Upgrade - 338: Loved by Podcasters the World Over

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Change is coming for us whether we like it or not. This week we ponder the possibility of an augmented-reality future, and mourn the loss of a piece of software we’ve used for every single episode of Upgrade (until now).

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 338 today's show is brought to you by fitbod hover and doordash my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley how are you today i'm doing great doing. Wonderful. I have a hashtag snow talk question for you. It comes from Stitch. Stitch wants to know, did you enjoy the Super Bowl? I was relieved to have a Super Bowl that didn't involve a team that I cared about at all. Last year, I cared about the Super Bowl, and this year I didn't, and so that was kind of nice. And yeah, sure.

I watched the whole thing, and all the commercials are interesting, and I was watching Twitter, And this year I didn't. And so that was kind of nice. And yeah, sure. It was fun. I watched the whole thing and all the commercials are interesting. And I was watching Twitter. And I think you put all those things together and you're kind of, there's a moment where everybody's sort of watching the same TV show. And I think that's a fun thing to do. And we had some chips and guacamole and yeah, it was nice. I will say, you know, you say about these were two teams that you didn't really care

about uh i will say they were two teams that i the names of which i did not recognize ah yes as a non-american uh football watcher yes they watched the halftime show though i watched that yeah sure i i liked it i'm a big fan of the weekendnd. I like The Weeknd's music a lot. I saw a tweet that said the people who know that it's spelled The Weeknd liked it and the people who thought it's spelled The Weeknd didn't like it. And I thought that's about right. That is fair. That is very fair.

I love the fact that a guy I saw at an Apple event was at the Super Bowl halftime show. That was pretty fun. Yeah, he's good. And I liked the whole thing. They did it, you know at the Super Bowl halftime show. That was pretty fun. Yeah, he's good. And I liked the whole thing. They did it, you know, usually Super Bowl halftime, they bring a stage out to the middle of the field and they have like a bunch of people run in who are not there for the game, but they're like screaming fans. And because of the pandemic, they didn't do that.

And they had this space in that stadium that during the regular season, it's like a pirate ship because it's the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. There's like a pirate ship there and it fires off like fake cannons and stuff when they score touchdowns and i don't know um and they made that into like the stage for the weekend and he had his weird glowing eyed kind of robot monster people uh which i really liked i liked how creepy it was and then he goes into the hall of mirrors and they're bumping into him and all of that i really like the staging of it and then he just it was very theatrical and then he goes into the hall of mirrors, and they're bumping into him and all of that. I really like the staging of it. And then he just, it was very theatrical. And then they end up all kind of like marching down the field at the end. I really liked it. I thought it was good.

Yeah, I thought the visuals of it was great. And I love his music. So I think it fit very nicely for that environment. So yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun. Was there anything ad related that was of interest to you? Well, I have a little mini upstream note, which is the broadcast was on CBS in the United States. CBS got the broadcast this year. And we've talked about how after the very much fraught merger between – re-merger between Viacom and CBS, they had to figure out what they were doing for their streaming service strategy, and they ultimately decided to call it Paramount Plus because, sure, it's got a plus.

And I think Paramount Plus is a better name for a streaming service than CBS All Access because CBS All Access sounds like a chance to watch old episodes of CSI. And Paramount Plus actually sounds like a streaming service that's got a lot of stuff on it. So that's what they are going with. And it launches March 3rd, I want to say. It launches in a month, basically, a little less than a month. And since they have the Super Bowl,

there is a whole ad campaign during the Super Bowl. Repeated ads, sort of like an ongoing story that I thought was a funny comedy bit that they did with all the properties of the corporate behemoth, but lighthearted. And so they heavily pushed that, which I think, you know, you got the stage, you got the Super Bowl, you're launching your thing in a month. The only way that would have made it better is if they launched it like today. Yeah.

But apparently they couldn't do that, so they're launching it in March, and they're still, I think it was the right thing to do to promote it That's probably why they paid the money they paid for the Super Bowl Well, I mean that's more complicated, like they pay those contracts, if you're an NFL broadcaster, you get in the rotation

and they did actually change who broadcast this year and it had to do with who had other events in the year that they wanted to promote, they swapped dates with one of the other networks but it wasn't about this and that happens way in advance so but it was a happy accident and i think they must have had that moment where just like well we gotta promote the streaming service at the super bowl but we can't launch it in time so we'll just say it's coming in march and i think it would have been more effective if they could have said you know cbs all access is now paramount plus sign up today

and instead they're like march 3rd which you know that's not quite as good because it's so close too right yeah but sometimes yeah you know the best laid plans and all that kind of stuff but i do i do think you know a silly we make fun of the branding and all that but they took a broad it's like a classic movie name from entertainment history that they own, which is Paramount. And yeah, they stuck a plus on it, I know. Paramount's the better brand. It's like why Warner Brothers went with HBO Max, right? Like HBO is a better brand.

Exactly. And it's a worldwide brand in the way that CBS is most definitely not. And also, again, CBS means something in America, but it doesn't necessarily mean what you want it to mean. CBS means something in America, but it doesn't necessarily mean what you want it to mean. Watching, as a Star Trek fan, watching press kind of contort themselves to explain that, no, Star Trek is not on CBS. It's on CBS All Access, which is a streaming thing, but it's the name for the broadcast thing, but it's not on the broadcast thing, except one episode is, and now they're going to rerun some.

And it gets very confusing. It's much easier to be like, no, no, no. It's a streaming service. That's all you need to know. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk or use question mark SnowTalk in the RelayFM members Discord. A couple of follow-up notes.

So this is kind of funny because we can not only give some follow-up, but also provide follow-up for a thing that we haven't yet spoken about, which was the returning of the DTK, the developer transition kits. So last week sometime, Apple contacted developers who received their ARM Mac mini developer transition kits to tell them that the time was coming for them to return them.

We all knew that they would need to be returned. Yes. It was the obvious thing. Preced precedent had been set with the intel uh transition kit that apple would likely offer some large discount or a free m1 mac for those in the program so people are expecting they're expecting some kind of like hey give us the hardware back you did pay us 500 so we'll say thank you with this uh on this occasion apple offered a $200 credit towards an m1 mac that you had to purchase before the end of may this upset people for a bunch of reasons it's a very small amount right $200 yeah um you probably already bought one right there's

unlikely to be any not necessary it is unknown if there will be any macs before the end of may that are new it's very unlikely to be the macbook pros which is what everybody would want right and you had to buy before the end of may and apparently i was seeing on twitter some developers including steve trout and smith complaining something i didn't know which was a lot of the dtks stopped working like there were lots of issues with them um so you know it's it's easy to say oh well you know of course people want more stuff and but this is these are the most important people to apple these are their developers and these are their developers who want to be on the cutting edge and supporting their new platforms so you would think that they would they would try to do you know And I would say that this problem started early

because everybody with a DTK, they expected that they were going to be able to get something from Apple out of it. But then the M1 Macs are announced and they're like, okay, now what Apple? And months go by. And a lot of developers are like, I'm going to wait and buy an M1 Mac

once my DTK situation is resolved. And it's like, why did you make them wait? Why did you not make it clear upfront what they could do so that they could move on it immediately? But instead they waited all this time. And then they put the, I mean, again, more money would be nicer than less money than $200.

But also the restriction of you've got to, you can only use it on an M1 Mac and you have to use it by May. So if we announce anything at WWDC, you can't use it for that. It seemed, again, they could do what they want with this program. They really can. But it seemed very strange that they would be so limited with what they would offer, considering that these are their most important people, really, which is their developers.

And do a good thing for your developers and for developer relations, please. Which, good news, eventually they did. So just a few days later, Apple increased the credit to $500, pushed the redemption date out to the end of the year, and said that if you already have an M1 Mac, you can use the credit on other Apple hardware. It's just like uh oh oh you wanted different things okay we'll just give you those then i would have loved to hear that conversation of like oh it turns out that everybody hates us for this why did we do it this way johnny johnny

did you do this yeah i did this i just wanted to save some money well johnny get out there and give them five hundred dollars now the the amount at which they reverse this i think kind of shows that they weren't aware of why this would be a problem right because because they they really they they could have done any of these three things and appeased people you know they would have not appeased everyone but they would appease people right because you could have said oh it's 500 or i don't worry it's the end of the year or you can just use it on a new iPad or whatever. But instead they just did all of them, which I think is right.

Honestly, I do think it's right to make developers whole for this because it's doing Apple a favor as much as the developers a favor. Yeah, I think the way we viewed the Intel transition kit and I think that the way that a lot of developers viewed this Apple Silicon transition kit is that you're essentially putting down a deposit on some hardware that you're going to need to return to Apple. And that when you return it, you're going to basically you're going to get your money back because you're not.

The idea here is that you're, you know, yes, you're going to have your stuff there on day one, but you're also doing Apple a favor by embrace. And Apple, you know, it's a stuff there on day one, but you're also doing Apple a favor. It's a symbiotic relationship here. It's like, we're going to get you this advanced, weird hardware because we really want your apps there on day one. But we're going to charge you for it is a weird thing. I think it's not unreasonable to view it as being essentially free with a deposit, and you want to get that money back at the end. And in the end, that is what they did bloomberg reports uh that dan riccio's new role so we spoke about this last week that he was moving on from kind of head of hardware to a special project is actually going to be overseeing an ar

vr product development cycle um i don't remember if i spoke about this if i mentioned this on this show or on connected but this is what i thought it was like the idea of him moving on to do a car which is what everybody thought seemed unlikely to me it felt like considering they have this whole thing which is sooner which is moving into ar and vr projects that in theory is going to be a really big deal so having somebody oversee that makes more sense and that's what mark german's reporting i think this makes complete maybe he moves on to a car afterwards if that's something apple really is going to do um but in the near term there are other things to manage and ar and vr is one of them so that's what uh richo is going to be going

on to do yeah and it sounds like sounds like they're at the point, we're going to talk about this in a little bit, but it sounds like they're at the point where they need to make real products in that category. And the first one may not be much of a real product, but they're entering the phase where they're going to go public with this stuff. And so having him kind of lead that effort

makes more sense than than like far off car stuff which you know we will we will talk about car stuff here eventually but i feel like there's no rush i think we've got a few years to talk about it so we'll get to it yeah so i will just note like there's so much stuff going on with the apple car and i've been collecting some notes right i collect links as i do for everything and every week i collect more links and delete old links because like one moment kia's doing it and then kia's not doing it then they are doing it and then they're not doing it and it's yeah i'm kind of happy we haven't yet spoken about it because we would be doing follow-up every single week on this about a product that may or may not exist and who knows why and i will say the one thing

that happened in the last week and you're in the apple car news and we're still uh we need to come up with a name for our recurring apple car segment i'm thinking upshift but we can oh my god all right now we have to start talking about it because you came up with a great name we'll workshop it but uh the funny thing this week what happened so, so this is like a little side segment, is there was a report that said Hyundai and Kia are going to totally make the Apple car in their plant in Georgia. And then like two days later, there was a story that was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, nothing is signed. No, no, no, no, no, nothing, nothing. And I can't decide whether there are negotiations going on and things are leaking from that. there are negotiations going on and things are leaking from that.

And then Apple gets mad and that Hyundai has to put out like their leaks that say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, nothing has happened. Or they totally have made the deal and Apple's unhappy that it leaked. And Hyundai has to go out and say, no, no, no, no, no. Or they made the deal. Then they said it. Apple got so mad, canceled it, right? Like it could be any of those things. Could be, right?

It's hard to say from the outside what it is but it is hilarious i say i you know i wouldn't want to be one of the people deeply involved in this because it's not hilarious to them but to me it's hilarious because it's very much like uh right right in the apple supply chain although there are leaks most of the companies know like nobody making a part for an iphone is putting out a press release saying hey the next iphone's gonna be pretty great because of our thing that we're putting in the next iphone that'll be coming this fall right they know they know you don't do that you don't pronounce anything with apple apple doesn't want you to do that and it feels a little bit like

there are people in the car industry who you know car industry they're like oh concept car new car this car is coming out in two years and stuff like that who are like yeah we're gonna be in the apple car and then people like no you can't you can't do that and they're like oh i didn't oh okay deny it no we're not in the there's no apple car so they'll get they'll get used to it and then we'll have kind of normal leaks from the car industry but right now it does feel a little bit like they don't know how to behave about secret Apple stuff. And so it's sloppy. It's messy.

But I find it very funny that this is these... And this isn't the first time, right? This is the second time somebody has said, oh, Apple's got to deal with Hyundai. And then it's been like, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. And then wait a month and then it's, oh, Apple's got to deal with Hyundai. Nope, nope, nope.

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to try out FitBod for free, and then get 25% off your FitBod membership. Our thanks to FitBod for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, the information has a report on Apple's upcoming AR vr mr headset um it's scheduled to launch quote as early as next year so not before 2022 okay but 2022 onwards this is a thing

that i see like bloomberg say this a lot like mark gomis says this a lot too as early as right because it's like they have an idea but they don't know when it's going to be so they've got some information about some hardware features so one is more than a dozen cameras for tracking hand movements and apparently there'll be also some thimble like device potentially that could be worn on a finger but it seems like from this report they may be really leaning into hand tracking for some kind of ar vr headset i don't want them to to rely solely on hand tracking myself i like i think there should also be some kind of controllers what do you think well i haven't had an experience with like pure hand tracking and in vr or ar um i i see the

importance of having the controllers because remember my first vr thing was a ps vr with just a controller and not the ps move things and so it didn't um it didn't hand track basically and that was that was not great and now with with the Oculus Quest 2, it has individual hand controllers, and so it does controller-based tracking, and it is like night and day. I can see the appeal of not even having to do that optionally and have it just as cameras, and it can sense where your hands are, and it uses that. cameras and it can sense where your hands are and it uses that my concern is that you know you're giving up some specificity of input and you're um right because you don't have buttons that you can push and also you're relying on a view from above to your hand and that also probably means that you could make small gestures sort of in the shadow you know out of the line of sight that it wouldn't pick up potentially. And I worry that just doing it based entirely on a camera, I worry about precision, right? Because one of the things

that amazes me that's magical about the Quest 2 ping pong game is that it is shockingly precise in simulating that. That said, I'm not playing ping pong. I mean, ping pong is a good example where I'm holding a paddle in my hand. So I'm holding the controller. So it feels real. But in most of these cases, you know, you're supposed to be reaching out with your hands, but you're in fact lifting a hand that's holding a controller and pressing a button. And that's not so I see the appeal of hand tracking. You know, I guess what I would say is having something that allows you to have a more precise experience as an option is probably the right way to do it. If you think about the iPad letting you use the Apple Pencil or a finger or attaching a keyboard, I sort of think that AR and VR maybe needs the same approach, which is maybe you want a game controller. Maybe you want, you know, hand tracking controllers, or maybe you don't need any of those for this application

and you can just use your hands and swipe in the air like on a science fiction TV show and that's enough. So I'm kind of open about it. I see the appeal of doing it purely that way, but I also see all the ways that if you didn't implement it kind of perfectly and brilliantly, it would have downsides. It's like, I think we spoke about this on Upgrade Plus a little bit ago when we were

talking about the oculus quest there is there is hand tracking there is a hand tracking mode and there are some games that do it and the experience that i've had is quite limited the experience that i've had is okay right it's like that was impressive that this kind of works at all that you know that i'm pointing right but unless apple has some huge leapfrog over oculus on this i would be concerned and well that's that's the question right it's like uh what we know we don't know whether that is because it's really really hard or whether because i mean if apple can do it right that's not having the product it's like well sure maybe apple solved this problem that otherwise is bad and they've done that before maybe they did it again or maybe not we don't know can you imagine like an apple vr controller they're just these two like buttonless like plinths of course that you just hold and you have to just all that one touch surface you have to just

work out exactly where to hit it the cameras apparently will also be able to pass vision to the headset so to create that kind of mixed reality mode so that's how it goes from ar to vr right it can either show you just what's on the displays or it can as well as using those cameras from tracking for tracking can use them to show the world outside of the headset. So it could be used for AR or VR. Yeah. And although you look really dumb wearing a VR headset and moving around, if you can see, at least you don't look very good, but you can see and there are some delightful things that you can do. I mean, I'm delighted by the low resolution, black and white mixed reality mode that I can put the oculus quest in because not only is it just kind of hilarious but it's also very useful because otherwise you can't

see the world around you in any context and if you can couple that to you have good cameras and you couple that to really good displays and again you're going to look like a dummy you're going to you're going to look ridiculous but you could actually like walk around and do stuff and have it be which is why microsoft always talked about like hololens as a um as a business tool right this is like you're not going to walk around your house in this thing but if you were using it for a business application you would have a an excuse for looking so silly uh apparently as well so this is this is that going into that two 8k displays inside of this which seems aggressive um i mean i'm maybe i'm not completely familiar with the current state

of vr headsets but i know a point that it was just one display and it was across the whole thing and you would just look at it and they split it down the middle maybe you do it now with two displays instead two small displays i don't know i i mean i i don't know i'm looking i'm trying to find this out from looking at the oculus page right now and your question is do they mean two ak displays or do they mean there's an ak display that's split across the two? Maybe they misunderstood this or something. Right. The point here, though, is that Apple is shooting for a level of graphics detail that the existing displays don't have. And I feel like that might be quite an ask.

So especially with passing the outside world in, right? It's a lot of data to handle because you have to do it in as close to real time as possible, right? To stop people from feeling nauseated. You can't have like a couple of second delay from me moving my head and the world moving.

You need some serious graphics power to drive those things. You know, that's the question. And at 8K, right? Like that's the thing. at 8k right like that's that's the thing like just to do it i expect is quite intensive but to do it at 8k feels like a lot i mean i guess this is this is going to be one of i think the more interesting tests of apple silicon so i think what we're looking at here is Apple wanting to build the platform,

knowing that it's not going to ship in volume for years, right? Not going to ship in volume with that first product. It's really going to be the year after that or the year after that, even, that it ships to regular customers at a regular price. And so what Apple's doing is smart, if that's what they're doing, which is it's imagining the moment when you could almost view it as being Apple drawing a line and saying, below here, it's not good enough for us, right? And we also, there's also some injection of reality there. Like, we're also not going to get there in a year. So they're trying to build what the tech would be what's state-of-the-art in vr in 2023 2024 because there's no point in building a 720p vr headset platform and and not shipping it for

four years or three years because you know the world has moved on by then so this is very much what you do if you were shooting for tech advancement that will take you where you want to go in three or four years. And in the meantime, all you have to do is make a kind of heavy, super expensive technical demo version in a year, which is what the reports suggest is going on. And we've talked about some of those before, that this is going to be expensive and it's not going to be in volume. And we don't know whether they're going to call it a developer kit or whether they're going to claim it's a consumer product, but nobody's going to buy it because it's going to be so expensive. But that sort of makes sense if what they're really trying to do is get everybody

thinking about what the standard for VR and AR is going to be when they ship that real product in you know 2023 2024 2025 um so on that level it makes sense to me like you know shoot shoot for as high end as you can right now because that high end is going to be the mainstream by the time the product comes out the real product yeah so there's there is some more hardware features but on that, because it leads into what you were saying, the information is quoting that the price is currently expected to be in the realm of $3,000, which is, I mean, that's going to make it a niche product. Apple apparently also has an internal goal of selling $250,000 in the first year. They don't expect to sell more than that. Now, what you could argue is there's a couple of things going on. There is one, that part of the argument which we spoke about a

couple of weeks ago, that this is a project that exists now to encourage development and take up for their future more refined AR glasses project. But the other part, lending into what you were just saying, is if you start with this, you will start driving the cost down just because you're making it. This reminds me of prices of folding phones, right? When Samsung came out with their first folding phones, they were incredibly expensive. And then they've been bringing that price down. And one of the ways they can bring the price down is by actually making it. It's a funny thing but you can push the development of the technology forward

by actually producing the products. I mean, $3,000 is going to be a lot of money for something like this. It's not a real product. It's not a real product. Every time we cover this we say the same thing which is it doesn't sound like apple right this is you mentioned the folding phones the way this product is described is described like apple's gonna make a folding phone and it's gonna cost two thousand dollars like all those other folding phones and it's not

practical and almost nobody's gonna buy one and it's gonna be fragile but uh it's not practical and almost nobody's going to buy one and it's going to be fragile, but, uh, it's the future eventually. And we'll see where it goes, but they don't do that. That's the thing is Apple tends not to do that with a product like that. So because this isn't a new category, that's why I keep casting it. And, and, and this is me wanting Apple to really cast it as being, it's not a product for every day. It is for maybe specific high-end businesses. I could see them getting some special effects artist up on stage or something like that and saying, oh, well, they can use it for this and for developers of AR and VR applications to plan for the future. And they can pitch it that way and say that here's a product that nobody wants except these very specific things.

It's weird, but that's the only way it makes sense to me. Like, this is not a product for regular people. It's only really a product that is saying this is where we're going. And, you know, check back in two years when we make a product that you can actually afford and you would actually want to use. So apparently this device will also feature eye tracking which is new i mean i can understand that making sense i haven't seen that on any competitor products it's not something that i remember i can see how these two things will go hand in hand and especially for ar glasses in the future, I could imagine eye tracking being an important part of that.

And multiple headbands that have features of their own. One headband has spatial audio built into it, another with additional battery. This is something we always thought about for Apple Watches. AirPods Max. Yeah, and for Apple, yep, yep, yep. Like, well, finally the swappable headbands are here. Right, Apple apple watch we talked

about they they obviously in the first apple watch were thinking that they might be able to do accessory things in the bands or something and it just never happened um you know obviously before they even shipped it they were like no we're not going to do that but the idea that you could swap in different parts makes sense i mean the the oculus quest which again i have very limited experience with vr and ar stuff but like i stuff, but I got the better headband for it, and it's vastly improved. But I could see how you might want to use that as an accessory that actually could add more functionality as you go for your $3,000. It starts at $3,000, I guess, is what we're saying. So the information have an illustration based on what they know

and this illustration has been around a lot because it clearly isn't the final product because that just straight up wouldn't work right like the way that the product looks you've got the you know the screens at the front and then a band that goes around your head right but the issue with the band is there's no support on it like it would just be completely rested right on the back of your head which it just wouldn't stay on right so but ignoring the specifics of how the illustration is drawn i can see this product existing right because the components in there all look like you know it's like oh okay i can see this right you've got the straps look like apple watch straps the hardware itself looks like the airpods max right with like the material on the face and

the part on the front and the buttons and stuff and whilst the illustration i don't think is perfect i think it indicates how a product like this could come from apple visually because it is building on these other things that they make. So you could see, I mean, and I genuinely, that's why I think they will do it because they do this, right? Like the AirPods Max

have the digital crown on them, right? Like Apple build on what they know how to make and adapt it. So I could see it there. It's true. The other, I mean, I reacted to that thing

also saying that it seems like somebody saw something and then they described it to someone else. And they said, oh, it's kind of like an Apple Watch band. Like, all right, I know how to draw that. Sure. Yeah, nobody, the illustrator had never seen anything. The illustrator just had somebody tell them something to something to something to someone.

It's a game of telephone a little bit. Correct. And so, you know, we'll but but perhaps the person who saw it um looked at the illustration said yeah that's kind of it but it's also not a final product right it's a product that's not going to ship before next year at the earliest so who knows um what you know what that is real i don't know it's it's a very weird rumor i mean i buy this report the information has had a good track record like they had a really great report on the magic keyboard for ipad pro like it kind of seemed to come out of nowhere and they had a lot of the details and they've had good reports in the past

like i trust this because as well going through it it's like whilst this all seems like so much i can very much imagine this product in the way it's described coming from apple well i mean since the first rumors came out about this i i had that moment where i realized apple does all of this right apple's got sensors and cameras and screens and like it could do this product using what it's got from basically the ip. Could it make an iPhone that you put on your face? And the answer is absolutely it could. This seems to be more than that, right? Like they don't, if they had wanted to do that, they could have done that probably a few years ago and they chose not to. They seem to want to take it to another level. I'm still also, I just want to back up for a second and say, I'm also still a little surprised that Apple really

is embracing VR in the way that this rumor says they are because VR always felt like a weird fit to me for Apple. Like VR is basically, yes, there are Microsofty business considerations, but it's also a, uh, very much a, a, uh, gaming platform. And unless apple's going to come out and say oh no this is for vr productivity and you're going to be able to like have a 9 000 inch ipad that you can crawl over in vr and touch things and all of that like failing something like that a vr productivity kind of pitch which i'm i would be very skeptical of i always thought ar made more sense for Apple, right? Because then we're out in the real world and you're wearing glasses. And I wonder if this

is just Apple realizing that it's going to be a while before the tech is good enough to do AR in public. And so the only way, you know, they pushed it as far forward as they can by putting LiDAR sensors on iPhones and iPads. And that the only way they're going to really keep pushing this tech forward till they get to the point where AR is practical is by taking an interim step to VR. I just don't know how great a fit VR is for Apple because, you know, again, depending on what their pitch is, productivity and stuff like that, I don't know. I'm skeptical of that. It's going to come back to games. And now we've got, you know, virtual reality iPhone games. Is that something that

people are going to really want? Is that a product that Apple is, you know, would ever really excel at? And that's, I guess that's, that's what I struggle with. This is, I can kind of see the end result here, which is what's going to replace phones is probably like glasses that you just wear and that all the contents of your phone are there in your vision when you want them and you don't have to hold anything up and put anything in your pocket. Like, okay, I think there's a strong argument that that may be ultimately where it goes in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, who knows? And that Apple wants to be a leader there so they don't lose their advantage that they have in the smartphone market.

And that all of this is really about that. And ultimately, they need to ship some products along the way. Because I'm still struggling with sort of like, what's the product people want here? And it feels more like there isn't a product people want here. But they know it's headed for somewhere where there's a product people want. isn't a product people want here but they know it's headed for somewhere where there's a product people want and they're just going to spend time and money creeping in that direction because they know you know they know that that's ar is where they want to get seamless ar that makes you not look like an income poop is where where they want to get but they're just not going to be able to

get there for 10 years and so they have to work at it in the meantime that's the best i can come up with right now because it's a very strange whole category, strange product, strange set of rumors. I'm still not... I don't disbelieve them. I think that it's probably happening. I'm just struggling to figure out why. That actually leads into a question. This was an Ask Upgrade

question, but I wanted to talk about it here. Ian wrote in and said, it seems that the both of you consider to be hesitant regarding AR use in daily life life but what about specific use cases AR doesn't have to be all day to be game changing and I think maybe out of the two of us I am the most concerned about AR and so here's my kind of thinking on it

I like the idea of mixed reality about AR. So here's my kind of thinking on it. I like the idea of mixed reality, which is what this headset is, which is you can use it for VR, for whatever you use in VR, and you can use it for AR for specific types of things. Like, for example, you can imagine IKEA

having a mixed reality AR app so you no longer need manuals, right? And it can detect the pieces and show you how to put them together. You know, like HoloLens have done so many great demos of like, have your granddad help you with the plumbing because he can see it and you can see it

and then he can draw arrows and like, you know, great. Like gaming is great for AR and VR. Maybe video, I don't know. You know, like typically at-home experiences for specific purposes? Sure. What concerns me is this future product, the actual real goal, AR glasses,

because that's where this is all moving to. Like Apple, I think even Facebook, they're not going into this to make a really great gaming system right they want the next smartphone that's what this is all for you make a really good point that i think that's exactly it is even though they are you know happy to have oculus in the short term as a leader in vr and gaming and all those things the reason facebook is making that bet is the same reason that I theorized for Apple doing all of this, which is the end result, which is AR glasses that replace your smartphone, essentially, that are your view

of all your data and your internet is just a pair of glasses that you wear around. And Zuckerberg is like, he's said stuff like this in the past. He's often quoted as saying that Facebook missed mobile mobile and he always considers that a big mistake in his career which is not gonna do it again no which is why he buys instagram buys whatsapp buys oculus he buys things that seem like they're becoming a thing to make sure that facebook can do it um and like the ar glasses product feels like the purpose of them is to create a product that you wear all the time like an Apple watch for your face or I mean ultimately an iPhone for your face ultimately it's an iPhone for your face but yes it would probably start as in more of an Apple

watch for your face and then move on in functionality yeah because no matter what that the eventual product that replaces the smartphone is it's not going to be fully formed straight away it's i don't think we're going to get a something like that with the smartphone where you could just replace your existing phone no and that's the where the apple watch parallel is good it's going to be a a view of some of the data that's on your phone will migrate instead of being on your wrist, which is sort of what's happened with the Apple Watch. It will be in your vision, basically. And I don't feel comfortable with having apps and notifications and ads and services being in my vision.

It feels too intrusive to me. One of the things that stops me from wanting to wear an Apple Watch all the time is I don't like the tapping. Right? I don't like technology being physically connected to me in a way that it can demand my attention. So this is something that going backwards and forwards wearing an Apple Watch, and I can wear it for a period of time and then not, that is one of the things that've really come down to and i look don't tell me that i can like not you jason listeners don't tell me i can turn off the notifications and it's not because that's when it was the freaking point and we're in the device yeah well and this is you know

we can back up here because although we're kind of tech forward kind of people like phones it's the same issue right the people will say this about phones too like i don't want my phone but i can put my phone down and walk away from it that's true i and also my phone this is almost like a snell talk question my phone is permanently silenced like i don't get noises from my phone either because i don't want them to bug me. I don't want it to bug me. So you're right. This is something that's in your face all the time.

My counter to that would be they're going to need to do a good job of setting the controls so that you're not constantly being distracted by this stuff. And then, you know, you can see that the first time they do it, they won't really do a good job. And then they'll be like, oh, no, no, no, we're going to do better in the future. And there'll be a lot of op-eds written on the internet that are about like, why are we so distracted by our AR glasses? And you can see, I think the difference may be, this is my optimism, is that maybe smartphones especially have had such an impact on society that by the time ar glasses become practical we will have remembered like oh right we need to think about the impact these have on

society before we deploy them because we saw what happened with smartphones and we don't want to have that again i just don't think that any technology company including apple has the ability to make that decision well and the apple the Apple Watch would be your example, right? It's like even with all the controls that you've got, there's this feeling of like, I can't really control it and it's just in my way. And, you know, I see it. I mean, even if, I mean, I guess my counter argument would be, what if you, because you're thinking about an Apple Watch in your face, what if you had a virtual phone?

Okay, follow me here. What if it was literally you didn't have anything with you, but you could make a gesture or even lift up a hand like you were holding a phone and you had a virtual phone? It could be that level of control where you don't see anything unless you summon it and it's not overlaying as a normal matter of course it's only when you summon it like there are there are i don't think it has to be bad but i think you are right in that that's going to be the barrier to acceptance of this stuff is that you're you know you're taking over my one of my senses, basically, to put your garbage in it.

I don't want that. I just think that the addiction that we have of our devices will be too strong if it's there in front of us constantly. I think you're right. And that's what I was saying, is i think there are some societal dangers here that uh we're all gonna have to to grapple with but in terms of like ian's question about hesitant regarding ar use in daily life it's like well first off i i do believe that this is the thing that's going to replace the smartphone i really do i really do believe that in the end there will be some technology that will make it

possible for you to have what we currently have on a piece of glass on our wrist or in our pocket, just be in the air in front of us. And that based on our eye movement and based on our hand movement, we're going to be able to, whether it's a virtual phone, virtual tablet, just a floating screen in front of us, you know, there are going to be ways to do it where you have all that data. And it's not going to start out that way. It's going to start out much more limited. But I do think that this is at least, if I'm not certain, I would say at least it's got the potential to be the thing that finally actually replaces the smartphone as the thing that everybody uses. It has that potential

to be like your smartphone, but all you're doing is wearing a pair of glasses. Everybody's wearing a pair of glasses and that's how we all have it. Are there societal implications to that? You bet there are. There are enormous societal implications to that. And we should be concerned about it, but I don't think that's going to necessarily stop it from happening. And to get back to your original point, this is absolutely why Facebook and Apple and every other tech company are looking at this stuff is because nobody wants to be left on the side of the road

when the next smartphone happens because you can see what it did for Apple's business to have a seat at the table for that. I'm not writing it off. I am a technology person, right? I love this stuff, and I really want to see what Apple will do with this, and I'm sure they will create something

that will excite me in the way that their products do excite me. But I have these very strong feelings about this stuff, and I really hope that these concerns will be addressed evidently in whatever they do. But my gut feeling about this type of technology is currently not a good one. We're going to talk about this a lot over the coming years,

but that's kind of like a refresher, because I don't know if I've gone into detail this much on the show about why I think this technology concerns me, and I do mention it a lot, and I'm mentioning it more, so that's kind of where we stand on it. No, I think that's good. And of where where we stand on it no i think that's good i think um and again this is the source of my optimism i guess it's also the source of some of my pessimism which is i do feel like the smartphone thing happened with no real thought

given to how it was going to impact society and my hope is that the next thing when it comes along, we will have enough collective memory of what just happened that we take some steps to changing our approach to it. The fear would be that we won't remember all the things that happened and we'll just rush out the products that completely break and weirdly change our social interactions and everything that happens in the world. And only after five or 10 years of that will we realize that we need to do parental controls and time tracking and other things in order to try and fix all the things that the new tech broke. It's like conspiracy theories feel more real

when you can see them. Sure, I can see UFOs all the time now in my augmented reality classes. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by DoorDash. You're craving Chinese food tonight. Your friends want pizza. Someone else is craving furio. There's something for everyone on DoorDash. DoorDash connects you with the restaurants you love right now,

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Can you tell me something you love about it? I like the idea that, especially if you're in a COVID peak time where there's a lot of issues in terms of going out in public and you're trying to minimize your exposure, and that's definitely been the case for us in California the last few months, the idea that you don't want to make dinner every night and you can kind of pre-order a dinner from a local restaurant and have it just sort of show up at your door with a knock and you didn't have to go outside. And I'm not always going to be that lazy, but sometimes I'm that lazy and I just want the food to appear and we all are working out of our house and never leaving it to go anywhere.

And then there's a knock at the door and that food that we ordered earlier in the day has arrived. And it's a nice change of pace too so you know there's a lot a lot of there's a lot to be said from going on the internet and tapping a few things on a on an order page and having food arrive at your house warm it's uh it's pretty good for a limited time listeners of this show can get 25 off and zero delivery fees on their first order of 15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and use the code UPGRADE2021. And something special and new for our Australian listeners, if you use the code UPGRADEAUS, so that's UPGRADEAUS, you will also get that 25% off at up to $10 and zero delivery

fees on your first order. Just download the DoorDash app in the app store use the code upgrade 2021 in the us and upgrade aus in australia one more time that's upgrade 2021 or upgrade aus for 25 off your first order with doordash subject to change terms apply our thanks to doordash for their support of this show and relay fm i'm happy to have something specific for the Australians isn't that nice fair dinkum mate is that a thing? I don't know okay iOS and macOS betas are out this came out I think just after we recorded

last week the thing that people were most excited about with iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4 is it enables iPhone unlocking without face ID when you're wearing a mask you've tried this out right i have and what do you what do you think i immediately installed these betas and it's it's quite a thing because you got to install the ios beta and the watch os beta to get it to work

and uh it works it's uh pretty great i in fact, I didn't realize this. I actually had to take my car in for service, and I'm standing wearing my mask in the line, or I guess I'm waiting for the guy to finish keying in whatever he needs to key in so that I can pay and go. And I just completely without thinking took my phone out of my pocket and flipped it open and i thought oh mask and then my watch tapped me on the wrist and it unlocked and i was using my my phone i was like oh real world test of this thing and uh it's pretty great i mean i've seen some people say oh well you know of course it's just for people with the apple watch well apple's trying essentially this is that Apple's trying to use whatever tools it might have at its disposal to make it easier to unlock your phone when you're wearing a mask.

And I applaud it. I wish it had happened, you know, last year. But it works. And, you know, if you're an Apple Watch wearer, it's great news, right? It's going to solve a problem that all of us are facing. And I think in the long run, there's going to be more mask wearing. And there are parts of the world where there's traditionally been a lot of mask wearing certain times of the year, for sure. So in general, I think it's a good feature to add, regardless of where Apple goes.

You know, eventually, maybe they bring back Touch ID as well. But, well, but we're going to have Face ID phones in service for a long time. I've been trying to work out the answer to this, as to how it's doing the unlocking, and I don't know if you know. Is it doing anything to recognize that it's JSON? Is it doing a partial scan of the top of your face? My understanding is that it's it's at least detecting that you're wearing a mask um i talked to somebody who said that they tried i think it was dan moran tried to like put some like a napkin up in front of his face or something and it didn't work like it may actually have they may have done some training on masks so that they get the sense of like yeah i've got a partial match and and it

may actually try to be partially matching what it knows the face is and then also recognizing mask i i'm unclear on exactly what the behavior is here i'm hoping that apple publish a white paper or something i would like that too a better idea of exactly what it's doing because i i really want to know and and i'm not trying like it's not for being alarmist but it's like what is the security level now like how secure is this is this more or less secure than my passcode like i don't know i'm intrigued because like the thing about face id is just how incredibly secure this is yeah well the truth is though it's biometrically authenticating you based on

your apple watch being on your wrist so you will have either had to put in the apple watch password or have unlocked your phone with face id or a passcode before while it was on your wrist ID or a passcode before while it was on your wrist to get it to work so that's your passport right is the fact that you've got just as it is on the Mac if you're using Apple Watch to unlock things or

Apple Pay on the Mac is the unlocked constantly on your wrist Apple Watch is your proof that you are who you are but it's like I I'm intrigued, though. How close does the watch need to be? Look, these are stupid things to go through.

Well, it has to be close. They didn't specify, but it has to be close. So they're doing time of flight, for sure. Which, again, is something that they've done with Apple Watch Unlock for a bunch of other stuff, too. That's how the Mac Apple Watch Unlock works. so it's got to be very close to the phone and it taps your wrist when it unlocks so if you had a a bad person who within a mask who took your phone away from you and then tried to unlock it even if they were close enough to unlock it you would um you would know right because you would get a tap that said, I just unlocked a phone.

And so you couldn't be caught unawares by that. They seem to have stepped through this as much as possible. So in the end, I will say, if you've got a four digit code on your watch and a sophisticated password on your phone, um, it means that you might be able to get into a phone by stealing a phone and a watch and breaking the four digit code on the watch right like that would become your weak your weaker link there i guess and i don't know whether it's trying to do a partial match on your face and you know the robber doesn't match or whether it would would succeed that part i don't know yeah and it's again i'm

not doing this to to paint these wacky and wild scenarios, which, of course, could happen to some people. You know, there's definitely something to be said about that. But it's more like I'm just intrigued, you know? So I do hope that Apple talk about it eventually, right? Like, what is the distance? And what is the kind of is the owner of the security? That kind of thing.

It's just intriguing to me. I'm happy to hear it works. I'm surprised that it's now, you know, it's been a year. I'm sure this was very difficult, but it's not like this type of authentication is completely new to Apple because the watch and the phone have an unlock between the two of them. The watch unlocks the Mac. My understanding, and I think Gruber was the one who wrote about this, is that the challenge was that they have a one-direction flow of authentication here, which is you open your iPhone when you're wearing your watch and your watch unlocks,

which is very convenient, right? That's nice. But now they need to use the watch as proof that the phone is authenticated and they already built it the other way. And so at least according to what I read, um, that was extra complexity because you can't have it,

you know,'t have it, you know, you have to make sure that the flow is only happening in one direction because, you know, you can't, you're like, well, they unlocked this and now they unlock that. And now we're going to unlock this again. It's like, well, no, how does, so there's some extra work that needs to go on there. And I think, honestly, I think the big issue with all of these features is that they want to make sure that they're really locked down security-wise, right? If any of these features becomes the hole by which people can break into an iPhone, then they've failed. So I think that a lot goes into the security stuff and that it makes these features slower to arrive. iPadOS 14.5 got a horizontal boot screen, finally.

iPadOS 14.5 got a horizontal boot screen, finally. Yeah, I haven't seen that, but great. We have been lamenting. Now they just need to change the logo on the back of it. We've been lamenting. At least on the Magic Keyboard, the logo is the right way around, right? I always view the iPad as a horizontal device and not a vertical device but um but yes apparently for the first time you when you boot if it's in horizontal orientation it shows the apple the right way up that's that's fun and today there are reports that it was

discovered by intrepid users and on reddit that ios 14.5 has the bones for changing your default music app with Siri. So you can ask Siri to play a song and it'll ask you which music app you want to use and you can choose which one. So you could choose Spotify, et cetera. So I'm pleased that they're adding this. This is something that I want to see this roll out

more and more and more to more types of applications, like not just the small handful that Apple originally ordained at WWDC. I want to see this come out further and wider, different types of apps. Big Sur 11.3 also came out. You can set HomePod pairs as the default audio output. If this is anything like Apple TV, get ready for issues. Oh my god, Jason, it's driving

me bananas. It's so bad. This feature is so bad with the Apple TV. When it works, it's awesome because I have my two amazing speakers. But every day, I have these issues where it pauses, it gets out of sync the audio starts

playing on my tv and at the home pods for a few seconds and then i you know i have to double quit the like i have to double tap quit the app sometimes to get it to work i've had times where the audio gets out of sync and i press home and the audio of the show is still playing until i restart the home pod like i have so many problems with this feature i genuinely think i'm one of the only people in the world that uses it uh i love it when it works but it really doesn't every day they it was fine for a while and then it got bad again so i i appreciate that apple like um mac os hasn't had support for you setting up home pod as an output and it's so frustrating because it seems like it would make sense to have a stereo pair home pod as your output

um my concern here is you know it's related to your problems which is there's a lot of sound stuff going on in um like mac os i wrote about this in mac world last week mac os has a much more sophisticated sound subsystem than ios which is good because it allows us to use things like audio hijack and you know there's so many reasons why it's good but uh it's way behind in terms of things like AirPlay 2 support and output to a stereo pair of HomePods. And there's other issues. I have had huge issues with macOS and AirPods where they disconnect or they go into the weird like phone voice profile mode. Oh, I have this. Yeah, it's's so bad I don't know why this happens and there's all

these issues there so I updated to the big server 11.3 beta because I wanted to try this stuff out and it was a disaster it just couldn't play audio at all it would try and I couldn't change it and I couldn't open the sound preferences pane it would just

never open and I re't change it and I couldn't open the sound preferences pane. It would just never open. And I reverted back down to 11.2 and said, well, I'll see you next time. So I'm excited about the prospect of this, but it sounds like this beta is going to just break audio for a while until they fix all of this stuff. And I hope that they don't ship the final 11.3 with it as, I mean, obviously it's developer beta one,

but at the same time it was super broken and I have concerns that there's already stuff that's really kind of broken and sound and big sir involving the AirPods. And I'll just put this on the list. You know, that said in that Mac world story, I'll just, I'll mention it here.

I did have a moment cause I'm using my M1 MacBook Air more and I'm using the AirPods with it and discovering all these things that are broken. And I did have a very funny moment that happened that I wrote about in that story, which is, you know, I'll sit down in the backyard and I'm writing on my iPad and I'm listening to music over my headphones and then I'll close up my iPad and come inside and the music is still playing. And I did that on the Mac where I'm like, I'm listening to music and I'm going to go get something

and I close the Mac and I walk. And the moment I close the Mac, the music stops. And I thought, oh, right, sleep. Mac shouldn't sleep like that anymore, right? On Apple Silicon, that doesn't, the old style sleep doesn't really make sense anymore. They got the low energy cores and and uh power nap is always turned on and i had that it was just a moment of realization where it's like yeah actually if i'm listening to music and i closed the screen you should just keep playing the music right like you

should my ipad keeps playing the music my iphone keeps playing the music why wouldn't my mac keep playing the music and i suspect that that's the direction that they're going is that these apple silicon macs are going to end up having a very different conception of of being asleep that's more like an ipad or an iphone but for now it just uh you know i've got a list of sound things and music things and other things with uh with the mac os that it even though it's more advanced in so many ways than ios it's also so behind in so many ways so maybe maybe uh big sur 11.3 will get better and solve some of these problems but don't don't upgrade now i i just don't don't do it so i want to move on to talk about ecam core recorder for skype this is very inside baseball

moment of silence there's no way we're not talking about this so ecam are a company that have long made uh audio based tools uh for the mac uh one of their tools core recorder for skype loved by podcasters the world over yeah is going away i should say ecams made a bunch of different utilities they made a really great utility to let you print to um to printers that didn't support air print oh my god yeah i forgot about that and they make and they make ecam live which is video it's like live stream video software that's actually really great and it's mac only and it's beautifully um beautifully done but call recorder for skype for more than a decade has been the tool that

basically every podcaster started to use because everybody used Skype in the early days. And how do you record? And here's a little tool that will automatically record your calls so that you can use those recordings to make a podcast. And last week, I knew that it wasn't working on Apple Silicon. So I just did a check last week to see if they had an update on it, and they linked to a tech note, and the tech note said, we will not update this for Apple Silicon. And I emailed them, and I said, does this mean that

you're killing this product? And they wrote back and said, yes, that's it. It's the end. So I wrote about it, and apparently nobody else had noticed, and that sort of like, and then Gruber linked to it, and then, you know, it happened from there. They ended up writing a blog post because they did after the fact they did instead of just putting it in a tech note i was disappointed by that like a company can decide to do whatever they want to do but if that was the decision that they made the way that they communicated it was

poor right just like it's in our support right yeah they have my email right email me tell me i want to know so i can start to make decisions but they wrote they ended up writing a great um blog post they spoke i mean and as well anyone that's used this that uses this product that the last year they have had horrible problems with skype so skype will update kills core recorder it'll reinstall. Like, there's been some issues, right? So I think, you know, maybe they know the writing's on the wall for them. And it's not fair to say, like, this isn't the case where it's like, well, yeah, but they haven't done any work on this product in a while.

It was obviously not. Like, I feel for them because they, when QuickTime, the old QuickTime APIs went away, they wrote a brand new set of movie tools to edit the stuff. And they did a new container file format for it so that it would continue to work without QuickTime. And they have made an effort to keep it working with Skype, even though Skype tries to kill it every single time it updates. To the point where now they actually intercept when you launch skype and say uh you need to reinstall call recorder now because it's not installed like they're they they made a real effort but i do feel like maybe part of this is that the writing was on the wall that skype really didn't want them to be there and that um something in apple silicon perhaps was the

the final the straw that broke the camel's back basically. And they're like, okay, we're not going to do this anymore. It was possible that it needed a rewrite and they just didn't want to put that time in. Well, they're spending all their time on Live and Live is a much better like growth opportunity for them going forward, right? It's a subscription app.

Yeah. It's in a field that people care about now, which is streaming. And they should be putting all their resources to that because there's lots of things it doesn't do that it could do and it you know but it's already a fairly impressive uh app so i get it i totally get it yeah but i would just say like i would pay them a stupid amount of money as a subscription to keep using this app but never nevertheless like what made call recorders so good was that it was very easy to have it record

calls automatically and the benefit of that being it's perfect backup because if me and jason are on skype it's recording it's recorded it's recording my correct microphone i don't have to set my microphone that so that was one of the huge things about call recorder and why i encouraged its use is not only did it auto record so you didn't have to remember to press record, which people, that was a point of failure. I'd be surprised. Also, when you have somebody record in QuickTime Player, which is great, they have to select the right microphone. Skype Call Recorder, if you knew Skype Call Recorder was running and you heard their voice coming over the right microphone, you knew you were going to get the right microphone. and you heard their voice coming over the right microphone,

you knew you were going to get the right microphone. And that's not the case with other tools where you don't have that extra point of validation. So, you know, again, if we were building a workflow today for podcasts, would we do it that way? No, but at that point, everybody had Skype. Skype was, you know, Skype was free. Everybody had it.

And it was a plugin that made the recording stuff way easier in an era where it was kind of hard to get people to record their own audio um and so it became the core of a workflow that that survived for uh more than a decade really i mean we were all using skype for podcasting before Microsoft bought Skype. Right. So like, and back then. Long time ago.

It was the only thing, realistically. It really was. To do what we're doing. And then, you know, once you wrote about a piece called The Mortality of Software, which is such a, but like strong title, but really points out, it's like, once you are in a workflow, you don't want to change it like if something's working don't disrupt it and you keep adding little bits on top of it so you create this thing that is the word i used is is bricolage which is a fun word but it's like you just kind of like a bunch of garbage just kind of gets piled together but like it's you've placed

it all there and it works for you and it's built up over a decade and it's it's like a beaver dam or something right it's like i put all this stuff together all these sticks and everything and now i've got it and then um and so you keep using it because it's it is this is where you know everybody all these workflows have inertia right it's like well i've been using it so i'm going to keep using it but that's where the inertia comes from also is that you you keep assembling this structure of stuff that is this is how i do it and then you have a case like this where it's like yeah yoink that that part is gone it's just it's or and it's not gone it still works but it works on intel max and and doesn't work on apple silicon max so the writing's on the wall right it's it's if you buy

an intel or an apple silicon mac you can't use call recorder. So thus, it's basically over. So for me, my typical feeling about this stuff is when something changes, when the writing is on the wall, I want to move as soon as possible because I don't want to find myself in a situation where I'm now stuck without a plan. Well, or like, let me give you an example, which is for various reasons, I am recording today on my MacBook Air. So I can't use that. Like, here it is.

I can't use call recorder because I'm on an Apple Silicon MacBook Air. So luckily this had happened. Well, and then this is my point is that, so if I was relying on a workflow that had it at its core, I would have to, every time i used this different computer i'd be like oh can't use that got to come up with something else and yeah it's been a backup recording for a while for us right like audio hijack has been the primary recording for most podcasters i know for a while but uh there's still lots of people who just rely on call recorder and we still use it as mine like yeah audio hijack is my backup core recorder is your backup yeah the one i used

yeah so so uh but but now that we know it's going away it's like well i can't stay with it i i need to come up with i need to find a new solution that will work and follow me across every mac that i use so as of today upgrade is now recorded over Zoom. That's true. So now, why Zoom, you may ask? And please don't stop. You stop right now with that feedback where you're telling me to use whatever app is Chrome based or whatever. You know, the reason we're using Zoom, there's actually quite a few reasons.

We both already have paid accounts. Yep. So we already have accounts. It's an app, which I want. I don't want to use anything in a web browser. I just don't want to do that. I don't want to use any app that is just for podcasting because there's a lot of VC money being poured into podcasting right now.

And that bubble's going to burst at some point. So I don't want to put all my eggs into a basket of some application that might go away. So I want to use something like Skype, which is we're not using it for what it's intended for, which probably means it's going to stick around. And honestly, you look at any kind of app right now, Zoom is here for the long haul because yeah

like it or not it's going to be here yeah exactly zoom now means meeting in the same way that google now means search right like it it's embedded but one of the great things about zoom compared to all of the other things out there before you say to me what about slack what about fac? What about FaceTime? What about, well, it has built-in recording into the application. And it does it automatically. It does. And the reason that I use it, also, it works on its cross-platform, including mobile, which is, you know, there are some non-cross-platform solutions or just Mac and Windows. And I, because I've been looking for tools for this

for a while now of like is there another way to do this is there an alternative to skype and i you know i can't get everything that i want but one of the things that i think you need to constantly be looking at is does it work on an ipad does work because that would be good like it would be really good if it also worked on an ipad and an iphone because sometimes you do need to call somebody who only has one of those devices but the way zoom's recording works and this is why i've been using it for podcasts for a couple years for the incomparable is although it makes a the recording that it makes is not local on on like everybody's end so it's got potentially some like bandwidth cloud-based artifacts in it you know

if they've got low bandwidth you may get dropouts and things like that but that said it the recording it hands you as the host is an individual track for every single person on the call and that's super important if you're going to edit audio after the fact so that's the perfect it's actually better than call recorder, which will only hand you your personal track and then the audio of everybody else on the call. Now for two people, it's fairly simple. But if you have three people like connected or you have four people like clockwise and then you have the incomparable, which has like 90 people on it at one time, it helps

to have that. It's a huge boost to have that uh and and right now i'd say zoom is the best in class because of that even though there are lots of issues with zoom for podcasting that's sort of what i'd already settled on and since i have a paid account and you have a paid account you only need one the only the host needs to have a paid account but for those reasons i think zoom sounds better than skype too honestly i think it actually sounds better while we're you sound much clearer to me today than yeah than i'm used to um likewise i'm i am now using audio hijack now as my main recorder and zoom is the backup as the backup i

want something that has a backup and uh i'm very you know I'm very happy to have a solution that I'm already using and already paying for. But it's a shame. Yeah, and I'm open to change. I would love to find that ideal solution that runs cross-platform, including mobile, and records everybody's files locally and then transmits them over the cloud. I could come up with a list and i have and there's nothing that does all of them right now and if we throw your web browser thing in the mix then it's there's really nothing that does all of them but zoom comes the closest at this point and so that's where we are for now but you know and my just to bring this back around to something that isn't podcasting inside baseball, it is, this is the story of being a computer user, right?

Is a new platform comes out or a new operating system comes out and you want to update. But this app that you're using, like, I think a lot of people went through this with the 32-bit apocalypse, right? Where you had an app that you've been using and it wasn't really being updated. And you had that moment where you thought, Oh no, I can't use it anymore, which is, I think your approach of like, well,

if it's not going to last into the future, I'm going to get rid of it now is, is another way to approach that, which is I'm not going to wait for the moment where I want to do a, an update to a new Apple operating system. And now it breaks. Or in this case, I don't want to buy a new Mac and realize that now my call recorder setup is broken because the new Mac is Apple Silicon.

And so now I can't use it anymore. But you know, I got a little philosophical on that piece. The truth is that, you know, nothing is forever. And software generally, I mean, there's software, institutional software that will last forever. But most of the stuff that we do we use is like more independent kind of software smaller batch software and that stuff does come and go because the people who make it come and go and their livelihoods change and they or they get retired or um our friend james thompson pointed out the there's a literally a story of somebody who wrote a piece of software for the mac who got hit by a bus he literally got hit by a bus and he was fine he was fine but like it's not even a metaphorical bus like we're all people and a more on a more happy note they could also just choose to retire right like if the author of your favorite software says i'm out of here i'm gonna go on a beach somewhere thanks for all the you know license

fees i'm i'm out of here i'm retired that, right? That's it. So all you can really do is accept that change will happen. Try to be open to it. View it as an opportunity. Like I did in the end, I think this is an opportunity. We could have switched to Zoom a long time ago. And I think it would have been fine. I think it would have been good. But this was the opportunity to do it.

And so here we are. And I'll be open to other opportunities, but I think that's all you can do because in the end, nothing is forever. And maybe it's good to look at that beaver dam of workflow that you built up over 10 years and go, well, like i had a moment where i was

super sad about call recorder dying and it was followed by a moment of well of opportunity which was like oh well with call recorder not in the mix like i can revisit all sorts of assumptions with that because that was the base assumption and with with it gone, well, it was based on Skype being the only tool available. And then everything came from there. But with Skype Call Recorder gone, like Skype's been lousy for a long time. We've been like, yeah, but Call Recorder. So, you know, in the end, it is an opportunity for change. And nobody likes change, but it's inevitable.

So might as well go with it. This episode is brought to you by Hover, one of our longest running sponsors here on Upgrade and RelayFM. So might as well go with it. entrepreneurs, Hover is that first step. It is that big leap. Hover has over 300 domain name extensions to choose from, and that is the dot whatever, right? They have.com, they have.co, they have.coffee,.pizza,.live. No matter what you're looking for, Hover has the domain for you. It's waiting for you right now. You just go and search for it. Go to hover.com, type in what you're looking for, and they will show you all of the options. They'll show you relevant ones, and then maybe some that you might want to look at. They also, what I like is you can just type in a bunch of words at Hover, and they'll do their best to try and put them together. Like maybe the combination

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to get a 10% discount on all new purchases. Make a name for yourself with Hover. Thanks to Hover for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions to finish out today's show. The first one comes from Nick, and Nick wants to know, Jason, do you use finger guns when you make the pew-pew sound? Absolutely not. I just lean into the microphone and the lasers emerge.

Do you have any kind of imagination that goes along with it? Like, is there an image in your head? Or is it just so built into you now? It's like a Pavlovian response. It's like the theme song for Ask Upgrade is lasers. I'm happy that you think of it that way. Ryan asks, do you still think that the displays on future

Macs will feature rounded corners considering the design changes that came with Big Sur? Yes. Do you think we're going to get that this year? If any Mac has a new design, you think it will get the rounded edge?

The first thing is they could just put the rounded corners on in Big Sur, right? Like they could just do it. There's software that you can get that will just round the corners for you, right? Like you can do that if you want. I think it looks better with the rounded corners, to be honest. But, you know, it's a direction Apple is going with its other hardware. So I think it would not, you know, surprise me at all that they would do that on the Mac. They could do it via software instead of hardware.

But yeah, I think it looks better. I really hate the little pixels in the corners. I really don't like it. I don't want to see this couple of pixels. Everything is rounded in Big Sur except the corners of the screen. Yeah. So I don't get it and and and not just in big sir in the window but then you look at the outside of the displays and they're all curved on the laptops

so it's it's a very weird sharp edge amid many curves but it's possible that they're waiting to reduce the bezel because that bezel could get a lot smaller i was looking at the my macbook air the other day and thinking you know from the perspective of my old macbook air the bezel because that bezel could get a lot smaller i was looking at the my macbook air the other day and thinking you know from the perspective of my old macbook air the bezel on this thing is so much smaller but it's also from the perspective of like an ipad or an iphone it's still enormous so there's more room to be eked out of the the display by pushing the bezel um further and further out so uh maybe that's an opportunity to put a curve in there too i don't know some great real-time follow-up in the relay fm discord from ryan who's put a link to cortex animated episode 109 uh it's also a time stamped uh link so i'll

put it in the show notes this is a uh an illustrative look of jason during the pew pew pew sounds uh i think you're kind of godzilla like um in this in this animation i wasn't aware that i was uh a character in cortex animated and then i watched cortexex Animated and I am, yes, it's a Godzilla-like robot me emerging from the sea to fire finger lasers at a city. And I'm just watching Cortex Animated, you know, just as you do. And I'm like, wait, wait a second. Was that, was that me? And I went back.

I'm like, yeah, that is me. That is me as a robot monster firing lasers. So it was great. A very talented animator,jim butek asked me about that and i said yes do it and i forgot to tell you yeah i'm pleased it was a nice surprise yeah i i am glad that it was a complete surprise while i was watching the thing because what are the chances that somebody isn't going to say that you weren't going to say or that a viewer isn't going to say but nobody told me about it. And I was just watching

and I had that moment. It was delightful. Phil asks, I got an M1 MacBook Air this week, upgrading from a 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro. My word, what an update that must feel like. Wow. This gives you an example of how big of an update this is for Phil. Phil's question is, I've been having difficulty with dragging files whenever i go to drag a file force touch kicks in should i turn it off okay so so so phil is an aggressive button masher yeah clearly well the thing is if you are used to the old trackpad style which had just the one point of actuation yep you probably weren't aware of how hard you were pressing yeah probably so probably so my answer phil is i'm looking at my trackpad settings right now um i have force click and happy haptic feedback turned off right

and that solves it so this is this is off what phil wanted to know if they should just turn it off so what i'll say is one thing you should do is just they have a light medium and firm clicking maybe try out those three options and see if you like that but i will tell you uh force the force clicking action actions not that not great, really. Not super important. But yeah, I highly recommend people go to the trackpad system preferences pane because it's a surprising amount of things you can do there. You'll learn some stuff. You turn on silent clicking, which is great because trackpads, Apple juices the click.

Because remember, they don't click anymore. Not for real. They sense the pressure and they vibrate and make a sound. And it makes it feel like it's a click, but it's not. It's all a lie. It's in your head. And you can turn on silent clicking and then the audio portion, the fake audio goes away. It still makes a noise because the vibration makes a noise.

But it's less of a noise. And I actually have silent clicking turned on because why would I want more noise? Oh my word, I didn't know about silent clicking. Right, that's terrible. Oh, silent clicking. Yeah, and then I have force click and haptic feedback turned off and then the click settings

where you can go light, medium and firm. The beauty of having a fake click instead of a real click is you can set how hard you need to push for the click to be registered, which is great. And then of course there's like tracking speed and other stuff that's in there. It's's also the only is it the only apple preference pane that has videos that auto play in it which is weird i know why they do it but it's also kind of weird but

there's a lot you can do with modern trackpads in terms of because they're not real like right because they're fake the magic trackpad 2 and modern apple laptop ones where, I mean, they're not fake, but like they don't depress in order to make a click. It's all vibrations and sounds and stuff because it's measuring the force pushed on the surface instead. So try it out, Phil, and you'll find a way to make yourself happy with your clicking and your dragging. That's where you also turn on just tapping rather than to select, which I also like. I hate that. I don't like that, but I like that. Tap to click, it's the worst.

Finally, Ryan asks, do you think Apple have added the Apple Watch authentication for unlocking your phone because they've realized they cannot deliver Touch ID this year? Conspiracy. I say no because I think they're're like i said earlier in the show there are a lot of face id phones out there and even if you were coming with a face id

uh iphone in the fall you're gonna have a lot of face id or a touch id phone in the fall um you're gonna have a lot of face id phones that are still out there and you want to make those people happy. Also it's February. So let's assume this feature ships in March sometime. Like that's good. That's really good. Um, for a lot of reasons.

Um, so I, I think, I think no, I, I get the conspiracy, which is like, well, if we, if we, uh, do this feature and we deliver touch ID in the fall, then we're kind of undercutting a reason to upgrade, which is for Touch ID. I don't think it comes to that. I think this is really about getting something out there that they probably started working on last year at some point, and they only got it delivered now because there are so many phones out there that are are on face id and and you know don't work with masks so i think it's that simple it's fun though that there's going to be another big feature released around this time of year you know we got the uh trackpad support last year around around this kind of time and uh it was like late february early march i think and now the uh i reckon that's probably when we're going to get this,

is late February, early March, I reckon, before 14.5 comes out. It seems kind of like the round of time. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord that you get access to if you sign up for Up plus where you also get lots of fantastic content we were talking i think maybe last time about the interviews that you were doing for the 20 max of 2020 you posted another one of those at john syracuse you get access to that feed as well if you're an upgrade plus subscriber go to

getupgradeplus.com to sign up and you'll also get upgrade without any ads and we have additional content each and every week. Thank you so much if you have signed up to help support the show. I would also like to thank Hover, DoorDash and FitBud for their support of this episode and for you for listening. We'll be back next time.

You can find Jason online. He's at sixcolors.com and at jsnell also at theincomparable.com. And I am at imyke. I-M-Y-K-E. Until next week, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.