Upgrade - 339: Dogcow and Spinning Rainbow Cursor in Finderland

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Disney+ keeps growing and its original content is flowing, and Apple TV+ brings new marketing muscle to bear for the second-season launch of "For All Mankind." And what can Apple do to make its Apple TV hardware more appealing? Sit down with a cup of tea and join us.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 339 and today's show is brought to you by express vpn hello fresh and spokes my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hello jason snow hello fresh i mean hello mike hurley oh no you can call me fresh if you like it's a fun nickname all right babe interesting uh hashtag snow talk question this week comes from don and don wants to know jason what is your favorite flavor or kind of tea uh tea questions almost as bad as weather questions um i like black tea. I like just pure black tea. My morning tea rotation is I have an Irish breakfast, an English breakfast, and I have a psalm full leaf. But they're all just black tea.

I like black tea with a little, some would say a lot. I would say a little bit of honey. Oh, okay. You put honey in your black tea. I little, some would say a lot. I would say a little bit of honey. Oh, okay. You put honey in your black tea. I put honey in my tea. That's my go-to is honey in my tea. My wife puts milk in her tea. Occasionally, she will be very nice and bring me tea.

And it's always funny because I seem to know innately how many squeezes of the honey bear it takes to properly honey my tea. And she's gotten it in her head because she doesn't use honey that I am a honey maniac who puts way too much honey in his tea. And so whenever she brings me the tea, it is like honey with tea in it. It's very kind of her, but it's also hilarious. Oh, interesting. That wasn't what I was expecting you were gonna say well i think initially she put in a little and i was like oh i need to put more honey in this and now she just overdoes it and it's funny so what uh so you that you said english breakfast irish breakfast and a psalm what what takes you to this psalm that feels like the outlier of the

three no well i i got it uh it's just a it's a full leaf so it's um it's just longer and and they they're it's actually easier to clean because they're they're bigger they're not little chunks um they they i think they they chop them up into little bits for to um so that it's stronger that it it works faster but i use the t robot so it's the same amount of time every time it's just for variety i could literally just take the english breakfast and order pounds and pounds of it and just use that um i'm i just i vary it a little but it's so slight that i think if you made three cups of the three different kinds and put them in front of me i probably couldn't tell the difference if you'd like to send in a snow talk question to help us open a show uh just send in a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk or use question mark Snow Talk in the Real AFM members Discord.

Some follow up because I just wanted to follow up on it. Zoom worked well last week. It did. We're using it today. It's the way we're going to record going forward. I'm going to start slowly transitioning all of my other shows to Zoom, but I'm waiting for

like I'm waiting to feel comfortable with the changed workflow which is what has happened right like i still have to get not like set well this is how i feel uh as as the host you want to like have it down so that when you introduce it to your other shows it's as painless as possible because you've got it down and like in my editing process and all that kind of stuff yeah uh and just kind of getting that all nice and set but and i'm back in my office now last week i was not i was in undisclosed location so it wasn't the zoom that made it sound different even though it was all my same hardware it was in a totally different room it was room so it was room not zoom yes um but now i'm back in my own office disclosed

location we're back that's right so this is gonna be a pretty upstream focused episode today so i have some upstream headlines then we're gonna talk about for all mankind because there's some interesting stuff going on there as it debuts later on this week and then uh we're going to talk about the fracas that you started around uh apple tv uh last week you mean a fracas yeah fracas as we might say in america there you got a fraca real fracas going on over there yep i don't know if it's fracas here in the uk but i i don't like the way that sounds so i say frackah instead. Maybe that makes me foolish. It's a hubbub.

It's a hubbub. Yeah, one of those. Kerfuffle. Ample TV Plus has secured four Golden Globe nominations this year. I think they had a couple last year, but they got four this time. Ted Lasso for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy. Jason Sudeikis for best performance wolf walkers for best animated film and bill murray for best supporting actor in on the rocks

which i haven't seen yet but i do want to say it's good uh do you think you're gonna win any of these well it's the golden globes so you can't take them seriously and they do weird stuff but i think that's why it's quite possible that they will win um because the golden globes do wacky pics they do things that are new they like to be seen embracing the new right and that's why i think that um i the what i've read is that the critics consensus is that wolf walkers is probably the best animated film of the year so it may it may win not for wacky reasons but for good reasons and we i think it's a real contender for the oscar now apple doesn't get the statue right it's the makers of the producer the film would get the

statue but it would still be a feather in apple's cap well even more so apple's not even listed because uh it was entered into i, consideration before Apple picked it up. Yeah, right. Exactly. Apple's basically just distributed. They did a distribution deal because of COVID and all of that. However, the Ted Lasso picks, I would think that there's a real possibility that one of those Ted Lasso nominations is going to be a win because of how wacky the Golden Globes is and how they want to do stuff that's new and not well known. And Ted Lasso, they often will pick things that are kind of more like cult breaking out. People are starting to talk about it.

And I think the Golden Globes voters want to look cool and in the know. And so if they say, you know, oh, yes, everybody else thinks that these shows are the best comedy, but we know it's Ted Lasso, then they look cool. So it wouldn't shock me if Ted Lasso or especially like Jason Sudeikis might get something there, but we'll see. I think there's a chance though. I think there's a real chance more than I would say the Emmys because the Emmys tend to be, not always, but they tend to be much more kind of on inertia. And when you win Emmys, like a lot of small shows that are cult followings that are really great

but aren't widely known tend to get their Emmy nominations and wins like the last. Think about Schitt's Creek. It was the last season that got the nominations. Schitt's Creek is the issue, I think, for the Golden Globes too.

I just looked it up. They've never even been nominated for a Golden Globe before. And so like Schitt's Creek cleaned up at the Emmmys because the show was over right so and it was and it is incredible so they were kind of like we can give it all the awards and they nominated again in every category yeah so i think schitt's creek really is like probably the biggest uh contender here against it's gonna be a challenge i read a story that

handicapped the golden globes and said that they thought that jason sudeikis or ted lasso really did have a chance because there's there's two ways to go with the golden globes which is the obvious choice which is schitt's creek and there's the oh it's the golden globes they're gonna do something wacky and that was and that's ted lasso so it's it's possible but um my point about the emmys is more that if you really love ted lasso and it continues to be great for the next three seasons then stay tuned for season three when they will finally get an emmy nomination as as they finish up and are on their way out the door because that seems to be how it works for a lot of the the emmy stuff disney plus has now hit 95 million paid subscribers they're up 8 million

more in a month when they they just reported this uh because they we knew the number from their quarterly earnings and now they've hit 95 so they've just told everyone they've done it um because why not and this made me want to ask because i think one of the potentially one of the drivers is wandavision uh no spoilers have you been watching wandavision no yes i have Oh okay well you might not have I don't know. No in fact it is I've been really thinking about this as the Disney Plus original content strategy so you and I have talked for a while now about we knew Disney Plus was coming they said it was coming and then it arrived and we're like okay but after the

Mandalorian finished like there's content but it's the library and like what is their original content thing and again you can do a service with with a library like disney's you can do a service like that but one of the ways you motivate people to sign up is original content rolling out and so maybe wandavision and the buzz around wandavision has been part of it this is the for those who don't know it's a marvel show it's the first show set, essentially officially done by Marvel Studios. The other TV shows that they've done recently were by a different arm, a TV arm of Marvel that was not run by the people who made the movies and didn't really feature the people who were in the movies with a couple of footnotes. And now it's sort of like characters from the movies

that you recognize. And WandaVision is the first one. It's got Scarlet Witch and Vision and some other characters from Marvel Universe in it. And the reason I was thinking about this is Mandalorian became, it's actually our only with our 16-year-old son, our family appointment television. Like on Friday night, we all sit down together and watched you know we watched the mandalorian and we transferred that right over into wandavision we sit down on friday night as a family and we watch wandavision together and you know we watch like movies we'll be like oh julian we're gonna do this movie and you know come and watch it and all that we do that and he'll choose he can right, what he's interested in.

Right, right. But TV shows, not so much. In fact, one of the things that we will reliably watch with him is Marvel movies, old and new. He's got the stuff he's interested in, the stuff he's not, and that's fine. And we've got the stuff we're interested in, he's not, and that's fine. So what strikes me about WandaVision is,

following Mandalorian, I'm like, we've had a pretty good run here. There's been a little bit of a gap, but not much, where you just sort of have this appointment viewing of there's always a new Disney show on a Friday night. And that is exactly what we were talking about, which is you want to have a situation where you always have to be subscribed to Disney Plus and you feel you're getting your money's worth because there's always appointment viewing of a new original plus your access to the catalog. And I was thinking about this because WandaVision's only got three episodes left. So three more weeks of WandaVision before it's done. And I was like, oh, but this has been so nice. And then I thought, yeah, but Falcon and the Winter Soldier starts in March.

I believe it is the next week it might be a week after but it's it's right there and because the pandemic it's not all gonna flow quite as seamlessly as that but that is the idea for all of these streaming services especially the ones with franchises so if you can imagine and i looked it up on on wikipedia afterward um you know there's this marvel show and there's also this Marvel show that's coming this summer. And there's this Marvel show and this other Marvel show that are coming this fall. And there's also the Book of Boba Fett that's coming in December. And I think the idea is that you will not be able to get away from Disney Plus for even a month.

Nope. As new Marvel and Star Wars and other originals come out. And we're loving it. And it immediately makes me think, you know, Disney Plus is a destination. And I'll just say this as a lifelong Star Trek fan, that is absolutely what CBS All Access, which is about to turn into Paramount Plus, like we said last week, that's what they're doing with Star Trek. It's the same thing. They want to have, and they haven't been able to do it. They're in a lull now, actually because of the pandemic. But their goal is that there should, if not every week, with very minimal gaps, there should be a Star Trek show rolling out on Paramount plus and that if you are if you want that stream

of entertainment easy just sign up for paramount plus and you get it and this is part it's not the whole strategy it's not a star trek streaming service this is not a marvel streaming service but it helps one set of audience members uh be welded to your service so i i'm and i'm excited about that too because it means that we'll have friday uh tv night with my son um for a while now because of disney plus so um so yeah i'm loving wandavision um for people who haven't tried it yet it is have you watched it mike yeah i'm up to date okay um again we're not going to spoil anything but i'll speak broadly about it and say what's interesting about WandaVision is that because it's not a movie, they're using the episode by episode, week by week format to tell an ongoing story, but also have the individual episodes feel unique. Yeah, I've never seen a TV show like this one.

It's peculiar in a good way i will also say that its commitment to its premise is so strong that the first couple episodes you're like what am i watching you know it's really good they did the whole like here's three and then we'll go every week i think it was two they dropped two and it's the very end of the second episode where it sort of like pulls back the curtain a little and says this is actually the show you're watching yeah um and and that's why they dropped those two episodes i think is that if people had just seen episode one they'd be like i is is it a sitcom now because that's basically the premise of it but yeah i think it's really

brilliant i've loved it and if this is and this was not originally their launch show falcon and winter soldier was going to be their launch show but because of the pandemic they weren't done shooting it and they had to go back and remount the filming to get it done um whereas this one was apparently close enough that they were able to get it ready to go and get it out the door um it's it's probably weirder and less conventional than they wanted to launch Marvel on Disney+, then Falcon and Winter Soldier will probably be much more. I bet Falcon and Winter Soldier is very like, yeah, this is a Marvel movie.

Yeah, they did a trailer for it, and we got to the end, and Lauren said to me, wait, that's not a movie? I said, no, it's a TV show, because it might as well be a movie. WandaVision looks like, I mean, the look of it all, I mean, it's fantastic. Friend of the might as well be a movie wandavision looks like i mean it it the

look of it all i mean it's fantastic friend of the show todd vizieri tweeted um last week something to the effect of you need to stop talking about movie effects and tv effects because i i realize the budgets may be different I don't know any of the behind the scenes business, but I'll tell you what is on screen. It's a Marvel movie, right? Like it doesn't feel like they cheaped out and it's a really bad effect like that you wouldn't see in a movie.

I just don't feel like it does. I feel like this doesn't feel like a cheap version of Marvel. This feels like a Marvel movie being told in installments instead and that is and not necessarily from storytelling like i said i think the individual episodes do have their own feel and the weekly release lets you talk about like what did we just see in a way that's very effective but it it uh the falcon and winter soldier feels much more uh conventional in the sense that it does feel kind of like it's a Marvel movie chopped up into, I don't know what it is, six episodes, I think, six pieces.

But I think it's good. And I think it's a good sign that the Marvel Studios people really are bringing their A-game. we know from the message from the top at Disney, from Disney's previous CEO and their current CEO, that Disney Plus is basically a huge part of Disney's future and that theatrical will continue as well, but that they are considering Disney Plus, in some ways, their primary output medium, output source. Well, it's all going there eventually, so it's important right exactly

so of course marvel studios has gotten the message which is do not make you know second rate stuff and also make your bring your a game to this and they seem to be so i've been enjoying it uh hbo max is going to be launching in some international markets in june with more set for later in the year um there's it seems pretty localized the june launch to i believe it's uh latin america mostly and then it's going to be some of the nordic countries some of europe later on in the year the uk is not on this list at all which i'm not surprised about i think we spoke about it before um hate the and Sky deal is pretty linked. But as I said previously, okay, but what about the original content?

That's the issue. Because currently, we can get all of HBO's content in the UK through Sky, and we subscribe to a service here called Now TV, which is Sky's purely digital arm, which I spoke about before. And we subscribe to their entertainment package, and we can watch shows and all that kind of stuff.

But none of HBO Max original content is available there. So HBO, work it out, right? Yeah, it sounds like they're actually selling... This is a sign that it's not coming anytime soon right is that they they are selling their originals to places like sky in the uk so like the original content the hbo max pure content is not available the flight attendant which is uh an hbo max original i'm looking at a story now. I just picked it as an idea. They sold it to Sky. And will premiere in 2021 on Sky somewhere.

So it seems like they're basically, at this point, selling content into markets that they're not going to go in yet. Are they doing it on a pick and choose? It may be. I agree. I agree. like a pick and choose, right? It may be. And that's stupid. It is so stupid. I agree. I agree. I hate you.

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I feel your pain. All right. This episode is brought to you in part by Spokes, a communications agency. Spokes is a public relations communications agency designed to complement businesses started by today's bootstrapping entrepreneurs.

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podcast for a 25% discount and there's a link in the show notes too. Our thanks to Spokes Agency for their support of this show and RelayFM. Alright, so let's talk about For All Mankind because Apple has read the promotional machine up to 22 on this one. Oh yeah.

The second season For All Mankind of For All Mankind debuts. To the moon. To the moon. Diamond Hands. It debuts this week on Friday, I think. Yeah, it's Friday. They're going back to weekly release.

Do you know, is it going to be one at a time, or are they going to dump a couple and then go weekly? One at a time. One at a time, baby. You're killing me. I'm really excited for this. I love the weekly release i like weekly releases but i want like two right i want two and then weekly that's what i want my

understanding is that it's it's just episode one on friday okay okay because you know i i that's what i really liked about uh when they debuted and again like we've what we're just talking about wandavision i want a couple so i can get into it again you know and then go weekly and i could wait like that's what we did with wonder vision and we actually wait until there was four of them and then we watched them and then caught up or three or four of them caught up and i could wait but i can't wait because i've been really excited for this show to return um because of what they did going from season one to season two yeah where there's a time jump and and i'm really intrigued to see what they did going from season one to season two, where there's a time jump. And I'm really intrigued to see what they do there.

But today, Apple announced that they are going to be doing a weekly pod... Okay, a watch-along kind of podcast, an official podcast. Sort of. For all mankind. Now, this is something that we kind of expected was coming. There's been lots of reports about them moving into this. And this was one of the things

that I think Bloomberg reported that Apple would do because it seems like the obvious kind of first step for them, which is take the content that they're already making on TV Plus and make companion podcasts. And this has been done

to some good effect. I know that you've spoken very highly about both The Good Place and Chernobyl, and I think Watchmen's podcast. And Watchmen too, yeah. And it's going to be hosted by Chris Marshall, who plays Danielle Poole on the show. So I like that.

It's hosted by somebody on the show. And the good thing about these types of podcasts is where you can actually get the people on. So I was talking about the west wing that i've been watching the west wing right and people were recommending to me the west wing weekly weekly but i didn't want to like listen because we were binging the west wing so it wasn't really possible for me to watch on but now i miss the west wing so much i'm now just listening to the west wing weekly and what's so great about that which i didn't know initially is it's hosted

by one of the people that's in the show so absolutely they just get whoever they want on and these shows are you know no disrespect to my many friends including you who make watch along shows like it is really great when you can have the people involved in the thing right no no disrespect taken because once you've got the people involved and it's the official podcast you also can't criticize it so it works both ways exactly you do lose something um yep but you gain something yeah and i i've enjoyed some of the official podcasts again i don't i i listen to official podcasts for interesting behind the scenes uh discussion of of how the art was made and i listened to discussions unofficial discussions about the tv shows for analysis and criticism of the art and like wish casting and all that kind of stuff right like they are you're right they're different one is behind the scenes the other is fandom of the

thing in exactly and and and one of them is you know tightly integrated and it's got all the all the stuff and and again you don't get that access otherwise right like you're not going to get one of the actors from for all mankind to talk about every episode and what they didn't like about it because it's not gonna happen what did what didn't work in this episode oh my part was terrible your co-star did a bad job that day was he uh did he not get sleep the night before what's going on there but this is wild to me so the first episode comes out with the first episode of the show yes then the show's weekly but the podcast is fortnightly this feels like falling at the first hurdle why would you do this i don't i don't know watchmen did this too and i i can't decide whether it's just that it's cheaper or what but

it it does seem unfortunate right like you want to kind of create this this more tight connection between episode and uh podcast if you're releasing weekly and that that didn't happen it's kind of one of those things no disrespect to the people involved. If I do it right, I don't do it. The Watchmen podcast was great, but it was frustrating that they'd be like, well, now we're going to talk about this week's episode and also last week's episode.

Yeah. Like, but why didn't you? Yeah, it's strange, but I'm looking forward to listening because I'm curious. Honestly, I'm just curious about what the Apple take. And they're working with a company that produce, an outside company that produces podcasts to do this.

This is not being made by Apple's in-house, but it's being made for Apple for one of its shows. So I'm interested in seeing how they take on the idea of the official podcast of a show that they're rolling out. Is it available outside of Apple podcasts? It's unclear to me my i don't know huh we'll ask marco we'll see i mean i've did a quick search and overcast and nothing comes up but it did only appear today with the trailer yeah right exactly huh i wonder what they're gonna do there i don't know you'd think that they'd want to promote it regardless yeah because this is this is ostensibly marketing for...

Yeah, my gut feeling is that it'll be available elsewhere too, because they want everybody to see For All Mankind. And what happens the next time? Is there an official morning show podcast? What are they going to do for the rest of their shows? Is this the new rollout plan or is this an experiment? I don't know. I think they should.

I think it's a good idea, really. It's just like it's an additional thing you can do. People that really love the show can also continue to consume content along with the show. I'll be super into this for a Ted Lasso. Oh, man. Yeah. Thing. Like, I would really like that, like a Ted Lasso podcast as well.

I'm intrigued. I'm very intrigued to check out both of these things. And we'll see. There was another thing, though, that they did for All Mankind, which was an AR game-type experience thing. So it's called For All Mankind Time Capsule.

Have you checked this out at all? I went through it all today. I have not looked at it yet. Okay, it doesn't take very long. It's probably like a half an hour type, type thing. Um, but it's effectively a bunch of little vignettes, uh,

that you tell us it's telling a story of some of the intervening time between season one and season two. And you get to see, uh, like kind of part of the family life of the Stevens family. So Gordo and Tracy Stevens, like it's, you see some of their family life of the stevens family so gordo and tracy stevens like it's you see some of their family life a little bit which is super interesting because of the way their stories go towards the end of season one um tj has found uh yeah there's a there's a rss url and

i just added it to my overcast and it worked so there you go for all mankind is you can listen in whatever your podcast player of choice is so i want to just touch on this real quickly because this is super interesting to me yeah um so pause on the for all mankind uh ar game the rss feed or the website is is with art 19 now art 19 is a hosting and production company and i can't work out why apple would choose any specific company like this which i think just shows that the production company that is involved with this i think maybe has uh a lot of the rollout plans because i just can't work out why apple would choose any maybe that at will media which is the name of the company that is producing the show for for apple um at will media works with art 19 for distribution and they they told apple we're handling the whole thing and apple is like great you you do it go to town

we're not going to do this now that's super interesting to me i've talked i'll talk to lex about it i'll talk to our friend lex i didn't want to mention it but yeah okay i wasn't gonna but you did yeah our friend lex friedman works on 19 and uh interesting anyway so the for all mankind game it's it's as they call it a story we've seen between seasons one and two which it really is and it's beautiful like it is a really nice really wonderful experience that they've created if you enjoy the show download this and try it out like i was quite surprised by how moving i found it honestly and it's got voice acting uh from sad spy i can't remember his his name michael dorman who plays gordo um he has

he's lent his voice to the game so there's some some some like vocal work there quite a bit of it actually in the game and i don't know it does a good job of setting the time frame of the show there's a lot of music in it a lot of music you would like jason uh specifically i really liked it what i'll say though is my iphone got incredibly hot doing this like because you're in ar for the whole time so it's like half an hour of just ar and like the top left hand corner of my phone i I couldn't even touch it. It got so hot. So that's where the processor is. Get ready to wear that on your face. Oh, God.

I'm going to catch a hand on fire. That's why there's a fan. Yeah. There's got to be a fan in an AR headset, right? My point about both of these things, the podcast and this AR game, they have gone all out here for all mankind. Do you want to know how all out they've gone? Yeah.

Would you like to know? Mm-hmm. I can exclusively reveal that there's a special episode of Liftoff on Thursday. Mm-hmm. With For All Mankind content in it. Because we got to talk to Ron Moore, the co-creator and executive producer for Liftoff about For All Mankind season two. So people check that out on RelayFM. I'll put a link in the show notes to Liftoff. That was pretty awesome. We did that last week and that was like, I was impressed with that.

They're like, For All Mankind's coming out. You got a space podcast. Let's do it. Like, yep. It was great. I am very excited uh i knew this was coming and i cannot wait to listen to it so i i when i found out i knew how excited you would be right because it's like look at my world's coming together i can't even tell you how excited i was to talk to him and i had to i had to keep it together because i've literally watched all the shows that he's worked on like i said at the beginning before we got started i'm like love your work from star trek to to to battlestar galactica to outlander um and now to for all mankind so that was that was when we were done with that interview i realized that that I had been stressing out about it for like a week.

I love that. I would have been terrified. But we had a great conversation. Relay.fm slash Liftoff. Go subscribe to the show now, and you'll get that when it drops later on this week. I'm very excited to hear it. I'm going to keep my eye on the CMS and just pull that one down just for me as soon as I see it go up there. So with this, with all of of this they are going all out and this is not not all of their shows are getting this

attention right so servant season two dickinson season two they're both out right there's ads for them i know that but this is like a whole next level so i think what we're seeing here is apple creating basically like a tiered version like system of their programming like what they consider to be their flagship shows are getting this type of promotion or sony the production company is paying for it i don't i don't know right this is something we don't know about about like kind of the the goings on inside but this is very clearly uh enhanced promotion for this show over some of their other programming which may be tied in with the originals too like there was a this show and the morning show especially got a lot of the initial press going into it um do you think that we will see i mean this kind of heavy promotion for say morning show and probably

ted lasso as well like with all of this stuff not just the podcast but the yeah the whole unclear whether dog and pony show i'm unclear whether this is a test or whether this is the new kind of a tier promotion thing or whether they've got a like a whole palette of promotional options and for each show they do a rollout plan this is the most i've seen for any of those apple shows so it'll be interesting to see the next premiere what happens what shows get the podcast what shows get the special ar content do the is there a track where there's things to choose from? Or do they brainstorm specific things and we're only going to see AR for this because they thought it was the best fit for the content? I don't know.

But it is interesting to see them doing this at a level that they weren't before for this. And I think that's good. I'm very excited for the show. I can't wait. Yeah. I really can't wait. I've seen episode one and two, and, you know, it's good.

It's a really good show. Look at me. I'm so fancy. Look at me. I've been using this. Mike, I've been using this for a few weeks. And I can say that it's a pretty good show. All right, this episode is brought to you by HelloFresh.

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I loved it. And that's what I love about HelloFresh, because we get a few boxes every week or so, and like a few meals, I should say, every week. And we can— How many boxes are you getting? We hungry we're hungry we also get a box every week with two meals in it we don't get many boxes though we only do the do the one we're super hungry in the holy house it's a box with a few meals in it there you go and we will take some of our favorite recipes and we can cook them again because we have the cards the cards are really easy to follow and I really appreciate that. And over time, we're building our knowledge and our skills of cooking, which I mean, I say this many times and I mean it like

HelloFresh taught me how to cook. We've been a customer of theirs for about five years now or something like that. And I've learned so many skills from doing these recipes because they make it really easy to follow. They break it down and they take a lot of the frustration away from getting all the recipes together and stuff is super, super awesome. I love it. So go to hellofresh.com slash upgrade 10 and use the code upgrade 10 for 10 free meals, including free shipping as hellofresh.com slash upgrade 10 is 1 0 with the code upgrade 10 for 10 free meals including free shipping hello fresh america's number one meal kit our thanks to hello fresh for their support of this show and relay fm okay so you uh wrote a couple of articles last

week about boy did i yeah you did you really oh yeah i did i wrote those articles and a bunch of tweets too so you were building on a conversation that was on dithering uh between um john gruber and ben thompson about the apple tv and they were pondering what could be next for the apple tv but you kind of took it from a different angle of like should the apple tv have a next basically well and why why does it exist it was really it was really like why why is it here the premise being that with it's i would say it's two most important unique features gone not removed from the product but not unique anymore which is airplay support and the tv app with those so access to every itunes movie you ever bought uh every tv show

you ever bought plus rentals plus apple tv plus um roll all that in there those are available on uh modern tvs and streamer boxes including a you know streamer boxes at least in the u.s you can buy a streamer box with all that stuff on it that does 4k hdr for 35 bucks so my point was we've got a thing that costs five times that and doesn't do those features uniquely anymore so what what is in the in the list of advantages you know the list of assets for uh for the apple tv and and where do they go from here like what could they do to make it um you know more popular as a product? What could they add?

What features could they add? And what are the issues? So it's sort of like, let's come up with what it does, what it still does that is unique, and then also kind of ponder what it could do to be more successful than it is.

I'll remind everybody that the Apple TV got an F in the report card on six colors as well so yeah for these reasons the reasonings your article there are things we're going to talk about but the thing is like apple's doing the right thing in making airplay and the tv app available in many places this is the right thing for the strategy. I think it makes sense. At this point, if you're buying a new TV, it's actually pretty hard to not have

some combination of these features. You're probably going to get the Apple TV app no matter what you get, and then some TV sets also have AirPlay. Most major manufacturers have some kind of set of these features now. But even if you don't i mean

you can get a fire tv stick for for you know the few tens of dollars that those things cost and you'll get the apple tv app right so very easy to get now i want to say something up front here because i got a lot of feedback on twitter about this i'm not trying to take your apple tv away from you i'm not saying you're a dummy for buying an apple tv especially not two years ago i'm not saying you're a dummy for buying an Apple TV, especially not two years ago. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use the Apple TV. I use the Apple TV every day. But I am saying if you want this product to be successful because you like it, other people should probably also buy it so that more people can buy it and more people can use it and developers can focus more on it. And all of those things, for it to be more successful you want to have it have a viable audience and market and right now it seems like that's a tough one so as of right now the things

that set the apple tv box apart uh it's point one apple makes it so if they're going to add features to the ecosystem in theory if they could affect the tv then you'll get them rolled in right and you can see this with some home kit stuff for example you know like when they add home kit secure video well they added the ability for you to see those cameras on your apple tv and if you were using the tv app uh and on your samsung tv or your og tv you're not going to get that right so there's some benefit there to being in the ecosystem um it could play games from apple arcade if that's your jam it has support for home pods i don't want to get started i was happy to see that you put in your article that i mentioned you in there because i heard from people who were like,

oh, I just play my HomePods from my Apple TV and it's so great. And I thought, well, that's nice. But I also know that Mike tries to do that and he's miserable. Like I saw John Gruber link to it and he said that he does this and it works great for him. I don't know what other people are doing that I'm not doing, but I mean, it really isn't great for me but there you go uh it's a home kit hub which is good but becoming less good so many devices can be home

kit hubs now um you know right it's becoming less of a what i tried to say is if it's a home kit hub which is great if you don't have a home pod if you don't have an ipad in your house which you know a lot of people are going to have an ipad in house and don't actually, the fact that it is a HomeKit hub is not necessarily, you know, it's a unique feature sort of, but there are other Apple products that do it. So even though it's unique for streamer boxes, it's not necessarily unique for Apple products. And you listed the remote here. Yeah. Well, it's different, right? And there are things about the remote that I like.

I feel like Apple could do a redesign of that remote that kept some of the features, like the trackpad, and make it better. I just didn't want to cast the remote down and say, like, and the remote is a total disaster because I have a love- love hate relationship with a remote okay but i switched to using the logitech harmony remote for apple tv you know i i have a universal remote the logitech harmony and it will control

the apple tv but all it does is buttons and i would occasionally get in scenarios where i would be in a show and i'd want to jump back 20 minutes or forward 50 minutes or, you know, and find that that moment. And then and by swiping, you know, you click to go into into scrub mode and then you can sort of swipe over to find where you want to be. And then you click again and you're there and you can't do that with buttons, at least not the way that it's built right now. And I really like that. And I use it all the time. And I heard from a lot of people who use Siri commands all the time. I don't.

But I know a lot of people do. So there's things about that remote that are not, it's not universally terrible, even though it's got lots of issues. It's slippery. You need to orient it properly and you can't do that on feel. You can bump against it. It's all true. Yeah, you bump against it. just the other night where i uh i bumped it with my elbow and it started to fall off and i grabbed it and and meanwhile i was sitting at the menu in uh on the apple tv i launched an app and it

started to play something and i'm like no and then and then i realized that it was i had caught it upside down in my hand so i was pressing the wrong buttons and I was just like, oh, Apple TV remote. Like it was just one of those moments of like, this is why people hate you. But it has its positives, too. I don't I don't it's not like the hockey puck mouse or something from the original iMac. It's not that bad, but it's got it's got issues, but it's also got upsides. So they could they could reinvent it in some way. But I do think it is a

unique feature and and there are things about it that some people like so honestly like i look at this list and i don't you know well yeah yeah this is this is the thing and and i got a lot of feedback from people are like oh here's some other things that it does that I like. So we got the, I use it to do screensavers in my photos and iCloud photos. And I like the sophistication of the apps because these are sort of like iOS apps. And so they've got all sorts of things that they can do. apps and so they've got all sorts of uh things that they can do um a lot of people brought up fitness plus integration which i agree is a good example of apple trying to add something to the apple tv recently yeah to make it uh to give it a unique benefit which is it's super integrated with fitness plus now you're going to be able to airPlay the fitness app from your iPhone or iPad to any device that supports AirPlay in the next full release of iOS, but it won't show your live data, although it'll show it on your watch.

I'm not entirely convinced that Apple will not make an effort to make that available everywhere as well because they want Fitness Plus to have value more than they want to sell Fitness Plus users in Apple TV, but we'll see. People mentioned the TV app integration, which we've talked about here. If you don't use Netflix, all the other stuff you're watching, you can sit in the TV app and it sort of knows and it'll launch you out to those apps and it can create a sort of single front end and watch list for everything you do. It's true. I don't use it that much because I do use Netflix. But for everything that actually does share data, it is a pretty nice interface. And I can see that that has some real value.

And if Netflix was part of the party, it would be even better. I wish they could make that work somehow. Right. of the party it would be uh even better i wish they could make that work somehow right and the big one that i heard from a lot of people is i had i had an item that was it's from apple right and i tried to roll a bunch of stuff in there like i just buy apple stuff and i don't worry about it um the you know apple logo is on it it's the it's the ecosystem owner platform owner it's nicer like all the things that are it's from apple as opposed to it's from some other company what a lot of people hit me back about was also it's from apple means i trust apple in terms of my data and i don't trust

random company that makes this software whether it's amazon or roku or samsung or whoever and so their argument is i buy the apple tv because um i trust it in terms of my privacy in a way that um i don't trust those other companies now that's a personal choice i think and and this is a thing that we've talked about on this show a bit i think that it can be overstated um i think i see in those arguments a lot of people who read that one story about vizio a couple years ago and have decided that all tv boxes are loss leaders that are there to steal all of your viewing information and sell it for an enormous profit which i don't think was ever really true but is

uh you know vizio the beauty of that vizio story is that basically everybody in the tv box market got uh scrutinized and they all have opt-outs. I have yet to see a story anywhere of somebody who's analyzed the network data on one of these boxes that has opted out from ad tracking or video tracking that they're leaking information to people, which is not surprising because it would be an enormous scandal if it turned out that they offered an opt-out and that it didn't opt you out is it not opted are you opted in by default yeah you are um i again i don't love the idea that some tv box manufacturer has data about what shows i watch at the same time it's not exactly the crown jewels like that's like a Nielsen box.

Basically your cable box may also be doing this by the way. Netflix is tracking what you're watching when you're in Netflix. Every service you use is tracking you even on the Apple TV, right? They're tracking you within their silo, not across devices, but they are absolutely doing that. Apple even has a,

I believe a privacy opt out in tvOS. So it too, it has got some amount of data but the so i think this is overblown but the truth is i think it's fair to say for a certain audience the fact that the apple tv is from apple provides a level of comfort that a random company that they've never heard of or only have heard of in passing or don't trust for other reasons can provide. And I think that's, I think that's fair. I would probably argue that that doesn't counter for most people. It doesn't counterbalance the fact that you can get this one for $35 and this one's a one 179, but for some people it does. So even though I can be a little skeptical that I think maybe this is overstated on both sides, it is perceived as an advantage for Apple.

And, you know, I don't think anybody expects Apple to make a product for $35 just because Roku does. Right. That's not what Apple does. But the difference between the Apple TV and every other model all of which have been updated in the last six months and apple tv hasn't been updated for two years it's worth worth thinking about what else could apple do to make this product more appealing because even the most exciting excited beloved devoted fan of the apple tv and i heard from all of them because they're convinced that i'm saying that they should, a mean man should come to their house and take their Apple TV away, I guess.

Even though I said I use it every day. Even they would probably admit that they love this product so much. Apple should be working very hard to improve it to find ways to make it have unique value and find ways to make it more appealing so more people buy it because again it's a stronger product if it's actively updated and flying off the shelves and people want to be on the platform it's more viable as a product that way it's a better product that way and it's been kind of drifting for two years so what can they do then brain box what can they do i know give it up call it a day shut her down i mean that's the thing they could do they could they could and i think i've gotten enough feedback from, if they wanted to shut down the Apple TV, they would need to make a greater effort to integrate some of their other ecosystem stuff into the TV app, which they haven't done, which leads me to believe that it won't happen. Although it's possible it could happen, right?

Like, oh, well, I want access to my iCloud photo library. Well, they could update the TV app to give you access to that, right? And they'd be like, no, just buy a Roku. It's fine. I don't think they will. I think that they're going to keep this around in some form just as a pricey platform object, right? But so Ben and John on Dithering

talked about games. And I think it's interesting. There there are i'm not sure it'll work because apple and games generally has not worked in history and when it works it's accidental um but there are two ways of looking at it and i want i want your thoughts about this as somebody who cares about games one way to look at it is well just make a game console like a super souped up apple tv with controllers and access to games on the app store and court game developers to be on the app store and get their games on the app store and uh and and go like we're gonna we're really a better comparison to Xbox and PlayStation, which seems like a stretch to me.

And the alternative is to say, we're a different kind of game console, just like Nintendo does different kinds of game consoles, but we are going to make a push in terms of gaming capability and controllers. And they've already started doing some of that,

but it's never going to be you know they're going to use continue using their ios foundation and not not make it feel truly like something that could compete with something like playstation or xbox but more than just a video streamer which at least in terms of their hardware is the right thing to do because their hardware is way too powerful for just streaming video so what else do you do with it what you know is any gaming strategy for apple tv viable do you think no um all right moving on well so like you know i will say it so so abruptly because i genuinely believe there isn't one uh i would love to be proven wrong, but I don't understand where they could fit. So

Apple is not going to make a PlayStation or Xbox competitor because it's more than just adding a controller, right? Now, Microsoft and Sony do not want to make consoles that are as big as the consoles they make, right? But if you want to make triple a top quality games that's the kind of hardware that you're looking at right and i can't imagine apple building a larger apple tv i'm not saying it has to be as big as like the xbox series s for example i was gonna say we're having a ps5 the ps5 is the size of my house the ps5 is is absurdly large and yes but it's doing a lot and apple could maybe go along the road of the xbox series s which is like it's not giving you all of the power but you could at least play all the games etc but the problem with the triple a

strategy the high-end high quality games it's not hardware that's the problem here it's apple as a company and the app store right just look at apple versus epic right that's the issue right like that is the closest to a top tier game that would be on ios and just the market forces just won't allow for it and there are many other issues here right so uh just looking i'm going to come to nintendo in a minute let me count you there if only to say that my understanding is that the console app stores take a percentage that's comparable to what apple takes they take a percentage um but i really loved a lot of this like john syracuse put this in in a great way on some episodes of atp but the thing is there is a percentage that is taken by the console makers,

but there's a bunch of other things going on. It's probably negotiable. It's definitely negotiable. Right. And you need to be on those consoles, right? You don't need to be on an Apple TV. Apple TV would be a hungry console that would need to really cut a deal

to get some things that are considered AAA running. But there are deals, right? So the big games, you're getting extra money for making exclusive periods of times the marketing the legit marketing right is the the they spend on that together um like they are taking a cut but you're getting a lot for it not just if you are a big developer not just the right to be on the platform, right? There's a lot of to and throw, which is something that Apple doesn't do. And I can't imagine they would ever do because they have no history of doing this. And they've had no history of doing this at times when they

should have done it, right? Like we look at Apple News Plus. They should be more give and take in that if they really wanted that to succeed. But they're just not interested in give and take, right? They're just interested in take, right? Like, you should be lucky to be here, right? It's kind of a lot of the feeling that people get from these deals, especially with content. So I just can't imagine them doing this, right? Do you think that the first time Apple found out that Epic had an issue was when they did that thing that they did? No, right? Like, do you think that the first time Apple found out that Epic had an issue was when they did that thing that they did? No, right?

Like, Epic were very clearly voicing what they wanted from Apple, and Apple didn't want to give it. I'm not saying what's right or wrong, I'm just saying, like, this is the, this is kind of how Apple treat these types of relationships, it seems, right? So I can't imagine, even though

these other, like, even though Sony and Microsoft take their cut, there's more of an arrangement between these businesses, and it's less clear. Like, just like, we take this, then you get to be on the platform. That's that. So just staying on Sony and Microsoft for a minute, marketing is so strong, right? Like, amongst people that play these games games they want one of these two consoles apple would have to do so much to try and convince people that they're a player in that field but this is not the field they're going for anyway if they're going for games right

and you mentioned nintendo people mentioned nintendo oh they're just doing a nintendo thing oh my god i love you jason you're great this is so incorrect like but but mike apple has decades where they have rolled out games featuring beloved characters like the dog cow so this is the issue people uh spinning rainbow cursor people oh my god can you imagine a game that is the adventures of the Dog Cow and the Spinning Rainbow Cursor in Finderland? The beloved chess. People look at Nintendo and they're like, oh, Nintendo managed to do this without the big, beefy

hardware. Nintendo have a level of creativity in their games and their hardware that everybody else wishes they could. Like, for example, right? Everyone's like, oh my god, you cannot buy a PlayStation right now. They must be doing so well. Nintendo in the same quarter sold,

I think it was nearly twice the amount of Switches, right? And I mean, yes, they have supply, but the Switch is like three or four years old at this point. Like, it's a different beast. Well, I mentioned Nintendo only to say it's possible. I'm just trying to make this argument. I'm trying to parse this out. It's possible that you could make a game-focused device that is not AAA console like Sony and Microsoft.

Yes. That would have some appeal. I think the problem, and I mentioned the Switch because nintendo has always gone its own way the difference is nintendo has a track record and audience and intellectual property that put it over the edge whereas what apple would bring is you know that game that puzzle game you like on your ipad you know that thing where you touch the colored gems on your iphone well now it can be on your tv which is not a great a great match and i don't you know short of apple you know buying huge amounts of intellectual property and even then right like it's not i think it's more likely for apple to be successful trying to do something that is

not a triple a console than apple trying to be a triple a console if that makes any sense i'm not sure either of them are great but i could see i could see it a little bit better given that every ios device works with controllers now i could see them making a push for more content that uses and is best on controllers i'm not sure it would work but i could see it i just i can't see it being a playstation right that i can't see in fact you could argue with with the ar vr stuff that if they want to go down this path they really do need to embrace gaming because gaming is an application for all of this stuff and apple's not very good at it so yes i agree with that um i wanted to address like the the game because i see people say casual gaming right they could why doesn't apple uh make the apple tv great for casual gamers what's casual about turning on your tv exactly right that's what you're saying is we're going to take the the casual games for

casual gamers and put them on the apple tv you have completely divorced the idea of casual gaming because it is not casual to sit down in front casual gaming works because these are games that you play when you are waiting for something or you're doing something else or you're trying to pass time these are the games you play on your iphone for something or you're doing something else or you're trying to pass time. These are the games you play on your iPhone, right? They work on your iPhone because they are built around this idea of killing time. Right. Sitting down at a television to play a game, it is not casual gaming anymore.

You've made it gaming. You've removed the casual from it. Right. You've made it gaming. You've removed the casual from it. Right. And again, if you were Nintendo and had Mario,

sorry, John, Mario, and all of that stuff, right? You had Mario and you had Kirby and you had all those characters and all those titles that you've done for years and years.

Well, then you could maybe release an apple tv like product and a better controller by the way and you might have something but apple doesn't have any of that right and that that's the like you you do need something to be there i feel like something that is going to draw people there other than that it's apple any of that. Right. And that, that's the, like you, you do need something to be there. I feel like something that is going to draw people there other than that. It's Apple. And that,

that's, that's the challenge here, right? Is, is we've seen the game story for the last few years on the Apple TV. And the fact is, can, I mean,

I want to say this too. Can the Apple TV be a decent game platform? Yes, it can. And a new one could be even better at it. And they all connect to controllers and if you've played a game that works well with a controller like sayonara wild hearts on the apple tv it's really good i also use it for party games for the jackbox party pack

all of that is true the challenge is how do you and apple arcade games play on the apple tv and yet it's not there on the software side, and I'm not sure how it gets there. No, it's like... So the thing about the Apple TV, the Apple TV can be a thing that also has games, which is great, rather than a thing you buy because it has games.

And I can't imagine it ever being more than that for all of the reasons. So Terrence in the chat room says, I'd argue apple tv doesn't need a distinct strategy it just needs to support apple arcade and they need to put a lot more resources behind it i do i do think i mean that is a distinct well okay i agree with terence indistinct strategy seems to be apple's current strategy for apple tv and maybe it's the right one which is to go back to a joke that I made about the original Apple watch presentation. What doesn't it do? Right? It's like, what, what is the Apple TV for? It's for all those things I listed earlier and it's for games and Apple arcade.

And yes, they could pour a lot more money into Apple arcade and say the Apple TV box is an arcade box. And we're, we're building, we're, we're putting a lot of money into making really good controller based games that you're going to want plop down in front of your tv with an apple tv and play and they're they're family friendly and you know your kids are going to love them and you're going to love them as a grown-up and it's not quite the same as buying a console and it'll also be your streamer box etc etc in a way that like other than hardcore gamers people are not like right the last generation of consoles game consoles they're like it's also your tv box and uh everybody was like no it's not stop just stop

and you can watch streaming video on those boxes but unless you're a gamer you're not like all right honey let's turn on the playstation to watch netflix like i don't think that exact strategy of it's the tv box killed the xbox yeah yeah exactly oh i have i had an xbox one and and of it's a TV box killed the Xbox. Yeah, exactly. I had an Xbox One, and yeah, it's ridiculous. HDMI in, HDMI out. It's like, forget about it. So I think Terrence's point is good in the sense that Indistinct, it does these kind of games on Apple Arcade, and we can put money into Apple Arcade to try and make the TV titles for Apple Arcade better. And then we could also do a bunch of other stuff,

including stuff we haven't talked about yet, other ways that they could go and, and just sort of be like what, you know, Apple TV, it's just better and does a bunch of stuff. And if any of these things hit you, you'll buy it.

And, um, and that might be something I, I, I still think it needs to cost less less or at least there needs to be a version of it that costs a lot less not because apple needs to be the low price leader it never does but because the prices of the other computing boxes are so low that it needs to come down now the 4k dolby vision dolby atmos version of roku costs 99 but the 4k hdr version costs 35 so is there i don't know i don't want

to set the apple price for this but 179 is not it so give it to me for 109 or 119 or or make a version that's 99 you know it would be very much like tim cook's apple for the current apple tv 4k to get cut to 99 and then for them to make a new fancy one that's 179 and that might be okay um but the are we done with games because there's the other yeah i said all i need to say about games that won't work basically um home home kit and and smart home is another area that they could beef up if they wanted to their their smart home strategy is broken. They brought in somebody new a couple of years ago.

We haven't really seen a lot there, although HomePod Mini has the thread radio in it. And like there's signs, they're working on CHOP, the connected home thing with everybody. The idea here is it's the detente in smart homes so that you should going forward at some point here, just be able to buy smart home stuff. And works with everything it works with google and apple and

alexa and all those things it just it works and it's fine and it may be that they're kind of on hold until that all gets resolved but i do think smart home stuff could be a way for the apple tv to differentiate um if apple made a Wi-Fi router, they could use it as a mesh network hub. That would be nice. And you talk to Federico about this sometimes on Connected. The Home app has automations that are essentially shortcuts,

but it's a very, and the shortcuts run on the HomeKit hub. So they don't run on like a computer or an iPad or an iPhone. They run on the HomeKit server, which can be an iPad. But you see my point. And they're very limited. There's a set of things that you can automate there.

Well, Apple could beef that up. Apple could say on this Apple TV, it's basically a whole computer in there. And there's lots of other stuff it can do now. And look, you won't believe what you can automate in your home. They presumably would put like a thread radio in there because one of the things that would be really nice is if i could stop buying little plastic boxes that i have to plug into ethernet and the wall in order to turn on lights in my house um but like all these different smart home uh old standards all connect via different things it could be something more like something more

like homebridge where it's able to suck in a bunch of different things like they could do work to say this is a great home product at a level that they haven't yet and that might be again is that the only reason you'd buy one no but it would be another one on the pile and if we're going with the indirect or unfocused strategy here then that would be something you could do and then the other thing i'll just throw out there is my hobby horse i've been beat i've been beating this drum for years now but take your home pod tech take your apple tv tech and take your smart home tech and make a sound bar so that people can plop an apple branded great sounding thing in front of their TV or

above their TV or wherever you put your soundbar and attach it to the TV. And it does video. It does Apple music. It sounds great. It does home theater surround sound when you're doing that. And it's also your HomePod hub. And it's like, I don't know, again, yeah, they're competing with Sonos and do they really want to make it? but like they already make literally all the parts of it with the home pod and the apple tv and i would wager mike that you would not have the problems you're having with your home pods and your apple tv if they were literally one box where they would have certainly just connected so i don't know again is that the solution probably not but i feel like with apple tv if it's going to exist it needs to be more affordable and we need to apple needs to

because we can't do it really apple needs to add some more new things on the pile because it took away some of its specialness yeah uh in the drive to spread apple's entertainment platforms across connected devices. And honestly, the AirPlay thing doesn't get enough. AirPlay is such a great feature of owning an Apple product. And to have it be increasingly common on other devices is a big win for Mac users and iPad users and iPhone users. But it comes at the cost of the unique value of the Apple TV. Somebody during the Twitter back and forth last week said they're a teacher

at a school and they bought Apple TVs for every projector so that they can project from their screen. And that's great. But today I would bet you that their it manager would buy $35 Roku's instead because they do the same thing and they wouldn't buy the 179 apple tvs or whatever the education price is so again we need to make a pile of features and lower price and you know that's how apple keeps the apple tv valuable and viable and make people want to buy it is they need to like with fitness plus they need to start integrating more things into it to give people

a reason to buy it because two of the biggest reasons have walked out the door in the last year it's kind of funny really because like thinking about the ipad line like the ipad air got a bunch of features that the ipad pro had and we're just naturally assuming because of the way the app has done things in the past that the next ipad pro is going to get a bunch of things that the ipad air doesn't have to like make it make a reason for you to want to keep continuing buying the more expensive product and there's a guess they're kind of a similarity here right where apple took a bunch of things that were exclusive to the apple tv and made them more widely available so now to get people to want to buy

the next apple tv if there ever is one they need to do this exact thing right like there has to be some kind of usp to this product yeah you need differentiation between you even though the 35 roku it's not available in every country but it is in the u.s apple cares the most about the u.s i know they're looking at that you need to have differentiation even if it's not your product you need to have enough differentiation between you and the 35 product to make the difference in price worth it. And the Apple logo is part of it. And Apple's privacy promise is part of it. Like all of those add, but you need to make the case to enough people to make that product successful. And as the product is sat there unchanged, it keeps getting less differentiated right and so so you're right we expect it from the ipad pro i think we need to expect it from the apple tv that they're going to find some ways to differentiate it because otherwise i don't really know why it's around um and and putting a new processor in it because imagine if it doesn't do anything new and then they put a

new processor in it from the latest generation sort of like okay uh what does that get me right like what is it's it's like the storage thing it's like well we've upped the processor well great i can buy a larger storage apple tv too but that's pointless i don't know this episode is brought to you by express vpn how did you choose which isp which internet service provider that you wanted to use sad thing is a lot of people don't have a lot of choice. ISPs have controls in the region that they serve, and you kind of have to just go with what's available. But then they can take advantage of you in different ways. They can put data caps and streaming throttles and stuff like that.

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in the show uh and the west wing so there was a west wing special on hbo max and it was actually free on their website so anyone could watch it only if you're in the us so i turned on express vpn and then i was on my phone and I was able to AirPlay it to my Apple TV, and I could watch the whole special completely in HD, no lag, no buffering, nothing. I was very happy about that. And it's just super simple. You could just download the app.

I already obviously had it downloaded. You tap one button on your device, and you can say you're from somewhere else, and you can also be protected. What's it jarring for all of the actors to be that much older that immediately after watching the entire west wing yes super weird it was super super weird because i was so used to the way that they looked and then it was a great special but yeah they're all they're all 15 years older now yeah which was very weird for me but yeah but super good and i was very happy i could watch it and all thanks to express vpn

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more. A thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM. It's time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Stitch wants to know, do you use bookmarks in Safari? if so what for uh i use bookmarks to store i just recently deleted a lot of bookmarks because i had them there for decades um i use them for things that i think i need to have available because i'm probably

going to need to come back there eventually there There aren't that many, but it just happens occasionally. Also, recipes. If I make something off of a random recipe website, I will add that as a bookmark so I can get back there and make it again. And otherwise, I basically just use the favorites bar. So that's really how I use bookmarks is i use the favorites bar and i have all of my content management stuff uh six colors the incomparable relay idg is all in there um i have quick jumps to my sites and my weather page and uh some covet 19 data is in there and Homebridge is in there. So that's basically how I use bookmarks

other than like to store recipes or other things. Like there was a GitHub something that I was like a project that I wanted to keep my eye on. I added that, but it's very rare that I use bookmarks anymore for anything other than sort of like save it for later or it's the stuff that's in my toolbar.

I don't use bookmarks i have some bookmarks in in safari and i don't know how they got there they're very old what i do use though is bookmarklets so the cms that we have for relay that we build um it has the ability to uh if i go to a web page i can hit a bookmarklet and it will save it to the cms yeah i have i have all those in there and those are great i've got one that um will kick out video into a picture in picture on the mac actually mac or ipad um that's really nice um yeah those are those are i should have mentioned that the bookmarklets are very helpful too for that reason so and that's that's what i use them for and and the other thing that i use them for um although i don't use this as much as i used to is i have all of my google docs that i use for podcasts uh planning google sheets or the upgrade Doc or the Liftoff Doc. And I used to use LaunchBar,

which would index Safari bookmarks. So I could launch the upgrade notes from LaunchBar. But I changed at some point, because those are all Google Docs, I have Google Drive. And it's just web links to those things too. But now I have, I think I have um you know google drive uh and it's just web links to those things too but now I have I think I have I have launch bar scanning google drive for the names of all my google docs and I get it that way but for a while I was using and I may switch back but that idea is that I'm not just launching apps using launch bar I'm also launching web pages like google docs so i use it for that and i do i think i do have my bookmarks indexed by uh by launch bar as well so if something gets added in there like a recipe or a doc that i'm working on i can get it through launch bar as well and that's convenient rather

than going to the menu or something i very rarely do that or auto or autocomplete right if you in the url bar you start typing the thing that you want. And because it's in bookmarks, it just shows up there. But I very rarely am like, now I'm at the point in my day where I will go to my bookmarks. I don't do that. Like if I want to open the upgrade show notes, I just open a new tab and type in UPG. And it's like, hey, and I just press enter. And that's it, right?

And I do command space UP yeah for a launch bar and hit return it opens it up that way too we keep getting lots of um vr and ar ask upgrade questions keep sending them in this one came from seth uh why is vr and ar considered only for mobile during the discussions that you're having in an m1 world where PC, tablet, and phone are the same. $3,000 endless XDR display for my M1 MacBook sounds like an amazing idea. Why limit ideas and theories to only what the phone can do? I think that's a great question.

I do think that if VR and AR ultimately becomes ever-present and seamless, the idea that you won't need a big screen because you can have a virtual screen anywhere you go will definitely become a thing that people will do. That you don't need a physical screen anymore because you can just make a virtual screen that's as big as you want it to be and move it around with you and whatever. I mean, that's true. However, they're all the physical issues right which is is it gonna is it gonna be good enough if it's good enough is it gonna be heavy or hot or uncomfortable in the beginning it will be in the long run maybe not maybe it'll be more like just wearing a pair of glasses and you put on your glasses and you're you a computer screen. But I worry about the ergonomics of it, that if you're working all day with a thing clamped onto your face, it's not going to be good. So what is the ergonomic and when does the ergonomic issue go away because the technology has advanced? And I think that's end goal is seamless AR and VR. And seamless AR, where you can put a screen up in front of somebody, is quite possible.

And at that point, we won't need displays anymore. But it feels like that's a long way off. So I think the thing that Seth is talking about here is this mixed reality headset. Because they say a three thousand dollar right so it's three thousand dollars is that price point and like this is a great idea if it if you discount the comfort of it right because i'll tell you right like as someone i have an oculus quest i can't have it on for three four hours at a time i watched a 3d i watched the doctor who 50th anniversary special in 3d on my oculus quest 2 it took me four sessions to do it yeah because it was just not very

comfortable and it's better now because i've got the new uh i've got the the upgraded uh strap that actually is comfortable even even so i you know i play 11 table tennis for 45 minutes and i'm like i'm done for a while and my face is all flushed and i'm really really really really really really really bad at table tennis is what i've learned okay you should add me as a friend and then i'll just beat you well no this is why i won't do that because i'm really really really really really really bad it's a fun game i'm just terrible at it so so that's i mean that's my answer to seth is that in the long run yeah sure like i love the idea that in the long run like let's let's put it all out there with hand tracking precise hand and finger tracking you should be

able to put on this magical futuristic set of ar glasses that don't squeeze your face and make you miserable and sit anywhere and put your hands out and type into the air and have it all work and mouse with your finger and do all whatever you want, whatever works for you and have it all be virtual. That absolutely is a thing that could happen. And I think the challenge is going to be ergonomics. And that's not just the ergonomics of the thing that you clamp on your face, but it's also the ergonomics of things like, what do I do for eight hours? Am I standing? Am I sitting? Am I typing in the air or am I typing on a solid surface? Is a keyboard better ergonomically because of the feedback it gives you, or is it pointless and you don't need it anymore? And some of that stuff is unknown, honestly.

And my guess is it's complicated and different bodies are going to react differently. But what are the best practices for a completely virtual environment beyond the thing clamped to your face? It's just going to take a while. But maybe someday. Jay asks, in terms of cloud storage, Dropbox or iCloud? Dropbox for me. I use iCloud more than I used to, but I pay for Dropbox and I use it all the time. I use a bunch of Dropbox features that iCloud doesn't support.

So if iCloud supported every feature that Dropbox, that I use in Dropbox, I would consider using iCloud instead because I found iCloud to be fairly reliable, although less reliable than Dropbox, but fairly reliable. It's way better than it used to be. But I use shared folders and file requests and, you know, I... Versioning? Yeah, versioning and undelete and rewind and all sorts of these features that iCloud doesn't have any of that. And I don't think it's ever going to have most of that because those are like pro features. And I can't really imagine Apple implementing all of them.

But if it were to do so, I would consider it. But for my use, Dropbox for sure. Yeah, and I'm the same. You know, even like that, I think they call it i don't think it's called smart sync is that the one where like it keeps all of your stuff and you just download what you need yeah i was really unsure about that feature but i use it now um on my macbook pro and i love it because the great thing is i have a terabyte of stuff in my Dropbox. So it's very expensive for me to get computers that I can actually have all of my files on in that way, right?

So I really like that. I like that feature a lot. And it's smart. It does a good job. But this thing that you're saying about like dropbox is rock solid for me right and so the idea of me ever thinking about moving to icloud for file storage is just unfathomable right if dropbox is around i'm just going to use dropbox because i don't have issues with dropbox and any issues i do have you know like if i was to have some kind of file issue something got deleted when i didn't need it to they have a very usable system

for going in getting that stuff out you try and recover a file from icloud that you've accidentally deleted right or like that there's a somebody's made an edit on it's it's barely it's like barely barely possible i do use icloud a lot like if an app has iCloud syncing for its data, I'll use that. But when it comes to where my files are stored, I use Dropbox. For example, numbers and pages, I use iCloud. Great. It's all there. And I kind of consider that as the app's syncing system.

But when it comes to where do I save my PDFs? I saved them in Dropbox. Yes. Yeah. All my stories are in a stories folder on Dropbox. That's linked to the editor that I use on iOS. And so it syncs. And could I do that with iCloud? Maybe.

And I might at some point. But again, I set it up with Dropbox and it works great. And when I've tried to do that with iCloud, I do end up in those situations sometimes where iCloud just doesn't see the changes. It's very frustrating. And that's why I said it's more reliable. Dropbox has those issues occasionally. iCloud has them more than occasionally, even now. It's much better than it used to be, but it's just not there. So I'm not going to drag either of these because they do both have their uses. But I think, honestly, I would say, I think we're very close to the expected result here. I think iCloud,

you know, they had these issues with folder sharing and like it was there and they took it away in the betas and all that. But like folder sharing among people in iCloud, that's a feature that Apple should add. But a lot of the stuff we use Dropbox for, I'm not sure I would advocate that. I mean, if they could reconceive time machine, uh, to be a front end to iCloud, uh, file versioning so that you could, you,

that would be, that would be a feature that would be nice and good because versioning is there on IO or on a, on Mac OS in iCloud, but it's, it's weird. And I'm not sure it's iCloud based as well as it's machine based.

So like I could see them doing versioning at a consumer level and I can see them doing folder sharing. But some of the stuff we use Dropbox for, they're never going to do that.

So that's and that's fine, right? Because Dropbox is a professional tool for lots of stuff that iCloud never needs to be. And so I think if Apple, Apple doesn't have to be Dropbox is a professional tool for lots of stuff that iCloud never needs to be. And so I think if Apple, Apple doesn't have to be Dropbox to make iCloud what it should be. But I don't think iCloud is what it should be yet. And finally today from Teague who asks, other than Core Recorder, have you come across any apps that do not work on M1 Macs?

I haven't. Core Recorder was the first one. And I didn't even know. I didn't know until that article came out because I hadn't tried to install it because I hadn't done any recordings on my MacBook Pro. So I haven't had anything else. It's the first one.

I mean, it's why it was honestly such a surprise for me because I thought everything just worked. Yeah. I thinkoshop works on it but i'm using the photoshop beta that's native on apple silicon but other than that i have not run into anything because we had the great catalina 32-bit app death right and i haven't tried to run you know obviously like obviously like VMware or something like that, running Windows emulation would have a problem, right? But I haven't tried any of that. And those apps that I really relied on other than Call Recorder are mostly the apps that I already replaced because of Catalina and the 32-bit apocalypse. So, no, when I use my MacBook Air, it's just great.

It just works. It's all those things, right? It'sbook air it's just it's just great it just works it's all those things right it's just it's fine it has been the least dramatic switchover um which is why i think that the paying the price in the summer of 19 with catalina was smart on apple's part because they got to clear the decks and make the chip transition not the painful transition i have no doubt that there are tools and services that people use that don't work but that i think they're on the niche ends yeah listener david who is our sort of music professor in the in the discord said there are a lot of uh audio and music apps that don't work although i will say there are also a lot of audio

apps that claim they don't work but they actually do work like isotope for the longest time was like you can't even run it on on big sur let alone on apple silicon was like well it runs on big sur just fine and it runs on apple silicon just fine but there's a lot of like there's a lot of qualification stuff and then there's the stuff that really doesn't work and there were a lot of like audio plugins that ran on intel and when you tried to run an Intel audio plugin in an app that was running on Apple Silicon, you had these very weird conflicts and there's stuff like that, that's been kind of broken. So if you're in a particular niche, you may have to face that. But even there, I found with a lot of these professional tools, what they are is they're

afraid to claim compatibility because of the support issues and sometimes it's just not true sometimes it's just like well what i had somebody say well i can't get an apple silicon mac or i can't upgrade to big sur because isotope doesn't work in it and i said well i've been using isotope with big sur for months now on and now on apple silicon and it works fine they're like but the web page says it doesn't work i'm like well i don't know what to tell you about their web page i just tried it and it worked so it's okay with me i think it's one of the things that's made the m1 max so fantastic at least for me is i don't really think about the fact that it's doing something different i just know that everything it

does is amazing so it's it like it just feels so good to use like i i'm really struggling to kind of get my thoughts out about why i love my macbook pro so much but it just everything just feels nice to use in a way that i feel like i hadn't experienced on the mac in a while like i i can't i don't really know why this is the case but when i sit down at my imac it doesn't feel like the same experience as when i sit down with my macbook pro and i'm and i'm i'm not completely gotten around to understanding why that is yet except to say that the m1 macs are really very special and cool yeah they they are it's it's a joy when i was traveling i took it with me um and when we went to our little vacation house for the weekend and it was um great it's just yeah it's a pleasure it's a pleasure to use it's fast even editing podcasts and denoising

things running in rosetta too. And it's great. Love it. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, you can tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade or use question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members Discord, which you can get access to

if you sign up for Upgrade Plus. Go to getupgradeplus.com where you will get longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade every single week. On today's Upgrade Plus, we talk about power. But not that kind. We talk about electricity and planning for power outages and solar panels and electric cars and things like that. that because because dear listener we've reached the end now my electricity provider sent me a letter in the mail last week that said dear jason during upgrade we're going to turn off your power

probably yeah and i i had to find ways of dealing with that and now that we've reached the end i'd be happy to say ha ha they didn't we escaped we did it they can shut it off right now and it won't matter but if you'd like to hear a conversation we had about that and all the weird and wonderful ways that that went go to

getupgradeplus.com to sign up $5 a month $50 a year you get loads of great stuff and you help support us and the show I would also like to thank

ExpressVPN HelloFresh and Spokes for their support of this episode if you'd like to find Jason online you can go to sixcolors.com

where you can find lots of wonderful articles from Jason, theincomparable.com for lots of wonderful podcasts and here at RelayFM as well. Don't forget to go subscribe to Liftoff at relay.fm slash liftoff to get their very special episode later on this week with Ron Moore, the creator of For All Mankind,

which I'm so excited to listen to that. If you'd like to find Jason on Twitter as well, he's at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. If you'd like to find links and information about this episode, it should be on your podcast app of choice. But if they're not,

go to reload.fm slash upgrade slash 339. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Michael Hurley.