Upgrade - 38: Titles Are Not Jobs

Episode Date: May 26, 2015

This week Jason and Myke discuss Jonathan Ive's new title and what it means for Apple's Chief Design Officer and the company as a whole, and in advance of Google I/O, talk about how and why we use Google's services on our Apple devices.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 38 today's show is brought to you by hover simplified domain management mail route a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam and go to meeting make it easy to meet with your team whenever you need to, wherever you are. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined, as always, by the man behind Six Colors, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Mr. iMichael. How are you? I am very well, sir. How are you? I'm doing good. We had the long weekend, which in England is called a very bureaucratic name, the spring bank holiday. We have many bank holidays.

This one doesn't really have too much of a purpose. So it's just called the spring one. And the bank is just because the banks are closed and they felt that that was the most important thing was that the banks are closed. I have no idea why they're called that. I feel like I've looked it up once or twice, but they're just called bank holidays. I mean, sometimes when I used to work in a bank, sometimes the banks were open, which didn't make any sense, but they were. That's a crime, the banks open on a bank holiday. That's madness. You can imagine how we felt. in um on this on this weekend which i was in uh i was in europe i forget when that was 2004 something like that we ended up in bruges in belgium and um and it was also a long weekend

there i for i think and i think it was something related to a church calendar thing but i think everybody sort of agrees that they're going to find a way to have the last uh monday in may off as a kickoff to summer and and it was funny because the banks were definitely on holiday in Bruges because there was no money in the ATMs. So we were like, we don't have money and we can't get money. It was interesting. And we finally found an ATM somewhere, like our fifth ATM. Finally, we found some ones that would vend some euro to us.

It was weird. Look at that. Belgium, what are you going to do? Anyway, yes, on Memorial Day here in the US. And so my daughter marched in a parade yesterday. And yeah, it was nice. It's the official kickoff to summer in San Francisco, which means that it was like 60 degrees and foggy all day,

as it usually is on Memorial Day. So, you know, stand outside and shiver. Woo! Summer. Woo-hoo! Yep. I'm hoping for a little bit of sun in a couple of weeks' time. Well, we haven't had any so far, but I hope that it turns nice so that we can put on a nice show for you people when you're all out here in two weeks.

Two weeks, Mike. Two weeks. So you know what that means next week, right? I don't know. No, what does that mean for next week predictions oh no okay good i was worried that i was worried you were going to say something like it's the it's the mid-year upgrade awards no i have ideas about the upgrade by the way for the end of the year i have ideas see i told you it will i told you it would kick in i do have some

ideas they will they'll actually be the second annual upgrade, which is you can't do annual unless you do them again. So it will actually be legitimately annual. Anyway, yes, we'll do some predictions next week, and then we will be together for our, I guess, this will be our third live in-person upgrade in two weeks after the keynote. So that will be exciting. We'll be recording on Monday as well,

which is fantastic. So we'll be live from San Francisco, which I enjoy. This is where the Monday broadcast pays off. Although today it's on Tuesday. And also whatever day, podcasting, whatever day you choose to listen to this,

it might be Thursday where you are. Hello, Thursday. Should we do some follow-up? I think that's a good idea. A couple of things this week. So we had something from listener Eric who wanted to kind of just... We were talking about pronunciations

again last week in Ask Upgrade about trying to teach Siri pronunciations of names. And we were saying that where you can't necessarily teach it pronunciations of names. And, you know, we were saying that, you know, where you can't necessarily teach it pronunciations of different words for the text dictation, you can teach it to learn your name and to say your name back to you correctly. However, Eric has had some problems with this. He cannot teach Siri how to pronounce his name. His last name is spelt R-A-U-C-H. It has a silent C-H.

So I'm going to say it's like Raul or Raul, something like that. He says he cannot get Siri to learn his name in any fashion, which is so unfortunate. I guess you'd have to put it in as like R-A-W or something like that. Well, this is my understanding is that there is a field in Contacts for pronunciation. But I don't know where it gets used, but it might get used in this way where you can put in the pronunciation and you can have that be a phonetic pronunciation, something ridiculous. Like when I do the incomparable intros and the little computer voice reads the number and sometimes those are bizarre phrases that I put in there in order to get it to sound the way I want it to sound. And I think you can do that with any contact is have a pronunciation field and it gets used in some places. But it's inconsistent.

And, yeah, Siri, you know, she's going to do what she's going to do. Or if you're in other parts of the world, he's going to do what he's going to do. But, you know, Siri is just – Siri's going to Siri is what I'm saying. Siri's a dude here yeah i know you can i think that there is a female voice now but i'm very used to british siri being a guy so i kind of just just leave it it is but i think that we got the female voice in like over seven or something nice but you know it takes on a certain personality so yeah. Oh, yeah. So we were talking about Letterman a bit last week. We were talking about your Incomparable episode. And I kind of just wanted to get – because I don't know if you're going to talk about it anywhere else.

I wanted to just get a brief feeling for – were you happy? Did you watch the Letterman finale? How did you feel about it? Yeah, we watched it on broadcast, stayed up late and watched it. Yeah, we watched it on broadcast, stayed up late and watched it. And I talked about it um of stuff and it ended with this crazy montage that the producers have been working on since december uh basically foo fighters comes out starts playing everlong live on stage but then instead of showing them they run this montage and it's somebody uh annotated it on on facebook it's like 500 different clips over the span of

four minutes or something. It's super crazy. And I literally felt like my life was passing before my eyes, especially for the first half of it, because I remember almost everything in the first half, certainly in his NBC days. And it's like, suddenly, I had that moment of like, that is my life from 1985 to 1995, at least. That is my life from 1985 to, you know, 1995 at least. It was pretty crazy. So it was, yeah, it was good. I think it was a good send-off to just, you know, say goodbye and talk about stuff, you know, memories and do some funny bits and have it be done. And it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't one of those kind of teary finales.

And I think that was fitting. And so, yeah, it was good. It was good. Beyond that, I mean, I didn't watch the show. I wasn't watching the show regularly the last few years anyway. So, you know, it's just a passing of a moment then. And I said that in the Incomparable episode that I did about it is, you know, when I thought about it, you know, this is something that I moved on from this a long time ago and so it's not as if something was taken from me so much as it was a moment to think about uh those good times in the past and and i think the finale did that too so yeah so thanks

for asking but it was good yeah so when i saw everybody talking about it i decided i would go to youtube and i watched a few clips um from the finale but it was one of those scenarios like i just want to watch the whole thing like just give me the whole thing right however you need to do that just let me watch it like i've never wanted to watch letterman before because it's just never been something that was on my radar too much like i know of him i know about the you know all the late night shows but i didn't really particularly have an interest in watching it before. But I wanted to watch that episode, but couldn't.

I could just watch these little snippets of it, which was fine, but I kind of wanted to see the whole thing. And plus, the snippets that I watched were good, but they weren't, and I had heard people talking about this, they weren't like the kind of snippets that you see from other talk shows where they're like, you can just take that one little bit and you're good. Right.

It felt like there was more to it than that, because I know like, you know, I'd heard like in some profiles that maybe one of the reasons he's decided to go away is because shows like Jimmy Fallon and James Corden and people like that, they make their bits to be shared, right? To go viral. Right. And he wasn't too interested in doing that. Well, I think there is a full show up there. You may have to do your magical things to make it think that you're in the U.S. On the cbs.com slash late show, there's a, the leftmost in their list of latest videos is full episode. And it looks like that's the final episode. So it may be there.

See, I was just going to YouTube. Oh, yeah. I don't know why not just put it on YouTube. Well, I'm sure they have their reasons. But I think there's a way to get it. I can't watch it because of my geographical reason. Although, you know, I can if I do some stuff. You can do your magic tricks.

Anyway, but yeah, it's funny because they're done now. And like they were ripping the seats out of the theater. And they asked him about it. Actually, he was at the Indy 500, the auto race this weekend because he's from Indianapolis. And he is a co-owner of cars that race in that race, actually. And he said, he said, Yeah, yeah, you know, day later, they're tearing the seats out of the theater. So that pretty much says it all about show business, right? So they're done. I mean, they're, they're moving, they're moving out the staff. And, you know, it's just it's over. Like, it wasn't just, we're gonna, you know, some time to tidy up. It's like shows over, folks. So that's kind of interesting. That website like, you know, on the CBS site, it presumably is just abandoned now. And then at some point it will like, on their own, and that Letterman's company owns all

that material? And are they going to, is there a staff at his company? Because Worldwide Pants is his production company. Are they building a davidletterman.com or something like that, that's got old clips or archives or things they post on YouTube? Johnny Carson's estate actually has that. So I wonder if they'll do that. But it's interesting. This is one of those cases of digital permanence and impermanence, where I feel like a lot of these clips that are on the official site they're just going to go away because they're going to want to CBS is going to want to promote the new the new version of the show hosted by Stephen Colbert and I'm not sure whether that all the Letterman stuff won't just get thrown in the trash you know digitally like the like the set

and the seats were thrown in the trash the next day you don't want to like you know digitally like the like the set and the seats were thrown in the trash the next day you don't want to like you know from that perspective you don't want to revel in how great the past is when you're trying to promote the new show cbs's job is to promote the new show plus i'm not quite sure what what cbs's rights to that stuff are contractually after some period of time like it may be that the moment that colbert premieres the letterman stuff has to go off because it's not theirs anymore. It belongs to Letterman and not CBS. That is probably the case. So it's a weird thing, but it made me think about the fact that NBC and David Letterman, they have never made much effort to show old clips.

There've been reruns a couple of times of old David Letterman shows, and those got nipped in the bud pretty quickly. And so that stuff is not available anywhere except on YouTube, where huge amounts of it are available. And in fact, I was seeing people, even Jimmy Kimmel, I think, when he said goodbye to Letterman on the same night as Letterman's last show, he played a clip from YouTube of a favorite moment of his. So these people just put, you know, and I was going to do it. And I discovered that every clip that I saved on an old VHS tape that I got out and I was playing and all that, they're all already on YouTube. So in the end, that's your digital permanence. It's like people going outside of the law in order to get this stuff around and then that becomes this incredibly valuable resource

whereas the official channels you know that stuff is inaccessible like you said you didn't even look on cbs.com and and then it goes away because their you know their contract expires and it's just all gone so uh you know bless you youtubers for uploading things you don't have the rights to so that we could actually see this stuff yep otherwise it's just lost yeah it's just yeah so many of the farewell letterman pieces in the last couple of weeks have have had youtube embeds in them and those are all not authorized by david letterman or nbc but that's also the legacy of the show i mean thank goodness those things exist because otherwise well i, I sent you, we were talking last week,

um, not to spoil a future episode of a different podcast, but we were talking less last week about, um, off of this show about, uh, music. And I sent you a,

uh, I sent you a still of David Letterman holding up the record of my favorite album of all time. And why would we have been talking about that i don't know why that would be it's for a future episode of clockwise obviously so um that was just but i that was just you know that's on youtube i i searched for the band and letterman and uh i got all of their performances on letterman uh they're all on youtube so uh yeah shine on you crazy pirates so you um last before you released your photo book it's out now it's finally all done version

yeah i think they're calling it version 1.1 i would say it's the real final version of it we released sort of the first half and um yeah yeah so it's a photostorm act to take control crash course is the name of it you can get it at takecontrol.com or takecontrolbooks.com sorry don't go to that's like uh that uh dash.com that's laundry detergent don't go there and don't go to take control takecontrolbooks.com uh and so it's part of the taking control books line so what you're going to get is it's i think the page count is like 60 ish. It's this like super boiled down designed, lots of screenshots, lots of references. It is me trying to boil down everything like you need. It's kind of dense. It's, I think it's visual. So it's, it's easier to get through. to get through. I was thinking about it. If I had written a traditional book, I probably would have written four times the amount of words, but I'm not sure it would have been any more informative. And I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been as easy to read. It's an interesting format.

I wrote this to fit their format, but their format is interesting in that the crash course format is you know it's kind of no nonsense um the chapter a lot of voice in there i assume yeah there's some jokes in there i tried to put some voice in there but you know there's not a lot of room for it you know the chapters are of a fairly constrained length you've got a column running down the side with sidebars and images in it it is a a format that you're fitting. But I think what's powerful about it is it's really no nonsense. It's like, you know, if you want to read a book that is thousands and thousands of words about some piece of software because it's fun, this is probably not the book for you. This is a book that is like, let's get down to business. Here's what you need to know. Here's some tips. Here's what these different tools do.

And I kind of appreciate that because I think there's probably more of an audience for that than there is for sort of recreational reading about software. And Adam and Tanya Angst who do it, they know their business and they know their audience. But it was an educational experience to write it. I feel like I've learned a whole lot about photos for Mac and I like it. I'm not going to ditch it. I do like it, although it's got some serious limitations that hopefully Apple is already working on. I think having a short book that gives you all the information you're going to need is good if what you're trying to do is just learn how to use a program. As nice as it is to get a lot more of the character around it, if a crash course is what you're looking for,

60 pages seems about right. Yeah, I mean, and you can jump around and it's got, you know, it's very visual. They do some nice things. Like when you say click on this button or look at this icon, the icon is in the text. Like you put it right. I mean, it was a lot of work for me to take the screenshots and all that. But it ends up being, yeah.

So it's interesting. It's been interesting. I've gotten some feedback already from people, you know, and some of it is why did it take so long? And the answer is because Apple like sort of unveiled photos really much earlier than I think anybody anticipated. And I started writing it when it was in that first beta. And it just, with my travel and a bunch of other production issues with them, it took until now for us to get the final final. But that's what we got the first half out when we did is we wanted to get as much as we could out as soon as we could. And then again, like the format, I think it's actually a really clever format and I think it's a very useful format. If you are expecting, you know, Jason's 20,000, you know, word essay on the meaning of photos, you're not going to get it because that's not the point of the book.

The book is really, you know, what are all the tools and how do I use it? And I think it's very useful in that. Cool. We have a ton of stuff to get to today. Yeah. So we should probably do that. But before we do, let me take a moment to thank our friends over at Hover. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names.

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Mike, Upgrade.fish is available, by the way. I don't know why I haven't bought it already. So, yesterday as we recorded this, so it was Labor Day in the States. Nope. Nope. Memorial Day.

That's it. Memorial Day. I always get those ones mixed up. I don't think I need to worry about it. It's not my country. I know it's a holiday. I apologize. Well, judging by your accent, it's rapidly becoming your country.

So watch it, Hurley. We'll wait until I actually get the visa and make a move. All right. So it was Memorial Day. There we go. We got it right this time. Good job. And Johnny Ive got a new job.

Apparently. Or has he had it for a while? He told Stephen Fry about his new job. Yes, this is really interesting. So it was announced in the UK in the telegraph in a profile by stephen fry yeah that was how like that was how it came to the world tim cook sent a memo yeah yeah which you know then leaks out as these things tend to do and i believe they're written that way they've got to be right you've got to write those knowing that the world's going to see them

yep like oh by the way everyone secret project x Project X is coming along. Yeah. It's coming along nicely. Don't tell anybody. Don't tell anyone. Shh. Keep it under your hat. So he is now chief design officer. So he is what is now known as a C-level executive. C-level. That's right.

He's living in C-level. He's pivoting with brands at C-level. So this puts him like with, is is phil schiller like a cmo or is or is he just i think i think he's senior vice senior vice president executive vice president yeah so this puts i've had a very very strong position in apple now um at least from a title perspective because you know in theory and as people have said he's probably one of the most strong people like it's effectively goes tim cook johnny i've everybody else um yeah everybody else is senior vice president right so the only that we know of at this point the only c-level executive is is uh johnny i've yeah wow so we have what tim cook and then we have the coo as well uh is there a

there's a you know do they call that do they call that person the coo i have no idea anymore i i'm looking at the executive profile list and i don't see anybody with a a chief title other than other than tim cook well there we go um there are now two people that are working underneath johnny so if you remember when uh forestall left uh they pushed the industrial design and user interface teams together and johnny was running them both right now they split them apart again with johnny overseeing everything that well they now have a vice president of industrial design and a vice president of user interface design which was how if i'm remembering correctly kind of how it was before and then johnny took them both over but now there are officially people that are heading up those two departments with Johnny sitting above them.

That's a different structure, but it reminds me of how it was before. I'm not sure if it's different. And this is the thing. I don't have any insider information about this. But my gut feeling about this is this is – so one of the things that i learned in my you know in my years doing some you know media company stuff but anyway is uh you you get you get the job and then you get the title a lot of the time that's just sort of how it works putting johnny ive in charge of software design means uh he was doing i mean that's when his job changed that's when his job changed because that's

too much either he didn't change anything at which point he wasn't in charge of it, or, let's be serious, he was in charge of it, which means he was not able to spend the amount of time he was able to spend on other things. die and Richard Howard. Maybe they were not. Maybe they emerged as this went along. I don't know that. But let's just assume they more or less were. This strikes me as being the quantification of that, that this was part of the plan. Now, it may be that this is moving the story forward in the sense that this is also Johnny Ives saying, now that we've got this ship running more like we talked about, Tim, I don't want to be a manager who's doing day-to-day stuff because I'm a designer. And these guys are my managers. These guys, you know, these guys are my managers. And boy, first off, I can identify with that because I had those same feelings, which is you get to that point where you're like, I'm not doing the thing that I am good at and that you hired me to do.

I'm now doing all of this other stuff. But he's so talented that you don't want to lose him and you trust him. So how do you structure it? And I feel like my gut feeling, again, with no inside information, this is Apple outsider territory. Me and Matt Drance were on the outside. Um, but I view this as being Johnny Ive saying, um, I'm in charge cause you trust me, Tim, but I don't want to be the day-to-day manager of these giant groups because I'm a designer at heart and I want to follow, you know, Stephen Fry called it like blue sky stuff, but I don't view it that way. I don't think that he's saying, I like to

just imagine crazy things that'll never be built. I think it's more like, I want to get back to the business of focusing on products. So I read this as being Johnny Ives saying, look, I have two jobs. I have to be the leader of this giant group. And with that, I'm going to have a couple of people who I manage who are going to be worried about the nuts and bolts day to day. And then I'm also going to be an active participant in product design. And because that's what I love, and that's what you want me doing anyway. So I'm fairly positive about this. It could be that this is corporate speak for the fact that Johnny Ive is getting burned out and wants to spend more time in England and, you know, or in his mansion in San Francisco and not... It could be that,

but I think it could easily be, and I think a perfectly reasonable scenario that I've seen happen in other places is this is allowing your super creative, talented guy to not get lost in being the head of two giant groups so that's my that's my take on it is that this is this this could easily just be a uh a formalization of how this has already come to be because that that explains how they're functioning, gives these two other guys, the authority and visibility to be part of it. Um, while Johnny Ive can go back to being, you know, kind of like totem of design at Apple plus work on projects. Cause he's really good at that.

And, um, and honestly, you know, that's, that makes sense to me, because if you whatever the next hard, super important design project is at Apple, you kind of want Johnny Ive on that, right? You kind of don't want him being like, no, I'm too busy. We got to reorg in the software design group over here. It's like, no, you don't want him doing that. You want him on those projects. So maybe I'm being a little optimistic here, and it's entirely possible that this is just a bad sign that Johnny Ive is leaving, and we want to get these guys in place so that when he goes, we'll have people who are visible. But I think it's very easily explained as just being that, that he's a really talented guy. This is too much for him to manage day to day. They feel like the ship is kind of righted from where it was when they made this move. And this way, those guys get to be seen as leaders while Johnny Ive gets to be seen as the guy who does design

and also go back to formally to working on the most important design projects that Apple has. So I actually think of it as being a little bit of all of those and kind of in a reverse order to the way that you mentioned them. So I think that probably first and foremost, this is succession planning. And that should start, in theory, 15 years, 20 years

before Johnny Ive's going to go, right? You need to know, because it's like the Steve Jobs conundrum all over again. Like Apple has to know that they have people that can make stuff without Johnny Ive going to go, right? You need to know, because it's like the Steve Jobs conundrum all over again. Like Apple has to know that they have people that can make stuff without Johnny Ives making it, right? That is a thing that needs to happen

and that should start now. It does happen, but they need to, they've over-messaged Johnny Ives just like they over-messaged Steve Jobs. And again, Steve Jobs was responsible for a lot of that himself, you know? But I think you're

right that this is the we already have a good team here you risk when one guy has everything invested in him that if he leaves then uh people are like freaking out oh my god he left he did everything and so some of this is sending the message that no no there's very talented teams here that are also working on this stuff that's a pr thing i think that's right yeah and then i think it's like going back from that is like it is so they just take the managerial stuff away because we like to think of apple as a as a beautiful incredible place but it is a company a big company stuff and as the head of a division he will have been bogged down in hr stuff well and the people who rise to this level are not rising to that level because of

their greatness at that stuff maybe some of them are great at it maybe some of them are good at it maybe some of them love it my old boss at idg my last boss atG, was a C-level executive. He was the chief content officer for IDG. And he used to be an editor, but he loved being a manager and doing all the political stuff. He loved it. And I liked him. I like him. He's a good guy. But he took to it in a way that I just never, I could not imagine doing that job where he was, he just didn't make stuff anymore. His job was to be a manager. So different people react to it differently. I look at, I look at Johnny Ive too. And I say, uh, well, first off, he doesn't need to do this. Right. Other than, other than like the, the, the, uh, excitement and of changing the world and

making great products, right? That, that he doesn't need the money. He doesn't need the acclaim. He's he's the queen has bestowed some accolades on him, right? He, he, he will be honored regardless, right? So what, what keeps him an apple? And it's the opportunity to make cool stuff. And it's probably the opportunity to be involved in designing this stuff in detail. So if you're Johnny Ive, I cannot imagine that he wouldn't have a moment where he'd say, and maybe this was when he was given this division in the first place, where he would say to Tim, yeah, I'll get the act together. But at some point, I want to go back in the design lab.

And I'm happy to do it at a high level, but I'm going to need to bring in some managers because I don't want to do that job. I just, I mean, that's just my gut feeling about him is that he's not the kind of person who just would be happy to give up design altogether and just manage a design group. That doesn't make any sense from anything we know about Jonathan and I. And then my other thought, you know, working back from that is if you take those responsibilities away from him, he can then spend a bit more time living his life how he wants to live it. Right. Because he will continue doing everything he's doing now minus some stuff. He's not going to do more, right, in theory. Because from the profiles that we've seen about him recently, everything steven fry talks about is stuff we already knew he was doing so if you take away the vice president like the svp and the evp stuff from somebody and allow them to do the free thinking right that that he should want to be doing and or work on the projects that he wants to work on delegating the rest to his new teams that is that is the path to someone who has a job that they really want to do and they really

love because he has a in theory one of the best jobs in the world in theory if you are if you are a designer you want johnny ive's job and and, you know, I don't know Johnny Ive. I would imagine that he loves that part of his job. And I think one of the challenges of all of these incredibly talented people who have made a huge amount of money at Apple is how do you get them to stay? You get them to stay because where else in the world will they have the opportunity to have the kind of impact they can have at Apple? And because they're doing things they love. And if somebody, as a manager, as somebody who used to manage a lot of people, I look at that and say, okay, you're really talented and we don't want to lose you. We don't have like leverage on you. You didn't just buy a super expensive house and now have

a big mortgage and there's no way you're going to leave your job. You know, we are, you are just, how do I motivate you? I never really liked it when people congratulated you on buying a house because they knew you wouldn't quit your job by the way because they did that to me i never liked that never haha we've got you right where you want where we want you worker um uh and congratulations but i but i look at johnny and it's, how do you motivate somebody like that? Well, you say, I'll unburden you from some of this stuff. You've got lieutenants. You already can't do it all. You've got lieutenants who are doing this and doing a good job at it. And maybe you know those lieutenants, hopefully, and you're like, oh, and those guys love that stuff and are really good at it. So let's take it off your shoulders. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And that could very well be the whole story here is it's not good for Johnny Ive. It's not good for Apple to have Johnny Ive worried about things that aren't designing products, quite honestly. Designing products or determining the overarching design philosophy at the company. I feel like those are his two jobs and they are bracketed by all of this management junk that he doesn't need to deal with.

Yeah, and there's other things that I think about, like, potentially, and I mean, I think there's a good chance that this is the case. Stuff like designing the campus is to keep him interested. interested i think yeah there's no reason in the world that he would be involved in designing the new building because that's not what he designs yeah but if you are a designer like that is an incredible project to work on as somebody as somebody who has done a slightly smaller project on the new apple campus which is we redid our kitchen. Just slightly. I will say, if you view the architect and the, this isn't entirely accurate,

but if you view the architect and the builders of this as sort of your contractor, the fact is that when you're building something like this, there are a million little decisions that have to be made. And if you're the client, if you're the person who's paying to do the work, they will come to you with those decisions. So who at Apple is going to make those decisions? And I think that's sort of what's going on here too, is like, look, Steve's not here anymore to make these decisions. He got the ball rolling here. Johnny probably knows what Steve was thinking. He's got his own thoughts. Maybe if you really want this thing to have the attention to detail that they want to have it, it is an Apple product that they're designing here. Then I feel like maybe that's the role he's in. I don't think

he's doing architecture, right? They have a prestigious architecture firm to do that. But I think he and his people may be the ones who are like making those decisions of, you know, for us, it was like, what color do you want the outlets to be? We can put white outlets here, but they're, you know, but the material on your wall here is green. So we could custom order some green outlets, which was the point where my wife and I melted down and we're like, just put the white outlets in because there's so many decisions. But that seems to me to be the place where Johnny Ive might be fitting in is, oh, we need tables, we need carpet or whatever, and being like, all right, what do we want that to be at a high level? And I know that seems ridiculous because maybe it is not at a high level, but I think you're also right that it keeps him engaged and it also invests in him the idea that everything Apple does regarding design is his purview.

He's setting the tone there. And I think it's also good for Tim Cook because it lets Tim Cook say, look, I got this guy. This is my guy. He said, I'm not designing products, but I got the best guy at it. I got Sir Jonathan Ive doing it for us. He's my chief design officer. I think that's good for for tim cook too because you know they say it says in the profile that like um

he is even designing chairs and stuff like that yeah yeah it is it is a little bit of whatever you want johnny just don't go whatever interests you let, let's do it. But at the same time, I mean, I do believe that they view that Apple campus as an Apple product. It's their new home and they want it to be... The last thing you'd want to do is spend all that money and then have it be let down with lots of like you know crappy chairs from ikea you know i it would be you want to take it the last mile i think that is that is a sign of apple's design philosophy is you want to take it the last mile you want to get it all the way there and not have this great idea that then doesn't come through in the final execution execution so just to try and save some follow-up um luca maestri is the cfo oh luca so there isn't a coo which is interesting to me um because tim was wasn't he he was a coo but jeff williams is

just an svp oh yeah well luca is senior vice president and chief financial officer. Yeah. But he's the only one looking at that page that has that. So there will be three C-level executives. That is so interesting to me that it's just that. Like you think about Phil Schiller and he's not the CMO, right? Well, maybe he will be. Maybe he will be. But, you it's it's just so interesting to see i mean it's it feels obvious in a company like apple that you would give someone a title like that because design is what they have that is all they have you know they are the company that

designs things incredibly well top to bottom inside and out that is what they are so it makes sense that you would create a position like that and and schiller used to be worldwide product marketing and now he's worldwide marketing which i think is also kind of interesting um i don't know when that happened that might have been years ago but but yeah i mean it's a one step from there to be cmo i i think if you're phil schiller also he might he might just say i don't like that title i'd rather just be svp yeah maybe maybe it's it's this is an interesting thing to me i think there's a lot of titles it's dripping it's dripping with subtext yeah titles are not jobs titles are not jobs titles are statements they're communicationles are – But they're statements. They're communication. Titles are communication.

You communicate your role and your importance with your title when you're talking to your peers or you're applying for another job. And your company is communicating your importance and visibility within the organization with the title. But titles aren't jobs. Jonathan Ive could be – and this is the thing. Phil Schiller's job, if Phil Schiller wanted to be CMO, maybe they'd make him CMO. Maybe he would prefer not to be, but it doesn't change his job. And you can have, again, just to bring my history in here, when I got, let's see, when Macworld was sucked inside of PC World. My boss, Rick LePage, was let go because he was the president of Macworld at that point.

A guy named Jeff Edmund was in charge of PC World, was now also in charge of Macworld. And I had the conversation where I went upstairs to see Jeff Edmund, and he said, here's what's happening. Rick is leaving. We're going to take care of him. I'm going to be in charge. You know, you're going to sit on my management team. And then he said, and you're now senior vice president and editorial director of Macworld.

And I was like, okay. And, and I got promoted. Why did that happen? Because I didn't, I like, I didn't do anything. My boss lost his job. And the answer was they wanted to send a message. They wanted to send a message of importance of Macworld. They wanted to make me feel better, I guess. I'm not sure. I guess it did. I don't know. But it was all about communication. It was about because it was kind of unbidden. It's not like I went to him and said, well, I don't know about this. It's not like it was the annual review process. It was there to communicate some things to me and to the staff and to maybe other observers. And so that's what this is all about. I feel like this is communicating changes that have already happened or changes that need to happen that that need to happen but the titles themselves kind of i mean johnny ives title could be um you know he could have no title he could be like my i

prefer to be titleless and he would be on the executive profile page and it would just there would be nothing he could do that right and it that would just be uh we would all just accept it well it's quirky designers whatever um yeah so titles are not the titles are are about communication with other people and what so it's always good to ask the question what is apple trying to communicate here um it may or may not be about us it may be about those people um but it's probably about us it's probably about everybody observing apple too and and wanting to know what the deal is with, you know, and stop whispers of like, well, you know, Johnny isn't doing day to day. They're like, yeah, Johnny isn't doing day to day. You know, we already announced that.

Gets in front of that change that they want to make. But do you think, I mean, a lot of people speculated that they announced it on a day that the markets were closed because it could potentially have had a bad effect on the market i mean any change right affects the mark like will affect the market sure any change involving a member of your staff sure sure it softens the yeah it also softens the rather than being a knee-jerk reaction right of like oh god jonathan i have what what's happening oh fear fear fear instead it's like it trickles out people are like eating a hot dog they're barbecuing a hamburger and they're like oh jonathan i and they have time to process and there's nothing they can do and it doesn't you know i think everything apple does now has an effect

like this it's interesting they did it on the monday though they did on a monday where like plausibly people at apple who don't observe holidays were back to work instead of doing it friday evening which is the traditional bad news time so what they didn't want to do is send the message that this was bad news but they still i think wanted to mute the um the response yeah yeah that makes sense but it was interest interesting news nonetheless i think yeah think. And I'm interested to see how this plays out. Like, are we going to see more of these other people? You know, how is that going to work? I think that would be interesting to see.

Yeah. I hope that we do. I hope that we do. Yeah, I imagine we'll be seeing those people at WWDC. Yeah, that'd be interesting. Maybe in some videos or something. We'll see. Alright, should we take a break and then talk about some Google

stuff, I think? Great idea. Let's go on a skew. This week's episode is also brought to you by GoToMeeting from Citrix. We've been talking about businesses and corporations, and meetings are a thing that happen in businesses and corporations with

executives. This is probably the type of thing that Johnny's trying to get rid of. But do you know what he could do from England, Jason? He could use GoToMeeting to talk to his team, you know, because he can be anywhere in the world, you know, anybody can be. And you can connect with your team via GoToMeeting. It is a smarter way to meet. You can meet with your clients and co-workers online with Citrix GoToMeeting. It makes it easy to meet with your team wherever you need to, wherever you are, because you can use any device. You can use a computer, a tablet, a smartphone. You don't have to think about travel expenses or travel time. You don't have to worry about

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So, Jason, it is Google I.O. this week. It's Google time. So we have all of that to think about before WWDC, which is, you know, that's that. So Google tend to do this. I don't know if they do it purposefully, but I would if I was them. Just get your news out quickly. Get it out first, because if you and Apple are working on a similar thing, at least you can get the news cycle for a few days yeah because otherwise your product launches are just ruined

by everybody talking about how it's not apple's one it's very also you know google will have some hardware partner announcements and all that but they don't they don't necessarily dazzle have all the tools to dazzle like apple does because they you know they're talking very much about cloud and software and operating systems. And Apple has some hardware to glint a little bit and people are like, ooh, shiny. It's funny, Google I.O. is very different. It's shorter than WWDC. And the keynote is much longer, traditionally. We'll see if it is this year. But in the past, the Google I.O. keynotes have been endless because there seems to be I mean, Google's doing a lot of stuff, but there seems to to be a reluctance to let parts of Google that don't have anything that merits being on stage, a reluctance to not have them be on stage. to not have them be on stage.

So for the last, I think it was two years ago, there was a Maps demo at Google I.O. keynote that was like, hey, Maps, you like Maps, right? Yay, Maps. And goodbye. And that was what just happened. And it was just a waste of our time. So it'll be interesting to see. That's one of the ways where Google I.O.'s keynote

differs often from Apple is, even though so many companies, including Google and Microsoft, now are like using the Apple playbook in terms of their event structure, they really have been inspired by the kind of classic Steve Jobs event structure. There are still moments where as a close Apple follower, you look and you say, that's not, you know, they're not doing it the same way. And with Google, I feel like some of it is just the, um, discipline to say you're out of the keynote person. Who's got a whole fiefdom that, you know, you're really excited about this product, but you're out of the keynote because we're going to keep it to two hours. And so it'll, you know, be three and a half hours or, or whatever. Um,

but there's always really interesting stuff announced at the Google IO keynote because it is Google's chance to do that thing where they get a big event and the developers are excited and they can sort of set the direction for where they're going with their platforms for the next year. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think about them in these kinds of terms now because they're definitely trying to pump up the showmanship a little bit, right? I think when I.O. originally started, it was very much a developer conference, and they still are more heavy on that than Apple. But when you see them come on stage, they are trying to give a bit of lip service to all of

the different departments, showing how much of a corporation they are. But I think they are also now trying to do more to dazzle because they're aware that it's a public event. So that's one of the things that I think makes I.O. more and more interesting to tune into. Because I do think that Google do some very interesting things. And I actually look forward to this presentation. Yeah, I am always interested to see that. You're guaranteed to get some, like I said, some boring things that you wonder why they're there. Some things that are interesting from an impact standpoint where they will talk about something new that's coming in the next version of Android.

And you'll say, you know, oh, that's interesting. Although I feel like with Android and iOS, we've left the period of, oh, my God, they added 80 new features that totally we need and that we've been clamoring for. And, you know, it's much more sort of the steady development of it. And the fact that Google has changed their version numbering to reduce the gap, perceived gaps, between this year's model and last year's model because they got tired of getting beat up over, you know, it doesn't even run Android 4. So they're like, fine, we will just do 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and we'll call them all Android 4. And, you know, if you want to cite it more specifically, you'll look like a jerk.

So, ha-ha, we win. I mean, that's actually a Google strategy. So, you know, that stuff will come through and be interesting. Although I'd say mildly interesting. There'll be those moments where you'll be like, oh, that's a thing that Apple does. And there'll be other moments where you're like, oh, Apple doesn't do that because those inevitably happen. And then there will be some announcements that we're not really expecting where we will all be like, whoa, what just happened? That's crazy. And all of those things are guaranteed for a Google I.O. keynote. I'm really interested to see the intersection of Android and Chrome OS,

because I feel like, you know, Google's pattern lately seems to be you do lots of crazy stuff. And then at some point, you evaluate the crazy stuff, and you start to decide what works and what doesn't. And you kind of bring it together into a strategy. And I feel like Android with Android and Chrome OS, we've got this strange kind of question about what is Chrome OS for? What is Android for? Do they connect? Why do you have these different operating systems? You've got a computer operating system without apps, and then you've got a mobile operating system with apps.

And they've talked about bringing them together, and I wonder if that, I'd like to see their current thinking on that. Like, how close do they come together? Does Chrome OS combine with Android and just sort of have an Android computer experience versus an Android tablet and phone experience? I don't know. But I'm interested to see so much of it with all of these keynotes is reading the tea leaves of like, what are they thinking? Not even so much the specific announcements as much as as those announcements tell us some things about their philosophy.

I mean, every Apple keynote is like that too, which is like, what does Apple think of the Mac? One of the ways we find that out is what they say about what they're doing on the Mac versus what they're doing on iOS. And Google, this is a good way to get that read out of Google. And sometimes you can't, Google, it's harder to read it from their product announcements because they make lots of crazy product announcements and it's hard to judge whether they're meaningful or just another crazy project that they thought they would try. Yeah. So do you have any kind of feeling for what you think might come out? I mean, I know we were talking about this a little bit on Clockwise last week um i mean and i've kind of got my eye on something tv related you know more more on google tv i do like the idea and i am also very interested in seeing about

where chrome and android begin to overlap you know if at all yeah yeah well and and they've kind of gone both directions with that so it'll be it seems like right now they're coalescing a little bit more but will that continue or will they say no no we rethought it forget it forget about that that could that could entirely happen the tv stuff is really interesting and and i would say beyond that also um home automation stuff they've got've got Nest, and when they bought DropCam, they put them inside Nest. So I wonder if Nest is officially Google's incubator for all home tech, and will there be a Nest segment, and will they talk about what they're doing with Nest? And is that confused with what Google is doing, or is Google going to say, no, all of our home automation stuff is here. It's part of this Nest thing. We're going to call it whatever we're going to say no, all of our home automation stuff is here. It's part of this Nest thing. We're going

to call it whatever we're going to call it. Because I think that's one of Google's weaknesses is sometimes you get confused about, you know, well, what's your initiative? Is it this one that's over here or this one that's way over here? So some clarity on what Nest is doing and what their ecosystem is for home automation, I think would be good. And the TV stuff related to that sort of, you know, you've got Chromecast, you've got app platforms, Google TV, Android TV, you know, all these different things. What's the next step there? You know, are they going to build their own box? Are they going to have like a partner that's demoing a box that's going to come out? What's their take on it?

Is voice control the big thing for them? know or is it something else i just it'll be interesting to see because um sometimes it's unclear like i said from the signal like hey a product what does that tell us and with google it's hard to tell sometimes it is interesting when you look at some of their products and realize how much they compete with themselves. And I wonder if that's something that is a little bit inbuilt in their corporate culture. You mentioned a couple, right? So if you think, for years, Android didn't have Chrome. It had a different web browser, which is called Browser.

You think you've got Google TV and you've got Chromecast. In theory, that should be one product, like how Apple have AirPlay. And I know that Chromecast is more, but it should be one product. There should not be two products here. It's very interesting to see how some of that stuff works. And I agree. If they do something home automation and it's not all under the Nest umbrella, that would be madness.

Pick something. Just pick one thing, give it all one name and get people to work together rather than working in their own silos, which it seems to be there is a little bit too much of that going on at Google. At least that's how it appears to be from the outside. I think Google, culturally, the biggest difference between Apple and Google is probably the idea that Google has these different groups that are doing different things. There is no, you know, it's let a thousand flowers bloom

kind of thing. Like we will have crazy stuff happening over here and over there. It's completely, I would say, I'd say the history of Google is it's become more disciplined over time. It was originally completely undisciplined in terms of, you know, what's our corporate strategy. It was a lot of brilliant engineers making things up and trying things out. And then we'll figure out what to do with them later. And that is still culturally part of Google. And if they completely lock that down, I feel like they wouldn't be Google. But at the same time, sometimes you look at Google and you get frustrated and you say, can you guys act like grownups for a minute? I don't want to clamp off all of your creativity because one of the things that makes you an interesting company is that you do crazy stuff and try to see where it leads you.

Good for you. The world doesn't need everybody to behave like Apple and be completely locked down. So that's great. But there are those moments where you're like, God, will you guys just settle on something to do on TVs? Will you guys settle on what you want to do in home automation? Will you settle on your operating system strategy? Please, right? And that's the give and take, I think, of managing Google. And when Eric Schmidt stepped aside and Larry came back into a more

active role, I feel like that was sort of what was implied was, we're going to try to lock this down a little bit more. And I'm going to try to be a little more Steve Jobs-like and give us a little more focus and a little more discipline here. And I'm not sure, I mean, Google is such a huge company and they have so many projects that I think adding more of that to the equation is good for them because it frustrates the market, it frustrates their partners. But at the same time, I wouldn't want them to be so locked down

that they became another Apple because it's good to have Google be the place where wacky ideas come from because some of those wacky ideas are going to be great, and I'd hate to stifle them. Should we talk about Google a little bit about how we feel about them and use them? Yeah. I mean, when we were talking about previewing Google I.O., and I guess I should say that we're going to delay clockwise this week as well from its usual Wednesday slot, and we're going to do it after the Google I.O. keynote. And we're going to have a couple of smart people who know a lot about Google stuff, especially Android. Andy Anako and Andrzej Tomic are going to be our guests.

So it'll be a little later than usual, but we're going to do it after the Google I.O. keynote. But every time we talk about Google on shows that are populated by people who focus so much on Apple, you know, you definitely get feedback of like, oh, Google, I hate them. They're the enemy. Just like with Microsoft in the old days, right? Oh, they're bad. They're the enemy. Why would you, you know, they're just gathering all our information and, you know, all of those arguments. And I find it funny. And I and I, and I put it in our, our, our document that we use to plan the show, our Google doc, if you will, because that's where it is,

uh, that I use Google stuff all the time. And I think you do too. And, and, and I find out, I actually, um,

Derek Walter wrote a piece, uh, who's a freelancer who actually writes for, uh, IDG's Android site, green bot, um, among other places that about how he's actually an android

user who's who's going back to the iphone because he loves google's apps on the iphone and that gives him the best of both which he gets to he gets the ios ecosystem plus he gets to use google's services and you know i use a lot of google services too and i don't i don't have a problem i don't feel like it's an either or but but I think it's interesting that, uh, for some people it really is like, you know, Google is the enemy. You can't use anything involving Google. Um, and I, I am, I am firmly in Google's ecosystem as a Mac and iOS user. I, I am, I am across and I think you are too, right? user. I am across, and I think you are too, right? Yep. I both use and love Gmail. We use the Google apps and a personal Gmail. I use Google Maps, even though I've been using the Apple Maps more recently because of the Apple Watch directions. But I'm just excited for whenever

Google have a good app, but that might be like 2.0 if they really want to make it something that's worthwhile because I don't think they could do too much of WatchKit. So I've been using the Apple Maps more, even though I prefer Google Maps. I use Google Docs. I love Google Docs.

A lot of our business is run using Drive. I'm a big fan. I'm just a big fan of it. I have this feeling about how I am with Google products, and I think it's something that people need to consider how they feel either way. I am a firm believer that I get genuine use from Google stuff. The products that I use, I find very useful. And I've tried competitors,

because I'm a nerd and I try stuff out. And the competitors of Gmail, Maps, and Docs, in my opinion, are inferior. I agree. I've tried so much other stuff. They're better than they used to be. It used to be no competition at all. But now there's competition.

Some. The iOS. Have you used the iOS apps, especially on the iPad? It used to be no competition at all. But now there's competition. Some. The iOS. Have you used the iOS apps, especially on the iPad, the Google iOS apps for doc sheets? And I mean, I don't do slides, but they're really good. They have some ployables that really annoy me, but they're good. I use them all the time. And that's one of the things. I've gone back and forth trying to use iCloud, right?

And I know people are going to come and say, iCloud on the web is so good. Yes, but there is one massive, massive fundamental problem with trying to collaborate with people using iCloud. Try and do it on iOS. Just try because you can't. You can't do it. It's not possible for Jason, you to share with me a document

and me make changes to that document on iOS that you will see. All I can do is download the document and make changes, and they're offline. I cannot. I just don't understand. It drives me insane. Well, you know, the Microsoft apps are very good on iOS, Well, you know, the Microsoft apps are very good on iOS, but it's the same story that you can edit a document and save it back, but it is not – and go back into your OneDrive and other people can see that there are changes, but it's not the same. It is not that sort of completely seamless experience that you get with what Google is doing. So obviously, I also use Google Search, right? I feel like I always miss that one

off. But yes, of course, I use Google Search. So I feel like I really enjoy using the products, and I get a lot of use out of them. So I personally am happy for Google to take my data and create ads that they'll serve back to me. I know that's the trade-off and I'm happy with that. I feel like you just need to think about it. Like, yeah, they're doing all this stuff and people think that they're like big evil and they're like creeping on you and they're going to change, they're going to try and ruin your life. People that way genuinely and if you feel that way that's fine but i get a lot of use out of google's products so i'm happy with that trade-off like that's fine for me like i don't care like i would be happy to pay and and that's just not in their business model but i mean it is in some places but i would be

happy to pay and i don't i don't love the fact that it's that it's just all free and we want we want your data but i'm kind of okay with that trade-off like you are because i feel like they've got the best products you know like like the best products and i don't feel like what they're what they're asking in exchange is so compromised that i can't i can't pay that price because it's a fairly painless thing right now. And I realize there are lots of arguments to be made here about, well, that's how they get you, and they're driving other people out of the market that would be better. This is all true. And yet, boy, those products – the products are good. And I don't use them because they're free.

I use them because they're good. Yeah. They are just the best. Like, I'm not one of the people that would rip a thermostat off a wall because Google, like, you know, and it's a joke, but like when Nest were bought by Google, there were people that were saying,

I'm taking it down. Like, what do you think they're going to do to you? Like, they're not evil. They're just a company that makes money by selling ads. I don't understand, like, why people are so terrified of them. And I can't wait for the email that I'm going to get. But I just don't understand it. Like, if you don't like that, like, if you don't like them looking at your data

and selling you ads, that's fine. But what are you scared of like that i don't understand like the fear of they must be an evil company they do things that are not good right and google have been caught up and they've been dragged through the courts right that is true like they've done stuff like um they were doing this weird thing with wi-fi right by using google street view or something. There are loads of things they do that aren't good. But you know who also does really terrible things?

Apple do really terrible things, right? They do things that they get dragged through the Supreme Court of Justice for because they price fix on e-books. Like, that is not good stuff. Supreme Court of Justice is not a thing, but okay. That's fine. I'm going to go with that. You're not an American yet. So we haven't forcibly moved you to our shores.

So I'll let you have it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. All big companies do bad things. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily prove that they're intentionally malicious. Yes, Apple has done some interesting things. Google has done some interesting things. I think,

yeah, we can quibble about some of Google's stuff. They're not saints. You're right. Apple's not a bunch of saints either. In the end, yeah, for me, I mean, every consumer has the right. You absolutely have the right to not like them and not want to use them. But I think the flip side of that is that we have the right to use their products if we like them. And I do like them. I just have not gotten caught up. But you know what? Our friend John Syracuse won't buy an Xbox because it's made by Microsoft. He just won't because it's Microsoft.

He won't do it. And I get that on one level. But on the other level, I'm like, you know, I just don't care enough about that. I just don't get caught up in that. And I think it is what you said, which is, um, you could demonize them, but, uh, I mean, I hate to say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, but it's like, these are big corporations. Apple, Apple may be better than Google, but they're not without sin. There are probably other products that you use from companies that you don't like, but you use them because you like them, but you can afford

to get away with not using Google's products or not using Microsoft's products. That's fine. I just have never gotten that. It's like, no, I'm not going to buy any blood diamonds, okay? I'm not going to do that. But for something like Google stuff, it's like, I think it's good. But for something like Google stuff, it's like, I think it's good. It doesn't creep me out when I use it. You know, it feels like the best in class. And so I, you know, and that is why I'm using it. It's not because it's free, but because it's good, like I said.

So I'm not going to tear my Nest off the wall. And I do have a Nest. The reason I would tear my Nest off the wall is if there's a war over home automation between Google and Apple, and it means that my Nest stuff just can never integrate with my other stuff in my home. That's the part that actually really does bother me about the Apple-Google relationship is that they're fighting for turf, and I feel like consumers, including me, are going to be potentially hurt by that. are going to be potentially hurt by that. I don't want to live in a world where you have to think about what your long-term smartphone platform preference is before you buy a light bulb. And we've had home automation in the show notes for weeks now. It's our new Kindle of the topic we never get to. Maybe next week. We'll just keep saying that forever. But that was one of the points I wanted to make there. And I can make it briefly here, which is when you get these format wars,

the consumers all get hurt. And I'm really concerned that we're headed that way with some of this home automation stuff. Now, fortunately, Google is not like Apple in the sense that Google is happy to put its stuff on Apple's platforms. And Apple has no reason to do the reverse for lots of good reasons.

You know, they sell hardware. They're in a different business than Google, so I understand that. But that doesn't mean Google stuff is operable on iOS, and that's great. light bulb or a thermostat thinking, well, does this commit me to using one, you know, using an iPhone or the reverse, which is I can't buy that light bulb because I use an iPhone. That's crazy. But I worry that that may be where we're going with some of this stuff. So that's when I would get angry at Google and Apple is, is if they start erecting barriers like that, that's, that's, that's where my interest in Google services and my reason why I might rip the Nest off of my wall, it would be stuff like that, where if they're like, oh, yeah,

thanks for buying a Nest, but we decided that it's just not going to work with any of your other stuff. That would be where it would get me. And it would be some sort of spiteful cooperation, competition thing between Google and Apple. Yep. Oh, man, I'm worried about the email I'm going to get. I've got on my high horse. That's one of the things I've got on my high horse about. I would love, yes, you were way up there on that horse.

Who's on the pillar in Trafalgar Square? Is that Nelson? Nelson's column. Is he on a horse or not? He's just standing there. He should get a horse. All right. That would be a high horse is what I'm saying. It would be. I don't know. This is something that frustrates me. I want to hear from people. I mean, look, I'm not saying please deluge us with email, but if you would like to make points about why you don't use Google services or why you do and don't think it's a

problem, I would love to hear those because I think there are perfectly good arguments. What I would say is don't try to prove that we shouldn't because I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in you telling me why what I'm doing is wrong. I'm interested in why it's wrong for you. That's the distinction I would make there. But I am I think there are lots of valid reasons why people would be like, yeah, I'm not I'm not going to use Google stuff or Microsoft stuff or whoever stuff because X. And I think that would be interesting because I think there are probably some very interesting reasons why people don't or do use services by, you know, if you're if you're an Apple person and you're using Google stuff, why or why not if you're not? I think that's perfectly good there. But yeah, don't get mad at Mike. I'd like to hear other perspectives, but it's a personal choice about whether you're okay with it or not.

And I'm okay with it because, like I said, because their products are good. That's the bottom line for me. I hate to say it. Again, I'm not going to use blood diamonds, but the products are good and they work for me and I don't feel like I'm giving up. I'm happy to spend money. I am spending a hundred dollars a year on, on Adobe creative cloud Photoshop,

and I am spending a hundred dollars a year on office three 65. But, um, and I would do that for Google stuff, but I don't have to, because that's not their business model and their stuff is good. So I'm still using it. I know that we pay for Google apps, email for don't have to because that's not their business model. Their stuff is good, so I'm still using it. I know that we pay for Google Apps email for Relay.

Oh, good. We pay for that. Right, that's like $5 per user per month or something like that. Yeah, we pay for that. Yeah, see? They do have stuff. They do. I don't pay for that, but that's because I'm grandfathered because I had a Google Apps account before they started charging for it.

But that's the only reason that I'm not paying for it is that I don't have to. They said, you don't have to pay. It's fine. But otherwise I would. Talking about email, should we get on to AskUpgrade? And that means our friends at MailRoute. Oh, yes. Yes. Our friends at MailRoute have sponsored AskUpgrade against this week. We love MailRoute. Speaking of mail, so I do use Google Apps for Domains, but before my mail comes to me, it's already passed through MailRoute. And MailRoute

has taken out all the bad stuff. Before it even gets to Google, the bad stuff is gone. It's in a holding bin. It can stink up the holding bin all it likes, but I don't have to see it. And it does do a better job than Google spam filters. When I've turned MailRoute off, I'm like, what is happening? Because Google spam

filters don't catch the stuff that MailRoute catches. This is how MailRoute works. You sign up. It's a risk-free trial, no credit card necessary. You change your MX records, which are the things that tell mail servers where to send mail for a particular domain. You point those at MailRoute instead of your mail server. And that's it. Your mailbox and your hardware are completely protected. All the mail goes to MailRoute first. MailRoute uses its intelligence software to sort through your mail and say, that's good, that's bad, that's good, that's bad.

They see a lot of spam. They see a lot of viruses. They see a lot of email bounces. They know how to detect it. That stuff gets put in a holding bin. You can get an email every day or every week that says, here's what we filtered out. You can check it if you want to see if there's something that you did want to receive. And with one click, you can have delivered or even whitelist the sender so that all their mail forevermore will be passed through to you and not go through the filters, which is really great. So you set that

all up and that's it. You don't have to install any hardware or software. You don't have to put anything on your email server that's doing auto filtering. MailRoute does all that for you. And then it connects to your server, passes all the good mail through. It's easy to set up, reliable, trusted by large institutions like universities and corporations. If you're a desktop user, you'll find the interface simple and effective, like I do. And if you are an email administrator or IT professional, we've said it before, they've got all the buzzwords, they've got all the tools you need. There's an API so you can do account management.

And there's support for all of that stuff. LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, mailbagging. Mailbagging? Mailbagging. Outbound relay, everything that you'd want from the people who are handling your email and the good stuff gets passed along to your server so like i said risk-free trial no credit card required it's simple effective there's no good reason not to try it all listeners to upgrade get 10 off for the lifetime of your account not for six months

not for three months not for seven days 10 off a lifetime, but you have to go to mail route.net slash upgrade. Now that's mail route.net slash upgrade. And thank you to mail route for sponsoring hashtag ask upgrade. So we have some ask upgrade for you, uh, for both of us. This comes from Dave first. How much do Bluetooth headphones affect the Apple Watch battery? Jason, have you tried this yet? I haven't. I don't even have any Bluetooth headphones. I do have, I bought some Bluetooth headphones.

I have used them briefly with the Apple Watch. I don't know. I imagine that they have some effect. I don't know if that was why Apple, you know, we had a whole bunch of people say, well, Apple, the battery lasts so long because it's going to reduce the battery life over time, which is true. Maybe it's something like Bluetooth headphones. That's true. I haven't done a battery test. Like while listening to a playlist on Bluetooth headphones, how long does the Apple Watch last? I'm sure it has an effect because everything does, but I don't know the details of it. I bought the Bluetooth headphones specifically because I wanted to try them with the Apple Watch and I have tried them. But when I've gone running, I generally like to bring my phone with me because then I get the GPS tracking and I like to listen to podcasts. And really, the right now music playback is kind of what it's built for when you just got the watch.

So I need to test it more. As an aside, what I found is that I love the Bluetooth headphones when I'm doing stuff in the kitchen because I would always get my wired headphones would get yanked out of my ears because they would snag on a knob on one of the drawers. And now I use the Bluetooth headphones when I'm doing stuff like cooking something or emptying the dishwasher, and they're great. So I'm glad I bought them, but I haven't spent enough time with them on the watch. And now we have from Danny. Have you noticed any digital crown stickiness in your day-to-day?

Danny notices it after workouts mainly on the sport edition i haven't have you not at all nothing no i mean i saw what was it was david spark somebody said that they had they had gotten it where it started to feel gritty and the the the stated instructions are basically run it under warm water and spin it and it'll like wash out but you know it's it's covered like you know people won't believe me that you can take a shower with the apple watch but it's in the apple watch manual to run the crown under warm water and spin the dial around and just get the junk out so do that ah um i did notice something and i wanted to mention this this because we're talking about Digital Crown,

where my mind was kind of twisted a little bit a couple of days ago. You know when you do things with the Digital Crown, like, for example, if you zoom out really far on the app screen and let go, it, like, pings back into focus, right? So you're, like, scrolling, scrolling, and then the apps fly back at you. For some reason, my brain assumed that the crown spanned back oh interesting that's a little uh little uh mind hack they're doing on yeah but it doesn't like the same with like no it doesn't software can't control the crown the crown is entirely physical the same with like the rubber banding for some reason in my mind the it felt like as it probably should that the crown was having a manipulation over the software and that the software was manipulating

the crown and it was just this very interesting thought i was like hang on a minute that doesn't move no but but and it was just very interesting to me to see that and like, OK, you did something very smart here because you found a way. Because like when I'm looking at it and I'm spinning it, it doesn't. But again, like feels to me like there's resistance of some description that increases. That is not the case. No. But that's how I feel. And I find that very interesting.

Very interesting. I think also the way they expect that if you zoom out, then you're going to let go, that you're not going to hold on to the crown. And so the way after a certain amount of time, you're going to let go. And so the way it works is you scroll it back. And if you then hold your finger there and on the crown, you have to wait like half a second and then it snaps back. So the illusion is broken. But that's what they're intending is they think most people aren't going to do that. They're going to scroll back and then they're going to let go.

And then the snapback effect makes you feel like the metaphor is still intact. But if you hold onto it, which I have to be honest, I have never done it. That totally does happen. It's funny. That's the power. It's just like with the, um, the haptic stuff, um, on a, on a, um, force touch trackpad. It's the rubber band on scrolling is a more likely example, right?

But even there, what they try to do is just stop it. So you keep pushing the crown and it just doesn't scroll. And then you let go and it rubber bands. But in reality, it's not that you letting go. It's you stopping the scroll. And if you hold on to the crown, the magic is broken a little bit. Cool. Very cool. Mind control. hold on to the crown the the magic is broken a little bit cool very cool mind control so this

comes from doc elliot on twitter do you use mac macro software and if so what do you use why don't you answer this one mike so i have used keyboard maestro in the past to make like a really rudimentary soundboard like it was madness madness, pressing a different function key, played off a sound that was coming through. It was this crazy setup. I had a mixer and I did it for that. But, and I also use, I don't know if it counts. I use Hazel to basically to file photos for me. This is like a thing that Federico came up with in Dropbox. I'll put a link in the show notes. So like Dropbox automatically uploads pictures from my iPhone. They go into a camera uploads folder. Hazel takes them, puts them into folders by month and date, like month and year. It's very cool. And I also use it to do some stuff like Skype call recorder that I use to record the shows

or to make backups of the shows. It keeps a history of all the, yep, all the calls. And I have it dump those out after a couple of months when they're a couple months old. That's all I use, um, kind of macro automation-y wise. Do you use anything different? Yeah, I, I, um, I have grand plans of using more of this stuff and I and I just haven't um and so maybe again I'll make some grand plans maybe I will sometime I would say the things that I use that are most like this are launch bar which has some um ways to kick off uh scripts and it has some various actions that it will do I'm not sure it counts but I'm going to throw it in there. And then I'm actually, I have to say, I'm using Automator to do some stuff, mostly because I know people, and I think I might have mentioned this in a previous show, I know people who are programmers.

We know people who are programmers. And oftentimes they come up with these very clever solutions to problems that involve shell scripting or terminal commands, because that's where they live and that's how they think. And I look at those and think, okay, I understand these terminal commands. I would rather not type them every time. And so what I'll end up doing is building an automator service, which is something that you can basically get with a keyboard shortcut or a contextual menu. And I will wrap either the terminal command in that, or I will wrap it in an Apple script that generates the terminal command and then fires it off. And I have a bunch of those. I have one for a thing that Dr. Drang wrote that's about Southwest Airlines, iCal files that they send you for your

confirmation, fixing them so that they're better and adding them to your calendar. And then, uh, Marco Arment, uh, wrote a, uh, a script about MP3 encoding for podcasts that I adapted. Um, and there's another command line thing that, uh, Marco, Marco did, and I built that into a, a service. And so all of those I can now when I'm when I'm building a podcast, I can select a couple of files and do a keyboard shortcut and it turns them into from mp3s or ACs into waves, because I need to use those for editing. And then I've got a couple of other keyboard shortcuts or sub menus based on a control click., you know, that's what I'm doing. I wouldn't say Automator is really a macro utility, but those are the automation things that I'm doing right now.

I keep telling myself to use Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander. And I have most of these things. I use TextExpander. Of course, yeah, I use TextExpander. I have it. I don't use it very much. And I don't know why. And I've got a bunch of clippings in BBEdit and I don't use those either. So I realized the other day that I have a keyboard shortcut, that if I've got a URL on my clipboard, and I select text and BB edit, I do a keyboard shortcut, and it makes the markdown link structure for me. And I never use it, I just type them out manually, I think there's I've just got a block there. So I'm recommitting now, I will try in the next few weeks to look at some of my workflow and identify the places

where I think I could save time and make my life better. But right now, I've got access to all this stuff, and yet I'm not really using it. It really does blow my mind that you don't use TextExpander. Like, that is just one of those ones where I'm like, you're a writer. Somebody out there is going to be mad because they sent me an email saying, stop talking about it. But I'll just say again, I type really fast. And that means that I feel less needed, less of a need to use TextExpander because I type really fast. So I'll just type it.

And I realize that's kind of insane. And yet there it is. I keep trying to think of phrases that I use over and over again that I could just put into an expansion and I just, I can't come up with them. And then I move on. And I use TextExpander all the time for live blogging. When we were doing live blogging, especially in a text document, I used it all the time because it was really great in that scenario because you just

type a couple of letters and things would happen and you were typing really fast and furiously. So that was good. But in my day-to-day kind of writing life, I have a hard time imagining things that would require that kind of thing. And like I said, I think that my perception is that I wouldn't save us quite as much time because I could just type it i don't know yeah it's great and i have a couple things in there but it's just i you know like keyboard maestro i i i've been writing about that for ages and i you know i just have never it's just never happened so maybe someday adrian wants to know how do you use overcast playlists? So for me, I have an all unplayed list, right? So it has everything that's unplayed and I have some priority podcasts in there. So

they basically come to the top, right? So I have a few shows in there that I want to be at the top. So I know when they're there so they don't get lost in the shuffle because I have lots and lots of stuff. I don't listen to everything that's in my all unfinished. Some stuff just gets deleted, you know, pick and choose some shows. I have a classics playlist for some episodes of old shows that I love and want to keep in case the mood ever strikes and I want to listen to them. That includes certain episodes and just certain shows in general, right? Like You Look Nice Today used to be in there, but it seems like things might be changing there. I don't know what what's happening but it's very exciting um i also have playlists for shows that i enjoy that i have a back catalog that i want to work through so i put them in there as

well which is quite cool i have one playlist okay it's called the playlist the playlist the playlist in honor of the magazine and other things named by marco it is the playlist and it has there's some priority ones that are that are you know because you can set a priority so i've got some that are prioritized and then the rest of them are all just in there so i have a single playlist and i will i will slide things up and down and i've got stuff in there that i've been meaning to listen to. I think about creating, like for the Flophouse, I've got a bunch of old episodes of the Flophouse downloaded because I haven't listened to all of them yet. I'm very slowly going through the ones that I never heard

because I don't want to, you know, it's going to be sad when I've run out. But right now I've got extra episodes of the Flophouse. I've thought about creating a classics playlist like that. The problem is that just so often I want to say, well, this podcast has 10 minutes left. What do I want to have come next? And I'll order them like that. And I want there to be some of those classic episodes hovering down there for either when I'm in the mood or when I'm out of the stuff that I really want to listen to. And I want to move on to the classic thing because I've run out and if i have them in two places though i guess i suppose i do which i do i suppose for example i have a flop house playlist for the same reason but they still

live in the all unfinished as well in case i'm flying around to see something but if i just want to see a flop house shows they just go there yeah yeah well i'll explore that but right now a single playlist but it works for me it works that's why i use overcast is not only do i think the sound effects are better than any other podcast player i've i've listened to in terms of you know being able to listen at more than 1.0 speed which i was never able to do on other podcast apps because of the uh weird artifacts and i they're not there but also the way the playlist is set up works for me so that's why I use Overcast Troy wants to know what is the best way to keep the Apple Watch from lighting up at the movie theater turn it off I guess or put it in in the battery mode or something um yeah if you if you're first

off almost everything on the apple watch is is a black background with a little bit of stuff on it so i think you could probably have a face that was like the like the extra large or modular with red as the color and no complications just the time, you could probably switch to that face when you're in the movie theater and nobody would notice if your watch came on. It's only going to come on when you move your wrist. It's not going to come on when you get a notification. So I'm sure you could minimize it. But yeah, if you absolutely don't want it coming on, I would say you put it in the battery saver mode and then reboot it when you leave the theater or you wear something with sleeves and you just make sure that it's under the sleeve. I think that's it.

But try the red because the red wavelengths don't broadcast so much and it's the black background on the OLED screen. So it's going to be emitting very little light if you do it that way. So that might be a thing you can set any number of of different presets for watch faces even of the same face with different settings so create a movie theater preset maybe and i guess do not disturb is your friend i suppose yeah sure to stop it from lighting up when it's bothering you yeah lighting up i don't know what you do i think the issue is is just if you you know you move your wrist a little bit and it turns on because it thinks it's you know wrist rays but you're actually just hiding you're covering your eyes because it's a horror movie and you're afraid of what's going to happen next that would be annoying i think it's

very bright though it's not i i um having been to a couple movies since i got it it's not i'm i've not found it to be an issue at all. Make sure your brightness is down. There you go. That's one tip. Yeah. Just go into the watch app on your phone. Turn your brightness all the way down. That's going to help a lot.

And finally today, Thomas wants to know, which grocery apps would you recommend for the iPhone and watch? It has to be able to sync between two people. So I have a suggestion that doesn't fulfill everything in this list. So I have an app that I use. It's not necessarily a grocery list app, but it's a shared, it's a list app that allows you to do shared lists.

It's called Silo and it's only on the iPhone. They don't have a watch app. So I can't help you with that part. I don't know if there are any, I'm sure there are, but I've not come across any. But Silo is the best joint list app that I've tried and I tried a bunch. And me and my girlfriend have some shared lists in there, but they don't yet have a watch component. They do have an iPad app. All right. I have, yeah, again, I haven't done shopping lists on the apple watch either um my wife and i are still using grocery iq which is not great but it works it syncs

shopping lists between us and lets you scan in barcodes and is attached to a database of various products at the at the market i'm uh i keep meaning to do a final, like official test of our groceries, which I had recommended to me, but I haven't tried it enough to move us over to it. So I can't endorse it yet. And, um, and then also I had any list recommended to me, which is another grocery list app that has a little bit of, um, of meal planning on top of it, um, which I'm not sure works with how we shop, but I'm looking into that too. So I'd say stay tuned. Still using Grocery IQ because it works, but not 100% satisfied with

it and looking around. It would be cool. My wife does most of the shopping though, and she doesn't have an Apple Watch, so it would be less of a big deal for her. think that you know taking out the iphone and using it as a shopping list though that is a thing we do we absolutely do that i do use clear when i'm in the grocery store but you know you then kind of have to move things around that it doesn't work too well but yeah hey ho all of those will be in the show notes along with a bunch of other stuff that we've spoken about today and you can find all of that over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 38. If you want to find us online there's a couple of ways you can do that. You can find

Jason's great work over at sixcolors.com and he is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E and don't forget you can ask questions but also send us follow up if you like through the hashtag askupgrade. We love to see your stuff there. But you-up if you like through the hashtag AskUpgrade.

We love to see your stuff there. But if you want to send us tweets or if you really want to send us an email, you can find all that information out on our show notes page as well. Did you see how I weighted that? If you really want to send us email, you can. Go for it. Go for it if you like. You can also see our show notes probably by scrolling in the podcast app

you're listening to right now most definitely but you do not see an email link there you do have to go to the website to find that so you can do that if you so desire but we'll be back next time sure we'll have some Google stuff to talk about and maybe have some predictions as well for WWDC

until then thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Upgrade. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, MailRoute, GoToMeeting, and Hover, and we'll be back next time. Say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.