Upgrade - 395: This App May Kill You

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Jason imagines a future iOS App Store improved by sideloading, Myke gets back into reading digital comics, and both of them have a very strongly worded wish list involving the rumored big new iMac.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 395 today's show is brought to you by electric capital one and member for my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley u.s route 395 runs on the back side of the s of the Sierra Nevada, a portion of California that people don't think of as California because it's on the other side of the mountains. Most borders are placed up at the peaks of mountains, but when they formed California, there was no Nevada, and California said, we want all the mountains. We want all the mountains because there's gold, gold in those mountains.

Let me tell you, Jason Snell, I've heard enough about American roads to last me for a long while. Tell you about the numbering system now. That's what I'm talking about. I was actually editing an episode of Cortex before we started today. Oh, yeah. Anyway, 395, it's back there. That's one of my things that I actually really love about California is that it's got this very weird thing where there's the whole other part that's the dry, desert-y part that's on the other side of the mountains.

Like, why is that still california and the answer is because california got to pick first and they're like i'll take all the mountains like they're if they're is there gold in the mountains we will take the mountains then and so golden you can drive on 395 if you like uh we are recording this episode a few days earlier than we normally would we're recording on thursday the 17th because jason's going to be away. Mike, did you read that Mark Gurman Sunday newsletter? Woo! Wow.

But that's the thing. What revelations were in there? Oh, man. Amazing. I don't know what could happen between now and Monday, but things can happen. It's a little pre-record here. I have a hashtag snow talk question for you from instantiate this who asks,

Jason, if you were in a car chase with the police, what song do you put on to keep you going am i chasing the police are we are we in a joint effort to chase someone else or are they chasing me it's just the interpretation is completely up to you are you with them are you against them you know it doesn't. I'm choosing that I am with them, and we are in an 80s movie or TV show. And so the montage as we chase is going to be The Heat Is On by Glenn Frey. Oh, that's good. That is good. That's going to be it.

That's how I choose to answer this question. That's a good answer, and also a good song. I mean, it is what it is, but I think it fits the mood of the 80s car chase that is going on there. There'll be a lot of like, you know, peeling out where like you'll go around the corner and the car will slide a little bit and then keep going. And there'll be like a pedestrian carrying a sack, like a grocery sack. And they'll step into the intersection and then have to step back and their bread will be ejected. And then there'll be two people carrying a pane of glass. Always. And then, of course, it'll end in a smashed up fruit cart.

Because whenever you see a fruit cart, it's going to get smashed. It's going to get tumbled. Yep. If you'd like to send in a question to help us open the show just send out a tweet with the hashtag snell talk or use question mark snell talk in the relay fm members discord jason snell pro side loading uh i don't know if i'm ready to come out and say uh apple should just allow side loading like anybody can just load any app onto their ios device i think it's worth considering that as a possibility what i wanted to do was um i wrote this macworld article that

was basically trying to think of um the app store being better if the app store doesn't have to be the judge jury and executioner for everything on a platform and that that was kind of the thought I had. And it led me to a place where basically I thought it was interesting, which is consider what the iOS app store might be like if a rejection didn't mean the app would never be seen. If Apple could, if there was always an alternative and how would that affect the iOS app store? And I thought it might make it better. I think it actually might be a better experience. If you look at what they do with the Mac app store and you, and how the Mac works,

that the, the iOS app store might actually be a better place if it wasn't the dam holding back every possible bit of software from coming to the platform. I found that an interesting take when I was reading your article because I hadn't really considered it that way. Because one of the things that you say is about Apple being able to be more of a curator again if they don't have to accept everything.

Like there are types of applications that they have to accept, but they're not really the type of thing that they would want to accept or should. And I don't want to get, I was accused by a few people. It's funny because everybody comes with their own preconceptions. So I heard from people who have written extensively about Apple's failings in the app store who wanted me to, like, it was really funny.

And I heard from angry developers who are, like, frustrated with Apple's rules on the Mac app store. And so they don't like the fact that I suggest the Mac App Store is better than the iOS App Store in some ways because they're like, no, it's all a sham. That's an interesting read because what you're saying is the Mac is better, not the Mac App Store is better. The Mac is better because you have choice. And one of those choices is the App Store.

And the pressure on the Mac App. The Mac App Store does not decide winners and losers on the Mac, right? The Mac App Store is a place and it's a good place for marketing and it may drive sales. Although again, you know, it's not as powerful as the iOS App Store at all. But it is a place to be if you want to be there. But if you don't want to be there, it's fine. And on iOS, it's a different situation. So when I hear from people who are like, like I said, sideloading is probably, you know, less secure than what we have now. But that Apple makes it seem like it's incredibly insecure. And Apple has already demonstrated on the Mac that they can make it way more secure than that. but they want to make this extreme argument. And I heard from some people who are on the other side of that argument who wanted to say, no, don't say it's less secure. It could be just as secure. And like, I don't actually agree with that. I think that fundamentally it would be less secure, but I don't think, but I think Apple overstates it. And the truth is what the people I'm hearing from are the people who want to counter Apple's extreme statement

with their own extreme statement in order to have this kind of rhetorical battle. And I'm not interested in playing that battle. I'm not going to do that. I do think you have to acknowledge that allowing random apps on the platform is probably going to be less secure than the App Store. Although I'll also grant you the App Store on iOS allows stuff that's bad, right? That's part of the

problem. There's scams. There's scammy stuff and bad stuff that doesn't get caught. My point was though that Apple has built up this whole infrastructure on the Mac side involving, you've got to sign up with a developer ID and it has to be notarized. And like they can do stuff that's not app store approval. That still is sort of a verification process before the product is loaded onto their platform, right? They could still do all of that and they could still pull the plug if something is bad, right? And something turns out to be malware, they can kill it. They do that on the Mac now. So it's, I think, disingenuous when Apple puts out these white papers about the dangers of sideloading. I think they overstate it. And I think they also overstate the idea that

this stuff would be popular because I think we've learned the lesson of what happened with Fortnite on Android, where they weren't in the Play Store and, you know, they want to be in the Play Store. They do. Like, they're going to make more sales on the play store than try to walk through somebody or facebook if facebook i heard from some people who said oh but if you do sideloading then facebook will just make their gross apps that spy on you uh require for sideloading it's like i don't know facebook is gonna lose a lot of users if it's not in the app store so i think facebook see that's that's apple's leverage is you really want to be in the app store but it's different if you don't have to be because facebook's in the play store like they haven't set up their whole like they're not like oh we have to be

outside of the play store and like we talked about last week apple's gonna have their warnings that say if you do this you'll'll die, basically, right? Like, sideloading leads to death. Don't do it. And then you have to tap the button that says, let me die. And then it's like, okay, fine. Jump off a bridge then. Ask developer not to kill me.

Yeah, yeah. But they might kill you. So that's just too bad for you. So they're going to do all of that, and there's scare tactics and all of that to do it. But my larger point about the App Store is I think once the App Store is not the judge, jury, and executioner, it actually frees Apple up if they want to be. And this is the question, right? Because they haven't stopped these scam apps.

But I'm choosing to be a little optimistic here that an App Store that's freed from being judge, jury, and executioner could actually more freely reject things and say, we don't want this kind of app, or we don't want your app because they're not going to get the bad publicity. Oh no, App Store ruins app. This app will never be seen. It's like, no, then it becomes a story that's more like Apple chooses what it wants to highlight and put in its own storefront.

You're free to sell it elsewhere. And that I think that that is an actually important point that, that the app store, I think some of the behavior that Apple has in the app store on iOS is distorted by the fact that it's going to either be bad publicity if they reject it, or it's something they don't like, but they feel they need on the platform. And, you know, we talk a lot about things like the Xbox streaming service being kind of not allowed on the platform because it doesn't fit with Apple's stand. But I would imagine there are some apps that Apple allows on the platform, even though it doesn't like it politically, because the alternative is that it's not on their platform. And Apple isn't just a

curator of software. Apple's the maker of the platform and sells the phones. And so sometimes they make decisions that are more about the value of the platform. And maybe that calculation would change a little bit if they were more free to say, just put this out yourself. It's not going to be in our app store, but you can just put it out yourself. Even though I know you're behind the scary dialogue box then, and you're not going to get the kind of impressions and then my other point is also that um interesting stuff happens outside the app store on the mac and that makes the platform more valuable like there's no emulators on on mac app store but you can do emulators on the mac and I mean like Windows emulators and

all, like all of that stuff, virtualization, there's all sorts of stuff that just doesn't fit in the Mac app store that's out there. And it adds value to the platform, right? And Apple doesn't even have to have it in the app store. And then there's this other class. And I did get some pushback about this too, which is Apple also, especially when Phil Schiller came back and was in charge of the app store again, he made an effort to get some larger developers into the Mac app store and some high profile apps that were out and to pull them back in and make changes or exceptions. And I heard from developers who are like, that was all for show. They showed favoritism and gave exceptions to these people to get them in the store. And I understand that that's frustrating and that maybe

I am being too optimistic in saying Apple will change in order to make things better if they observe that there are good things on the outside that they want in. But the fact remains, Apple did make an effort to get things that were outside the app store in, and that I think there's a possibility that Apple will look at something that is so popular that people are turning on the sideloading and you may die provision in order to get it and say, interesting, could that work in the app store? And maybe change their mind about something because they realize that it has some value. Again, maybe I'm being too optimistic, but what I'm trying to do is see beyond the argument about like sideloading yes or no, and sort of like imagine what would that be like? And I really

do think that the iOS app store would be better if it wasn't a death sentence if they rejected your app. I really do. I'm completely in agreement with all of this i i've been pro side loading for like a year now like it just came to a point when all this antitrust stuff started coming to a head where i was just like i don't understand why why they don't just do this and i know they won't like i feel very confident in that like i feel like over the last few months a thing that i keep coming back to is i really want apple to do something before they're forced to you know and right my thinking for that is that what i would expect them to do is maybe to make some changes to the 30 that is becoming less and less likely after the dutch thing uh to me

like in my mind of like what they will and won't do. But I feel like the one they are least likely to do on their own now is sideloading just because of their rhetoric, which is, as you say, like if we allow sideloading, all of our phones will just implode. It's impossible. They will be destroyed, you know, like something will get inside of them and kill all the phones.

Like this is a point what they're saying. And I just, so to me me like i can't imagine them now turning around even in true apple style and being like hey we've worked out how to do this because it's not gonna be if they do if they are forced to do this which i think is actually becoming more likely like some of the laws that are in i've been i I pay attention to Ben Thompson most of this kind of stuff because he reads the things so I don't have to. Those laws that we were talking about that were passing through Senate committees have been changing and seem to be getting better.

And like something might happen here, which is odd and strange. And it's not going to go well if they're forced to do it. Like, it's just not good. We've seen this, you know. We're seeing this already around the world, right? That they are... Apple are not following the spirit of decisions. They are

trying to weasel their way through them instead. And so I just... Even though, as you said, they have a proven model for this that they have run for how long? 20 years, 30 years, which is the Mac, right?

Right. The way Mac software works. And then maybe for the last 10 years or whatever with the Mac App Store. How long has the Mac App Store been around? 14 years. Oh, the Mac App Store. Yeah. Yeah, 10 years.

Say 10 years. And that system, and they've only made it stronger and stronger over time, right? In like the way that they're doing things where like we have this app store, you put it through here and it's all taken care of. Or if you want to distribute outside, you've got to do this. And then you've got to do this. And then you've got to do this, right? And it's like notarized this way.

And you've got to do this. And then if you want to do a kernel extension, well, now it's going to be a whole big thing, right? So like they are actually continuing to make mac software distribution safer for consumers at right outside of the mac app store exactly if apps from outside of the mac app store at the same time that they're saying well i mean you can't do it on the phone i mean what this is it's impossible there is no safe way to do it it's just such a it's so strange it's like uh are you familiar with the phrase like talking out two sides of your face yes sure this

is what they're doing when it comes to side loading and i find it peculiar i don't know the truth of what's going on inside apple but i believe that this entire mac thing is being done with an eye toward what they would have to do if they did it on ios right oh for sure yeah right i feel like i feel like they want to make mac os more secure and more like ios i get that but they gotta also be thinking what if we were forced to do this on ios we would because this is what they would do. Even though I have such little faith in them for some of this stuff recently, I do, I know that they're smart people over there, obviously. So I refuse to believe they do not have people coming up with systems.

It may be a wink, wink, nudge, nudge thing too. It's like, yes, for the Mac, we're going to do, you know, signed and, and we're going to have it notarized and like, yes, that yes for the mac we're going to do you know signed and and we're gonna have it notarized and like yes that is for the mac right the mac but that in the background they're like or if we need to do this on ios this is how we're going to do it and and so it's it's there and there's and and there are other tactics that are not yet on the mac like the mac you can do anything right you can literally run anything. Apple, it depends on what the laws are, but Apple could say, you know,

you can't run anything. You have to have it signed. Like we have to, for security reasons, have it signed. And if the laws- I would prefer that. If the laws that force them to do this say, that's okay, like to stop malware

and to whatever else, we'll let you do this notarization system. But basically, you're going to get sued if you use it as a de facto approval process. You need to just be looking at it for security reasons. But they could do that and then not have completely unsigned random things

able to run. They could do that. I guess they're moving that way for the Mac now, though, right? Isn't that coming well no so the the mac and i had somebody from apple tell me or actually no it was in a session somebody at apple said we you will never not be able to run software you want to run on the mac okay what you have to do is go through those dialogue boxes that say you may die and then you click on that app and it goes this app

may kill you you know so we're not going to let you you should probably put it in the trash pops out of the laptop you know before it explodes you should put it in the trash can and then you go in and you have to set your settings and you have to like right click and choose open and get another thing that says I told you this might

explode and you may die do you do you want to die? And then you go, okay. And then it runs, right? So you can do it, but they put the barriers there, but you can do it. On iOS, they could, depending on what the laws are forcing them to do, they could say, well, we're not going to do that. It has to be signed. It has to be notarized. We're not going to let it run if we don't know anything about what it is. And as a user, you know, the fact is there are whole classes of apps that don't run on iOS that I would like to run on iOS. I have an Apple II emulator on my Mac, right? It's great. And none of that stuff, the Dolphin emulator that you can put on iOS, but it's really hard to do and then

play old Nintendo games and stuff. Like, I understand legally why Apple doesn't allow that stuff in the App Store, but it makes the platform worse. And, you know, so there's all sorts of stuff that I think could function outside of the App Store that would be worth it for some people to install. And I'd like to see that. But I also think that the App Store, freed of the bad publicity of rejecting apps, I actually kind of like the idea that the App Store might be a little bolder in rejecting apps. Because I know this is like a wild thing to say,

but like there's a lot of apps in the App Store that should have been rejected that are bad, that are like bad. I'm not saying like apps that it's all a misunderstanding, but like that are bad that I believe really do get in because Apple has this hands-off attitude. I know all the indie developers get the hands on them because they're trying to do interesting things, but there's a lot of garbage that just goes through that maybe in another scenario, Apple would be like, man,

we're cleaning it up. Maybe I'm being that if I'm being too optimistic about anything, that is the thing, which is maybe that Apple would take more care with the App Store. Because it may be true, based on the evidence that we've seen so far, that Apple just doesn't want to exert any effort on the App Store. But I would hope that if the App Store had competition, the App Store might actually need to get its act together a little bit more. I don't know. Anyway, I think it was a fun way of thinking of it to imagine that world where the App Store is no longer the end-all be-all because it really does change how you view it. If it's not, you know, an App Store rejection is an inconvenience or a frustration, but not a death sentence. And that's really my final point is I have definitely heard some developers say that they are reluctant to develop anything for iOS because if it gets rejected from the App Store,

there's literally nothing they can do. They can't take that code and reuse it. They can't move it. I think they could probably put it on the Mac using Catalyst, but that's it. And that suppresses development, right? Like people who are afraid that they're going to spend two years

and millions of dollars or whatever the project is on a thing for iOS, if it's like at all possible that Apple's just going to reject it, just don't do it. And then the platform is worse. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Electric. When leading your small business, it's not all glamour all the time. In fact, most of the time, it's a matter of spending hours trying to find a laptop lost in the mail that was meant for a new hire, or dealing with some other technical emergency that you have to try and learn how to handle. The team over at Electric know that small businesses, maybe like yours, face these challenges.

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and Relay FM. You wrote an iMac. I'm calling this the iMac Pro wishlist. I think you were a little bit more reserved than me. You just called it the next generation iMac wishlist. But I'm calling this an iMac Pro wishlist because let's just call it what it is. It's just a computer to replace your computer.

I don't know for sure that that's what it's going to be and it doesn't i mean in some ways it doesn't matter because it's just a name right so we can call it the iMac pro if we want to but it's the big i really have been calling it is the big iMac yeah sure and i and i do genuinely stand by i think they will do that i think it would be strange to me uh i agree to give it especially if they give it a lot of the stuff that you want it to have so i i the my only hesitation is there i think there's a scenario where they do they do a version of it with colors and then there's the high-end version that's black basically and that's the imac pro they where they split it and there's two versions of essentially the same computer but like the high-end model is like the super tricked out version it

feels to me more likely the reason I say this is that if you look at that 24-inch iMac there are two of them right there are really two of them there's the one with two ports that's you know it's the decontented version of the 24 two ports no ethernet on the cable like it's it's the the kind of like low price leader of the 24 inch iMac and then there's like the real one well they've been doing this a little bit more now though right because there are the laptops which have the bin chips in them and stuff exactly well yeah right I mean chip variation but like now there's literally like port variation on the back, right? Yeah. all of them all iMac Pro anyway. But like, I do think there's a scenario here where there's sort of two variants

and there's the like regular one that is a big screen, but it's just got the M1 and it's got fewer ports and it's just the iMac 27 inch or 30 inch or whatever it is. And then there's the iMac Pro, which is the one with the Pro chips and lots of ports and is much more expensive. They could break it that way.

And I think my argument, if I'm inside Apple working on this, and lots of ports and is much more expensive, they could break it that way. And I think my argument, if I'm inside Apple working on this, if I'm one of the people we've interviewed over the years about this, my argument would be lots of regular people buy the big iMac and like the big iMac. And so we should offer a cheaper version that doesn't feel like a pro product for them so that they have something to buy.

So I think it's a possibility. I agree with you, but on iPad, do you want the biggest one? Pro's the only option currently with the iPhone. Want the biggest one? Well, you got to go pro, you know? Yeah, I hear you. So maybe that's the modern Apple take is like, look, Pro doesn't mean anything really other than it's the nice one. And so let's just lean into it.

And that's fine. I think that's the simplest solution and probably the simplest one is the best one. But then again, my counter is there are two 24-inch iMacs because there's the one that just has two ports and is kind of sad because they wanted a cheap one. Maybe you don't need a cheap one of the big one yeah and i actually kind of like that they did that because it meant that they didn't need to keep the old iMac around oh yes right for sure which is what they do with all of their other products so i'm actually pleased that they have that model because also it's still a great computer it just has less ports oh yeah i don't i'm not displeased with it. I just think that's an interesting example of them taking the time to do a,

you know, the extra work to make this second variation of it. Even though we call it one product, it is actually two. So they could play that game again. Even, you know, will they? I don't know. Maybe. And to your point, even if they play that game, they might

still call them both iMac Pro so I'm gonna for you list here we talk about it you don't want it to be too big right now I'm like in camp of big screen I want a 30 inch iMac that's what I want yeah I you know what I said in the article is sometimes 27 inch feels too big for me and and I say that because I see people with these widescreen displays and multiple displays. And it's like, there are times where I've got a window in the upper corner of my iMac where it's like too far away and I got to move it into the middle so that I can work on it. Like it's way up there. You need to put your distance lenses on. Yeah. I got to drive over there, see what's going on, drive back, move my keyboard over there.

And yet at the same time, there are times, especially when I'm doing video stuff, where I switch into more space mode. Try to shrink everything down in order to get more stuff on that screen. So where I came down to, because originally I was going to be like, I don't want it bigger. 27 inches is just fine. And what turned me around is the argument that the 24-inch iMac is packing a lot more display in something, in a device that doesn't feel enormous, doesn't feel like it got massively bigger because they reduced the bezels and all of that. This iMac's tiny, really. I think that is the strongest argument for them going above 27 is that they've decided, as they have with many other devices that they've done, that what you do is you keep the size of the device similar. But by shrinking all the bezels, the screen just becomes bigger.

Like, I like that. That's a good idea. I will also add for myself, if we're talking about screen, ProMotion. Ah, sure. I would like ProMotion. I mean, I think you mentioned mini LED, right? That it would be nice if we could have that. Like, why not?

Yeah, yeah. If we're doing a wish list. I mean, those are less necessary for me. But yeah, the dream would be ProMotion. Essentially, the dream is the MacBook Pro display on a big computer, which is, I think, a big request because that's a spectacular display. And spreading that over 27 or 30 inches, it would be amazing. I won't be super disappointed if that doesn't happen, but it would be great. It would undeniably be great.

And I would also add in nanotexture display option. Sure. Because I mean, they've already done that on the iMac. I put that in there for you. I put that in the story just for you. It is there on the iMac now, so why not? I don't even know if I would want it. I have seen a Pro display with that,

and I thought it looked really cool. You get a cloth. There's a polishing cloth. I have the a Pro display with that, and I thought it looked really cool. You get a cloth. There's a polishing cloth. I have the polishing cloth anyway because I'm one of those fools that bought one. I didn't even buy it when it was a meme. When I bought my MacBook Pro, I was like, I don't know what this is,

but I'll get it, and it just sits here. I don't ever do anything with it. So I would love just to look at that again and maybe weigh that up it could be a cool addition and it's you know a fun little thing that they could do uh you want more ports including usb a ports i agree with you by the way yeah well there are usb a ports on the apple silicon mac mini yep and i will remind everybody my imac pro has four thunderbolt and four s thunderbolt usbc and four usb-a on the back eight usb ports on the back of this imac pro and you know what it's i use them i use them it's really nice to not need a dongle to plug in a usb-a device this is a pro

system it's big it's got lots of room back there so i think yeah i think lots lots lots of ports that's what i'm asking for i want an sd card slot like i have on the imac pro i want that and i want you know ideally i'd like four and four of um of usbc style and usb a style and know, it's not unreasonable. There are a bunch of ports. Even the M1 Mac Mini has USB-A and USB-C ports. So I think, and there are four, for the record, the 24-inch has four USB Thunderbolt ports on the back,

other than the two-port model, but, you know, the bigger one has four. Whether there will be eight or not, it seems unlikely. And yet, I'm going to advocate to keep some USB-A back there, because really, why not? It adds compatibility. There's no cost. Yeah, two USB-A. It adds compatibility. There's no cost appreciably to it. You did it on the Mac Mini. There's value in a pro desktop of having port flexibility. So why not do it? It's like Apple, what if we promise you

this is the last time you'll need to do it? Will you do it? Right now, on the back of my iMac Pro, right at this moment, I have two USB-C plugged in and two USB-A plugged in. And I could convert those, but I didn't have to. Last time, just put two on there last time. plugged in and two USB-A plugged in. And I could convert those, but

I didn't have to. Last time, the next time you redesign the iMac, you'll probably have moved on to something else other than USB-C. But we're probably okay by then. But I like the practicality of it, and it's something that, remember, Apple didn't do on their laptops, this practicality,

but they did with that Mac Mini, which is yeah, let's just put some USB-A on there. I wouldn't expect or ask for usb a on a laptop now no no but on a desktop where you've got all that room and even on the mac mini where they didn't have all that room like just the flexibility of having that stuff that's laying around and it really is as simple as i have this thing i can plug it in instead I have this thing, oh let me go get an adapter, now I've got my adapter, now I'll plug it in and that happens to me all the time If they announce this computer without

USB-A, I'm not going to be mad I've already moved away, I've got docks and dongles and all sorts I would like them to just embrace it maybe it's 3 and 2 or 4 and 2 or something like that, that's fine the Mac Mini has 2 USB-A butbrace it. Maybe it's 3 and 2 or 4 and 2 or something like that. That's fine.

The Mac Mini has two USB-A. But I think it's worth it. You even mentioned put them on the power brick, right? We got our friend the Ethernet power brick. Put them on there. I don't know. I doubt this is going to happen this time. But for the iMac, and I know people are like, oh, you can't put USB on the power brick because what if it unplugs?

It's like, well, what if your computer unplugs? If your computer unplugs, your computer's off. Your computer's off anyway, and it's bad. Whatever. So unlike MagSafe on the laptops where you probably don't want to put USB ports on the brick because then the thing pops off and you lose your USB devices. Okay. But on a desktop, I just, I want them to push that concept forward. It probably won't happen this time, but it's a

wishlist. I want them to push the concept forward. I have a USB hub Velcroed to the bottom of my desk, to the underside of my desk, because I need some ports. I need to attach things to, like my keyboard runs under there and my UPS that's got a USB port on it so that when the power goes out, my computer stays on. Like, it's got a USB umbilical that goes back to the computer. It's under there. Like, taking the Ethernet outboard and getting it off your desktop is a great idea. But really, I would like some ports on that thing too. I really would because, like I said,

I got a USB hub under my desk. It's dumb. I would really rather attach that little brick and have stuff coming off of it. So for an iMac Pro or a big iMac, however you want to call it, yeah, I want even more than just Ethernet on there. I want it to be multi-use because that's the truth of it, right?

Is we got lots of devices that we plug into these desktop computers and so, you know, embrace it. And we don't want the, I mean, the argument is the same as the ethernet, which is I don't need this clutter. I don't need, I have some stuff that I need to plug in that I do not need on my desktop. So I'd rather have one nice braided cable going down onto the desk and then what happens down there stays down there and obviously you'd want it to be color matched but will i think that goes without saying right whatever color or lack of

color or boringness that they do i want to i expect it all to match. I would like color is my item. I would like not just to have black or space gray or silver. I would like some color. I'm kind of resigned to the fact that they'll probably be dark, not bright eye-popping colors like the 24-inch model. But you know what? If it's a dark blue or something like that, that would be cool. I would love to be able to pick a color of iMac and not have it just be entirely neutral. And this is the moment where everybody is like, oh, but designers need to be neutral. It's like they're never going to not offer it as a neutral color. There will always be a neutral color offered. But not all of us want that.

So I would like colors, please. But not all of us want that. So I would like colors, please. I don't think I would, if it was like a pro machine, I don't think I would want the exact color options that are on the M1, but a variety of interesting colors is what I would want. Like I do like the kind of reserved color palette, provided there is a color palette, you know i i think you're right i expect

that instead of that very light gray bezel that goes around the 24 inch imax my guess is that it will be a dark bezel that goes around these larger imax because they're going to be for pro use and so the the bright colors wouldn't really go with it anyway and that's that's okay like that's okay i just want some personality injected into it i think it would be a shame if like more than one you know like with the iphones they have the standard ones and in one color it's like no no why don't we do five colors but they can be like safari green whatever it was called and like pacific blue you know like but like you know option not like if you want color you can get one color or you can get three different grays yeah like right that's not what i'm looking for here but like there's a good wish list item yeah

a lot of fun um webcam gotta be good right i yeah i'm tired of the excuses of i'm tired of the this is the best webcam we've ever put in a mac it's 1080 but it's got a processor on it so it's fine like that's where they are right now and like it's got to stop it's got to stop the imac uh or the the imac needs to have what the ipad has which is the ipad has a 12 megapixel camera. That's a wide angle with center stage. And, you know, I, I should be able to do very high quality video from this thing. And I should have an auto track. I, all of that stuff needs to be there. Like I I'm tired of the excuses. The iMac 24 came out the same time as the iPad with center stage. and yeah and the imac is the perfect product for that like i would like it to do face id i would really like that i mean we're talking wish list that's that

would be right but at the very least it needs to be that proper high quality front facing camera with center stage big one for me is the ergonomics my dream would be the pro display stand you know that's half the price of the iMac right there right but something akin to that you know like like yeah obviously not a thousand dollar stand but the flexibility of it the pro display rotates right and I don't think Apple needs to make a base stand for the iMac that will let you lift it up and turn it and put it in portrait orientation. I mean, imagine that. But they don't need to do that. But adjustable height stand.

Like, I think the 24-inch iMac's a little short, right? Oh, yeah. I have mine on one of those little riser things, you know? Yeah. It's too low down. I asked them about it and they said, oh no, we did our research and we think this is the right thing.

But I think that, but I just, I don't agree. I don't believe it. I think that they took their best shot and maybe they think it's the right height. It feels a little short to me. And then you've got this beautiful, fun, cute, colorful thing. And then you stick like a dictionary under it or something

in order to get it to height. It just seems, it seems like a mistake. And so if they're going to make a high end iMac, please spring for height adjustment. Like displays have height adjustment. The iMac is a display. It should be adjustable. It's important. It's ergonomics. It's, it's accessibility. Essentially. They, they really, really need to do it right. And then also, what have we got?

M1 Pro and M1 Max specs. So when you say that, is you talking like just the chips? Yeah, well, the chips and the RAM limits that come with them, right? So that you can have, so you can choose to go up to 32 or 64. And then ideally,

if they've got the dual m1 max ready to go for the mac pro they could do that for this too oh i mean wish list right yeah i don't know like the i'm the the mac pro is coming eventually and the rumors are that they're going to be dual and quad configurations it would be interesting if they rolled out like a dual max configuration at the high end of this i don't know if that's likely but i'll throw it in there but at the very least you know the m1 max and an iMac yeah bring it to me i guess the thing i had i don't know if i consider this but as you're saying it like if they do this double m1 max chip or whatever, would they only do it for the Mac Pro? That's the only place it's going to be?

Maybe. I think in the long run, if they've got other Pro desktop Macs, why not put it in there? That's my argument to them is if you've got an iMac Pro, put a dual M1 Max option in there. Why not? Just see it. It may not be ready. It may really be waiting for the Mac Pro to do something like a dual or a quad um but down the road perhaps some things like mac mini and um and imac pro might get those too but really honestly that's that's dreaming a magical dream

but m1 max and an imac um yes please my favorite though is your last one announced March 8 orders March 11 ship in March 18 it's like we don't even have an idea if there's even going to be an iMac it's my list Mike it's my list I want it now what's the point of a wish list if you can't demand the product to be made available

for you so that's my last item is announced March 8 orders on the Friday shipping the next Friday please thank you made available for you. So that's my last item is announced March 8th. Orders on the Friday. Shipping the next Friday, please. Thank you. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at Memberful,

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Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. I want to talk about comics a little bit. Okay. So I feel like a couple of times in my life, I've been a bit i've

been a comics person so going back many many years it's actually fun when i used to work at my bank one of the things that i did was help people open business accounts and there was once um i mean this is probably like 15 years ago now which is a horrible thing for me to consider. It's like thinking I have stories in my life that are 15 years old, but nevertheless. One of the accounts that I opened was for somebody starting a comic book shop, like a comic book store.

And I went down to visit their store once and looked around and picked up some stuff. And I had some interest in superheroes, but I hadn't really read comics and I bought a bunch of stuff and enjoyed enjoyed it and one of the things that i bought was civil war that was recommended to me absolutely love marvel civil war i turned it into a great movie but the comic book is still excellent in some way in its own way and then over time as well like i've got moved in and out of paper comics and then some years ago i was reading

some digital comics i think probably probably when Comixology launched. And recently I've been watching a YouTube recap series of like Marvel and superhero movies. And it's just been like a fun thing that I've been watching. And they keep referencing comic stories that are influencing some of the stories in the movies, of course. So it's made me think, I want to read more of them, especially X-Men.

I've never really... My only real X-Men knowledge comes from the Saturday morning cartoon show. Like I never read any comics and I saw some of the X-Men movies, but like I wanted to know more about the X-Men for reasons that I think will be important in the future. So I've been digging back in again and

we're kind of the landscape has changed a bit i think since i last looked at comics and it's actually pretty time because it's changing again like comiXology was a big thing amazon bought comiXology it seems like amazon are making a bunch of changes to comiXology which i think some people were not happy about like they're doing some weird stuff. But I kind of wanted to know, what are you doing right now? Do you have any recommendations? And I want to talk about some other stuff that I've been doing.

I haven't been reading comics as much the last, I don't know, six months as I was for a while there. I've just been reading a lot of novels lately. So I still have Marvel Unlimited, which I feel like is still getting better um dc apparently now has their version of that that lets you like dive into their archive i i want to check that out someday but i haven't done that yet but um so for marvel i the nice thing about going you know a few months without reading any marvel comics is that they just kind

of all queue up on marvel unlimited and i can get to them whenever I want. I buy some comics, mostly independent comics on Comixology and some other stuff that's like the non-Marvel stuff. Comixology, you know, Amazon bought them and everybody wants to portray it as like Amazon ate Comixology. It's not quite right. I mean, it's sort of true, but the truth is that Amazon did not have a lot of comics expertise. And they installed the guy who founded Comixology, the CEO, as the head of comics, like immediately for all of Amazon, like not just for Comixology,

but for Amazon proper, because they knew that the Amazon comics approach wasn't quite right. And so over the last few years, like they've made a lot of, a lot of, uh, changes to the Kindle app to make it better for comics and all of that. And I think their plan all along was to converge comiXology and Amazon. And, um, that's like, they're like, yeah. And if you go, they are doing that and if you go to the comiXology app now uh it is a it is a uh a comics reading app but it's not the old one

and it really is the kindle app it feels very much like it's just the kindle app with a comic reading storefront on the front or front i guess list front because it's ios you can't actually sell the comics there um so i think they're unifying all of that and i don't think that's a bad idea in the end they're going to want to make one comic reading app the comixology website now here in the uk i think in the uk and the us is part of the problem is they're not they're doing this thing but they're not doing it everywhere which means it's kind of shutting down in some places but in the uk comixology.co.uk now takes me to amazon.co.uk and a lot of people signed up for subscriptions uh where they get the next issue automatically and my understanding is that as part of this merger thing they basically told

everybody outside the us you can't have that feature anymore just like what are you doing i don't know there's a lot of stuff going on there that's kind of weird but anyway it is still at least especially for me in the u.s a convenient place to buy i don't really want to buy comics from amazon i think you know um we mentioned before that apple bought that company that does classical music stuff and they're going to roll out an apple music classical basically at some point or apple classical um and this is a little like that where comics are different enough that what amazon seems to want to do is have a brand that has comics that is um that is dedicated to the comic reading experience because like i i have the kindle app but like i don't want to read comics on the kindle app i want to read them in the comiXology app i want to read them in an app that's actually dedicated even if the reading

experience is the same i want i don't want to go through the whole kindle thing and see my kindle books i just want to see my honestly it's like having podcasts in your music app it doesn't always make sense to do that you know no no thank you so um that's that's sort of what they're doing there um it's fine it's it's i know people are up in arms about it like this is on one level it's not as big a deal as i think people are making it out to be on another level amazon bought them what did you expect of course this is going to happen to some degree i think it's going to be okay um the truth though is that i also am not i'm just not i wish i had comics to recommend to you but i just have not been reading a lot of new stuff the last year saga just started up again so i think i need to go or announce that they're starting up again so

i'm going to need to get back on the on the saga uh train but i have not been reading new comics the last six months for me at the moment i'm really i'm only that interested in marvel comics this is just what i know and it's what i like and there's so much stuff i haven't read that i'm good with that partly because i bought a dino a marvel unlimited subscription a couple of years ago and so i'm just signed into that account on my ipad as well and i'm just reading some stuff that she's not reading like we're reading completely different types of things and the marvel unlimited i actually kind of like that experience and i think it's pretty cool like how long do you know roughly like how long do you have to wait for new comics

to come to marvel oh last time i checked i think it was three months right i mean that makes sense i think it was six i think it might be three now four but the truth is like if you're if you're behind and you stay behind then new comics are being released every week it's just that you're behind yeah there's so much stuff that i could and want to read i don't really care about being up to date right so like i like I'm reading through House of M, Powers of M right now. Oh, wow. That's way back there. Yeah, because there's a bunch of stuff.

There's that classic stuff I've just never read and would like to read. And this is a fascinating series. Yeah, there's so much X-Men stuff and it's so confusing. What I like, they have these like curated lists and starting points in the Marvel Un app and i've been like going through that you said house of m but do you mean uh house of x that's powers of house of x powers of powers of 10 yeah is that what it is powers of 10 uh yeah it's a well it's a play on it's like

a very for apple people it's even extra confusing yeah that's really interesting that's from a couple years ago where they basically reset the whole x-men scenario and and put them in a new place yeah i love i love that that was a that was a really fun intertwined series um i like that one a lot it was two comics and they have like a weird reading order and in a great way that like in the back of the issues they show you the suggested reading order which is like it's like a very funny thing but i like it it's like i read some of the stuff like and it's so incredible it's like these people just build these entire worlds and all these jonathan hickman who wrote that he has a very particular style i i really like his work he is um he's a sci-fi oriented i would say comic book writer and so his stories tend to be a little more sci-fi than some

of the other uh superhero titles that are that are out there i really liked he did um he did a run on new avengers and avengers that led to secret wars okay secret wars is one that i also have in my again because they like they they what i like is there are some big comic events right where it's spread across like six series right but there's a reading list they they create the reading lists and so like i've saved some of those reading lists as well i recommend looking looking at hickman's avengers and new avengers as part of that and they probably have that in a reading list too because it really does sort of start there and then build to this event and the the idea is that all the parallel universes are colliding and annihilating each other and that goes on in a new avengers especially for

quite a while um and and like i love those those kind of widescreen wild idea um sci-fi kind of thing so that was a fun thing and then hickman coming off of that went and did this let's reinvent the x-men as having their own country and you know building up this whole new system and they have like the ability to clone themselves and it's just these wild ideas and told in a chopped up narrative because the powers of 10 the whole idea is you're shifting from like now to one year from now to 10 years from now to 100 years from now to a thousand years from now and like what's going on and all those different timelines and yeah that's good stuff. My secret invasion

reading list starts with New Avengers 31. That's the reading order so it's definitely in there which is cool. And like I kind of just like this thing that Marvel's doing like just this it's effective like a Netflix thing right? It's just like

here's your streaming service for comic books. Just give us an amount of money every year, and you can just go in and read whatever you want. And if DC does it, like, maybe I'll get it, like, I'll check out the DC one eventually, too. Like, I think it's a smart move because there's so much back catalog

stuff. Like, the idea of the comiXogy for me now doesn't really make so much sense especially like the need to own it like i don't need i actually i don't need to own digital comics like i'm good you know like my my kind of mental model for that stuff has changed a lot now where i don't really feel like I need any ownership overall. Like it's just streaming to me now. I agree. And I, I don't know what the,

what their financial model is. Right. And I want them to, um, I want the people who make comics to succeed. And I do buy comics that are like, I'm not buying Marvel comics, but I am buying from like more indie publishers because that's how you get

that stuff. And I know that it matters to them. And a lot of the, even the indie publishers, know week one it might cost 4.99 and week two it costs 2.99 right where they're like they're trying to get the people who are super into it and want to buy it immediately and they charge them extra and then sometimes they discount it after a few weeks for everybody else so you can it's a lot cheaper to get caught up. Um, so I want them to do well. I don't know, but I agree that the,

the Netflix e-model of paying a subscription fee and just having access to a comic library is pretty great. Um, when you finish, by the way, uh, house of X powers of 10, uh,

the incomparable 502, a hundred episodes ago, uh, was all about those. Oh, amazing. So yeah, I guess that's the fun thing.

I'll be able to go and listen to some, uh, old episodes of the incomparable, which I've skipped's funny i just i just googled does like oh what about the dc one yeah no it's in the us only yeah you own it it's yours i don't understand it i don't get it nobody else is doing it it's not like there's another company who has your streaming comic rights or whatever you know just like just just make it available dc like this is your or warner i guess i don't even know who is anybody you you this is your content you know come on just make it available to me you know i'm i'm into it there's like and then i want to do a

bunch of spider-man stuff love spider-man do you have any spider-man recommendations for me uh i i say start from ultimate spider-man um number one it's great that's my favorite comic favorite marvel comic of the last 20 years is ultimate spider-man by brian michael bendis oh i've read ultimate i've read some of it before but a long long time read the whole the whole thing is there and it comes to builds to a climax and it introduces miles morales and then there's the more then then it becomes the miles morales spider-man comic after that so um there's a lot of good stuff in that it's like a hundred and hundred and thirty three issues for ultimate and then one of my favorite comics of all time is invincible which

is from image so you can you're gonna have to buy those yeah i read a lot i love that too but i have i have nothing nothing super recent uh there's a lot of brian k van stuff uh paper girls i read a while ago that was really good has some good apple uh references in it believe it or not it does yeah so the part of of me talking about this is I want recommendations from the Upgradians. I want people to give me this stuff that they've got. I'm just, I don't know. I feel like this is a... I made lots of references before on the show that I don't really enjoy reading.

Which is true. I just don't really enjoy reading novels, that kind of stuff. Because I kind of stuff because i kind of find it hard to keep my attention i do not have this problem with comics and it is kind of funny because reading through the the like the the powers of 10 there's like there are these pages of text like i have to read them like three times yeah he does the whole thing where he's got like little readouts of yeah of stuff yeah which is

cool information but like i have to sit there and i have to read that three times but the comic part i'm like no problem i'm like going through i'm on top of it but those as soon as you give me a paragraph of text i'm like oh man i don't know what it is it's just like it takes a while for me to have to go over a couple of times like right i'm on it now i can continue uh so it's fun yeah i'm enjoying it it's like i don't know i'm just it feels like just a fun thing to get back into again and the ipad mini so good so good the only thing it's not great for is the landscape uh yeah because it's it's a little it's a little too small yeah you gotta zoom in and pan around for that by and large it's great like the the

ipad mini is really, really good. Like I remember when, even on like the regular, like I remember on previous iPad minis, do you kind of have to use the zooming in on the panels features? Because it just wasn't good enough. Right. But now I can read all of that.

Catherine is asking if I read Matt Fraction's Hawkeye. I have read that. I read that back in the day. I have a hard copy of that. Catherine is asking if I read Matt Fraction's Hawkeye. I have read that. I read that back in the day. I have a hard copy of that one. Sent me up nicely for Hawkeye, which I enjoyed a lot. Yeah, comics. Comics! It's fun!

Look at us having fun and not talking about legislation and regulation. Yeah, see? We can talk about side loading, but we can also talk about comic books. Look, we have lots of shades here. Lots of colors. Lots of, hopefully, iMac colors. Maybe. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Have you ever hit a technical snafu while shopping online? It's filling out payment fields, giving you a headache. Has a mobile banking app ever been down when you wanted to use it? Capital One

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Search machine learning at Capital One. Capital One, what's in your wallet? We have some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Matt asks, I feel like I'd quite like to own a Retro Mac, having listened to Jason talk about it, but I have a limited amount of space available. What do you think is the smallest Retro Mac that I could get? I'm going to say that practically, it depends on what

you want from your retro Mac. Practically speaking, one of the compact Macs from the early days is probably best, whether it's an SE or a classic or a color classic, something that is classic too, something that has its own screen built into it. And I know that means it's bulkier in a way, but it also means you don't have to have an external monitor. And the problem with a lot of early Macs is that it's actually hard to get external video out to a modern display that you might have hanging around. You know, if you find a 2ci with a monitor sitting on it at a garage sale, you could do that. That would work too. But I would say one of the nice things about those classic compact Macs is that they are compact. And so when I, I I've been struggling to get video out of a bunch of old Macs,

but it's not a problem with, uh, with the classic Mac. You could look for a power book. The problem there is that, um, that the hard drives die and then you're trying to take it apart and like there's there are a lot of issues there but again a mac with its own screen is nice like that helps keep the size down if you want to go a little more modern than that um i don't know you got the g4 cube you find those uh or an imac again imax some of those g3 iMacs are big. The G4 iMacs are smaller. But like if you have an old all-in-one that brings its own screen,

especially that's helpful. Otherwise you're going to need to find like a screen. Like I got a G4 Cube and a screen and they came together where it's got ADC on it. So you just plug it in and the screen works and the G4 works. So that's my advice, though, is avoid having to adapt to an external monitor because you might be saying I'm going to save space by having it be an external monitor that I already own. But you may not be able to get there. So that's my best advice for now for Matt.

Sekou asks, Jason, do you use any form of spell or grammar checker prior to posting an article? I try to run a spell check and sometimes I will run Grammarly. I signed up for a year of Grammarly just to try it out because I, you know, writing on six colors, you don't have a safety net. I don't have a copy editor who's going to go through my pieces. And I also am not going to wait to post them until, you know, two days later because somebody has read it through. So I, Grammarly is interesting because it finds, it's better than a spell checker at finding words that are typos contextually, which I'm very impressed by. So it'll say, well, this is not the word you want to use here. And it turns out it's a typo

and a spell checker won't do that. And it will occasionally flag something that I'll agree with in terms of there should be a comma here, or you should remove this phrase. The challenge I have with Grammarly is that it flags a lot of stuff that I just, it's trying to have me write a business letter and that's not what I'm writing. And so there's a lot of stuff that it flags as you might, you want to rephrase this or change this. And I'm like, nope, that's what i that's exactly what i meant and that's frustrating but i do try to run longer pieces through grammarly just because it provides a little bit better safety net than a straight up spell check yeah um even though i find it frustrating because it catches so much more stuff that i don't consider

wrong i guess it's trying to remove your voice a little bit it it is because like i said and it's got they've tried they've got settings to like it's more informal and not a business letter and all but the fact is that yeah it still throws up a whole bunch of stuff that i just don't agree with um and it gets confused by some technical terms and things like that but the real goal there and i don't use, I don't write in apps with a grammar checker. So I can't tell you, I'm not in Microsoft Word or whatever. So I can't compare. But I do like the idea that Grammarly is looking at things a little more holistically.

And so it can find those dumb mistakes where I have typed the wrong word or I've made a typo into a word that is in the dictionary but is totally the wrong use. Or if I don't have a piece of punctuation or if I left a fragment in that I meant to change and now it doesn't make sense. All that stuff gets flagged in a it's a nice last sort of sanity check before I get it posted. Google started doing a thing recently, which is equal parts funny and annoying for me in Google Docs, where it's flagging the differences between English spelling and American spelling and is asking me if I mean it. Do you want to have this U taken out of here or do you want to change to American English? Like, it's just like a funny thing because it's like either I'm putting it in

or somebody else is putting it in and it's like, do you want, are you sure about this one? You know, and they ask me, do you want to change? Do you want to change the sentence

to American English? I honestly wonder about that and sometimes sometimes in our docs you write something in british english and i and it underlines it for me and i wonder does it underline it for you or does it know that it's know that it's okay for you and it's not okay for me and then we end up having these kind of potentially we could go back and forth and we have to keep changing things back and forth and back and forth because we're both auto-correcting to our own local language i think that is happening now this is that probably is happening michael asks do you think that apple's upcoming headset could be like thought of in the way that the home pod is too expensive a too high-end version of something

that exists from others that's in an otherwise good enough form so like how we would say like the home pod is just an over-engineered over-expensive version of an amazon echo or whatever i feel like we covered this in our episode recently where we talked about this product i think i addressed this question directly, sure, it's possible. The difference is that Apple seems to be committed to this for the long haul as a product category, and they risk it being perceived as being too expensive. But if they keep at it and they keep building new versions of it, I think their thought is that they will wear people down over time. I don't think it's going to be, I do think it's possible that the first one will be way too expensive and it will be kind of rejected by people, but that may be okay because Apple is thinking about this for the long term.

My hope is they will have learned something from the HomePod and if they still are planning on going down this route of it being really expensive, to make sure that they market it with that in mind. Yeah. Not that just like, this is better. It's like, okay, but it's three times more expensive. You know, like, is that? I think the difference here is that Apple can probably come out and say, this is the best experience ever.

And any experience below this isn't good enough. And we can debate that, but I think that they will be able to say that. Whereas HomePod, it's not as if, I mean, I know they said a lot of superlatives about the HomePod, but the truth is the market they were going into is every speaker ever made.

Or that it's just like the HomePod sounds nice, but to the level that it's nicer than an Amazon Echo. So it's not that much of a difference. Yeah. They do have the opportunity here to really like you put it on and you're like, oh, my God. You know. Right. To blow people away and also to say all of those other things that you can buy for 300 bucks are garbage.

This is the stuff. This is the thing that's going to change the world. And again, it will still be very expensive and a lot of people won't buy it, but it's not the same as the HomePod. The iPhone was really expensive when it came out. Phones were free, right? Yeah. Smartphones were free before that. You just got them as part of your contract, but the iPhone, you also had to give them $600 for it. And it's like, oh, hang on a minute. This is a lot of money. So this has not never worked. It just hasn't worked maybe recently. The Apple Watch maybe is another example. Apple Watches,

you know, it's much more expensive than a regular watch. Chris asks, what are some of your favorite all-time TV show theme songs? So I wanted to have this question because we just started watching, TV show theme songs? So I wanted to have this question because we just started re-watching Mandalorian again because we just watched Boba Fett. I like the song for Boba Fett, but I love the Mandalorian theme song.

The Mandalorian theme song is one of my favorite TV show theme songs. It's just so good. I just love it. It's just a fantastic piece of music. It gets me so hyped up for the show. I will also throw in Succession, which is a recent one. Love the Succession theme song.

I know I'm not alone in that. And then because I picked two that were very recent, I wanted to pick some that were older. The West Wing, love the West Wing. Just definitely get the West Wing's theme song. Gets me in the mood for the West Wing. Like, I'm in it fresh prince of bel-air it's just superb and curb your enthusiasm sure so good it's just like

perfect right it's perfect for its thing it's ended up like just that song like the curb enthusiasm theme song is played so well that now just hearing it makes you feel awkward. It's just like, yes, they nailed it. I will point people to the incomparable episodes 388 and 515, both of which are TV theme song drafts. Of course. But just mining that, Spider-Man, Spider-Man. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. I picked the Friday Night Lights theme song, which is really nice.

And that's in a style like Explosions in the Sky, which is a great band, even though it's not Explosions in the Sky. It's that post-punk. It's really nice. Let's see. What else do I want to throw in there? Magnum P.I. Love that. Classic 80s magnum pi theme can't be beat um tecturus has a really good theme song i like that a lot and uh i don't know uh hawaii

5-0 is great i always used to love that as a kid i used to love the taxi theme song and taxi was on late and my brother watched it but i wasn't allowed to stay up. It was my bedtime, 9 o'clock or whenever it was on when I was a little kid. And so I would stay up to listen to the theme song, and then I was allowed to go to bed. But I could listen to the theme song first before I went, so I'll throw that in there. A lot of great TV theme songs out there. if you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show you can send in a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade or you can use question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord which you can get access to by signing up for upgrade plus go to get upgrade plus.com and you will get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week thank you so much listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com

and he is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I'm at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you to Capital One Electric, a member for further support of this week's episode. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Aloha.