Upgrade - 43: Haptic Skeptic

Episode Date: June 29, 2015

It’s a big week, so Jason and Myke spend a lot of time discussing the launch of Apple Music and Beats One and the ugliness of music industry negotiations. Plus Jason installs the iOS 9 beta on an iPad Air 2, legal opinions from non-lawyers, questionable attacks on Taylor Swift, and praise for “Mr. Robot."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 43 today's show is brought to you by mail route a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam stamps.com postage on demand and the new mexico tea, making excellent teas available to people all around the world. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by the wonderful Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Mike. How are you doing? I am very well, sir. It is a new week. It is.

We are currently about to experience a heat wave in the United Kingdom, which I am horrified and terrified about. What constitutes a heat wave in the United Kingdom? On Wednesday, it will be 93 degrees. Wow. Of course, thank you for the Fahrenheit conversion there. No, I meant Celsius. Oh, dear.

Well, you're all going to die then. That's the end for the UK. It was a good run. That's 93 Fahrenheit, uh, which is what? 33, 34.

Yeah. See, yeah. We have a couple of days in the nineties this week, and that is going to be a problem. That was the day of the WWDC keynote. That's what the temperature wasn't in, uh,

at least here. It was close to that in San Francisco too. But in my house, it was, that was the, that was the hot day. It was 96. And we get like three of those a year.

That's going to be an issue for us in the UK. Let me tell you that. We are not used to that kind of heat. No. Well, I mean, in the Bay Area, it's actually kind of like that too. This part of the Bay Area anyway, where I live and we're in San Francisco, north of San Francisco, we don't have air conditioning, right? We have nothing like that. So you're kind of immobilized when it gets that hot so i expect that uh tuesday and wednesday

wednesday shows um i will be operating from a paddling pool most likely nice no i am i'm genuinely concerned i'm going to turn into liquid it's going to be ridiculous i don't even know what i'm going to do i did um i i did an of Total Party Kill, I want to say last summer. It might have been the summer before that. Entirely outside. I set up a microphone and my laptop in a chair in my backyard because it was so hot that I literally, I could not do it in the house. And that was fine, except it went so long that it got dark. People couldn't see me by the end.

It was really dark. But, you know, that was... And it actually sounded pretty good, I got to say. Nobody was doing, like, lawn work, and there were no birds dive-bombing me or anything like that. But that's, yeah, it's, you know, if you're not equipped... This is the thing. It's just like when people laugh at people in San Francisco for talking about it being cold, because it's never gets as cold here as it gets almost anywhere. But we're

not equipped. And that's the thing is you've got to be equipped for, if it happens often, you'll be equipped to deal with it. But if it doesn't happen often, then you're completely unable to deal and you're just you know it it's all ruined and i think that that's what will happen to you uh with this heat wave i have no air conditioning right you know so you have a fan i have a fan uh and i need to do some tests to see if i can remove the the sound of the fan accurately from the audio recordings. Oh, yeah. Well, that happens a lot when we're doing podcasts with people in hot or cold climates

is that they either have the noise running in the background or they turn it off right before the podcast and gradually get more and more uncomfortable as the podcast moves along. So, Carl's in the gray in the chat room has asked a question that i'm sure many people uh many american people will ask of me is why why do i have no air conditioning because it doesn't get that hot here we don't need it we have radiators and central heating we have no central air it's not a thing we need uh we open windows most of the time and it does an absolutely fine job of the like the 20 degrees that we usually

have in the summer you know like 23 or something 24 it's like a hot summer day for us but yeah kyle is in kyle's in in arizona where you would you would literally die without air conditioning but you know in the bay area like i said in in marin county we don't down especially southern marin and and uh and in san francisco too there's no air conditioning because when would you use it? Like four days a year. I talked to somebody about getting air conditioned. I think about it every now and then when we were replacing our heater, I talked to them about what it would cost to put in an air conditioner. And the answer was many thousands of dollars for something we would use, you know, we really use probably four days a year. I do have a little tiny air conditioner on wheels

that I can roll around and it's got a tube and you sort of like stick it days a year. I do have a little tiny air conditioner on wheels that I can roll around and it's got a tube and you sort of like stick it in a window. And we, I will roll that out literally like three days a year. I will roll that out because it's so miserably hot, but that's it. Yeah. You're not equipped. You can't deal with it. I'm going to Southern California this week, but it looks like it's not going to be quite that hot because it's the 4th of July is coming up, which is a relevant date in America, but not really anywhere else. But it is a holiday, Independence Day. And so my family and I are going down to Southern California for the week. So- USA. USA.

Indeed. Whilst I would like to complain about the heat for a little bit longer, we're probably getting to follow up because I have amassed a large follow-up topic here. Yeah, so we have a document that we put all our topics in, and I opened this document last night after playing Dungeons & Dragons for three hours on the internet for your amusement, and I said to myself, oh oh my god what did mike do because there is a very large um thing there's some bold type there's some bold red type there's links uh you definitely got it in in you at some point that you wanted to talk about uh about antitrust and things that are you're not qualified to talk about because you're not a

lawyer. So yeah, let's do that. Yeah. So again, I am not a lawyer. Okay. So everything that I'm saying here is based upon common sense, what I consider to be common sense, which again, is a problem when you're thinking about law. But I want to talk about, if we go back to last week, talking about Apple and Taylor Swift. Many people wrote in or tweeted at us or, you know, on me for different shows, including this one. You know, we spoke about it on Connected too, to say that they think that Apple held off from paying artists or labels on the fears of claims of antitrust or anti-competitive measures from either the Department of Justice or from the European Union. So Apple were basically, it seems that the argument is, and again, I don't really understand this argument, so I'm probably going to do a bad job of even explaining it. The idea it the idea that it would be anti-competitive for apple to not pay artists during this period or to pay up no sorry to pay artists during this period because it would go against what their

competitors are doing so apple's competitors during their free trial periods they don't pay artists so like if you if there was a free trial for Spotify or whatever, they don't pay artists. So if Apple paid artists, it would give them an advantage in some way. I don't understand this argument because I think that really that doesn't affect the user. I don't know if people look into it and be like, oh, hang on a minute. They're paying artists. Well, I will sign up for this free trial. I don't know if that is a thing that goes into people's minds. Right. And more so than this, I'm sure that Apple have someone on site at the moment from the Department of Justice for these matters.

I know that they're there to look after like to make sure nothing's going wrong but surely they could advise as well um i i don't i don't know if that is something that happens where there's somebody there but they have lawyers they have lots of lawyers and and they they yes lots of lawyers lots lots of in-house lawyers lots of lawyers, lots, lots of in-house lawyers, lots of contract lawyers. And Apple is well aware of what these issues are. And I would say that especially, I think Steve Jobs was much more of a person who kind of said, I don't care, let's just do it. I think with him not at Apple anymore, I think that they're probably a little more careful about legal stuff than they've been. But I'm with you. I think the most important thing when you're talking about antitrust and

anti-competitive things is you're using a monopoly power in one place in order to gain power in another place. Now, you know, this is the argument, there's what's illegal and there's what's right. I mean, there's the argument that Amazon has done a lot of things where they have pushed into categories using their money from one category. They pushed into other categories. But, you know, my understanding is that's not illegal. What's what's illegal is if you're a monopoly and then you're using your monopoly power to to destroy other categories. And, you know, Apple is not a monopoly. And then this is also. Yeah, this is about, you know, it's a three-month trial. What I find funny is that a lot of times people on the internet will gin up these arguments saying, oh, well, this is probably why they didn't do it. And it often suggests to me, like, that the way companies work is there might be a lawsuit, so we won't do it. is there might be a lawsuit, so we won't do it.

And in reality, there might always be a lawsuit. That's not a good enough reason. I had an impassioned argument with somebody on Twitter. I don't even know what it was about because it's Twitter. It was months ago. But literally his argument was, you're opening yourself up to lawsuits. It's like, you know what?

Apple is open for lawsuits every single day and gets lawsuits every single day. I am sure Apple is being sued about hundreds if not thousands of things at a time. Now, there are businesses that operate in a completely risk-averse manner where they're like, you know, we're not ever going to do anything that might make somebody sue us. Those are generally failed businesses because they don't do anything because they're terrified. And part of the cost of doing business is you're going to have to pay lawyers and you're going to have to deal with people who sue you. And I'm not saying do things that are wrong and let the lawyers deal with it. I'm saying people are going to sue you if you're doing what you believe is right. Don't not do it because you're afraid somebody is going to accuse you of something.

And Apple's got a huge target on their backs, and that's just how it is. So I kind of am skeptical when people say, oh, well, they probably didn't have this major thing that they're trying to do because of some kind of legal fear. There's a lot of skepticism I bring to it. So I have a hard time seeing that. Plus, I don't see this as antitrust, saying how they're funding it. They've got a lot of money. I actually think it's more arguably anti-competitive. Yeah, so they spend money on it. That's more anti-competitive. But in the end, for the consumer, it's no different. It's still, like you said, it's still free for three months. you know spotify's got a what a 99 cents for three months trial it's not that different so from a

consumer standpoint it's not that different i don't know no i'm not an lawyer either by the way not a lawyer a lawyer gildance in the chat room brings up an interesting point right let's let's say that it's not about the customers what if and gildance says i would suspect that it would be more about getting artists to shun the services that don't pay during the demo period i mean sure that is a a thing but my other point on this which and i think this enforces that is i don't imagine that the supreme court would be like oh taylor swift pressured you well then of course it's okay like if this is an actual issue right of anti-competitive measures by paying artists for that reason of like oh because then it may make people move their cat like their catalogs around i can't imagine that they would get off

from it like it would they would be able to be get to get away from these claims because one artist pressured Apple. That doesn't seem like that would make any change legally to the position. It doesn't feel like that would be enough collateral to get the lawsuit dropped. It just doesn't seem like that they would care.

Using a big company entering a new market and spending all their money to get entry into the new market is not illegal. Now, it may feel unfair, especially if you're one of the people competing in that area, seeing a huge competitor in and try to eat your lunch. But where it gets illegal is the leverage of something else. power on the computer to try to take over the internet and web browsing by saying, you know, we're going to make it difficult. We're going to use our monopoly power and operating systems to make it difficult for there to be any competition for our web browser. And we're going to ruin all the other web browsers. And then we're going to, you know, we're going to control the internet.

Wah, evil laugh, Steve Ballmer, you know? And so if Apple had a monopoly power in something, which I don't think they have anywhere, but, you know, you could even maybe say, like, imagine a world where Apple uses its power as the creator of the iPhone to make it difficult for artists. Let's say iTunes is the only paid music market, which it's not. paid music market, which it's not. And then they started to do things like, well, we're not going to feature your stuff or we're going to remove you from the store in the thing that we control and ruin your for sale music market unless you play ball with us over in this new thing we're doing. That, you know, maybe there's an argument there, but that's a theoretical and it's not based on reality anyway, because they don't have that kind of power. So I feel like what this is, what people are really saying is, hey, you know, aren't there complications when a big company enters the market and makes it tough for the people who are already there?

And I think the answer is, yeah, but at least in our current regulatory system, companies get a lot of leeway to just compete. system, companies get a lot of leeway to just compete. And yeah, that's a reason why there are so many huge companies. It's because huge companies with lots of money get to roll into markets and take them over. That happens all the time. So my other feeling on this is, let's say that all of this is true. If we go back again and presume that the reason that they didn't do this was because they wanted to avoid antitrust or anti-competitive measures. So let's presume that all the previous statements are also false. They're incorrect, my feelings and your feelings on this. There has been some reports recently that there is an investigation going on at both the New York and Connecticut Attorney General's offices into collusion in the music streaming business.

And it's heavily hinted that Apple may be a part of the investigation. So I want to read a quote from a letter that was from Universal Music Group's head antitrust lawyer, Eric J. Stock. This was what brought the investigation to the press. We understand that the investigation concerns whether participants in the music industry are seeking to act collusively or to restrain competition among music streaming services, in particular by working together

to suppress the availability to consumers of free ad-supported on-demand music streaming or similar, such as those offered by Spotify and YouTube. So the idea and what this report was saying, and people were saying that this was Apple, as well as maybe some others, were trying to get the labels together to collude to shut out companies that offered free streaming,

which Apple doesn't do. And this is right in the e-book thing, which is it's collusion to make a market less friendly for consumers. And that is not legal. And Apple has been bitten by that. And we can talk about how Amazon is the true problem in that market. But the fact is what Apple did was illegal and has been repeatedly found to be so. And so the fear here is that what may have happened, and it's unclear who would initiate this, but let's take the ebook model. This would be the equivalent of Apple going to all of the music companies and saying,

here's what we're going to do. We're not going to offer a free tier. Everything's going to have to be paid. Take your best stuff, lock it up behind here, refuse all of the competitors access to that stuff on their free tiers, and we'll see what happens and we'll force everybody to pay. And I think the argument there would be that would be very much like what Apple did with the eBooks thing, which is, you know, if there's collusion among competitors in order to make the market less, you know, less friendly and more costly for consumers, that's where things get illegal. That's not antitrust. That's collusion to control markets. But that would be a problem. It's obvious. And this is the challenge with the ebook thing too. It's obvious that the music industry wants the free tiers to go away. And that's they can want that but what they can't do is collude

to make that happen yeah see that that is anti-competitive behavior it is um it is because that's that's yeah that's competitors working together which is not allowed and then the reason main reason though that from my digging that i guess this could be tied to apple is this report came out on june the 10th the june 9th june 10th like a day or two after apple announced apple music and this is a quote from matt mittenthal who is a spokesman for the new york attorney general eric schneiderman and this the quote says this letter is part of an investigation of the music streaming business and industry in which competition has recently led to new and different ways for consumers to listen to music.

So if you read into that, which some people did, it's like the recently led to new part could be Apple. So many people are pointing at Apple during this. And my point of this is whilst I do not know and have no way of knowing, whilst i do not know and have no way of knowing if that is the case and they are involved it's just further um proof that they kind of don't care about antitrust if if and when they want to i think this i think this is a much more meaty issue and i i guess what i would say is the question to me is, is this something that Apple, did Apple encourage collusion or was Apple

happy to be a useful figure for the music industry by saying, we're not going to do a free tier? And that's very similar to the ebook thing. If Apple came and said, hey, here's what we're going to do. We're not going to give things away for free. We're going to do a trial and that's it. And then people will pay. And that's how it's going to be. It's not wrong for the music companies to say, oh, we like that model. We're going to give you more stuff.

The problem is if it was all part of a scheme by a cabal to wreck the free tier of all of the music services so that everybody has to pay. And that's tricky stuff. I mean, this is what happens when Apple gets into these waters is that this is ugly. I mean, like we talked about last week, these industries are ugly, and the competition is difficult, and their business model is kind of broken, which makes it even uglier. I think that a lot of this, I feel like a lot of these things and these kinds of arguments are brought up as ways for people that believe in Apple to tell themselves why Apple did things the way that they did. Basically to not face up to the fact of what I believe in that they made a decision

in which they would spend the least money possible because it's a business. And they made the wrong decision, probably the morally wrong decision, but they made what they considered to be the right business decision. But the thing was that business decision didn't match up with what we considered to be good business. Right. It made them look bad because it's true. I mean, Apple's got... So look, Apple's got

billions and billions, like more than $100 billion in cash, I think now. So anything they do, we can say, why did Apple need to do that? They've got all that money in the bank. You could say that about anything. Why do they charge what they charge for their products? They've got money in the bank. They can subsidize it all with their cash in the bank. And it's not a good enough argument. I mean, they are always going to be trying to make the best deal, right? The best financial deal. And I think the problem comes, as we said last week, that you end up being portrayed as a company that is trying to get musical artists to forego their money so that you can catch up in a category, as opposed to you investing in the category because you want to have your business

grown there. And if they can negotiate a deal where everybody gives up everything and gives them free things, even though they've got hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank, then good for them. That's good bargaining on one level. On another level, people will maybe not think of you so kindly. And that's a, you know, that's just, that was the trade-off there. And Taylor Swift was the one who got everybody to notice sort of, yeah, this makes Apple look bad. But whoever negotiated that deal with all the labels they did, that was pretty impressive because that was not a good deal for the labels and the artists at all. So, you know, not a lawyer. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of feedback about that. But that's just my opinion.

I think that they did a bad thing, basically. And that's kind of the long and short of it. We have a bunch more follow-up, but why don't we take our first sponsor break at this point, and then we can kind of jump back in again, Jason, so people can have their palates cleansed. What do you think? Sounds good to me.

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Thank you, stamps.com. Yeah. So you have a follow-up topic that you would like to discuss that will make you unpopular. Yeah, I know. Well, I'm already unpopular with this. So I don't want to belabor it.

I feel like we've got a lot of follow-up on this show. But this is in other Taylor Swift news. I just want to mention I had a few people send me a link to a story from a photographer who wrote basically an open letter. So that immediately got me kind of rolling my eyes to Taylor Swift. And basically, it's about how Taylor Swift's contract for freelance photographers has some very specific things that you have to agree to if you want to, as a freelance photographer, go to her concert, take pictures of the concert, and then sell those pictures to a newspaper or magazine or website or whatever. And I'm going to leave aside

the question of what's fair and not fair for freelance photographers taking pictures at a public performance by an entertainer. I feel like that's a pretty different thing, and there are probably fair and unfair that and I assume that it's mostly motivated because they're they're pro Apple people and they're they're mad at at Taylor Swift for criticizing Apple. I get a little bit of that vibe from at least some of the people who are seeing this. But you know what? Her criticisms of what Apple did are not made less valid by the fact that over here, her management has an agreement with freelance photographers about how they can use pictures from her concert. That is a really bad argument. Because what you're basically saying is, she can't make claims about this because of that. I think, you know, defending musicians is not the same as telling freelance photographers who are coming into her concert how they can and can't use their photos. It doesn't mean that the other thing couldn't be unfair.

It doesn't mean that Taylor Swift's management might not be inappropriately treating freelance photographers. But that has nothing to do with this. And that's a bogus argument. So I refute that argument. And then I actually have one person who's a very nice person I've talked to a lot on Twitter. And that's a bogus argument. So I refute that argument. And then I actually have one person who's a very nice person I've talked to a lot on Twitter, and he sent me an email, very nice, smart person. So I don't want them to be insulted by this. But at one point, what this person said to me is, Taylor Swift is no people's hero. And that's just a complete

straw man. I mean, basically, if the attack is, well, she's not perfect and she's not this incredible hero of the people. Well, actually, you know, I think we were a little more targeted than that in saying she was talking about struggling and independent music artists and how this situation was going to be difficult for them. And you can try to elevate her in order to then beat her down. But I think that these are not strong arguments against Taylor Swift. And I was a little disappointed to see the ones that I did get about this. I don't mind people debating this issue, but trying to change the subject and come up with side issues in order to find ways to attack her seems kind of dumb. So anyway, attack her seems kind of dumb.

Anyway, that frustrated me this week. Anything else? Yeah. If people would like to bring up other unrelated things about Taylor Swift that they don't like, don't email me about it. I bought 1989 this week,

by the way, even though it's streaming on Apple Music starting tomorrow as we record this. I bought a copy last week. I just felt like I needed to. And then I've been listening to it, and that's dangerous because it's catchy. Catchy. Yeah, I haven't yet heard it. Super catchy.

Super catchy. Let's see. What other follow-up? I got an interesting email from listener Matthias who says, Spotify and other streaming services are often spoken of as a bad deal for artists, but the average music buyer apparently only spends about $55 a year on any sort of music recording, meaning that a single Spotify subscriber at $10 a month spends more than double the average, which I think is an interesting point because theoretically then if the average music buyer turned into the average subscription service subscriber, they would be spending more money on music, a lot more. I think my question is, who do subscription services actually appeal to?

One. And is that the average music buyer or is it a very different music buyer? Now, the more people it appeals to who don't spend money on music at all, people who steal music, people who pirate music, then that's money in the bank. That's great. But I suspect that the people who are more likely to subscribe to a music service probably are not in that 50% that spend less than $55 a year. They're probably in a band that spends more money than that on music. But I don't know exactly what the profile is of the average music subscriber. And that would be interesting to see. Is it people who are not spending a lot of money on music right to see. Is it people who are not

spending a lot of money on music right now, or is it people who are spending a lot? And then on top of that, I have to say, some music isn't available to stream, and you've got to buy it if you want to listen to it. So you've got to throw that in there, that just because you pay $10 a month for a music streaming service doesn't mean that you aren't going to still be buying music, because there may be a lot of music from people you like that's not on the streaming service, whether that's something like Taylor Swift holding things back. And there's that whole question of, will we end up in a Netflix situation where the hottest new hits don't make it on? Or will it be that the more obscure artists don't put their stuff on because they know they've got a hardcore fan base that's going to go buy it. I've got a subscription service for, they might be giants. I paid them for a year of downloads

every week. That stuff's not on Apple Music, I don't think. And there are a few other artists that release sort of like obscure things off on the side on various websites. And I have no confidence that that stuff's going to be on websites. And I have no confidence that that stuff's going to be on there. So I like the idea of boiling it down to, let's find, you know, the average person doesn't spend $10 a month. And so if everybody then spent it,

the music industry gets more money, but I don't think it's that simple. Ashwin wrote in about the iPad Pro. We were talking about it a bit a few weeks ago and Ashwin was writing in about how maybe Apple could use force touch

in some way to replicate the feel of pen dragging on paper so say small vibrations could replicate this feel and make a compelling writing companion I think that this would be extremely difficult to do um and to do in a way that tries to completely replicate the feeling then we are far far away from that feeling being replicated what apple can do is provide feedback which won't

feel like drawing on a piece of paper but it will feel like friction which is more of what is needed um the the idea that there is something happening when you're rubbing the the stylus against the glass is better than just rubbing like a piece of plastic on a piece of glass because there's nothing there doesn't feel like anything and it will at least give just a nice feeling i it wouldn't help at all because it wouldn't add actual friction or anything. You just have the feeling of it is what I would expect. But my feeling about this is some feedback is better than no feedback. So giving something like some sort of rumbling would make sense. But then again, you know, the other part of it is, can they make it as precise as to just be where the pen is resting?

Or is the whole thing going to start shaking? If the whole thing starts shaking, then we go back to square one again because it's just not useful enough. I think that if false touch exists and the haptics exist, because they are slightly different things, but false touch with the haptic feedback, if that exists in the iPad Pro, I think Apple would do something like that with the stylus but in my opinion the jury will be out on how that actually feels and one of the reasons i feel this way now is i remember being completely

blown away by the false touch trackpad when i first tried using it and that was just in clicking around in an apple store i have since had a little bit more time trying to use one and it drives me crazy. Like I was using Stephen's new MacBook Pro 15 inch to edit a bunch in San Francisco and I was left feeling unhappy when trying to use something like Logic which requires lots of clicking and dragging. I was left feeling very, very unhappy about that experience with the false touch trackpad. It just didn't work very well. And a lot of the time where, because what I will frequently do, if I want to click and drag on a trackpad in Logic,

you click down with my thumb and then move with my finger and it was misfiring constantly on that. And I found that to be really frustrating. Maybe I should have and could have tweaked his trackpad settings in some way, but the more I've used it, the more I've started to see that I have found

there to be some misfires and a physical trackpad doesn't misfire like that. You click it, you click it, and that's it. It's clicked. And that's not the way it is with the force touch. And it's like that old adage, right? If it just doesn't work 10% of the time, then it's clicked and that's not the way it is with the force touch and and you know it's like that old adage right if it if it just doesn't work 10 percent of the time then it's a problem it's like siri right if siri is not 100 accurate then it's inaccurate well the great thing about having hardware controlled by software so you know instead of it being a real click it's a software click

great thing about that is it's programmable and intelligent. The bad thing about that is if it goes wrong, it doesn't click. And if it's hardware, it always clicks because it's hardware until it breaks and then it's broken. And yeah, having it be like, oh, something's wrong with the software. So now my trackpad doesn't click anymore is, yeah, that's not great. So are you a reading between the lines here are you a haptic skeptic i really like it on the apple watch um and what that does um i'm just currently i am just not in the opinion that my say on my current 13 inch or the current 15 inch that it requires the force touch trackpad and i feel like there should be there could still be a that, say, on my current 13-inch or the current 15-inch, that it requires the force touch trackpad.

I feel like there could still be a click there, and it could also still register the pressure. They do not need to take away the clicking, in my opinion. Interesting. Makes sense on the MacBook Air, or what do you call it, the MacBook One. MacBook. It's not called that, Marco. Not called that. It makes sense in that one, in theory,

because they say, you know, well, they need the space. And if that's the case, then fine. But I would not be happy if it was in its current guise if it was my only option. Yeah. You have a piece of follow-out for us? I do. You have a piece of follow-out for us?

I do. I have one piece of follow-out. I do a show weekly with Tim Goodman, the TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter, where we talk about television. It's called TV Talk Machine. It's at the incomparable.com slash TVTM. And I wanted to mention it here

because I think a lot of our listeners are obviously interested in technology stuff and may be interested in television programs. And in TVTM number 40 last week, Tim, who is not a very techie person, said that he really liked the USA Network show Mr. Robot, which I watched over the weekend. Which I watched over the weekend. And as somebody who knows a bit about technology and sees how painful, how painfully bad some shows are at depicting technology. And there are two shows in particular currently on the air on the CBS television network that do this incredibly badly. Scorpion and CSI Cyber, both of which are sort of like laughably bad. The names tell you everything you need to know. In general, yeah, in generally bad and also bad about their technology. I haven't seen every episode of Scorpion and CSI Cyber. So if somebody who's a huge fan of Scorpion comes and says, well, actually, you know, in episode eight, they were accurate.

Okay, fine, whatever. But what my point is, Mr. Robot, I found to be, first off, I thought it was really entertaining. I think it's a good show. I'm going to keep watching it. It's a techno thriller, kind of paranoid about a guy who's a security expert and hacker who is sort of brought in on a potential conspiracy involving a large corporation that controls, you know, huge amounts of the economy and a, you know, theoretically a group of kind of rebels against it, which sounds like every, you know, techno thriller you've ever heard of. But what I'll say in its favor is the details that they use to make it seem like, you know, I'm going to hack this thing, I'm in,

that kind of stuff are not ridiculous. In fact, they're about as good, I think they're about as accurate as they could possibly be without draining all the drama out of the show. I mean, there is a moment where they go to the server farm in, you know, in Washington, D.C., and they're actually like in the server cages. And I've been in those, those, those server, uh, spaces before I went to the MLB advanced media one in New York. And, um, they kind of look like that except they're, you know, even tighter and, uh, hotter and more unpleasant to be in and louder. Um, but you know, they, they, um, it's a guy opening his laptop and doing some terminal things and all that,

but what you see him typing and the way they describe it to other people is all kind of real-ish. It's not, I never point, I was like, oh, geez, this is absolutely ridiculous. They're just, you know, they're just making things up, uh, out of whole cloth. And so I, I guess it could get worse as, as the episodes go by, but I will say based on, uh, the first episode, I feel like it is the, um, it is the most kind of like technically, uh, I can't say accurate, but not ridiculous depiction of technology that you could probably do and still call it entertainment because they still want to have like drama and people typing things and running places

and explaining what's going on. And yes, that's probably completely unrealistic. But the terms they use and stuff all seemed pretty solid. And so if you're looking for a techno thriller kind of show that isn't going to make your head explode with the badness of the technology, maybe Mr. Robot is worth a look. So that's my follow-up. Don't worry, I got to. Nope.

He's just Mr. Robot, not Mr. Roboto. It's just Mr. Robot. And the main character, the actor who plays the main character on Mr. Robot is very good, very interesting character. He is not Mr. Robot. Christian Slater is Mr. Robot. Or is he? I don't know.

I think he is, but I don't know. I don't know i think he is but i don't know i don't know who mr robot is it might be christian slater though so shall we start talking about apple music uh bearing in mind we are 24 hours away from it being available i i hello everybody who listens to this show within a day of it being posted um You two are anticipating Apple Music. And now hello to everybody who will be listening after Apple Music has come out. It hasn't come out yet for us. So I'm finding myself to be quite excited

about tomorrow. It is quite rare that an Apple, a new Apple service of this kind of magnitude launches. And it's quite rare to have it happen kind of out of product cycle, I think. Usually these things tend to go hand in hand

with something else happening. Also, I'm very excited because I'm pretty sure that 8.4 is going to bring Apple Pay in the UK. By the way, I saw the Sex Pistols credit card in an ad in a window. Yeah. I think it's Virgin Money here that's doing them. It is.

Yeah. So that was fun to me to see. So we're kind of, you know, I'm finding myself to be very excited about this. I'm looking forward to checking out the service and seeing what the catalog looks like. I am more excited about Beats 1, and I want to talk about Beats 1 in a little bit. But how do you feel, Jason? Do you have any trepidations for the service? Are you excited about it?

Like, what's your overall feeling right now? I'm looking forward to trying it out. Like I said, I've been a Beats subscriber for the last year and have used that some, although not as much as I had thought. I'm interested to see how Apple has set the music app up to integrate. I think the nice thing about the three-month trial is that we're going to get a better sense of, you know, people who have an

iTunes library will get a better sense of how it all fits together. I'm also interested in seeing how it fits together on iOS and how it works on the Mac. Because that's a big question mark for me is how is this going to work on the Mac? Because Beats doesn't. I mean, it's a web browser window. And I would hope that there's an update to iTunes that enables all of this, but I don't know that for sure. So, yeah, trepidation, I mean, look, I've got nothing invested in it. If it's not any good, it's just not any good. And I'll say so. If it's a work in progress, it'll be a work in progress.

Although I feel like Beats was the work in progress and hopefully they've done something to push it forward beyond what they already did with Beats Music. So I'm interested in the radio, which I know you're going to talk about. I'm interested in Beats 1, although I'm not a big radio person. So in the end, I doubt that I'll be listening to it a lot. That's mostly because when I work, as I've said before, the thing is when I work, I need to listen to music that I know by heart. And that limits the exploration I can do to very specific times. Because if I'm writing, especially, I need to be listening to things that I know well. And so I can't explore then.

And I can't really listen to the radio because it's got people talking and it's got music I haven't heard before. And, you know, it's great to hear new music in the right context, but most of my music listening time is not for exploration because I can't work that way. So I don't know. I guess I'm saying I'm excited about seeing how they built it and integrated it. I may be more excited about the, you know, the app and the interface and things like that than I am about the exploration of the library because there are streaming services now and I subscribe to one. So on that level, I'm just, it's another one.

So it's really about like, what does Apple do differently here? I mean, the only thing that you do have invested in Apple Music is the fact that Beats will stop working. That's true. That's true. But there are other options. I mean, if they ruin it, then I can use Spotify or Rdio or Rhapsody or whatever. I have lots of other options. Also, the music page definitely seems to hint to the fact that iTunes will be updated.

Because it doesn't say explicitly it just says the heart of apple music and home to a universe of entertainment so i assume that that means it is going to be there i mean who knows i mean it doesn't say explicitly i don't know it's just kind of just like hey one of the huge failings of beats music is that it doesn't work you know it doesn't work on the mac except in a browser window and it's lousy it's a lousy flash yeah yeah which is extremely upsetting and plus the web app is just terrible so a couple of things that we now know about the music catalog so because there are still a lot of questions about the music catalog right we have no idea what's going to be in this catalog

tomorrow 1989 is going to be there right so tay have no idea what's going to be in this catalog tomorrow. 1989 is going to be there, right? So Taylor said that 1989 is going to be in there. And then today Dr. Dre's The Chronic is a very famous album, is going to be making its streaming music debut on Apple Music.

How'd they get Dr. Dre? I know, right? That guy. How did they get that guy to agree to this? How did Apple and Beats get Dr. Dre to... The Chronic mic. That is one of my favorite... I can't even say it

on the street. Good for people who want to listen to that album. Good for them. Do you want to know how they got him to agree? They walked down to his cubicle and said, agree. With anti-competitive behavior jason that's how oh taylor swift told them to is the answer so as we sit here right now you know as i say about 24 hours before the launch i expect in the next 24 hours we're going to see a couple more announcements like this We're going to see a couple more announcements like this.

Or at least over today and tomorrow. Some albums or things that are going to find their way into this catalog, which we're expecting. What about the Beatles? Yeah. Well, there was one report that the Beatles were not going to be on the streaming side. And that's the stuff that fascinates me the most about this. how is this going to play out in terms of what is what is streaming and not um and what does that mean for the future of music streaming services where you know like i said earlier are there going to be tiers of things that that are just not on the services because those those the owners of that

content feels like it's premium material that people are going to pay for on their own and that they're not going to just let it be part of the all you can eat pass. That's interesting to me. And then the what's available, will we end up seeing that things are available if you pay and not available on a free tier? Because I know that's what a lot of people want. I think that is what Taylor Swift said that she really wanted. And when she said it wasn't like a super exclusive thing in putting 1989 on Apple Music, I'm unclear whether that means it'll be streaming elsewhere. My understanding has been that one of Taylor Swift's demands was always just don't put it on the free tier, just limit it to pay. And Spotify has resisted that and said, we don't want to differentiate between free and paid based on content. And I know that there are a bunch of people in the music industry who would love that, who would love to be able to say, and that's where we get back to potential cabals and collusion, know, will that happen? Will we see things that are on Apple Music and not on other services with the implication being that the other services don't get them because they aren't, you we going to end up in a place where music catalogs are essentially all there, at least for popular music, not necessarily for other stuff like classical and soundtracks and things like that, but for popular music? Or is it going to be like Netflix where all the really, really great new stuff you can't get? are going to be like netflix where all the really really great new stuff you can't get um talking about netflix um have you seen uh about netflix uk's first original

have you heard about this it's called the crown um and it's going it's basically going to be telling the story it's going to be over multiple seasons of Queen Elizabeth and her relationship with different prime ministers. Ah. And the first season has Claire Foy from Walthall will be playing Queen Elizabeth II. John Lithgow will be playing Winston Churchill. And Matt Smith will be playing the Duke of Edinburgh Doctor Who's own Matt Smith Indeed

Interesting, so is that going to be I assume that'll be worldwide but it's being produced in the UK Yeah, it's just Netflix UK It's like the UK arm of the production company I guess Interesting Because we get all of the US stuff

I talked about this somewhere I think it might have actually been on the aforementioned TV talk machine company, I guess. Interesting. Because we get all of the US stuff. We get 100% of it. I talked about this somewhere. I think it might've actually been on the aforementioned TV talk machine. I think we might've gotten a letter from somebody asking if Netflix would use sort of UK production at some point. And it's really smart that they've got this worldwide distribution, but why not produce a show in the UK for Netflix? And then the UK Netflix people would get it, but so would everybody else. And that's a cool idea. The Crown. Yeah, it's based on a play called The Audience.

I'm very excited about this. And they're already planning for it to be multiple seasons and they'll have different actors and actresses in each season to portray the different ages that people were at. I like the idea. One of the things that I was really happy to learn when I was in the UK this year is that UK Netflix people love these Netflix originals because they just are there on day one. And so much TV gets delayed and it's, well, this broadcaster is going to get it in your

region, but not for a few months. And when I was visiting James Thompson up in Scotland, they were talking about how Daredevil was going to drop, and it was just going to be there. Just the same day it was in the U.S., it was going to be in the U.K., and that's really nice. That makes you, I think, that much happier as a Netflix subscriber to have. They just don't kid around. They just drop the shows and say, here they are, have them. But this, you know, all of this stuff just further solidifies where Netflix sees themselves in five years. And it's HBO. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's not a provider of other people's content. And it's genius. It's a genius move. You build up this catalog of shows that makes it that make it worth the seven eight nine ten dollars a month or whatever it is right the fact that those shows are there make it worth it and the original shows some movies that have come by recent ish lee and um and then like a catalog of older stuff that's floating around there but that that yeah that's

catalog of older stuff that's floating around there but that that yeah that's absolutely very hbo like smart um so let's let's take a second break and then we'll talk a bit about beats one okay so this week's episode of upgrade is also brought to you by the new mexico tea company oh yes indeed that's the new sorry that was the new sponsor horn i blew up there thank you very much for that for over five was the new sponsor horn I blew up there. I like that. Thank you very much for that. For over five years, the New Mexico Tea Company has been sourcing fantastic loose-leaf tea from all over the world for its customers. They discover and import great teas, but they also make some themselves.

The New Mexico Tea Company is focused on making excellent teas available to people all around the world. They have a regular store where you can go and buy some of the tea you like or even buy some equipment you may want to upgrade your tea setup with. But they also have their Tea of the Month Club. This is a fantastic thing to try out, and it's something that I think you should take a look at because each month, the New Mexico Tea Company will send you a brand new tea to try out.

It costs $19.99 a month, so $19.99 a month, which will get three different teas that will last you around 50 cups in total. You can choose to receive pure tea or herbal tea, and if you have two people in the household, you can get double the tea for just $29.99, so an extra $10. By subscribing to the Tea of the Month Club, not only will you always have excellent tea at home, you'll also be broadening your horizons and trying some new high-grade specialty teas too now the fine folks over at

the new mexico tea company sent both me and jason uh some tea to try out and i have some right here i have been drinking and enjoying um what do we have the lucky summer which is very interesting. It has, is it Rooibos? How do you say that? I don't, we'd have to ask Rene Ritchie because that's a South African thing. We'll go with Rooibos tea. Peach, fruit, lemongrass, spearmint and peppermint, which sounds like, I picked this one out

because it's the most peculiar of concoctions, but it's delicious. I've been enjoying it a lot. And also, I mean, I've got a whole selection of things here. One other tea that I've, oh, I'm absolutely in love with is called the Cream Earl Grey. Oh, I had that. That was very nice. Oh my, it's very tasty. I like, but don't love Earl Grey, and that Cream Earl Grey is really good. So I checked, this is their number one seller. Oh yeah. That's not surprising.

So I got some tea from New Mexico Tea Company as well. They sent me some samples like they sent to you and then actually WWDC week I had David Lohr and Dan Warren staying with us for a few days and they're both tea drinkers so we went through a lot of the teas and

by the end of the week I was running out of the Canadian breakfast black tea, the English breakfast black tea, the Irish breakfast black tea. I wanted more tea. So not only did I rip through a lot of their samplers that they sent me, but I actually went to the New Mexico Tea Company website and bought a pound of tea. Actually, several pounds, but they come in like a pound. You can get loose tea up to a pound bag. And so I'm not just somebody who has sent samples,

but I liked it so much that I went back and placed an order for more. And I am fueled this morning by the English breakfast from the New Mexico Tea Company. Very good. I've been enjoying it a lot. I've been trying a couple of things. That cream Earl Grey is amazing. It's Earl Grey with vanilla. It's just incredible.

Because I like coffee, but I drink one coffee in the morning and I don't like to drink any more coffee in the day. I like to have one coffee because it really gives me a kick, like too much that I wouldn't want to have a second. But tea, whilst caffeinated and doesn't doesn't really pump me up as much as coffee does so i've been enjoying like a second caffeinated beverage in a day and i've been exclusively drinking goods from the new mexico tea company yes so we have an amazing offer for you if you use the code upgrade at checkout you will get 25

off for the first three months of your Tea of the Month Club membership. So that brings the price down to $14.99 for the first three months. Or if you're just looking to buy some one-off items, that code's going to get you free shipping. Members always get free shipping. And don't forget, and they want you to know this, that if you sign up for their Tea of the Month Club, you can feel free to cancel at any time. It doesn't lock you into any commitments.

I think that these guys have an absolutely fantastic variety of tea. I want you to go and check them out. This is a really, really nice thing to do. It's something a little bit different, and I've been enjoying it a lot. So if you go to, this is the URL, so bear with me here because it's a mouthful to say on the air. It's easy to read, but it's a mouthful to say. So it's N-M-T.

So hang on. I need to spell the whole thing. N-M-T-E-AMTACO.com slash upgrade. So it's the NMTCO.com slash upgrade. So NMTACO.com slash upgrade. And you're going to find everything that you like there. Of course, the link will be in the show notes. Thank you so much to New Mexico Tea Company for sponsoring this episode. More importantly, thanks to all of you as well that go to their site and try out their products because that helps support this show. So if you enjoy what we do,

go and check their stuff out. Tasty, tasty tea. Black tea, herbal tea, green tea, all the teas. They have all the different kinds too. I love the black tea, but they've got all the different kinds. Would you say all the great tea?

All the great tea. In fact, Marco, I believe when he was here, when we had our little party, had their green tea. And we had a, we had a, and green tea, you need to steep at a different temperature. So we got up like the probe thermometer and all that. And the next day, Lauren said to me, that's the first time I've ever seen somebody use a probe thermometer to, to, to make tea. I said, well, I think normally green tea people like put it on a boil and then have it sit for five minutes or something and then pour it or something. But I don't know how to do that. I don't drink green tea. So, yeah. NMTco.com.

Mmm, tasty. So, Beats 1. Can we just talk about tea some more, Mike? Sure, if you want to. We'll start the tea cast in a in a while beats one so i wanted to talk with you about beats one because you are one of the people who has been i think the most excited that i've talked to about beats one because of zane low uh you were so excited when uh he was hired by apple and this is and he has been a big part, apparently, of putting this product, Beats 1 Worldwide Streaming Radio Channel, together. So apparently the idea for Beats 1 came from the mind of Trent Reznor. And he was, I think from the quotes that I've read, seemed it was kind of like a what if we could do this and what would it be like

kind of experiment like let's try this and see if it would work because his his thinking was like can uh can a radio station exist in today's music world um like can you do it because people are now used to choosing so much music can a a singular focused mind create content that people want to listen to? So they obviously set out on this journey and found the man for the job, Zane Lowe. So I've mentioned it before. Zane Lowe, I believe, yeah, he's from New Zealand. And he has been in the UK for many, many years working for the BBC Radio 1. He has been in the UK for many, many years working for the BBC Radio 1.

And he has been known as one of the best interviewers in music. His interviews are just incredible. Just go onto YouTube, type in Zane Lowe, maybe your favourite artist of maybe the last 10 or 15 years. There's probably an interview with them. If there is, I guarantee it's going to be fantastic. And actually, his first interview on Beats 1, which I'm he i did we didn't know if he was going to be doing this but he is and he's going to be interviewing eminem yeah i think the interview has been done because

they've released some photos uh but we'll we'll find out what kind of what it's about and what's going to happen now i'm really excited to see a little bit more of that and to hear a little bit more of that as well. So that's going to be part of the whole Beats 1 thing. See, I just did your little Google test, but it doesn't work for me because he's from New Zealand. And so, of course, Zane Lowe and Neil Finn from Crowded House have done like a billion things together and did a fundraiser for the earthquake and stuff like that.

But you win. You win. Zane lowe has he's interviewed everyone um so i'm excited that they're going to be doing that in a big place to start with m&m and i put a link to the verge they had a little write-up about it and they they embedded the video of uh his interview with m&m on radio one so you can kind of get a flair for what's going to be there but so some of but what i've found out about in the last week or so that i'm most excited about is the programming in general so beats one launches the same basically an hour after the ios update which is crazy that they are doing it this way um because you everyone will want to be tuning in, right, to that first broadcast. There's a bunch of stuff that we don't know yet,

like if the broadcast will be available on demand or anything like that. Because it's not just going to be kind of Zayn and Julie Adenuga and Ebro Dardan. I don't know Ebro at all. I believe that he's the guy who's going to be based in LA while Julia Adenuga who's been on the radio here for many years

and different guys is going to be based in London and then Zane is based in San Francisco maybe Ebro's in New York or something I don't know but anyway so as well as the three of them just playing

what's new in music They have tapped up a bunch of musicians To have their own programming So Pharrell is going to have his own show Dr. Dre Disclosure who are great Oh they got Dr. Dre for Beats 1 too?

Yeah that guy He's all over this service Can't believe they got Dre The one that I'm the most excited about is Elton John Yep Yeah, that guy. That guy. He's all over this service. And also... Can't believe it got Dre. The one that I'm the most excited about is Elton John. Yep. And the show... This is the one that's getting the most press.

It's going to be called Elton John's Rocket Hour, which is just so incredible. I don't know... Again, if people don't know much about Elton John, they might not know why this is significant other than the fact that he is a popular musician. Elton John is considered to be one of the world's biggest music fans. I've read reports and interviews of him and stuff. He buys, I've heard, this is probably an exaggeration, but gives an idea, all of the singles in a week, just listens to them all.

the singles in a week just listens to them all and i've you know there are a bunch of stories of new artists especially in the uk who will say that like very early on in their career they received a phone call from elton john to for him to tell them how much he liked their music this is a very frequent um story in young artists in the uk like so he will find you and he will give you a telephone call and say how much he enjoys and we'll talk to them about their music. So, and this apparently Elton John's Rocket Hour is going to feature new and classic stuff. And I am very excited to hear what the programming schedule is like because that's one that I will never want to miss.

And this is exciting to me as an idea to create content like this, which is unmissable today. And if, so I would like them to have a on-demand service for this stuff, but in a way I kind of don't want them to do it because I think it would be a lot more powerful if Apple able to create something that makes people tune into something at a specific hour and i think even you could even get a notification right yep i'm sure they'll be

crazy if they didn't but just that that idea is very romantic right all of beats one is a very romantic like you know nostalgic idea but if they you know if you can imagine people all sitting down at like 8pm on a Tuesday and tuning in to Elton John's Rocket Hour if that's what it's going to be for example. So isn't the idea of Beats 1

completely contrary to the idea behind Apple Music in that one is your choice everything on demand and the other is a stream of other people's choices that you just have to turn on and listen to? Do they fit at all? Or are they opposites? Or are they complementary? The reason I think this is because part of what is said to make Apple Music great is the curation. And so if you imagine completely your choice, in the middle you have curation like beats does

with the playlists and the artists you should check out and on the other side of that is complete curation you have no choice over so you imagine so you've got the two opposites you've got completely your choice completely not your choice and in the middle is suggested curation that you can pick from so i think with with apple music they are spanning all of the different ways in which you can consume music i think i'm doing a better job of explaining this than they did so you can kind of imagine at this point that what you have is any way you like to consume music this can be presented to you and you can also find out about new things in different ways whether that be through listening to beats one or by listening to the music that is suggested to you

by looking in your music library which is part human creation because you know people are putting together the playlists then there's a computer that looks at what you listen to and suggests this human creator playlist to you so i think that doing this, they're kind of spanning it all. I have a couple of reactions to this that I wanted to mention. One is, so we have satellite radio in our minivan and the bit rate is so, it sounds so terrible, but it's really cheap and convenient

when you're making a long car ride, which we're actually going to be doing several of in the next couple of weeks. But it is, so it, but it's, you know, it's radio, it's like this, it's curated. But one of the things that always, that always strikes me about it in the modern age is how having data with us wherever we go is going to make something like satellite radio kind of irrelevant, I feel like, because eventually you'll just be able to listen to the internet, anything, anywhere, and you won't need that stuff transmitted by a satellite and there'll be more choices. I think it's interesting that

Beats 1 is that, and it's not the first internet radio station, but it is like a major commercial radio station being launched just on the internet. And I think that's interesting. The other point I wanted to make is you mentioned about these being events. I wonder if there's a feeling like if you missed it, you got a short period of time where you can listen, but then it kind of goes away. Because that would be maybe a way to split the difference where, yes, we would like everybody to listen live, but that's not realistic. So we'll give people, you know, essentially a catch-up service for a short period of time and then it'll go away. I don't know. i kind of have this um i mean one of the reasons that i hope that that they do do that is depending on how they broadcast this some shows are not going to be listened be listenable a certain hours to different

people right but there is also a potential where in the idea of worldwide that they time shift a lot of these things we don't know yet like will it be 12 p.m local time that something is played or will it be 12 p.m san francisco time whatever that time is for you around the world yeah i don't know if they've said that it's going to be live yet so you know there are a bunch of different ways that this kind of stuff can be done. And so Beats 1 is the thing that I'm the most excited about for this reason. But I do kind of have this, like, fantasy idea of it. Let's say that, you know, Elton John's Rocket Hour is at 8 p.m. Pacific time. And that's the time it is, right? So I listen to it at whatever time that will be, on Godly Hour in the morning or something.

Let's just say, for example's sake. And I imagine people on Twitter commenting about the music that's being played. Like, there is just this idea to me of how nice that would be if people, you know, a show, any show on Beats 1 becomes popular enough that a bunch of your friends listen to it as well and you can comment it about it on social media in the same way that people talk about tv shows in real time when they're being broadcast and i think that there would be something very nice in that

for music which which i'm excited about um my only concern is we have a lot of celebrities here. How are Apple going to make sure that these shows are maintained? Right. Like there are a lot of people with extremely busy schedules. And I wonder if they've put these people in contracts or they're in goodwill agreements or like how this is going to be done.

Because if Dre's show becomes super popular, but Dre has more important things to do, well then again, I guess these days he's just an Apple executive, so he can do whatever. He's probably just working on products and music streaming service deals. But you get my point, like Pharrell, for example.

When Pharrell goes on a tour, does his show stop? How are they going to manage that? And I'm interested to see how that stuff's going to work. Maybe, although also you've got to keep in mind that a lot of radio programming, somebody comes in for a day and records weeks worth of material

because they don't necessarily have to sit there and listen to the song, right? They know where their songs are playing and they know when they need to talk and they record those bits and then it all gets programmed. And unless Apple is going against that and they know and they know when they need to talk and they record those bits and then it all gets programmed and you know unless apple is going against that and they're like no no elton john's gonna sit there for the entire hour and he's gonna listen to the music and they could do that too you know it's running a radio station i i think presumably they've got

people in place who are doing the beats one thing who are essentially you know radio station uh executive types maybe in a good way not a bad way way, but still, that know how to do this. Or maybe it's limited run, you know, they've got them for 10 weeks, and then, you know, Pharrell will go off, but somebody else will come on. We'll have to see. It'll be interesting, given that it's worldwide and it's Apple, it will have more scrutiny than a lot of other, you know, radio stations or other kind of things would have.

But this is, you know, Beats 1, Beats. They really made the right deal with this acquisition because that brand is so perfect for this. You're very excited about this, aren't you? I'm really excited about this. This is the thing that I'm most excited about, about Apple Music. Because streaming is streaming. I've had streaming music on my phone for years.

This is something slightly different and it's something that excites me. All right. I can tell. Yeah. I can tell. It's going to be really sad when Apple hires you away from Relay

to Mastermind Beats 4. I'll take the job. Okay. There aren't many jobs I'll take the job. Okay. There aren't many jobs I would take, but that's one I would consider. In case Apple's listening. They're not listening. They're not listening, no. But if they were...

If they were. Okay, so you took receipt I think just after the show yesterday? Yesterday? Last week? Last week. Last week.

During the show last week. Was it actually during? Well, we had so many technical problems that it was actually in between time. Yes, during the show last week. So you took receipt of a refurbished iPad Air 2 of which you have loaded iOS 9 on it and I'm wondering how you feel well it's a beta, it's beta 2 it's early, things don't entirely work

third party apps have issues but it's been fun to play with it I have an iPad mini mini 2 I guess technically it fun. I have an iPad mini, so mini two, I guess, technically. It's the Retina, first Retina iPad mini. So having the larger iPad has been interesting. I like it. I'm tempted to switch back to the larger iPad from the smaller iPad because I do like the big screen. The multitasking, the problem with the multitasking and the slide over is that it only works in the Apple apps right now. There are no third party apps in beta that support it.

TestFlight, I believe, doesn't let you have iOS 9 apps in TestFlight at this point. Not yet anyway. So I haven't been able to test that stuff out yet, which is, you know, that's the stuff I really want to do. I want to get Twitterific running in slide over. But, you know, the picture-in-picture thing kind of blew me away. I was playing a movie just, you know, from iTunes in the corner of the screen while having the Notes app open and then switching to a different app, and the movie just kept playing. And I thought, okay, that's going to be big because I know a lot of people who work that way, who they just set something running.

And then they go about their business while the video plays and they kind of half pay attention to it. And that's really nice. So, you know, San Francisco font takes some getting used to, but I think is pretty. The app switcher I'm really liking. It's with like the stack of cards instead of the boxes sort of next to each other. That's pretty nice. Beta 1 was kind of a mess, but Beta 2 actually seems to be much more stable.

But, you know, it's a beta. I've been enjoying it. I downloaded an app that's a newsstand app, and it's not in the newsstand because there's no newsstand. That was kind of fun. And yeah, the new keyboard is good. The idea that you can tell whether it's upper or lowercase because it actually will show you if the shift key is pressed. It shows you the uppercase letters. The shift key is not pressed. It doesn't. It shows you the lowercase letters. I like that.

uppercase letters. The shift key's not pressed. It doesn't. It shows you the lowercase letters. I like that. That's pretty nice. But yeah, but for me, the huge thing and the one that I can't test yet because it's just too early is how third-party apps are going to run. Because the third-party app ecosystem is so important to when you're talking about productivity with an iPad that you really want to have your favorite third-party apps available in split screen or slide over, um, or picture in picture, right? I mean, I can't take Netflix or major league baseball and put those in picture in picture yet either. Um, only, only things that can play in Safari or in the, in the video app. So, um, it's early days, but I'm but I'm encouraged by it. These are really cool features.

It is a trip to have Safari and the Notes app open side by side and be able to scroll both of them and have the keyboard slide up, and you end up in this weird position where you have to think about where your insertion point is because your insertion point is in one of the apps, not the other app. The keyboard covers both, but you're only typing into one of them. So it's a little weird, but I'm not sure there's any better way to do it. I wouldn't want a partial keyboard to slide up over one of the apps. That would be no good.

You want to take the full, the full space of it. So yeah, I'm, I'm getting used to it. But it's been a lot of fun to, to try it out. And, you know, I'm looking forward to the third party apps. I feel like that's the big, the big missing piece here. And that's nobody's fault. I mean, the developers have to work on it. Apple has to support it. Getting betas of new apps on the new os version is always difficult before the os launches but um but so far so good i would say um i am very excited about some of these things like the picture in picture stuff is really cool and and i look forward to having that in apps like youtube right i'm assuming i'm just going to assume they're going to put it in there.

I assume. And I also, like you, am anticipating third-party applications and how they work and how they will work with the multitasking stuff because it is super cool, but I really, really want more apps to be able to use it with, you know?

And so I'm excited. I think that this is great, like, for the iPad. This is great to have this stuff. There is still, you know, as you say, San Francisco font kind of makes it feel a little bit like Bizarro Land. It's just a little weird to see that because it doesn't seem quite right. It's just a little weird to see that because it doesn't seem quite right. Oh, and I should say the two-finger cursor movement thing is also pretty weird and great. Yeah.

Once you work out how to not select text, right? Right. And just move it around. It's like you have to tap and then drag to select text. Tap basically toggles between selection and non-selection. Once you work that out, which took me a few minutes, you're good to go. So yeah, I'm excited for this.

There are, you know, there's a lot more in there for the iPad than there is for the iPhone. But nevertheless, I'm excited to see how we go in September with this and maybe there'll be more to talk about between now and then

but for today's episode we should get into some Ask Upgrade and that means a message from our good friends over at MailRoute Yes, Ask Upgrade this week as usual brought to you by MailRoute

Imagine a world without spam, viruses or bounced email Who could bring you that world? Ask Upgrade this week, as usual, brought to you by MailRoute. Imagine a world without spam, viruses, or bounced email. Who could bring you that world? The answer is email nerds, people who live and breathe email, people who care about email more than anything else. And that's the people who founded MailRoute. These are the people at MailRoute. They are email experts.

And what they've set up with MailRoute is a cloud-based service that protects your server, not just your mailbox, but your entire mail server from the evil, evil people who send terrible email through the internet. The way it works is you point your MX record, which is the thing in the domain name system that says, send all the email to this computer. And then that computer has to take everything in that anyone tries to send to it. You point that at MailRoute. MailRoute takes it in. They use their intelligence software to determine whether it's good mail or bad mail. The bad mail gets put in a holding bin. The good mail then gets delivered to your mail server. So your mail server has much less load. It's getting a lot less email.

has much less load. It's getting a lot less email. It's getting a lot less connections from weird servers that are trying to see if they can figure out what the available email accounts are on that server. That stuff doesn't happen. MailRoute is in the way. MailRoute stops them and blocks them from attaching to your server. So all your server gets and all your inbox gets is good mail. You don't have to maintain any hardware or software. MailRoute does the sorting and delivering for you. It's easy to set up. It's super easy to set up, and it is reliable. I've been using it for a couple of years. I found it incredibly reliable. Big universities and corporations trust it. It's super easy to use. I get an email once a day that says, here's what MailRoute filtered out. With one click, if something was mis-filtered,

I can deliver it and have that person whitelisted, and so their mail will pass through forever more. And if you're an email administrator or an IT professional, they've got all the tools that you need. There's an API for easy account management and support for all of your favorite email-related buzzwords, including LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, mailbagging, outbound relay, everything you would want from the people who handle your mail. Start a risk-free trial today, no credit card required. You sign up and change those MX records to point at MailRoute instead of your server, and then your mailbox and hardware are completely protected. It's simple and effective. There's no reason not to try it. And all listeners to Upgrade can receive 10% off for the lifetime of your account. Go to mailroute.net slash upgrade now. That's mailroute.net slash upgrade. And thank you to MailRoute for sponsoring Ask Upgrade.

So our first Ask Upgrade question this week comes from Jeff. Jeff says, one of the best parts of the Ask Upgrade is waiting for you, for me, and how I will say mailbagging as I just did. Would you like to explain it sometime? I fear that this might have just been something that got lost along the way as we've been doing this for so long. We did explain it. Somebody did send us a link explaining what mailbagging is. bagging is. And it sounds like mail bagging is a system where if a server is unreachable, the mail is queued up in a mail bag, essentially, and then delivered to the server once the server comes back online. So the idea there would be that MailRoute supports this so that if your

server goes down, MailRoute would be able to hold onto the mail and then deliver it later. But I'm not an email expert, but that's my understanding about more or less what mailbagging is. It's a service that lets you collect mail and then send it all off in a batch in order to improve reliability. And maybe more importantly, the reason that I say mailbagging in a new and more and more exciting way every single week is purely because the first time that mail route sponsored us many many many months ago now uh when jason said mailbagging i just laughed well i think we both i think we both did because we didn't know what it was and it sounded funny and that is the

literally the only reason and we also got feedback from somebody who said that they're tired of us uh saying mailbagging, which we're not going to stop, but we promise not to explain it every week. It's a subtle. It'll be subtle. Yes. It's a little Easter egg for those people who are kind enough to listen to our sponsors, which we appreciate because Mike and I support ourselves through podcasting.

So we appreciate you listening to our sponsors. Bartek would like to know, does the new spotlight search in El Capitan show, like for example, show me my documents I worked on last week, also allow search by location? Jason, do you know this? I don't know this.

I'm looking forward to learning more about El Capitan. I haven't spent a lot of time with it, but I'm hoping that as we get closer to the public beta release that I'll have more to say about it. I'm not sworn to secrecy about it right now. I honestly don't know. And I think one of the things about the new search features is that they're evolving as the betas are evolving, too. It would be nice. Although I have to ask Bartek, do you mean searching by the location on your hard drive or by the location of where the files were made?

Because that would be funny. It's like what picture documents I worked on when my laptop was at work. I don't think those get saved. I don't think it's geotagging your file. So I don't know. That would be nice if you could say like in the project folder. But I'm not sure it can do that. I'll let you know.

I've got a lot more time I need to spend with El Capitan. Tim has asked, since you have both done scripted podcasts now, what are your methods or thoughts on how to get the ideas that you have to a spoken language script? One of the best ways that I found, when I was really stuck,

I would just fire up Siri and dictate. Because my thinking was, this is eventually going to come back out of my mouth again. Why don't I start by saying it, and then I can edit it and then refine it and then speak it again. And when I was really stuck, that would really, really help me.

I guess what I would say is calling it outlining is probably overstating it. But what I tried to do was I was thinking of points I wanted to hit and topics I wanted to cover. And since I had a bunch of interviews, what I did was I wrote a script. It started as not a script. It started as a collection of quotes about the different topics. So I knew what order I wanted to cover the topics, and I knew what my interviewees had said about those topics. And that's where I started. And I knew those topics sort of going into the interviews, although some of the interviews went in directions that were unexpected, but I generally knew sort of what I wanted to cover. I wouldn't call it an outline. It's not like I sat down and had a whole big outline, but I knew some issues. And then I collected the interviews and had them

transcribed and collected what they said about the different topics together. And then I actually went into a script writing program and I sat there and I wrote a script and I didn't read it out. I just typed it because I'm comfortable doing that because I write a lot. That's what I do. And that's how I did it is I ended up sort of writing what I was going to say and copying and pasting in the parts of what my subjects were saying that I knew I wanted to use and writing what I needed to, to bridge that material. So, um, I would say, you know, not really an outline, but, uh, having a loose structure. And then, and then for me, I, I would, I was writing what I was going to say, typing it instead of, uh, reading it like Mike.

The majority, uh, of the scripts that i wrote i i did write the same way that you did but when i got really stuck uh i would go to to dictation and just talk that that there's something there's something to that i mean i i at one point thought that maybe what i should do is just uh press record and talk and just see what happens and if anything good came out then like go back to that and and play it back and write it down press record and talk and just see what happens. And if anything good came out, then like go back to that and play it back and write it down, which is similar.

Robert asked, could Jason and Mike randomly turn off Dan Morin's lights once an episode? Jason? Alexa, turn off the light. So yes. And finally from Jim, this is my favorite ever. We're having our second child today and don't yet know the sex. What's your guess?

Jim, it's a girl. It's a girl, Jim. Congratulations to Jim and partner on the birth of their second child today. birth of their second child today and i hope that jim will allow us will permit us to to uh give some follow-up uh next week onto the sex of his child dan moran left our chat room like a minute before that ask upgrade question he maybe he knew he was warned it was coming not by me spies we'll see oh well we'll get you next time Morin next time thank you so much for listening to this week's

episode of Upgrade if you'd like to find show notes for today's episode you can point your web browser at relay.fm upgrade 43 or they will be in your podcast app of choice if they observe the sanctity of show notes in the correct and proper way.

If you'd like to find Jason online, you can do that at sixcolors.com, and he is on Twitter at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. Do you have any other social networks that you would like to promote, Jason? No. Find me on Twitter. Find him on Twitter, and I am I-Mike, I-M-Y-K-E. If you want to look on a social network and I am there then I will be using that name so you can find me on that one and thanks again

to our lovely sponsors for this week's episode the great people over at MailRoute the New Mexico Tea Company and Stamps.com if you enjoy the show please take a moment check out their products and purchase from any and all of them because it will help support this podcast

that you love so much. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Mr. Snow. Goodbye, everybody.