Upgrade - 44: Tap the Ellipses

Episode Date: July 6, 2015

The pros and cons of Apple’s relationship with the web development community, our first week with Apple Music and Beats 1, Jason doesn’t go to Comic-Con, and the first Upgrade Baby is born.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 44 today's show is brought to you by lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses that are created by industry experts hover simplify domain management and fracture photos printed in vivid color directly on glass my name is mike hurley and i am joined as always from an undisclosed californian location by mr jason snell as i'm in a different different undisclosed california location hello from sunny and warm southern california mike how is it there uh even when it's foggy here it's warm which it puts it one up on the bay area where when it's foggy it is not warm here when it's foggy it's actually warm so it's been nice we were in uh uh my wife and i went down to san diego for a couple of days it's sort of it's the week

before comic-con so they're putting up all the comic-con banners and things but i'd always dreamed all the times i'd gone to comic-con i've'd been to Comic-Con in San Diego like three out of the last five years, something like that. I always, I would walk around with just the throngs of people and trying to get from one place to another and think, this is really nice. If there were less people here and if my wife was with me, this would make a nice vacation. would make a nice vacation and finally i put my dream into reality and and we went down for a couple of days this week and just were in san diego without the kids and left the kids with grandma and grandpa and had a really nice time so that was like a little mini mini summer vacation and san diego is beautiful and it is even more beautiful when there are not thousands of people surrounding you at comic-con so yeah that was nice and now i'm back in greater la area um and we're heading headed

back home after after this program in fact we will we will be heading home you're not going to comic-con no i'm not going to comic-con this year i i you know it is huge it is too big and although i can glean some things from it i decided uh well first off i you have to requalify every couple of years for a press pass and i'm not entirely sure I would have gotten one this year. And when you qualify, it was like right in the wake of me leaving Macworld, and I had this sort of like, you know, do I want to bother? And I just decided after last year that I didn't want to go this year. It was too crazy, and I didn't get enough out of it. I started going, honestly, because of the iPad. Because comics and the iPad seemed like a natural

fit. And so when Apple, the first year that Apple came out with the iPad, 2010, I went to Comic-Con, talked to the comiXology people, talked to the iVerse people, talked to a bunch of publishers, went to a bunch of sessions. And it was a moment in time when the comics industry was really trying to figure out, how do you use these devices to create comics? How do you use these devices for people to read comics? Can you, you know, what does that do for traditional like comic book sellers that people are getting these things digitally? It was a really interesting time.

Last year when I went, I feel like it's just part of the culture now. It's settled. Yeah, yeah. People have figured it out. They figured out, yes, it is good. And you can make comics with these devices and you can read them and people

buy them digitally and the comic book stores are still doing okay the ones that have survived have survived for other reasons and it's fine um so amazon has tied that market all up with a nice little bow yeah well they have um i actually did a piece on six colors a couple weeks ago because they did an app update and i got to talk to their actually i talked i talked to their ceo uh david steinberger who's the CEO of Comixology and he's basically the head of comic books for Amazon too so I think they've got some big plans to bring

some of their good comic technology over to the Kindle app at some point they haven't announced anything and they haven't told me anything secretly either it's just speculation but it seems like it makes sense because the Kindle stuff isn't as good as the Comixology stuff is in terms of a reading experience. But anyway, while I was talking to him about their app update, he mentioned that he had been listening to our podcast at one point, which was pretty fun.

So if he's out there, hello, David Steinberger of Comixology. But yeah, it's sort of settled now. And so for me, I never wanted to wait in line for five hours to see people far away on a panel for 40 minutes. And so I found interesting panels to go to, and interesting people to talk to, but it was a lot less appealing than it was right when this was a real question about how people were going to react to it. And I was coming to write about things, not just to wander around and that plus being independent, I had to make some decisions about it. And I thought,

yeah, it's not for me. Maybe, maybe I'll do it again. Although the size it's so unwieldy that it's actually kind of difficult to go to, um, for that,

but it does, you know, it, it, it was fun and San Diego is beautiful. So I was happy to go to San Diego, even though I did it pre-Comic-Con this year. I always thought I would like to go, but over time, my desire has gone away. You know, it's fun, but it's a spectacle, and I think it's oversized.

Yeah, that's why, because it just looks too unwieldy. Yeah, I've heard good things about the New York Comic Con, which is also huge. It's a similar size. I think the difference is there's a little less... See, at San Diego Comic Con, they say it's celebrating the popular arts, and there's some truth to that. I mean, a lot of what's there is movies and TV shows doing promotion. It's not just comics anymore. It's movies, TV shows, video games, lots of other stuff. It's a pop culture convention, basically. And it's kind of an overstuffed bag now.

So, you know, maybe something like, maybe, yeah, maybe you should go to, like, the New York Comic Con or something. I'm sure there's a really cool equivalent of that in London somewhere. There is. And I think the smaller scale might actually benefit that event to not have the insanity of the large scale

yeah there is a London Comic Con I've just not been I keep missing it it's one of those things you know like every I'm like oh I'll go to that and then it just I just miss it every single time I miss it but it looks like fun I see in October so maybe I'll maybe I should just get tickets and actually

go this time yeah yeah it, it's fun. I mean, I went to a couple conventions when I was a kid, and then only in the last few years have I been to more sci-fi and comic conventions. They're kind of fun. I wouldn't say they're

absolutely my bag. Actually, my favorite thing about them is meeting interesting people. Not waiting in lines and not big crowds. Those are not my favorite things. But I mean, the reason I go, the number one reason I go to the Doctor Who convention in LA every year now is because I know like 15 people who go to it every year, and it's my chance to see them. And I honestly don't even need a ticket to the event, because I could just stand in the lobby and have a good time talking to the people i know mostly podcasters actually so anyway anyway it's a fun little subculture to to for me

to sort of dip in and out of and and uh but i'm happy to every year that i go i think why am i here and every year that i don't go now that i since i went the first time the years that i haven't gone i look at it and i'm like, oh, Comic-Con, I'm not there. You know, and I do feel a little bit of that, like, but I, you know, I'm not there this year. But after last year, I was like, I got to take a year off at least. Should we address some follow-up? Yeah, let's do some, let's do some follow-up. up so interestingly in the time that uh we since last episode to this episode we were talking about we were talking about antitrust and the ebook case came up and it basically with a couple of days ago

the u.s court of appeals uh upheld the 2013 decision that apple was guilty of conspiring with publishers so basically apple had an appeal uh which has now been shut down and they will have to pay the $450 million fine. So it kind of, I think, puts this to bed now. Yeah, we got, when we were talking about this earlier, last week, we got some feedback from a few people who are like, very much in Apple's camp on this and said, no, there's no proof

that Apple was involved in collusion and you should report the real story and not just assume the worst of Apple and all that. And my response was, I believe that Steve Jobs and Apple got the publishers together and banded them together to push back on Amazon. And I think quite validly and rightly, but that my understanding and my belief of what went on, that's illegal collusion. And although, you know, they were, I think, doing it, you know, not for altruistic reasons, but doing it to push back against another opponent, and it really was competition. You know, this court ruling makes it very clear that as far as the U.S. court system is concerned,

Apple did this. It's settled. The appeal is passed. It's a done deal. Yep. So you kind of just have to lean to that and be like, well, that's that then. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like Apple, I've said this before, and it's always tricky when you're talking about Steve Jobs because, you know, Steve Jobs, I think you just give it as a given. It's like, look, Steve Jobs, we all know all the great things about Steve Jobs. I think you'd just give it as a given. It's like, look, Steve Jobs, we all know all the great things about Steve Jobs. But one of the issues with Steve Jobs is he believed that sometimes there were things he wanted to do that weren't legal, and he didn't care. That was part of his personality. And you saw it in parking in handicapped spots. And you saw it in making secret deals to not hire employees from other tech companies,

which is also illegal. And you saw it, I think, in the eBooks case where he thought, and again, you can see the motivation of it. You can totally understand why he would say that, which is, you know, we got to break Amazon here because they've got a stranglehold on this market. But what he did, you know, I would say, and I think the courts have said, wasn't legal. Maybe it was the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, but it was also collusion with the leaders of the publishing industry. So I think that's a case where I would hope that we talk a lot about the new Apple. This is one of those cases where maybe the new Apple is less inclined to do the all-out nuclear patent war with Samsung and stuff like this. I feel that's

one of those areas where Steve Jobs was just so in control of that company that he would get mad about something or get his mindset on something. And it didn't matter if all of his advisors and his lawyers were saying, no, no, don't, that he would just do it, because that was him. I think history has shown that Steve had a very much by any means necessary

kind of... Yeah, well, he was a rebellious guy, right? And sometimes I think, yes, he was... I was going to say say shoot first ask questions later but that's not entirely right it's it's uh whatever it takes ask it's ask forgiveness not permission right yeah the fly in the pirate flag even as a huge company i think i think that's where he lost some perspective where you know i believe that he really believed that the

non-compete stuff where they agreed not to hire away other people from other tech companies and the other tech companies agreed the same, which is illegal. I think he really did believe that that was doing the best thing for Apple and didn't think of the fact that he was preventing people from furthering their careers and stifling their salaries. I don't think he thought that. But, you know, the fact is, I think that's what happened. I think that he just didn't have that perspective because he was focused on what he was focused on. And, you know, I just think that's who he was.

He was focused on very particular things and didn't really care if somebody got in his way and would say, that's just bureaucracy or that's just, you're just worried about us getting sued, but you know, I don't care. This is the right thing to do. And, you know, I think that's the, all the Samsung patent stuff and, and, and the Android patent stuff in general, I think it's the same thing. It's the go, let's go nuclear on them. And everybody's like, no, no, no, no, no, it's no, it's not going to be worth it. We're not going to win. What's it going to accomplish? And I think there was just some, you know, anger there. And was it justified anger?

Again, yes, I think it was justified, but not pragmatic. Or legal. Or in the end, yes. Or actually something, in the case of the e-book thing, or something that was legal. Even though they felt like and may have been in the right in terms of trying to increase competition in that. It was actually the rare case, right? I mean, super rare case of industry collusion increasing competition. But that's what it was.

In regards to the Apple Music and Taylor Swift and anti-competitive, anti-trust stuff. Stephen Hackett, co-host of Connected and co-founder of RelayFM, who just also today announced that he has gone independent. He is now going to be a full-time writer and podcaster, and I'm going to include a link in the show notes to Stephen's blog post. You can go check that out. He's selling t-shirts to help give him that first kick into the independent world. Please go help him out.

Stephen has joined us in the realm of fun employment, Mike. He has indeed. You and me and Stephen and David Sparks. Living the dream. So go help Stephen out. So buy a t-shirt. Yeah, go buy a t-shirt. It's a big thing.

It's a big thing for Relay. We now both are putting, I put all my time into it.ven's putting a majority of his time into it it's it's exciting for us less than a year less than a year yep we one year in august so it's amazing anyway so he he pointed out um that one angle that we potentially missed is that by working with the record labels and that kind of thing that we may have missed that apple music might be pushed by the record labels to consumers and that could be part of the anti-competitive stuff that we missed uh but you know which i understand but my feeling about this is while i get that idea of working with the labels would potentially you know push them on consumers

my point that taylor swift writing the letter means it's all okay from a legal perspective i think that that still stands like it doesn't make any sense the department of justice is not going to be i still don't think it's going to be like oh taylor swift wrote that letter well of course you can you know of course you can do whatever you want it doesn't didn't make any sense to me still i agree i i think i mean my take on that was was uh and i think i said this last week is that the fear there is that what there was is a secret backroom deal like with the ebooks thing where apple's like here's here's our plan for how we get rid of spotify uh free tier as we we you know colluding to get rid of the idea of of a free tier because from all accounts the music industry

doesn't like the free tier and apple isn't offering a free tier but it could also be that apple is coming as a new party here and there and the music industry is saying look we don't want a free tier and apple's like great we'll do that you know just to get on your good side and you know i think it'll be i think it'll be fine yeah it just fundamentally doesn't make sense to me the idea of like if they paid the free trial it would make the music labels promote apple music more uh because they're doing something that a competition isn't doing so you know therefore it's illegal but taylor swift said please pay and they do and then the department of justice is like all, it's not legal anymore.

That still stands for me. It doesn't make any sense. But, Your Honor, there was a blog post. I do. So have you heard the term open letter? Like, it's not. It's just not going to happen. Let's move on, though.

Alexander pointed out to me a potential solution for my woes of the force touch trackpad. I was mentioning how yeah click and drag just doesn't work for me and it's something like logic i cannot work in that scenario um and he mentioned that there is the ability to do a three finger drag motion movement i don't know if this works in logic uh i think i think it works in any um window thing. I'm not sure whether it works. I think it's to drag windows around, though, not to drag objects around. That's what I'd assume, too. So, I mean, basically, even if there are solutions which are like, more fingers Force Touch trackpad is that I just don't think that the best solution is to take the physical click away from laptops that have the space to keep it.

So updating the 15-inch with removing the clickable trackpad, changing nothing about the body design, and putting it in there, I just don't think that it's the right option. Because for me, whenever I click down on my trackpad a click is registered right that is a given because it is a physical switch and it works i can't think of any time where i've ever clicked and it hasn't worked but it was happening enough for me on the on the force touch trackpad where it makes me question if it's worth it doing and i just i just wonder is it possible you know and i'm sure that they could find a way to make a hybrid version which has a real click, but also the pressure sensitivity so they can continue doing the force touch APIs

that they want to do. Because that, to me, is the only reason that you would put it in something like 15 inches because you want to push these force touch APIs, right? So you can have bigger clicks. What if I click down and then kept pushing and then a force touch click happened, right? Give me that. Don't take away the real click if it doesn't need to be. It just doesn't make sense to me because you are taking something that is 100% reliable

and making it not so. And that is a very peculiar thing for me. It's a shame because the first time I tried the force touch, I was blown away by it. And when I'm just using it, just browsing around the web, it is kind of crazy to just using it, just browsing around the web, it is kind of crazy to me because it does feel like a real click, but it's not one. And at times when I really need it, like when I'm editing a podcast,

I need complete precision. And anything that gets in my way during that process is not something that I want to be working with. And I have found it very frustrating to use in those scenarios. Yeah, I don't know if there can be a hybrid version or not based on because if you're trying to do pressure sensitivity but you've got a diving board kind of thing i'm not i think that's i think it would be much more complicated than just taking it out i i would um i think my response would be i wonder if they can make it

better than it is in this first generation because my feeling is not, I don't, I haven't been bothered by it like you have, but I kind of like it. But the one problem I have with it is I feel like there's not enough feedback. I feel like the click, and I think Marco talked about this when he was complaining about the MacBook One, as Marco would call it, it doesn't, it's not clicky enough. That's my feeling about it is when I click it, I want it to be more, I want more feedback. And for whatever reason, the maximum feedback it'll give you still doesn't quite feel, it still feels like not a real click. And so I wonder if they could just, you know, if, if what we're really saying here is this

is not a solved problem and the next generation of force touch trackpads needs to be better because this is not quite good enough for you to use. And, you know, more fee. And I definitely feel the desire for some more feedback. That said, I also I was noticing I use a trackpad, a magic trackpad at my desk at home, and I have, I've contorted my hand. I actually hurt my wrist a little bit. I contorted my hand into this weird position in order to use it because I've got my keyboard tray that I use has got these, I don't even know what they are. They're like, they're like strips of adhesive, I think, to put down like a like a an arm

rest or a wrist rest or something that i don't use um but uh i can't put there's certain places i can't put the trackpad because the trackpad needs to physically depress and if the legs are up it doesn't click right yeah and i i had one of those moments where i thought well this is one of the advantages of having something like the force touch trackpad. If you had that as a magic trackpad is it wouldn't need it, you know, it wouldn will listen to stories like yours and say, oh, so what is, you know, what is the issue about how Mike uses logic that, you know, doesn't work with the force touch? And can we make that better? Can we emulate that better? Can we make the software better? Can we make the vibration motor more, you know, I don't know, buzzier. I don't know what the solution is, but maybe that's one way to approach this is.

It's not, it's a first try, and it needs to be better. It definitely does. I hope that it will be, and I'm sure that it will be. It's just weird to me. Looking at it now, it's really weird to me

that they put it in the 15-inch without doing anything else. It wasn't needed, but they did it, and it's sort of peculiar. Well i mean they very clearly apple feels that the that the keyboard is a compromise and you know every time i've talked to apple about the keyboard and the macbook one they've said oh god look at me i'm calling the macbook one marco it's easier it is easier because it's just called the mac, which doesn't really help. Adjective-less MacBook.

Every time I talk to somebody from Apple about it, they're like, look, we know that travel is a problem. But we increased the keycaps and all of that. And it's like we're trying to balance it out. But I've not yet heard somebody at Apple just say, oh, it's better this way. They all seem to admit it's different and it's not better, which for Apple, with any new piece of technology they do, is a big admission. It's not actually better, but what they're basically saying is, but it's not worse because of other reasons. We've balanced out the bad and the good. With the Force Touch trackpad, Apple very clearly thinks this is the future, this is better, it does more stuff,

it's more flexible, you know, this is better. So Apple clearly thinks it's better, and that's why they put it in, the 15 and the 13, is they think this is just better. And what I hear from people who don't like it is they're wrong, or at least for some class of users, they're wrong, it's not better, it needs to be better still, because for a lot of uses, it feels like a regression. And, you know, again, I hope Apple's listening to that and not just sort of feeling like, well, we did that. Let's move on to the next thing. Moving on, you know, in terms of moving on to the next thing, in our upgrade last week,

we mentioned that Jim would like us to guess the sex of his baby girl, who I think was being born at that moment. Yeah, in advance he wrote to us and said that on the Monday of our show, episode 43, that they would be having a baby. So I assume scheduled like a C-section or something. And he said, what's the sex of the baby? We don't know. And we both declared that it was a girl and we were right and we were right upgrade wins congratulations to jim and the whole and the way family um on their baby girl yeah absolutely the wig can we

claim jim's baby is the first upgrade baby uh as as I'm concerned, we have just done that, yes. Excellent, excellent. Baby upgrade. And the last thing I wanted to follow out, we have a new show on Relay called Material, and it is an Android and Google-focused show, which has been created by Russell Ivanovich, Andy Anotko, and Yasmin Evgen,

who we welcome all three to the Relay family. Material has been created by the three of them in the idea that they want to create a show about Google and its related products that can be listened to by anyone. Like their idea is to try and create something that Apple fans will love, that Windows fans will love, and that Google fans will love. So if you enjoy this show, I heartily recommend that you check out Material. If you enjoy this show, I heartily recommend that you check out Material. They have a great episode one, and they also have a little episode zero,

a kind of like origin story type thing, in case you want to learn a little bit more about your hosts. I think you should go and check it out. I really, really enjoyed it, and it is a fantastic addition to our lineup. Relay FM, you should go and check out right now. Yeah, I think the idea of having it be about Google, Google is such a major part of, I mean, we talked about it here,

how we use so much of Google, but also to have people who know about Android and have that perspective is good. It adds to the diversity of the network, which I think is really nice. I know I was trying very hard to recruit Andy to do something at Relay, and we got Andy on this. Russell, really interesting. It's a great trio, so I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going

to be a fun show. So go check that out. We do have a couple of topics today, but before we jump in, let's take a moment to thank our friends over at lynda.com for helping us out today. They are the online learning platform of over 3,000 on-demand video courses that can help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills. You can grab yourself a free 10-day trial by visiting lynda.com slash upgrade. That's l-y-n-d-a dot com slash upgrade. lynda.com is there to help you learn amazing things. They have real experts who are super passionate about teaching, and they are there to teach you incredible stuff.

Like, let's say you want to learn how to use software products. You want to learn how to use Excel or Photoshop or Illustrator or Pages or Keynote or Word or PowerPoint. The list goes on and on and on. Lender.com have courses on all of it. And with the 10-day free trial, you can go there and find out if they have courses on the exact thing that you want to learn. And I'm sure that they will, because they also have some really interesting stuff, which is not just software. It's not just like tools, but also the way that you can put things to work. So say, for example, you want to learn to do some photography stuff and you can go there, you can learn about aperture, you can learn about light

room, you can learn about eye photo or photos, you can learn all that stuff. But you actually then want to learn how to take better portraits or how to light things correctly for photography and how to use your camera right. They have that kind of stuff. They have practical things as well. It really is an incredible resource of stuff

that you can just go and you can learn everything you need to know. You know, I've been thinking recently and looking at this stuff, like you could start a business and use Lunder.com to help you learn everything along the way. They have like marketing courses, paperless courses, they have income tax courses, they have everything that you're going to need. You can stream these thousands of videos on demand, allowing you to learn at your own pace, at your own schedule and in your

own way as well, because you can jump around, you can learn this part here, you can go and grab that bite sized piece here and you can create and save these playlists of the orders of the videos that you want to watch. You can share them as well with people in your life, maybe co-workers, friends or colleagues. You can browse along with the transcript to help you in case you're that kind of learner and you want to read along, but it also helps if you want to later on find a part. You're like, oh, where did they mention about that thing? And you can search the transcript, jump right to that part of the video and watch. And you can even watch and download courses to your Android and iOS device

to help you learn wherever you want to be. Your lynda.com membership is going to get you unlimited access to training on all of these hundreds of topics for just one flat rate. Whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, I would like you to go and visit lynda.com,

that's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade and sign up for your free 10-day trial that also helps support this show. Thank you so much, lynda.com, for sponsoring this week's episode of Upgrade. So, Jason, please tell me, you put a little topic in here. Safari is the new internet explorer. And I read a couple of articles about this, and they've got a lot of things in here that I don't really understand about web frameworks and stuff like that. But what's going on here? I've seen a lot of people talking about this over the last few days. Yeah, it was definitely a discussion that was had. This guy named Nolan Lawson, who describes himself as an Android and web developer, and I think that is, he actually seems like a really bright guy. He definitely comes from a particular perspective, and his perspectives are not necessarily favorable to Apple, I would say,

for a couple reasons. One, he doesn't seem to be a particularly enthusiastic user of Apple's products. He's an Android developer and a web developer, and web developers have had an issue, you know, have had an on and off relationship with Apple. Apple, we've been talking a lot about new Apple and old Apple. And this is one of those cases where Apple's participation in standards bodies and discussion about where web development standards are going and, you know, it's hot and cold. It's, you know, and it's frustrated a lot of web developers. So Nolan Lawson wrote this piece where he said, Safari is the new internet explorer. And he had gone to a conference and said,

all the developers are frustrated because there are all these new web technologies that are standards that they've been trying to push into all the different web browsers. Because once they're in all the web browsers, then everybody can use them. And it's very difficult if something's only supported on Chrome, you know, you have to do a fallback or something like that, because it's not really great practice to say,

sorry, this only works on one browser. Generally, they want to support more, they want to support everything, and they've been frustrated by the lack of pace in Safari development and WebKit development, really. And I think also I would say Nolan Lawson's approach is definitely mobile-centric. A lot of his discussion, it was clear that he was referring to when he was talking about Safari, he was really talking about Safari and WebKit on iOS. I think that was his focus. He's not so concerned about the Mac. He doesn't seem to be somebody who cares particularly about that aspect of it. He was really talking about mobile. What struck me about

it, and I wrote a link on it, so I was one of the people who, and Rene Ritchie wrote a story at iMore about it. I was one of the people who, I think early on was, I had seen it, it actually floated up on Nuzzle for me because I follow a bunch of people who are on the, you know, are web developers or in the web development and web standards world. And that's how it floated up in front of me. And I thought, well, that's a provocative headline, right? Safari is the new IE. And I read the story, and what struck me about it was, one, I thought, well,

if Apple is really way behind on a bunch of core web technologies that other people are building. That concerns me because Apple should be, I think, generally trying to have Safari not be this eye-rolling weird browser. I think that on general principles, it would be nice if Safari was considered by the web development community a modern browser and not the next IE, right? So on that level, just generally, I was like, well, this is troubling. I don't know enough about this. But, you know, I sure hope that this isn't an accurate depiction. And I would love to hear from somebody who's on the WebKit team and the Safari team at Apple, sort of talking about what their approach is to development. Because one of his examples is like, there's a database format that's been around for quite a while now as a standard that Apple has sort of not implemented or implemented in a kind of partial way. And as a result, you know, the database that they have to use in Safari is not particularly

robust and it frustrates web developers that they have to do that. So on that level, you know, again, not knowing about it, it's like, okay, red flag from web developers saying that Safari is really bugging them. I wonder what Apple has to say about it. But the other thing that struck me about it in reading that article was how Nolan Lawson doesn't really understand Apple. And that just was clear to me in reading it. And that, you know, I got feedback. I got, because some of my tweets got, and my link got passed around. And I started to get feedback from people who were very clearly web developers or Android developers, people outside the kind of Apple sphere.

And, you know, they basically took it as, I can't believe that you would argue that, you know, Apple shouldn't support web standards. It's like, okay, well, that is a really reductive version of what I wrote. Because what I wrote is, it troubles me if Apple's not support web standards. It's like, okay, well, that is a really reductive version of what I wrote, because what I wrote is, it troubles me if Apple's not following web standards. But Nolan Lawson's perspective in that first piece was very much not understanding anything about Apple. So he, you know, it was hard not to look at some of the examples that he gave, which were for initiatives. There are initiatives in the web development world that it will come as no surprise to anybody, are all about giving web developers access as if their

apps were native apps on mobile. And essentially this is, hey, we built up a lot of skills in web development and everybody's excited about mobile apps. So we really like to be able to use our skills to write those. So we've built a bunch of this, you know, we've had these standards and it comes, a lot of it is supported by Chrome because Google and the Chrome team have really been pushing this idea of websites as apps. There's the Chrome app store, which has not taken the world by storm, but it's something that Google has pushed in the past. And, you know, I totally understand if you're a web developer and you say, how do I get, you know, I want to build apps too. I want to build mobile apps that we have access to the things that mobile apps do. But my point was,

what's Apple's motivation to support? And the answer that these people give is, well, it's a standard. It's a web standard. Why would Apple not want to support a standard? But from Apple's perspective, it's like, wait a second, you're trying to create your own cross-platform app standard and then shame us into supporting it. And I just, why would Apple make that a priority? And then I had some people say, well, what do you mean priority? Apple's got lots of money. They could do anything. It's like, well, okay, first off, Apple needs to choose what they want their priorities to be like anyone else, and they're not going to run out and hire 100 new programmers to do so that they can, with a pile of money, so they can do anything. They still have to make their choices with their resources,

so they can do anything. They still have to make their choices with their resources, and they also have to make strategic plans. And if Apple believes that letting web developers create web apps that run on Android phones and run on iOS, and they run the same, and they look the same more or less, and they're not that good, but they're okay. If I'm somebody at Apple, I think about that and I think what's going to happen

is that there's going to be this whole layer of apps that are no longer developed natively because the businesses, the banks, whoever it is who don't want to spend the money on native app development will just, they'll build a web app and it'll be okay. And in the end, what you're doing is sort of reducing iOS to a platform with some native games and Apple's apps, and some native apps, but also a lot of really boring Me Too web apps that are maybe not that attractive

and not that fast. And maybe some of them are good, but a lot of them are not good. and not that fast. And maybe some of them are good, but a lot of them are not good. And why would Apple do that? I was getting flashbacks to the early days of Java where people said, oh, Java's going to be great because it's going to be everywhere

and you're going to be able to write it once and run it everywhere. And, you know, it didn't happen. In the end, all Java did is have terrible apps that ran everywhere sometimes. And that wasn't a good experience. Apple's really kind of gone in on the native app thing with great success. I would also say that being beholden to a standards body to drive innovation forward

is as non-Apple as it gets. Because when Apple rolls out its new APIs to its developers, Apple can make decisions and say, we're going to push the platform forward here, and we're going to do this there, and we're going to be innovative in these ways, and we're going to catch up with the competition in these ways, and go to it.

I have a hard time seeing how this vision of apps being developed using web technologies, using web standards, allows Apple to differentiate their platform. It turns Apple into a Me Too platform, which if you're an Android and web developer, sounds like the path forward because that's obviously the right way to do it. But if you're anybody who is at Apple or understands Apple or understands Apple's focus on users,

you look at that and say, that sounds like a terrible idea. Why would they ever do that? And ultimately, that's what struck me about the Safari is the new IE post is one, I'm interested to hear from Apple if they really are dragging their feet on things that they probably should prioritize that will make the web better for users. And two, that there seems to be this undercurrent in at least part of the web development community that they really want to make mobile apps and are really mad at Apple because Apple's like, I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Or that Apple's silent about it because when you look at what they're proposing, it's very hard to see why Apple would think it was a good idea. idea so part of what um was written about here uh by nolan it's like he's the way that he he kind of phrased the piece and what it was focused around is he just finished and just come back from a conference in london called the edge conference which is about advancing the web and looking at future web technologies and the reason it struck a chord with him is because nobody from Apple was there, but basically everybody else had someone. And so my thinking

along these lines is, you know, if you just boil it down to the most simple part, if Apple does or is ignoring this stuff, is that not just what microsoft did like they just ignored web standards they ignored future web technologies and then it gave us ie like is that not just what they did and then like the reason that he makes this comparison is it's what's installed on every mac macs are becoming more popular ios devices have that have it and i'll talk about I want to talk about browser choice and iOS in a minute and you're kind of majorly locked into that and that's only gaining with Safari view controller in iOS 9 if Apple isn't advancing in certain areas does that not just make them like Microsoft yeah well and um I think in Rene's piece uh Rene Ritchie's piece, he talked about this a little bit.

It depends on how you say just like Microsoft. What does that mean? Just like Microsoft, just like IE. What does that mean? If you cast it in broad terms, you can absolutely say, look, Apple's behaving like Microsoft with IE. They're supporting web standards to improve the web experience so that people who are using what we think of as the web have a good experience. And I completely agree. really rotten because they have to use a second tier kind of database system to store files because and store data because the new standard that's really awesome just hasn't been implemented by Apple because Apple doesn't care.

And I'm not saying that's actually the case. But if that was the case, that would be a problem. And that's the first thing I said in my post about it was, look, I don't know enough about this to say if all of these standards are good and if they're being followed and if Apple's dragging their feet but that is bad and that would be that would you could argue that would be what Microsoft did because Microsoft was focused on its own things and it and it was focused on you know use ActiveX plugins that aren't even part of web technology they're they're you know an x86 plugin. So it was completely tied to Windows,

and it was outside the realm of even web standards. But it seems to me that what Apple's doing, the second part of the argument is, if we agree that following open web standards and keeping modern in browsers is a good thing, And I think I do. At what point do you draw the line if what the web standards bodies and the web developers want to do is start to push into areas that you as a platform owner think are your business? And that was what made me react to the first Nolan Lawson post is it struck me as that this stuff was crossing that line and that they were really saying, look, we want to use this open standards-based platform to write apps. And, you know, there's an argument to be made that that could be great. I've seen some very interesting people, including Lauren Brichter, say basically, oh, you can do amazing things using the web technology.

You shouldn't assume that it will just lead to crappy web apps, and there are also crappy native apps. Well, okay, I'll say, yeah, I bet there could be good web apps and I know that there are crappy native apps. But if you're the platform owner, if you're Apple, especially where you control the platform completely and your business is very different, you can't afford to run the exact same apps as everybody else because your whole business is being different than if we've signed on to, yay, web development, web standards. We love it. It's the side of good. And then the web standards body says, oh, by the way, web standards now include your development platform for apps.

We want equal access to that. I think it is perfectly reasonable for Apple to say, no, that we're not going to give you. Because we don't think that's going to be a good experience. And I got a sense of that a little bit. So I feel like there's, you know, there's layers here and there's a bunch of different issues. And in some of them, I'm in full support. I would like to hear, I would like the new Apple to come out of its shell even more and participate in these conferences and say what it likes and doesn't like and say, no, we don't agree with this approach and let everybody know where Apple stands. Because I got a sense from Nolan Lawson's posts that there's a feeling in a lot of the web

development community that there's just a frustration that Apple doesn't participate more. And, you know, that's been Apple's way in the past. But maybe this is an opportunity for this new Apple to be a little more forceful and a little more communicative about what Apple's view of the web and web standards is. Fully support that. But I also kind of understand that some of what they're suggesting may be things that Apple looks at and goes, no, we're not, we don't think that's the right approach for the web.

And if that makes them like Microsoft in a broad sense, then I guess they are. But I think that it's an unfair comparison at that point. Let's talk about iOS for a moment. So I've seen people in regards to this piece also talking about, and I've seen this link somewhere, an article about iOS browser choice written by Kenneth. I'm trying to find his surname.

It's on Kenneth.io is the website. And Kenneth doesn't have his surname. Orkenberg, I think, maybe? Anyway, he wrote and he's actually started a petition to Apple. His surname is.io. Yeah, Mr..io. He's actually started a petition and you know he's talking about the idea that there are technologies in ios which make safari better um than any other

browser and you obviously can't set browsers that you want like i use chrome i can't set chrome's the default and you know there is a potential for this kind of stuff to increase now that Safari View Controller is coming around. And basically what that does, but I don't know my very basic understanding of it, is it effectively, every time you click on a link, a Safari page can slide in from the outside and there'll be a new back button in the status bar

which can take you back. And basically it stops people from needing to create their own in-app browsers they can just leverage safari yep um so what this like this further points out to me is so many developers are going to use this now and it further increases safari's advantage over something like chrome it's all webkit though i mean it doesn't change the fact this is all being rendered with webkit it just means that it's more clearly uh sort of in-app safari instead of a window running the webkit browser but they've all they're all running every single thing is in webkit in ios apple won't allow anything else basically but there you know there are features of chrome that i like and one of the one of the things that

i really like is that chrome uh fully embrace the callback URL. But that's effectively what Safari View Controller is allowing you to do, right? You can go back to where you were. So I see more, you know, I see a world where more and more developers, they may not even bother adding Chrome support anymore. Like, you know, because many,

I would say pro apps or productivity apps or very nerdy apps allow for the ability to open a link into Chrome for that reason, and I use that, and I'm very happy with that. But I see this kind of stuff, I would see a world where this is just going to decrease because it would be like, well, why would you even bother because you get the full, powerful Safari of all the great stuff that has built in that other apps can't take advantage of.

And it just concerns me, Jason, because I am a Chrome user. That is the browser that I choose. And I see a world where it's just going to be less and less of a less and less advantageous to be using it on iOS. So it is, this is a difficult thing to pick apart because is what we're seeing support for web standards? Or is it an astroturfing campaign

by people who like Chrome and want Google, who is an active participant in web standards, and Chrome to have more access to iOS. And, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but when I see this Kenneth post and a link to Jake from the Chrome team who says, hey, if Apple are throttling back their web platform work on Safari, if, I guess, because he's just decided to cast some aspersions there. I wish they'd let other browsers in iOS so someone else could have a go.

Burn from the guy at Chrome. And that's part of the question here, is how much of this, from Apple's perspective, is basically Google trying to get more access to iOS versus Apple keeping control. But here's what I'd say. I think it's dumb that Apple doesn't let other browsers on iOS. Bottom line. I think you could argue that there's a consistency approach that you want, and by offering these system-wide, and now in iOS 9,

offering this Safari service essentially to bring up Safari inside an app and then you back out. I think there's great strength in that. But the flip side of that is great strength that doesn't need to be necessarily feel threatened by other rendering engines running on iOS. feel threatened by other rendering engines running on iOS. So, so yeah, I think it's dumb that Chrome can't run on iOS as Chrome and not as a WebKit instance inside of a wrapper called Chrome, which is what it is right now. So I, I agree with that. Um, I think Apple should, should, uh, I mean, Apple's never going to compete with Chrome on iOS in the sense that all of the system calls are

going to be based on WebKit and Safari. That's just how it's going to be because they're the platform vendor. And we, you know, we, we can't open a, you know, you can't open a different camera app by default. You can't open a different mail app by default. This is something Federico talks about all the time. Apple has at this this point, wants to keep all that stuff, like, super seamless and tied to the Apple apps, and it can be frustrating for users of other apps, but, um, but I do, I do think that, uh, it's, it's, uh, fine if Apple were to open it up to other, uh, other rendering engines, and I've always, that's always seemed to be one of the stranger, um, limits in the App Store that, one of the stranger limits in the app store that, you know,

other browsers are not welcome. Everybody uses WebKit and that's it. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder. I think it's just an interesting thing to keep an eye on, like where are Apple going to go in this? And, you know, we've been talking a lot recently about antitrust and anti-competitive stuff. And considering this is something that Microsoft was hit so hard on,

it's in the 90s, right? Sure, but the difference was that Microsoft was effectively a monopoly because they had more than 90% of the computer industry. And that's the difference is if you want to use a different browser, don't use the iPhone, use Android. And Android has a bigger market share than iOS. So there's no, you know, saying it's the same behavior as Microsoft. Well, it's different in one big way. As Microsoft,

we're using its monopoly power to control the web, the entire web, and say, basically, we have 90% of web browsing devices, because there was no mobile back then, really. So we have more than 90% of all of the web looking at our stuff, and we're going to integrate it everywhere so that we can drown out all at our stuff and we're going to integrate it everywhere so that we can drown out all the competition and we will control everything that everyone sees on the web. What Apple's saying is we want to control the web on our devices, but if you don't want to use our devices, you can use any of the other devices because, you know, Apple's phone market share is, you know, not even close to half.

And so for me, that's the big difference. So is it the same in that it's a platform vendor who wants to control the web on their platform? Yeah, but Apple's end result is control of their platform and Microsoft's end result was control of the entire internet and the shutting out of all competition anywhere. Yeah. I feel like in the last couple of weeks i've been a little bit down sounding on apple and i don't want people to think that i am if that makes sense there's just been a few things recently that have been frustrating me

um and and i think you know i only talk about them in this way because i love them so much and i hate it when they annoy me yeah yeah well yeah. Well, and I think this is a good subject to see both sides of it right. That for me, I think Apple could be more open. I think Apple should participate more in web standards. But I also don't think that we should all make the assumption that that means Apple should say yes to everything that everybody in, in web standards proposes, right? I mean, Apple,

Apple needs to be out there, but they need to be out there saying yes and no. And if people want to say, oh, I can't believe Apple's not supporting this. That's fine. But right now it's like, we keep waiting for Apple.

What the web developers say is we keep waiting for Apple to, you know, release updates to see if they're supporting these things because we just don't know. And that's weird. And I would like to see less of that from Apple. But I think Apple's absolutely right to be able to say, no, we don't believe that that's the future of the web and we don't think that's good for our users and we're not going to

support it. Yeah, I guess maybe they can choose to support what they want to support, but they need to be more open about it rather than just leaving people high and dry just waiting. Exactly, and it's totally, I think, it fits with the way Tim Cook's Apple has been comporting itself lately, for it to be more open about that.

And I hope that happens. I hope that that is one of the other ways that Apple is going to be a little more communicative than it was in the past. That this is not, you know, WebKit development, you know, Safari features and user features and things like that. I totally get wanting to keep those secret

until you, you know, you announce El Capitan or whatever. But on the WebKit side, being more open about where Apple thinks WebKit is going and how it's going to support different initiatives. Let's get that out in the open and be as communicative as possible about it so that Nolan Lawson can write a blog post that says, I can't believe Apple doesn't like my database format instead of why won't Apple decide what it wants to do with this database format?

Yeah, like basically talk about the things that I don't understand. Like this kind of stuff, like I don't understand it. So if I don't understand it, nobody really understands it unless you do this stuff. There's no harm in talking about it and saying whether you're going to do it or not because you're not giving anything away

because like 99% of people that buy your products don't even know what you're talking about so like just just tell tell nolan if you're going to support the database for just just do it you know also to get back to that ie parallel microsoft announced all sorts of things for ie microsoft's issue was not uh questions about whether it would support web standards. A lot of Microsoft's issues were Microsoft just announced its own web standards and expected people to build them. And Apple does occasionally do stuff like that. But the difference is they're just saying support this on our devices. And Microsoft was literally saying we control the entire web. You have to do what we say. So it's a little bit different, but yeah, I think there's, I think there's interesting points

being made on all sides. And I think I posted a follow-up because Nolan Lawson posted a follow-up where he was humble and said, you know, he thinks he probably went too far in some areas, but that this was sort of what he meant and he didn't expect it to blow up like it did. And, and I interacted with him a little bit on Twitter and he seems't expect it to blow up like it did and um and i interacted with him a little bit on twitter and he seems like a he seems like a nice guy um and i posted a follow-up and i said look i think this is a good discussion that we're having i don't agree with all of nolan's points uh you know he doesn't agree with mine uh i don't agree with lauren bricton's lauren brichter's points many of them um and he doesn't agree with mine and that's fine i'm glad

we're having a conversation i'd like apple to be a part of this conversation too because it seems like there's a lot of frustration about not knowing what the heck apple is doing in areas where apple should probably just say look here's what we think right let's take a break and then we'll talk about apple music hey no singing this time no no singing this week this week's episode is also brought to you by Fracture Fracture you may have heard of them they are a fantastic company who do a really

really interesting thing that Fracture is basically taking the way that people print and display their favourite types of images and doing it

in a brand new way that is really really cool you upload a photo to fractureme.com and they don't just make a print of it and send it to your house

in maybe a little frame or something or maybe they just send you a picture in a tube what they do is they print your photo directly onto a piece of glass it is kind of like magic and it's really amazing I have a few fractures here that I bought over the years and I have some ones that people sent to me as gifts as well and I really love them they look incredible they're packaged in a really great way so i've had them shipped from florida they have a little factory where they check them by hand and they're all checked for quality it's they're in gainesville florida they have a small

team there they have shipped them to me in the united kingdom pieces of glass right and they're perfect i've had maybe eight or nine fractures sent to me here and they have all come through perfect i'm so impressed with how to do it they package them in to me here, and they have all come through perfect. I'm so impressed with how they do it. They package them in such a great way, and they all come with everything you need as well. So the packaging, it all helps you. Basically, the frame that they send you, so the piece of glass is mounted onto this foam board on the back, which also has in it the ability to hang it on the wall. They send you the screws and stuff that you're going to need. It's fantastic. I love fracture prints. Jason, I know that you've had a few. I know when I came to see you in your home in lovely California, you had some fractures on the wall of

your own. Indeed. I have several. I have, I think, five on the walls out in my garage. And when we talk about the frame, it's not really, it's not a frame, right? It's the picture because the picture is printed on the glass. So instead of having a frame, what we think of as the frame is the picture. The picture is the frame with Fracture, which is really interesting. I've got a bunch of the smaller squares, and this is following on from a recommendation that Marco Arment made, where he was printing out, or fracturing, or however you want to say it, having Fracture send him icons of his apps. And so I actually ordered a bunch of icons of my podcasts

and have those up on the wall. And they're beautiful. And the orangey color of the Clockwise logo is vibrant. And the red in the Upgrade logo is bright. And I love the deep blueyy purpley uh incomparable logo and i mean they all they all look uh the red of the total party kill logo they're all very pretty um i've also got uh tiffany arment sent me a uh a black and white photo that she shot of the atp uh wwdc episode from 2014 which we did at the macworld Podcast Studios. So it's me,

because I was setting them up, and then the three guys from ATP. And Tiff was there and took a picture of the four of us at the table and said, all four of us got that fracture. And so I've got that up. And that's a pretty cool little souvenir of that moment from 2014. And then I've also got a big, I've got a big one that also comes from Tiffany Hermant of a little painting she did based on a joke that happened at dinner at the last night at UL, where you and James Thompson were looking up American words for English things or, you know, American translations of English words, a hilariously wrong website. And we ended up in this whole

path down about blueberries being bilberries and, uh, you know, uh, a container of them being a punnet of bilberries. And, um, Tiff went home and, and she painted a little watercolor of a punnet of blue, of bilberries. And, uh, she fractured that. And, uh, and, uh, I've got one of those on my wall too. I have one too. It's beautiful. So it works for art. You could take your kid's art and scan it in and send it to them

and have it be in this kind of beautiful permanent display. Works great for photos, works great for logos and things like that. I've been really happy with it. I think when we repainted our house, redid our house,

we took a lot of the photos off the walls. And I'm actually considering when we put stuff back on the walls, like in our hallway, doing those with fractures instead of getting prints and then having to buy frames and getting things matted and framed

and all of those things. So they're really beautiful. They really are special looking. all of those things so it's they're they're really uh they're beautiful they really are special looking i love them a lot and and they're great you know we mentioned that like they're great for gifts as well as just getting your own stuff done it's a really easy gift choice um for steven's birthday i fractured him the relay logo uh and i saw it hung on his wall when when i went to visit him it's just a really nice thing i really like them. Fractures come in five different rectangle sizes all the way up to 21 inch by 28 inch.

And they also have three square sizes that are perfect for Instagram photos, album covers, podcast artwork, app icons, that kind of stuff for you creators out there. Their prices start at just $15. So it's not going to break the bank and you can get yourself 10% off your first order with the coupon code upgrade. So just go to fractureme. bank and you can get yourself 10% off your first order with the coupon code UPGRADE

so just go to fractureme.com and you can get started right away. Thank you so much to Fracture for supporting this show if you like what we do, just go and buy yourself a Fracture, they're really cheap, you know you can get 10% off with the code UPGRADE, buy one for yourself buy one for a gift, that'd be a great way to help support this show because they're a new sponsor

and we want to show them that it's awesome to sponsor Upgrade and RelayFM. So thanks to those guys. Yeah. So Apple Music, we've had it for a week now. Do you mind if I give my overall feelings? I was going to say, hey, Mike, give me your overall feelings about Apple Music. I was going to start there. So let's hear it. I'm happy with it overall. There are some niggling problems that I have that I think are going to just get ironed out because they tend to be with software more than anything. iTunes is a little bit confusing,

but I feel like that's just iTunes, right? So I didn't really expect anything else. And there's just some weird stuff. Like I've seen, it's basically become a meme now, which is like, if you're listening to a song, how do you get to the artist or album? And it's like, you press this button and this button. It's possible, I can't even remember how you,

I think you tap the ellipses and then you tap the name of the current song and it takes you to them, which doesn't even make any sense. Like there's some weird navigation stuff. Dan Warren posted a thing about it that was so bizarre. It's like, it's a really useful how-to tip. And yet at the same time, it should not be like this.

No, but it's, you know, there are things that could be a lot better with it. But I think overall, I am happy with the service and I am enjoying using it. But I think that they've got some ways to go still, I think. Yeah, I wonder if they should have called the three-month trial a beta. Yeah, that probably would have been a good idea.

Jonathan Mann did a song about Apple Music that was mostly from the perspective of musicians, and Dave Wiskus wrote a blog post about it, too. But in Jonathan Mann's song, he mentions in his video that, you know, in the past, Apple has released things that were sort of of this level of stability and called it a beta. And, you know, I've really enjoyed it myself. But I do have that feeling that, you know, this got pushed out, uh, as a work in progress. And, um, maybe they should have just said, look, we're going to do a free public beta for three months, you know, use it, tell us what you think of it. And we'll

keep making changes to it as we, as we go, because yeah, there's just weird things. The UI is weird. Um, yeah, there's just some strange stuff in it that i i feel like uh needs to get ironed out but the content is uh is all just it's a lot of fun beats we got to talk about beats one so the day that it launched i was driving from we drove from san francisco to la the day that it launched so we listened to beats one for quite a while on the drive and then we switched over and listened to some playlists and stuff. So this is your guy, Zane Lowe. Do you have more to say about Beats 1?

Yeah, let me just mention playlists first. Oh, yeah, okay. And then we'll talk about Beats 1. Speaking of betas. Because what I want to say is, because I have good things to say about playlists, I'm not sure what I'll ask you what the problem is that you have. The thing is, the app is frustrating in points, but it's not so much that it's an issue.

And fundamentally, the fact that the service works the way that I want it to and the content that I want is in there means that I am overall very, very happy with Apple Music. For example, the playlists that they have, I just adore. It seems like every time I open the app on my iPhone, they are suggesting a new playlist to me, which I just want to listen to instantly.

And I keep pulling them up and it's perfect. Because I'm a big fan of alternative music, alternative indie rock and stuff like that. And I follow the Apple. It turns out that all of the music that I like is classified in Apple Music as alternative. Yeah. So like, okay, that's a really broad category and I don't really like that word, but okay. It is.

I have the same, but it doesn't really bother me too much because the music. Because rock is like Jim Dalrymple territory, right? Yeah. Rock is like screaming guitars and stuff. And I consider myself a rock music fan, but but they're not you know that what they've classified as rock is very different than what i would consider so alternative i'm with you yeah alternative did you listen to the a-list alternative playlist because i really loved it and it was entirely populated other than muse and there was one other artist that i'd heard of in there but it was entirely populated by

artists i'd never heard of and um and you know not all of it heard of in there, but it was entirely populated by artists I'd never heard of. And, you know, not all of it was great, but a lot of it was legitimately great. I haven't listened to it, but I'm looking at it, and there is a ton of my favorite bands in here. Yeah, I discovered Civil Twilight, I discovered, and they're really good. I'd never heard of them. One of my favorite songs at the moment is Bros by Wolf Alice, which is a song that I know from like a year or two ago because they've just released their first album. But there's just some great stuff on here.

And the thing is, I'm opening it up and it's suggesting to me like alternative party. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. And there was this one playlist which was like alternative songs about youth. And it was basically all of the stuff that i love when i was 19 and it's like this is just and i'm eating it up like i am in love with these

playlists and i'm subscribing to more and more and more every single day i'll put a couple of links to some of the ones that we've mentioned into the show notes it's incredibly hard to link to them but by the way well this is this is what i was going to say is my complaints about playlists are my complaints about beats in general or sorry apple music in general which is um it's hard to find things it's hard to know where to look um if you heart something uh nothing seems to happen other than feel filling the recommendation engine you can't look at your hearts they're not saved anywhere you can add things what you need to do is add things to your library um then they show up in your it library, which is very interesting. It makes no distinction. So I took that Civil Twilight album and I just added

it to my library and it shows up on my Mac and iTunes, which is crazy. But cool. I like that, but it's crazy. And likewise, if I subscribe to a playlist, that A-list alternative playlist is in my playlist on iTunes, which is actually kind of great. I really like the mixture of my iTunes library. I know some people have a problem with it, but I really like being able to add things and have my existing iTunes library and they're all just present. It's just some confusion about how do I find things? How do I find an artist? How do I find a playlist? How do I save it for later? Some of that stuff could be clearer. And then one of the things that frustrates me too is that sometimes I want to, I actually just want to do an artist shuffle, like play

everything from this artist in a shuffle. And I can't, I don't think you can do that. Oh man, I haven't tried to do that yet, but that's going to drive me crazy if you can't do that. It seems very album and track oriented. And I don't think you can find an artist and just press shuffle or play with the shuffle turned on. I guess what you could do, and I've had to do this in the past, is create a playlist.

Yeah, but again, it ought to be easier than that. But, you know, so that's what I've been saying is I think the content is great. Not just that they've got a library of tracks, but the curation that we've been talking about I think is really good. I've been saying is I think the content is great. Not just that they've got a library of tracks, but the curation that we've been talking about, I think is really good.

I've been impressed with it. I liked it on Beats too. I like that it's more integrated with my music library now that it's Apple Music. So, yeah, I've been enjoying it. I just feel like some of the interface stuff, especially on the iPhone, is kind of obscure. That ellipsis button,

right, is like, we also put a lot of other crap in here and it's all hiding under the ellipsis. It's like, I'm not quite sure. I mean, it's a hard interface problem. We can't just say, well, it's very obvious how Apple should have done this because it's like, no, this is really hard because they've got a la carte music

and they've got a streaming service and they've got radio and they've got to try to mix it all together got a streaming service and they've got radio and they've got to try to mix it all together in a way that makes sense and then it also falls back if you're not a subscriber and you don't want to see it it's a hard problem but they've got more work to do because fundamentally you're not going to get it to make sense because it's too much like and over time it will but like it's not going to make sense initially because it's a very, very hard problem to fix. And I believe that they will do it, but you've really got to open it up to allow people like us to complain

before you can kind of understand some of the things that people want to do because especially music, everybody has their own way of wanting to categorize it, play it, use it, the type of stuff they want to look for. And you've got to get this feedback. However, Apple, because I genuinely believe they listen and read, right? And as well, like to us and to other people. And I also look at people on Twitter. I believe that that is happening.

Apple is very aware of what people are saying about Apple. People, I think even in the days when Apple didn't communicate, I can tell you from personal experience, Apple is paying attention. And the people who work on Apple products are paying attention to what people say about their products. Absolutely. Absolutely. It does not a black hole. So let's talk about Beats 1. I've been really impressed with it. I think it's fantastic. There's so many interesting shows there's fantastic guest djs uh it's just i like just tuning in and my girlfriend has just she asked me about it i explained it to her i showed her and now i keep hearing music playing i'm like what is that and she's like it's beats one and she just keeps listening to it and she seems to really like it there is a great uh mix it really not i've been

really really frustrated by seeing people saying oh i don't like rap like it's not just rap there is rap you need to understand that rap and hip-hop is a massive market of music and just because you don't listen to it stop complaining about it right because there is a big mix there but they're gonna be you are maybe tuning into the two hours where like julie adenuga is playing her set and she is predominantly hip-hop and rap because that's where she came from but you listen to zane and i mean i'm just gonna say it i i told you right everybody out there that zane lowe is amazing he is incredible and his sets have been fantastic and i love that they make playlists out

of them and you can follow them on Connect. I am disappointed that you can't listen back to the show, because just having the playlist of the music, that's a good, what was that song they played kind of service. But I do kind of miss the fact that I can't go back and listen to the actual St. Vincent mixtape delivery service, because I only caught the end of it, and it was really great, but I can't go back and listen to that show. I can see the playlist and play those songs, which is cool, but I do wish that they had, like, even if it was a seven-day

listen-again iPlayer-like kind of experience. We listened to Julia Abnuka coming down, and that is totally not my genre of music, and yet I enjoyed it because... So, okay, I beats one at its worst is radio, right? And I don't love the radio, and a lot of people don't like the radio. You don't have any control over it. You have to take what comes. And at its worst, that's what it is. If it's pummeling you with music that you don't like, you should change the channel or listen to something else, right? But at its best, it is kind of delightful with the surprise. It takes the fact that you aren't in control and takes you on a journey. And whether it was, for us, the Julia Anuga set on her first day, on that first day, she was taking us on a little trip. And she would say, you know, she was playing, playing, there was, there was hip hop and rap and, you know, it was

all up tempo. It was mostly up tempo, not entirely. But, you know, she's dropping in and is a very entertaining person. And you get the feeling like, you know, you're driving around town and she's the driver. And she's talking to you and she's playing music and she's telling you about the music. And even though not all of the music was stuff that I liked, I kind of felt like I was having a little bit of an adventure. And being exposed to stuff that I wouldn't have been exposed to. And some of it I really did like. And that I also felt when I was done that I had taken this fun trip with, with, with, uh, with Julie and that, um, you know, and that was kind of fun too. So I think that at its, at its

best, that's what it is, is, is using the linear nature of radio to, uh, with some very talented people to take you on a journey. And the point is almost not the music. I mean, the music is the journey you're taking, but it's not like a playlist of music with people appearing in between and saying, that was this song. Now here is another song. But it is this cure. You get the sense it's curated by these people. They care about it and they're entertaining you along the way. That's when it hits. That's what it is. And when it doesn't work for you, again, it's radio at that point and you should change the channel or listen to a playlist, I think. Yeah, I completely agree. The main problem that I think Apple,

that Beats 1 has right now is trying to understand their schedule. They are attempting to create a schedule on their Tumblr page, but they need to really lay it out better. It seems like they play music, they play the shows every 12 hours. Yeah, it looks like it's a 12-hour loop. But it's not exactly 12 hours all the time. Sometimes it's like 11.

So for example, I just did a, because Elton John's show starts today, but it starts at 3 a.m. my time. And then it's going to be broadcast again. You would expect at 3 p.m. tomorrow, but I just found a link on Elton John's website where they explain it, which is really funny. They say it is not a podcast.

And I was like, oh, look at that. But apparently it's going to be played at 3 a.m. and then 2 p.m. So that's not every 12 hours. No. Interesting. So if that is correct, like this stuff, it needs to be explained better because their website doesn't do a good enough job of showing it.

For example, if I scroll through now, it only shows the next 10 hours of stuff. So they need to get better at that. But again, that's just a thing. You just update the website. But I feel like these You just update the website. But it is, you know, I feel like these are just little growing pains. You just need to make the Tumblr a bit better to understand, show a bigger list of stuff.

But like, you know, I just think that Beats 1 is just brilliant. It's just such a great idea. And I think that there is so much stuff that they can still do with this and so many more channels they can do and i'm really you know i want to check out more of the celebrity shows i haven't had enough time to listen to it but it is partly because i haven't really been able to work out when some stuff is

being broadcast and i kind of just tune in and see what's happening at the time but that is kind of cool that they do that and i can just tune in and see what's there by the way you know talking about the playlists like if you want to find playlists for a certain show, just search for that person's name and you can go to the connect page and follow them. And then the new playlists pop up and you'll be able to see them in your for you tab. I guess it's a lot of stuff and we have to learn new ways of doing things, but I think what you learn them is probably not that difficult. Yeah. St. Vincent's mixtape delivery service. Did you listen to that? Yeah, I've got the playlist. I didn't hear the show, but I got the playlist. Well, the hear the show, but I got the playlist.

Well, the show is amazing because the idea here is that she is talking to a fan and she calls them on the phone and explains what the songs are on the mixtape and why she picked them. And the fans, meanwhile, the fan is just melting down

because they're talking to this person they're a fan of. And it's kind of hilarious. So there's this girl that she's talking to about this. But the playlist is insane. It is an 80s playlist and it is, you know, that was, it was for day one, I thought it was a really smart move. They, you know, they had, they had Zane Lowe on, they had Julia Nuga, they had the Beats LA stuff, which was very rap oriented, hip hop oriented. And then you get to St. Vincent, and it's Depeche Mode, Stereolab, New Order,

Devo, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Bjork, David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, The Pointer Sisters, and Talking Heads. It's this super blast of the 80s that was, it was just a riot to listen to that. So yeah, that's the diversity of it too. I mean, linear means that you may tune in and find something you don't like, but that, you know, that's going to happen. But sometimes something listening to something

you're not, you haven't been exposed to, you may find something you like about it. That's the other thing that can happen. I'm not going to listen to it all the time. I don't know how often you're going to, you're going to listen to it. I'm not going to listen to it all the time, but I will tune it in from time to time because I'm, I about what they can provide. And I anticipate that I will probably find some shows that I like and that I make time for. Yeah. I want to just lock myself into the schedule a bit more so I can work out how to do it because a lot of the work that I do is audio based. So, you know. Yeah. That's the challenge. Oh, we should also say thank you to everybody out there who's listening to this podcast and hasn't stopped listening to podcasts because of all the things on apple music and beats

one we thank you it's not that good you shouldn't go listen to it you should just listen to us someone said take it all back a couple of people said this to me on the day that it launched it's like aren't you worried and i'm like not really i mean that's just another thing for people to listen to i think that people enjoy our stuff enough that they will tune in irrespective of what great rad is out there. Yeah, radio and music services have been there all along and this is a new one

and if it's a better one, then it provides some more competition to us. But I feel like podcasts and music are very different and use different parts of the brain. And when I want to listen to music, I'll listen to music. And when I want to listen to podcasts or audiobooks, I'll listen to those.

Should we do some Ask Upgrade? Let's do that. This week's episode of Ask Upgrade is brought to you by Hover. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. It's been the place that I've been going to for years, and that's for one simple reason. I can go there and buy a domain in 30 seconds. I don't have to traverse an assault course of pop-ups and windows and add-ons. I just go to hover.com.

I search what I want. If the TLD that I want is available, I just go and buy it. Done. Easy. In and out. I don't have to like uncheck the little checkbox and read the big thing and like make sure that I'm not signing up for, I don't know, for a big book to be delivered to my house or

something. I don't know what these people sell, but crazy stuff. Hover.com make it super easy. They have all the TLDs that you'd expect. Dot com, dot co, dot me. They have all the crazy new ones as well. Maybe you want to get a dot plumbing or dot coffee or dot academy domain. You can go and get those. They'll show you what's available. You select the ones that you want. If maybe a domain isn't available, but hover.com can sometimes sit in the middle and help you with the auctioning process and that kind of stuff. They offer that service. They can help you out there as well. You know, you're going to get the great service that Hover.com will provide. Their.com domains start at just $12.99. They have WhoisPrivacy for free, which I love. If a domain supports WhoisPrivacy,

they will just enable it for you during the checkout process. You can uncheck it if you really want to. I don't know why you'd want to, but you can't. They'll just take it, and your private information stays private. I just love that they do that. It just seems like such a no-brainer that it should be included. But believe it or not, with some other people, you have to pay. I don't know why, but they make you do it probably because they can charge you, so they will. This is not the way that Hover works.

They have fantastic customer support. They have a no-hold, no-wait, no-transfer telephone support policy. You pick up the phone to Hover.com, you're speaking to a person. If you don't want to speak to people, they have great customer support. They have a no-hold, no-wait, no-transfer telephone support policy. You pick up the phone to hover.com, you're speaking to a person. If you don't want to speak to people, they have great email communication. You can do great email support. I've used that a bunch before. It's fantastic. When I've messed something up, they've helped me out. They pointed to me exactly what I need to do. I love it. They also have great guides as well and documentation on their website. And don't forget Hover's valet service. They take all of the hassle out of switching from your current provider

because they'll do it all for you no matter how many domains you have. Go to hover.com right now and use the code ROBOT at checkout and you'll get 10% off your first purchase

over at hover.com and show your support for this show and all of Real AFM. That is code ROBOT for 10% off your first purchase. Thank you so much to Hover for their support of Upgrade.

Robot or not, huh? That show is like a whirlwind in the internet. We just got a link this weekend to a podcast that had the guy who created Invader Zim on it, the animated show, and they spent, they must have

spent ten minutes basically talking about Robot or Not. Not the podcast. They mentioned the podcast and then they just started debating Robots or Not of various things, which was pretty hilarious. So yeah, it is the dumb idea that has struck a nerve. I figured it would. I mean, it struck a nerve with us. That's why we did it, is that every time anybody would bring it up, everybody had opinions and wanted to talk about whether things were robots or not. So I saw somebody on Twitter say, it's not a podcast about robots. It's a podcast about semantics.

And I don't agree. I think it is a podcast about both. But yeah, I keep, it's crazy that people want to listen. If you haven't heard it, it's me and John Syracuse talking about whether things are robots or not. And we post a couple episodes a week, but each episode is only about three minutes long and it's just about one topic and then we move on and it's it's been fun to do it and it's been fun to see people um alternately entertained and frustrated by it but that was sort of the point i think i feel like it is it is completely impossible

for me to understand what john is going to say as a robot that's what i love about it that is the beauty of it is it's is it me too right i ask him and i i have no idea where he's going i there have been several times when i'm sure that we're going to have a violent disagreement on it and then i'm surprised that he actually says what i agree with because i've been ready with with uh kit the car from night rider i was ready to debate him vociferously about my feelings about whether Kit is a robot or not. And it turns out he was on my side on that one.

So that one was an easier one. I also do kind of approach it from the perspective of I really want to hear what John has to say about whether things are robots or not. I'm not sure I entirely endorse all of his judgments, but in this case, John is the robot master. So we see what John... It's all about John and what he thinks a robot is

because his ways are strange and interesting. On to Ask Upgrade. Jason, I would like to know, are you still showering with your watch on? And have you had any problems with that? Jason, I would like to know, are you still showering with your watch on? And have you had any problems with that? I took a test shower with the first Apple Watch, the one that Brad has now.

Brad from The Pen Addict. So I wish him luck with it. No, I did that as a test just so I could write about having taken a shower with it. But I don't shower with my watch on. Also, I mostly am wearing the leather band, which is not appropriate for showering. So, no, I did. Actually, on the 4th of July, we went to the back bay here in Orange County down to Newport Beach, and we paddled around on Independence Day. Did I say New Year's Day?

On the 4th of July. We went and paddled around in outrigger canoes, which was a lot of fun. Went around Balboa Island, stopped, got a frozen banana at the banana stand. There's always money in the banana stand. That's actually, I mean, that is what they're talking

about. The place where we went is basically what they're talking about. That's the reference from, it's not just a banana stand but it's a reference lots of references to balboa island in arrested development um anyway we got back and i noticed that the the digital crown was like a little sticky and it's like the salt and and maybe some sand but like the salt had gotten in there and i actually did for the first time i followed the um the tech node and i took off the the watch band and I took a little warm water and I sort of spun the

digital crown under the warm water and then I dried the watch off, put the band back on, everything's fine. That terrifies me. But I'm not taking showers with the Apple Watch. I'm less careful with it around water, like washing the tissues or whatever. I don't take it off. I wouldn't swim with it off i wouldn't swim with it i wouldn't shower with it i do have some scratches on my watch now like on the screen and i'm just trying to forget about them i have i bought the apple care so i figure i'm going to give it like another few months and i'm just going to take it in pay the 50 pounds and get them to replace it yeah fair enough it's um i i wore the watch because uh when we went on the boat because i

thought you know it doesn't matter if it gets splashed on and i i had meant to bring my sport band and actually wear that but i brought the leather it was fine i didn't go for a swim guy wants to know uh is cover flow truly dead in the in uh itunes in the new music app i think it is i mean my mike we established already on the show that we are not your cover flow experts, but it seems to be truly, totally, utterly dead. Because it's pointless for music. Jeremy wanted to just kind of...

He was very confused, Jeremy, and I understand. He doesn't understand iCloud music. So it's the iCloud Music drive thing. He says, in my device, I don't want to see all of my iTunes purchases accessed via the cloud. I had a time where I had to go in and delete from my library a bunch of stuff that I just didn't want to see in there that I bought like six years ago.

It's just a thing. It seems like basically the iCloud Music library seems like a thing that snuck up on me. I don't know if I knew about this before. The first time I recall knowing about it was when Apple Music launched. I'm sure it'd been around, but I'd kind of ignored it. Seems to have to be enabled,

although you get this weird error where it's like, you can't enable it. And then it's, did you get that? Like some really weird error popped up and I saw a bunch of people saying it when i when i first launched apple music and it was like you cannot sync your library you must turn it back on again it was very strange um but yeah it seems like you have to have this icloud music library well there's a there's a setting there's a setting to turn it off

what does that do i don't know i don't want to do i'm scared okay well it's uh yeah i think what i mean this is add songs and playlists to my music and access them from all your devices i i don't know we're still we're still figuring all this stuff out but i i think um you can't pick and choose so i think you can either show your library or not and access Apple Music or not. Yeah, I think it's like the idea of do you want to see what you add to your music library mirror across your devices?

If you do, you have to have that turned on. I think that's my understanding of it. So, I mean, you could probably try and get by without it, but I think in the end, you're just going to have to give in and just spend the time pruning your library as I did.

Yeah, or if you don't want to use Apple music, you just turn all that stuff off and then you're old school. Talking about that, John asked, uh, how long do you think Apple will let me continue to keep going with my iTunes match? Will I eventually have to switch to Apple music in all of these scenarios? My advice tends to be the same, which is just try and get used to the new thing because eventually the old thing is going to go away. Yeah. Apple has said they're going to maintain iTunes Match. I feel like as long as the iTunes store is a viable business of selling music, actually selling it, I think iTunes Match is useful for Apple to keep around in parallel because it provides a service for the people who are buying and not streaming. But it's hard to see them

putting much effort into it. At the same time, Eddie Q said that he was hoping that the song limit on iTunes Match would be raised. I think that is because it also affects the song limit for Apple Music because it has all of iTunes matches like functionality built into it. Yeah, that's true because you're uploading or matching and then using that on it's going to, this is actually going to change Serenity Caldwell wrote a nice piece about like, no, it's not going to add

DRM to the music you already bought, but it is going to change this is going to change how I handle music because I've got a Mac that I buy music on and because I've got a Mac that I buy music on and then I've got a Mac that I have my entire music library stored as a file. And that Mac, right now, the way I do it, since I have iTunes Matches, I just download the music on the one Mac and then it uploads to iCloud

and then I download it on the other Mac. And if I give up iTunes Match, which I think I'm going to do, I'm going to just have to be diligent about the music I buy. I actually copy it over to that Mac and add it. So I've got a, a non iTunes, um, a non iTunes, uh, or Apple music version of those files. Cause I did buy them and I want to have the, the non DRM version. But yeah, it depends on if Apple thinks this is a real... First off, how much effort is it to do iTunes Match? It may not be a whole lot of effort to keep that going. And how big is the market for the people who are not doing Apple Music?

And Apple still wants to serve them. And do they feel that this is a product that uh the the remaining people who aren't doing apple music want or not but you know i i'd imagine it'll at least be around for another year but uh i don't know i don't believe that it's doomed but uh it could go away i i'm not certain it will go away but i i it could if apple just feels like, look, you know, don't do that anymore. Just pay for Apple Music. Do you want to cover this last one here from Michael? Yeah. So Michael sent us a funny Ask Upgrade and linked to a page that is Brits try to label the United States on a map and hilarity ensues, a little 4th of July humor. And he suggested some

great radio drama for us that you get the geography test of trying to name all the u.s states followed by me being quizzed about the magna carta and i wrote back and told michael that i didn't think this would be effective because i uh saw that doctor who episode where they go back in time and an android tries to uh stop thena Carta from being signed. And I know all about the Magna Carta because of Doctor Who. So, although it would be funny to test you about states, because sometimes I feel like you know a great deal about America that in some areas and then in other areas you don't. And it's a funny mixture with you

that you have good knowledge and more American knowledge than I think the average Brit would have. And yet in other areas, I think you haven't picked up that knowledge. And so those areas would be more vacant. You've been to Memphis and I haven't. And you've been to Atlanta and I haven't. So you've got me there. I think I would quite like to take that test because I don't know how I would do. I don't think I would do very well. You should see if you can find a printout of the US map

and just fill it in and scan that and send it to me. And maybe we'll talk about that next time. Okay, I can do that. And then you can invent a task for me. Just don't make it Doctor Who related because then I would win. So if, if anybody knows a place where I can take this online,

that would be great. Okay. If I could just type it in, send that, send that to us. If you know a place where I can just take this test, send that to us. I suppose it's less funny than if I don't have the proof of you writing

Minnesota in Wisconsin's box. I can send you a screenshot of my results or something. All right. Cause yeah, that'd be, I think that'd be a lot easier than cause I can send you a screenshot of my results or something. All right. Cause yeah, that'd be, I think that'd be a lot easier than, cause I don't have a printer. Okay.

So that's like number one. All right. Yeah. Screenshot works. I just want proof. I want proof of you labeling Oregon as Washington. Cause I think it would be very entertaining for everyone, including me to see how I do on something like that.

Yeah. That's not Colorado. That's Wyoming. So that wraps up for this week's episode of upgrade if you'd like to find the show notes for today's episodes there's a bunch in there including links to a bunch of apple music playlists so you might want to go check them out if they're not in your podcast app of choice you can find them at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 44 if you want to find jason online he writes over at sixcolors.com and he is at jnell, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Don't forget all your feedback, follow-up, and questions for this show

can be tweeted with the hashtag AskUpgrade. It's a great way for us to collect feedback and follow-up as well as the questions that you have, so feel free to send any and everything through to there. That would be great for us, especially if you want to send me through some map tests. Great place to do that. Thanks again to our sponsors for helping us out today linda.com hover and fracture and we'll be back next time with episode number 45 until then say goodbye jason goodbye everybody