Upgrade - 6: The Enemy Discount

Episode Date: October 20, 2014

This week Jason tells Myke about his experiences at an Apple event as an independent writer, before going on to discuss the new products announced and day-one impressions of Apple Pay.

Hello and welcome to episode 6 of Upgrade on RelayFM. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at Smile with TextExpander, where you can type more with less effort, and Hover, simplified domain management. My name is Mike Curley, and I am joined, as always, by the magnificent Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Mike. How's it going? I'm very well, sir. How are you? I am fascinated by the idea that some of our sponsors are our friends, and some of them you didn't call them our friends,

and I'm waiting for the first sponsor who is our enemy. They're all our friends. No, but wouldn't it be great if one of our enemies sponsored us? Just to infiltrate us? Brought to you by our enemies at Microsoft. And just roll with it. It's a dream I have, one day, to be sponsored by an

enemy. Because that's when you really got them. When the enemies have to sponsor you. Well, I'll get working on that. Alright. If any of our enemies would like to sponsor us, you can go to relay.fm slash sponsor. And just put enemy in the subject line It will give you the enemy discount which is a higher rate Yes, oh I like that

I'm calling to you from the future, hello Hello future man Here in the future we have Retina IMAX and we pay for things with our funds Big show today Yeah, there's a lot going on It's a big day today, busy day today and we pay for things with our funds. Big show today. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot going on. It's a big day today. Busy day today. Crazy. I'm using Yosemite and it's making me really upset. Maybe we can talk about that a little later. Yeah, maybe so. I've been using it for a while now

and there was a period in there in the betas where I was unable to do most things relating to audio which is a problem for, you know, podcasting. But it's been pretty good lately. That was when I ended up using the Marco method that I wrote about where I ended up doing all my live streaming from an external box via my iPad. That was why. I thought you were just being fancy. Yeah, I didn't want to throw a beta of Yosemite under the bus,

but NiceCast stopped working for a while. It was weird and choppy and all of that, and so I just gave up. Eliminating software from the equation, or at least your Mac software, can be good for things involving audio sometimes. But I've been using Yosemite fine lately. The machine I'm currently talking to you on

is still running Snow Leopard. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had one of those at IDG for a long time. I assume it's still there. It still had Snow Leopard on a partition. There were certain things in sound related that we could not do if we went to even Lion. I'm just scared. No, on lion sorry i'm online oh okay

what's wrong with you then i'm only on lion because of logic pro 10 otherwise i'd still be on like leopard or something i just i just don't like to touch this machine in any way where i don't have to yeah well i i get it that's why so many things at xoxo somebody um Yeah, well, I get it. That's why so many things at XOXO, somebody recommended an audio plugin for a voice from, oh, I can't remember the name now. The name of the plugin is Renaissance they'll qualify all of their products for the new os like by the time the next os comes out because they're careful and i you know it annoys those of us on the on the cutting edge but you know i i understand why they're careful about that stuff do we have some follow-up oh my of course we have the day i know i don't want to say that i was gonna say the day we don't have follow-up. Oh, Mike. Of course we have. The day... No, I don't want to say that.

I was going to say the day we don't have follow-up is the day that this show ends. You just make it up. But I would... Indeed, I would say, let me follow up what people are emailing me about other unrelated things. Let's just read some emails that I got.

Like, Jason, you may have already won. Oh, Target sent me some vouchers today. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, there's a house down the block that's for sale. We could go look at it on Sunday. Follow-up. Listener.

So we talked last week about jet lag a little bit. And listener Manuel wrote in to say that he uses the exact same technique that I mentioned, which is whenever you get to your destination, you stay up until it's nighttime. Stay as late as you can until you reach, ideally you reach bedtime in wherever you are, or at least as close to it as you can manage before you pass out. And he said it works great.

But then he goes on to say, I'm afraid it might change when I get older. I'm 25. Did you handle jet lag better before? Better before. Before what, Manuel? get older i'm 25 did you handle jet lag better before better before before what man well before i became an old man of 44 years old yes let me tell you back in the day um are you calling me old man well is that what is that what you're insinuating here when i was 25 we didn't have planes well to be honest when i when i was my 20s, I didn't travel anywhere requiring any notable amount of jet lag. I didn't leave the continent of North America, I guess Hawaii accepted, until I was just about to turn 30.

So I can't tell you how amazing a jet lag fighter I was. I haven't noticed any difference. I feel like this isn't something that's related to age but you know maybe old people truly ancient old wizened people have problems with jet lag i don't know i'm not one of those that's what i'm saying or maybe you only just get 25 years of your life in which you can experience jet lag interesting so you have like until you're 55 and then you can't can't fly anymore that's possible or you do you can fly but you have to book like an extra day to just uh process your jet lag before

you can move about do about your go about your business i don't know when we went on my first international trip my wife and i went to uh to your your place to the uk and i remember we flew overnight and we got into he Heathrow at like 6 AM. And it's really hard to do the stay up until night when you haven't slept all, all day. And now it's daytime again. And it's the start of it.

And I remember we took the bus from London to bath and we started in bath and the whole bus ride. Um, I, I just, I have memories of all of those towns that are between London and bath just, uh, through the haze of like falling asleep and then waking up and just nodding off.

Oh, that horrible head full sound. Like Swindon. I passed out and woke up and we were in Swindon. And I went, okay. And then I passed out again. Yeah. It's a long bus ride. It is.

But it was good because the idea there is you start outside of London and you wrap up in London and then you're not jet lagged anymore when you're back in the city and can take advantage of being in London, which I actually thought was a really good strategy. There's a guy, Rick Steves, who writes travel books for Americans to go to Europe. And that was his recommendation. We basically followed his like 10-day UK trip plan and it worked pretty well. And that was our first big international uh trip that we took together um but yeah we did i think we slept for an hour like in the middle of the day just because we were going to pass out and then after that even though we were kind of loopy we we stayed awake until night time and i don't know but we were only we

you know 29 and 28 at that point man well so is that old you tell me i don't know 29 and 28 at that point, Manuel. So is that old? You tell me. I don't know. The best tour of England in 14 days by Rick Steves. There's a picture of Bath right on the top. There's good.

I mean, we did. I think ours was 10, but we went to the Cotswolds and the Lake District and York and Yorkshire and Edinburgh, all the way up to Edinburgh, and then took the train back to London and spent three days in London. It was pretty awesome. You got a nice country there, Mike.

Yeah, we're pretty lucky. And it's still together. Hooray. Yeah, that's right. I didn't need a passport check going into Edinburgh, and you still don't. Listener Thomas, by the way, also, he is of the opinion that it's coming home is always easier. And I suppose that's true in some way. I'm not sure I buy it jet lag wise.

I think flying west is generally better than flying east. And when I've gone to Hawaii, I have not felt the jet lag going to Hawaii. And coming home from Hawaii, I have felt the jet lag. So I'm kind of buying the it's easier to go west than east. Yeah, I disagree with Thomas as well. It's always easier for me to go to the states and to come home yeah see there you go we solved it sorry thomas welcome to jet lag talk with jason i know i feel like the first five minutes of every episode is going to be some

other podcast that just dropped in that week that we were are going to do one episode of and then it's only five minutes long and then we're done this is how we serve the verticals jason yeah that's right it's it's the vertical podcast we should have called it that it's just five minutes of obscurity followed by five minutes of a completely different kind of obscurity followed by follow-up um uh so last week also we talked we we had the little pre-show bit which was literally our pre-show conversation that you stuck in which was great um where we were talking about um ring tones and alarm clocks and and uh using podcast theme songs as alarm tones and and your feelings about that that sound that wakes you up at five in the morning and i played xylophone which is the sound that somebody pointed out is actually a marimba not a xylophone which may actually be

true but it's called xylophone whatever instrument demon instrument makes it don't they have a marimba, not a xylophone, which may actually be true, but it's called xylophone, whatever instrument, demon instrument makes it. Don't they have a marimba? There is a marimba called marimba. So maybe they just want marimba one and marimba two. Exactly. And so they felt it was xylophone-y, even if it wasn't a xylophone. Anyway, the point is, I'm not the only

one who uses xylophone as their alarm sound, and I heard from several people who heard me play xylophone on the pre-show last week and freaked out because like me, that is a bad sound. And then some other people shared other awful sounds that basically, I think our thesis was proven correct, which is that noise you use to wake yourself up, you grow to hate that noise. noise you use to wake yourself up, you grow to hate that noise. And so don't put anything you like, um, in that, in, as your alarm clock sound ever, ever. So that was, we learned something. Um, listener Patrick wrote in, uh, following up about what we were talking about a few weeks ago about streaming services, uh, and how, uh, Netflix tends to have TV shows and movies just vanish one day. And we said that

that didn't really happen so much with music. And this is probably the exception that proves the rule. But he said that there's a well-known rapper in Germany who removed all of his albums from streaming services one day as some sort of a protest about the uh about the probably the economics of streaming services so it can happen like i said i think it's uh less common but it can happen that uh even your favorite music can disappear from uh from your services this was about popular rapper not david hasselhoff by the way talking about music and streaming services interesting fact that came out today in the u.s there's only been one album that has sold over 1 million copies this

year and that's Disney's Frozen soundtrack. So potentially this year no artist will go platinum. Huh. It's definitely streaming services that's causing that in my opinion. I think you're right. It's a pretty interesting fact though, right? 2014 could be the year of the last

platinum album. Could be. Well, I mean, you too. It's a pretty interesting fact though, right? 2014 could be the year of the last Platinum album Could be Well, I mean, U2 doesn't count Because they cheated And they wouldn't have got it Well, no, because Apple bought A billion copies to give away, right? But they're not allowed to do that

While we were talking about streaming We also talked about Netflix and being spoiled Both of us talked about being spoiled about House of Cards. And listener Brian wrote in with a link to where he got spoiled, which was ironically enough, Netflix has a funny little site that people should check out if they want a little chuckle, which is spoilers.netflix.com, which is like an interactive quiz about are you a terrible person who spoils things? And apparently it will also spoil you about things. So thanks, Brian, for sending that in. an interactive quiz about are you a terrible person who spoils things um and and apparently it will also spoil you about things so thanks brian for sending that in that made me laugh

um listener kyle kyle the gray and uh and listener joe steel like a superhero team kyle the gray and joe steel oh yeah you can, you can't. When their powers merge and they form Grey Steel, which is like a giant robot. And it's... Is Steel always Grey? It might be kind of a redundant name, but it doesn't matter. Grey Steel, amazing superhero.

Occasionally Kyle the Grey and Joe Steel. Anyway, superhero talk with Jason and Mike. Here we are. Imaginary superheroes we've known. Anyway, they both just sent in some nice feedback when we were talking about conferences and WWDC and Singleton and UL, just about how much they,

even though they're what Kyle described himself as totally not an app developer, but still loved going to WWDC because they met so many people. Joe said, I think we're groupies to that. And I would say that what you call that is a community, that this is the sign that there is a real community with real people who like to meet each other and talk and have a good time. And I think that's a really healthy thing that people

have an emotional attachment to this community and want to be a part of it. And when things like Macworld Expo are going away, these little conferences and WWDC, even if you're not a practicing programming developer, are places for community. And so I thought that was really good feedback. And it's totally true. I mean, when you and I both go to WWDC, we see so many people there. It's just an amazing experience. It's just fun. Yeah.

Yeah. Even if you don't sit in a room in Moscone and learn about the latest APIs, that's kind of, for people like us, it's kind of beside the point. Never written a line of code, not one. Nope. I've got some terrible Apple script. I don't think that counts. And basic, 10 print, hello, 20, go to 10. I was really good at that.

At least you've done some web stuff. That's true. I wouldn't call that programming, though. Nobody, no, yeah, that's just, web pages isn't programming. It's just web pages. Follow up for next week's show. For another time, yeah. Well, no, I mean, like, JavaScript is programming.

If you use JavaScript in your webpages, it's scripting or programming, I would say. But I'm terrible at JavaScript. But, like, HTML and CSS, I don't know. That's something that feels different to me. Listener Oz, I wanted to say, great name, had a suggestion. Following up on our successful hunt for a euphemism for the thing that you say to she who shall not be named uh to activate her uh suggested that we go somebody should go into an apple store and then shout ahoy telephone uh or perhaps that's the code

shout the actual thing and see what happens uh so you don't shout away telephone people will you'll be ushered out if that happens but if you shout the thing that we're using ahoy telephone as code for uh what will happen is apple has apple shut that feature off or will uh like a million iphones and ipads appear and uh and start talking to you i don't't know. They are all plugged in. Right, right. But they may have that Ahoy telephone feature turned off. I don't know. Well, lots of people do lots of really weird things in Apple stores anyway.

So, you know, like all the dancing videos and such. That's true. They may be used to it. It's just another viral video. Somebody shouting Ahoy telephone, whatever. Waiting to happen. Yeah. And that's all shouting ahoy telephone, whatever. Waiting to happen. Yeah. And that's all the follow-up, Mike.

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That's IPADMEGA to get 10% off. Thank you to Hover for sponsoring this episode and for supporting RelayFM. I was really kind of going for it with the iPad Mega. What is the iPad Mega, Mike? It was when I was giving the codes to Hover for this week's shows last week. It was in my hope that there would be a bigger iPad as an interesting thing to talk about, and I went with iPad Mega. But no. Alas, iPad Mega we did not receive. So, Apple event. Yeah, how long ago was that now?

It feels like forever ago. It was like five days ago. That is basically forever. Four days ago, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, Apple event. I was there. Mike, it felt like I was in the afterlife.

Yeah, because it's like a new beginning. So Jason Snell. I went to the last one knowing it was my last event for Macworld. And it was all like, drink it in. I'm going to, you know, am I going to see any of these people again? I thought, yeah, maybe, but you never know. I was like, all right, I'm going to just appreciate this. This is the last one.

And honestly, for the last year, every time I go to one of these, I've been thinking, is this the last one? Because I've been thinking of leaving. But I knew that last one. So now a month later, I'm at another Apple event. And it's not all the same people because it's a much smaller group. But it's like the usual suspects are all there and I'm there. And that was weird because it felt a little bit like all these changes have happened in my life and now I'm here with these people again, but I have this new role and I'm with my own thing. Like I said, somebody at Apple referred to me a few weeks ago in an email as like an independent thought leader or an independent media something.

I was like, okay, is that what I am now? What is my role? Thanks for defining me. And I always used to pick up uh dan moran at the bart station on my way down to cupertino and pit and uh and we'd ride down together because he'd stay in a hotel down in san francisco and you know dan wasn't out he was watching so first apple event he's missed since the iphone launch the original iphone launch which he missed because we made him go to ces instead oh. Poor guy. Poor guy. I know. I'm surprised he doesn't hate me for that. He's got other reasons, I suppose, to hate me and he said, you know, you're not, you know, basically it was like,

you're not going through downtown on your way to Cupertino or something because he stays downtown at a hotel in downtown San Francisco. And I said, well, I always had Dan just pop over on the BART. It's like 10 minute ride on the train and then I pick him up. And so I was, in addition to being an independent thought leader or whatever I am, I am also John Gruber's driver. Well, so now you've gone from, you know, picking up your colleague to like to picking up, you know, just like your industry buddy. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it was fun and it was a good conversation. We started, it was very much like an episode of the talk show. We started talking about baseball and then we moved on to Apple analysis. And at several points, I thought to myself, it's really a shame that we're not recording this because this is a podcast happening or two halves of a podcast happening to and from because I drove him back in that car. Podcast is in cars going to Apple events. Yeah. So it was so much like it used to be at these events, except it was different.

The people were a little different. Dan Frakes was there, and we almost never sent him from Macworld. And yet, now leaving Macworld, he finally gets to go to an Apple event. And so I got to see him, and I got to see my usual people. And Susie from Macworld was there, so I got to say hi to her and give her a high five because she's working really hard to to keep macworld up and running and uh yeah it was uh so it was weird it was weird being there and then you know it's it wasn't the usual thing because we went through rnd1 which is uh the main entrance right next to the company uh store the main

entrance which is not where you usually go for these town hall events. In the past, you would drive around the backside of the loop, park behind the whole loop structure, and then walk over to R&D, I don't know, four. And that's where the town hall is. And they would basically check you in right there. And there'd be this little narrow room that you would hang out in. And maybe there was some like coffee on the side or something. And then later they had like an upstairs that was still crowded, but they had some food up there. And they didn't do that this time. This time they had us go through the main entrance. It's like the third time I've ever been through the main doors at R&D, you know, at one infinite loop.

So that was kind of cool. And then they had like Apple, I think they were retail people, stationed the entire walkway through the center of the campus, leading over to the cafeteria and to where the town hall is. Like, you know, essentially as security. They were helpful people who were there so that you didn't like run off course and go somewhere else at Apple that you weren't supposed to be at. But they're with a smile. And so they did,

we walked through the center of campus and then over to this little corner behind the building where the town hall area is. And that was our waiting area. So it was really nice. You can tell that with Katie Cotton having left, that whoever's doing, because events were her bag, and with her gone, whoever's doing the events now is rethinking everything they do, even down to the, I realize this is inside baseball, but where the journalists and VIPs come in, and where you put them before you load up the building. Once we got in there, it was Town Hall. It was the usual tiny, crowded, really small space kind of thing. But it's fascinating to see just even for little stuff like that, that it's just not the same as it was a year ago. And it had been that same playbook for years before that. Do you find it a better experience now?

Well, I mean, they're taking better care of us i don't think i don't know if anybody else cares about that but that you know the fact that they have they're using their own catering to feed us beforehand and stuff and like instead of us just sort of standing in a huddle for an hour waiting to go in um you know it was a little more conversational but um the actual event you know uh town hall they red Hall, I think, to increase the capacity, and also they put power at every seat. But the result is that it's like a really crowded college lecture hall or something, and it's really cramped. So it's not really that comfortable. There's very little legroom. It's a tight fit. But, you know, again, we're at an Apple event.

It's not really about us. That's all inside baseball stuff, but they've made changes. It's interesting. This was a grab bag too. I mean, to talk about the actual event, this was a grab bag. This was when they sent out those invitations that said, it's been too long. I think in hindsight, we can very clearly say they're just making a joke about how they did a big event a month ago. And it's literally like, here's what was left over. Let's get this all. We got a bunch of other stuff. Even the intro at the beginning of the event was like Tim Cook saying, hey, we got a bunch of stuff that we want to get out before the end of the year.

So here it is. I find it interesting that they used the colored logo, like the thin-lined colored logo. Yeah, who knows? They're doing all sorts of crazy stuff. I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting. I don't know.

I was happy to be there, quite honestly. That was like number one in my mind was, boy, I'm glad I got invited to this because I just didn't. I kind of expected that I would not if I had to pick, but I was very happy to be asked to go. So then John got a ride. How was it like live blogging? You went with Twitter in the end, right? Yeah, we did Twitter.

We talked about that last week, what we were going to do. And I decided rather than go with the weird kind of open source, free, hosted, we don't know how they make their money kind of platform, which could also have gotten, you know, crashed immediately or doesn't do weird things, insert ads. I don't know. the Six Colors website and then I created an account that's at Six Colors event and then Dan Morin and I tweeted from there during the event me in the building and Dan doing some jokes and color commentary and things from his place back in in Massachusetts and I enjoyed it a lot actually I thought it was quite funny, especially when you two were arguing about things. I enjoyed it. It was funny. Yeah, it worked okay. And I think the tweet length is fine for that.

And we didn't want to, especially when it's already being live streamed, you're really hitting the highlights and doing some commentary and not trying to provide a transcript of what everybody's about. We were 30 seconds or a minute ahead. So a transcript of what you're about to hear is sort of pointless. So it was, I was happy with it. I think we'll do it again like that. That was a compromise between doing the grouper thing of sitting there with your pencil and just pondering

and doing the full out like crazy frantic typing. I mean, I took some pictures too, but again, I didn't feel like the need to document every last thing that happened on the stage. I just took some pictures for illustration and dragged them into the Twitter client and posted them. And that was nice too. That worked out

pretty well. And then I saved those, I shared those out so our buddy Mr. Teachy used them on on mac stories which was nice to teach teach our buddy federico vittici i'll just say that and i also want to apologize to federico for my terrible impression of him on the last show uh it was terrible i apologize to all of italy um but it was a much better impression if you could see my hand gestures that those were good anyway a lot of people said that the event was boring um what was your impression being there it's a lot less boring when you're frantically typing and taking pictures and

uploading them and things it's a lot less boring then it's very it's really hard it's just like people talk about the little finger thing with uh tim and bono and like we didn't even see that we were in the back row there are people standing up in front of us i i so your your perspective when you when you're there versus watching it as a as a show on your computer or on your tv or something is totally different so covering it i get i get it because the first half I mean, Dan and I both said this in the live blog, the first half hour was like things that everybody already knows. And literally, if you follow this stuff closely, that part was totally boring because Apple was doing that because Apple wanted to set the stage. Something I learned, something I learned writing about OS 10 actually over the years is that we would write these stories about OS 10 when it was announced at WWDC and it'd be like, everything you need to know about OS 10.3 or whatever. And, and then months would pass and

the OS would be about ready to come out. And you'd think, boy, this is all old news. And people would be like, Hey, there's a new version of OS X. What should I know about it? Like literally there is the universe of people who care so much that they knew it the moment that it was announced at WWDC. And then there's this whole other universe of people who don't care until it pops up on their computer saying there's an update to Yosemite. And at that moment they're like, oh, Yosemite, what is this? Tell me more. And I feel like that 30 minutes of this Apple event, it was for those people and for the press who reached those people.

It's for the more casual users of Apple products. You can't announce an OS in June, detail all of its features and then when october comes around just release it and not say anything right like we already said everything that there is to say about this so here it is you remember that thing from months ago here it is so you gotta tell that story but if the people already know the story it's really boring and that's that's that was the deal it was like continuity we've seen that before you know yosemite we've seen that before but um they needed to do it because

or at least they i understand why they feel the need to do it because not everybody is paying attention to what happened uh in at wwdc just for those of us who were yeah it was a repeat i mean that's what dan said i think in our twitter thing was i think this is a repeat like i was waiting this one yeah is steve jobs in this one i think i've seen this one before and it was a little bit like that for the first yeah first half hour 40 minutes certainly there was like no news at all it's tough it's tough to watch but i get why they do it this is their time where they are able to talk about all the things they want people in the world to know about. So if they've got some stuff that they want to say about

OS X, or they just want to show OS X again, then show it. And if, you know, you could tell that they were aware of that because they tried to make the whole thing humorous. Comedy. Yeah. Entertaining. I actually liked the extent, even though it was an extended comedy bit, and I know people don't like that, or some people don't like that. I actually liked the extent even though it was an extended comedy bit and i know people don't like that uh or some people don't like that i actually thought the colbert thing was fine but what i liked about it was that it was trying to throw a whole lot of continuity context at you in a way where you almost like don't it wasn't like and now i'm going to do this see this feature and now i'm going to do this see this feature and now i'm going to do it felt a little more natural it wasn't natural but it felt like uh

they did a whole bunch of things they did a whole bunch of things that were all continuity without it being like let me list let me show you the five things you can do with continuity it was more like here's a story where continuity is useful. And, you know, yeah. I mean, so they try to make it different. They try to make it funny. And I like the Colbert bits. I thought that was kind of amusing. And I like Apple poking fun at itself,

the doubling down on secrecy. That was good. Jokes and the flying, you know, flying campus spaceship thing. That was, I thought that was fine because that was, that is, you get away with a little bit more if you're poking fun at yourself, which is what they were doing. The Colbert bit was actually the bit that I found the least entertaining.

And I think that there might be an element of just like I don't really know much about him. So I think that there's a lot of like carryover. I saw a lot of people say they felt like it was a very US-centric show, too. These are jokes that make sense to all the Americans who work at Apple. Even if they're not Americans, they're living in the US. And maybe outside of the US, it didn't play quite as well. Because Stephen Colbert is someone i know because people tweet about him you know like if i i can't i can't watch anything from his show because comedy he's on comedy is it

not is he on comedy central or is there somebody he's on right after john stewart although he's going to be david letterman's replacement right cbs oh yes i remember that yeah like any links to to clips are just banned and it's like you should go to a different country. And I was like, okay, thank you. I was trying to tell you something, Mike. I think so. But I enjoyed the handshake video. I thought that was quite funny. It's an interesting move.

It's very different. I can see why they do it. I think we just need a little bit more time for it to bed in. And I think Apple need to get used to the amount of comedy that they want. I think that the WWDC presentation, Craig's WWDC presentation, I think that was just the right amount of comedy. I think there was maybe a little bit too much this time. But I can see why they did it because they know they had to reshow all this stuff.

So let's turn it into a fun keynote presentation instead. Well, WWDC was like jokes in the presentation. Yeah. And this was like skits in the presentation. Like, let's stop the presentation to do a bit instead of Federici just having funny examples as he went through it, which is more of what it was at WWDC. But I think this is all part of the same thing, which is this was a repeat. They knew it was a repeat.

They tried to make it a little bit more palatable by coding it in zaniness. But yeah, it was a repeat. Until they got to the hardware, there was nothing new here. I mean, a lot of that, to be fair, is pretty much a repeat as well. Yeah, well, that's true.

But at least there were tidbits there in a way that there were not with the, yeah, well, you know, you get everything spoiled in advance. And, yeah, I mean, everybody, if you're watching a live Apple event waiting for that one moment of the thing that just didn't leak and was totally rumor free and it's going to blow your mind i i feel like you're never going to be satisfied because there's that's just not that didn't happen anymore you'll get it once every couple of years and we had ours last month you know yeah i watched even a lot of the details a lot of the details leaked but but there were a lot that weren't uh that didn't leak but that's a rare occurrence for a brand new product or it's or it's something that's a surprise like when they did their uh when they did whatever that was mountain lion where it was just out of the blue and nobody realized it was going to happen but that's so rare yeah yeah software is easier to do though isn't it i guess yeah if it's inside cupertino they can

keep a keep a lid on it af waller in the chat room pointing out swift you know i was sitting right next to syracuse so when they announced that that was a beautiful thing um but yeah they can do if it's in cupertino it's got and and doesn't require partners uh you know bring in third-party developers to try out this new thing the more locked down it is in cupertino the more likely it is to not leak because they're pretty good about that stuff. Let's talk about the real darling of the show, the Mac Mini. Yes, they spent at least like 30 seconds on the Mac Mini. They got more time than the iPad Mini.

Almost as much time as the iPad Mini 2, 3? That's just depressing. Mac Mini got updated. It's been two years. People were really excited that Mac Mini got updated lots of people it's been two years people were really excited the Mac Mini got updated I saw it on the slide and it's like hey Mac Mini also getting updated today with

no information I didn't expect information anybody who cares about the Mac Mini you know don't it getting its existence being acknowledged on stage in an Apple event is like, that's the checkbox.

That's like, I can't believe they admitted that they make this thing because they're not going to talk about it proudly. That's never going to happen. Just admit that it exists and give us an update. And so I was pretty excited by that. It got an update because it's been two years. And I was in the market for one. The fact that it wasn't just a quiet refresh,

that's a good thing, at least. Yeah. Then I found the specs out and I was not as excited anymore. Why? Well, a couple things. I mean, one, and listener Brian, actually, this is not follow-up quite, but listener feedback nonetheless, listener Brian pointed out that it's essentially the same process that's in that sad, cheap iMac that they rolled out last year that's like the lowest of the low iMacs, where Macworld did a bunch of testing about it and basically said, you could buy this, but why? It's like, it's already slow. And for $150 more or something,

you could get one that's modern and instead it's this old processor. Well, that's the bottom of the Mac mini line now. And it's the same thing. If you try to configure it, it won't let you upgrade the processor. You gotta go. The $499 is like with that low, low, low priced iMac.

It's to get you in the door, but it has no options. Like if you want, I think you can in the door, but it has no options. Like if you want, I think you can upgrade the RAM, but that's it. If you want anything better, you need to move up out of the $499 model to one of the higher end models. So that's, that's kind of sad. But the really super sad thing is that they used to make surprisingly high end Mac minis. At the high end of the configuration tree, you could do a quad-core processor, like on the iMacs, and you can't now. The Mac mini is a dual-core only machine. And as somebody who is looking at getting a Mac mini because my dual-core MacBook Air is just not quite fast enough for doing some video stuff and video streaming, which I'd like to do more of for the

incomparable, like for our D&D podcast, I was looking at that quad-core mini. Well, the quad-core mini's gone. It's gone. If you want quad-core, you want more than two cores in a desktop, you need the iMac or the Mac Pro at this point. The Mac mini is... So it's become a lower-end product than it used to be. And the server configuration is gone too. They used to have this high-end 2, 2-terabyte drive. It was the only more than 1-terabyte drive configuration in Apple's product line for any product, and it's gone. They're not selling that anymore. So the Mac Mini has sort of been redefined down, I think.

I think I might get one and then it sounds crazy well yeah you crazy you crazy guy what so what would make you want to get one so i i want to upgrade the production machine good word upgrade i like it thank you i like it too it's uh because i'm using a mac mini at the moment um and it's got a spinning disc yeah um and i don't i don't want an iMac um for a silly reason but a reason that's important to me i just want dedicated audio in and audio out right the iMac doesn't have that my only two options then are the mac mini and the mac pro and i i don't need a Mac. I just don't need a Mac Pro. Quite simply, I don't need one. So I can upgrade the Mac Mini

and I can do it for about... I mean, I know they're not comparable, but I can do it for about £1,000 cheaper than buying the iMac Retina. And that's with 16GB of RAM, maxed out processor, 512 megabytes of solid state so that that will be more than enough in power for the podcasting stuff sure um so i'm thinking about i'm thinking about going that route in the near in the not too distant future

i think that's perfectly sensible i just am so sad that they're not letting you configure that with the quad core it is frustrating um because that's just i mean again it was there and now it's gone it's like they they had that quad core you could get it in dual core it was default dual core but you could go up to the quad core if you wanted to and they've just decided you know they're not going to do that that this is This is one of those areas where Apple is withholding features because they basically are saying, if you want that, you need to pay us more money. But the Mac Mini is such a different product than the iMac and the Mac Pro,

as you pointed out, that it's kind of a shame that it's just not an option. It is a shame because the Retina, which we're going to talk about in a minute, is priced very well here. It's like £2,000? £2,000, which is very surprising for it to be less than the US dollar amount, you know, like for it not

to be £2,500. That is an incredible amount of machine for that money, but it's... Look, I know that there are little dongles you can get that you can plug in that will split the audio

in and out. I just don't. I just want it. I just want a dedicated audio in and audio out. It's always good for backup, I think. The more audio related ports I can have, considering what I do, the better I feel. But we'll see. We'll see.

So should we take a break for our second sponsor? considering what I do, the better I feel. But we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. So should we take a break for our second sponsor and then talk about iPads and then the Retina iMac a bit more? I think that's a good idea. I hope this next sponsor is also a friend and not an enemy. Oh, these are friends. These are great friends. These are friends that smile.

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Thank you so much to Smile and TextExpander Touch 3 for iOS for supporting this week's episode of Upgrade and RelayFM. So, iPads. iPads. There are a lot of iPads now. There are a shed load of iPads. It's like an army. They remember when people were saying how Beats was going to help Apple deal with products that had lots of SKUs because there are all those Beats headphone colors and things like that.

I didn't count. How many iPads models are there now? Like 50? There's currently five iPads on sale. Well, no, but then you've got the different sizes and the different colors. So somebody counted how many SKUs it is now. And it's an enormous number

because you've got every size in three different colors. And then you've got the older models that are also available, like the two and the original ipad mini uh and both the air models are out there and there's a lot of ipads before color because i've just done a quick count before colors if you just take the different storage sizes and wi-fi and cellular there are 22 so then for the two new models there's multiplied by three and then for the two older models, there's multiplied by three.

And then for the two older models, it's multiplied by two. Yeah, it's a lot of iPads. It's a ridiculous amount of iPads. Collect them all. I dare you. Someone has. Use Apple Pay. But then the weird thing is,

it's so strange to me because you have five ipads that you can purchase but they're kind of only two models really the ipad air and the ipad mini that but then there's different iterations on them from what's inside then there's different iterations for the storage then there's color it's so confusing it's like they're trying to dazzle people into buying their products i i think what they're i mean what's happening with the old models is simply that they want to have something the uh it is the get them in the door with a low low price thing just like i was saying about the mac mini and that low priced imac it's the their competitors have these uh cheap tablets and they don't want to make a cheap tablet. So instead

they just sell their old tablet for cheap. So the fact that the iPad mini is out there, the original iPad mini, first off, all the developers are just beside themselves because it's got an A5 chip in it, just like the lingering iPod touch that's out there also has the A5. The iPad 2 essentially is still available as a new device that you can buy today new from Apple, which is crazy. Um, so that's, I mean, that's, that's one is just to provide some pricing variety that adds to the confusion. That's three models of iPad that the, the two, the original, the mini two, the, uh, mini one and the air one. Uh, and then, you know, the color variation is nice. I don't have a problem with that. I don't think that's too confusing. The iPad was already so confusing because it's got cellular and not, and it's got the different sizes. So it's just cranking it up another notch.

But the, you know, having, it must be really important to them to say iPad starts at whatever it is now, 239, 249. I don't know what it is for that original. You know, don't buy that model, but it's there and it's cheaper. The Air, original Air for $100 less is not a bad deal. And the iPad Mini 2, I would argue, is actually the best deal of the iPad Mini line. I would recommend people buy the iPad mini 2 and save their money and not buy the ipad mini 3 unless they really need 128 gigs or 64 gigs of storage because it's um exactly the same as the ipad mini 3 except for touch id that's it you can live without it like it's crazy i cannot believe they didn't update the processor in any way um for the for the for the ipad mini 3 it

seems because we we were given this incredible device with the mini 2 which is now called the mini 2 yeah it was such i have to say that mini 2 and mini 3 is awkward but ipad mini with retina display was more awkward it was it was the it was the worst it's just funny that they've they've renamed it retroactively i like they were like no numbers are too confusing we're going to give them product names no product names are too confusing we're going to give them product names and numbers yeah it's going to be numbers from here on out uh instead of specifying that it's a retina display and by the way here's the imac uh retina 5k no it's that's the imac 5k 5 5K 2. Yeah. Yeah, it's... For one shining moment last year,

the iPad Mini and the iPad Air were at equivalents, right? But before that, the previous year, the iPad Mini was underpowered compared to the iPad 4, as I recall. And I think so. I'm not 100% on that one. And then now we're back to that, which is they've upgraded the Air and they're not worried about the Mini. And I guess the question there is, is that because they really just want the Mini to be out there and be cheap and this way it can be cheap and their margins can be good?

Or is it that it doesn't sell very well? I've read a lot of stories that suggest that they thought the Mini would sell better and that the Air is the winner there and that the existence of the iPhone 6 Plus calls the iPad Mini further into question, which I dispute because I use an iPad Mini 2 every day and love it. And I didn't buy the 6 Plus. I bought the 6 and I'm happy with that combination. But I am prepared to accept that I'm out of line when it comes to what people like with their iPads. I want to talk about the Air 2, because you've seen one, I assume. Yeah. The thinness and the lightness. How much of a jump is it? I don't know. I mean, it feels thinner than the Air,

but it was already pretty thin. And I'd say it's imperceptible. The weight is imperceptible. I think iPads are not... What we've learned about these devices is that they're not a one-year upgrade cycle. So the real question should probably be compared to an iPad 3 or 4, how is the Air 2? And it's way lighter and thinner than those, but it's incremental compared to the Air. It is noticeable, but not, you know, it's not going to blow you away. And I don't think they're going to be able to blow people away with thinness and lightness again, because there's not a lot left until they float and are so thin that they are extruded into a different dimension. I think they're not going to get much thinner or lighter. I could be wrong. People could like get their arms cut off by the wrong angle of

a, of an iPad, but probably not. So yeah, it's a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter. I really wonder at one point, the thin and light thing comes to an end i'm gonna write something about this at some point on six colors but um you know at some point thin is not an advantage anymore at some point it's a disadvantage because it causes you to make a lot of trade-offs in other areas um and i'm not sure uh they needed to make the ipad air any thinner than it already was but they did so that's fine it's nice and thin just at some point it's a it's a at some point it's too thin and i i i wonder if uh what else they're sacrificing now is uh would be more important to more people than it just being a little bit thinner at 6.21 millimeters, can it actually, I mean, I feel like we say this every time,

how much thinner can it actually get? Like the components that they're putting in there have to have a, like a minimum thickness to them. At some point it has to stop, right? Yeah. I mean, this is, this is, and this is what i want to write about too is that at some point you know it's so thin that it cuts you right so at some point even if you could make it thinner and all the components can be thinner um and that's not true they can't like the glass there's a point physically where the glass won't be able to get any thinner and the and the you know and it may be a lot more than we, that it is capable of being today. But at some point it's, we're talking about just physics and the size of molecules. And, um, so at some point it won't be able to get any thinner without dramatic changes.

I can't decide whether Apple's goal here is to eventually make it a flexible thing that you just roll up and put in your pocket or something that it's a piece of paper. And if that's what they're going for, but short of that, short of a piece of paper that is actually an iPad. And even then you want it to be rigid enough when you're using it to touch on the screen and stuff and not have it like curl away. I don't know. I feel like they're reaching the end of the thinness thing and they need to be focused on, you know, better battery life and less power consumption and reducing screen glare, which they actually are trying to do with the Air 2 a little bit. And other features like that, that are more important than thinness, because at this point, the device is plenty thin and light. Um, having moved to the

laminated screen where the screen, like on the iPhone now with a, with a, there's no air gap between the screen and the, and the glass, uh, that covers it. That's good. Uh, that's a step forward because it makes the, uh, makes the, the screen seem more directly under your finger when you're, when you're touching on it. But, um, but yeah, I, I, I feel like we are at the point where thinness is no longer the dimension they need to be worried about, or the dimension's the wrong word there. It's literally a dimension.

The feature that is the thing that drives them forward. It feels like they've got thinness pretty well licked and they should move on to something else. So the iPad Air, I i think is starting to show not like seams or cracks in in in the fact that it's thin but there are hardware changes that are occurring that to me indicate the the trade-offs they're having to make so the rotation lock switch is gone yes and the apple sim now the apple sim is a very interesting thing because it's basically allowing apple to put their own kind of sim card into this thing but what it's showing is they are struggling now to be able to have a removable sim tray now obviously it's a benefit the apple sim is kind of a great benefit but it's

showing to me that we're at the point now where they're having to make hardware decisions based on the thinness so i just want it can't well in my it was my thinking how much further does it go i don't know i don't think the apple sim is because of thinness. I think the Apple SIM is because the last thing you want to do when you're stocking 70 different models of iPad is have to have, yet again, another multiplier because there's the one that's got this company's SIM card in it or this company's technology in it. I think they're trying to reduce that as much as possible so everyone right out of the box will work with whatever and it's all in software and you don't have to pop out something because that is kind of ridiculous and primitive. Right. So I feel like that's where they're going. They're probably motivated by thinness and I think the switch is probably motivated by some simplifying and thinness. But also I bet they would tell you that they found they found that people don't use the switch very much. Yeah, I mean, I never use mine.

I use mine, but I use it as a mute switch. I don't use it as an orientation lock. And I don't use it that often. It usually just stays muted. Yeah. And they probably know, right? They probably have statistics of the number of flips of that switch that happen on iPads and it's probably not very much and they say look we can lose it

and we'll we're getting rid of one moving part and it simplifies the hardware design and maybe it allows us to make it thinner but you're right at some point you're sacrificing like battery life at some point you're sacrificing battery life because of this obsession with thinness and lightness and um at and at some point battery there's enough battery um i'm not sure their products are quite at there's enough battery yet certainly the phone's not but even the ipad you could argue could have a little more battery and that people might prefer a little more battery 14 hours or 16 hours rather than um having to be a few millimeters thinner. Do you have any sort of steer? Is it worth upgrading to the Air 2 if you have an Air?

Like, is it beneficial? No, you don't think so? I mean, unless you really, really, really want Touch ID and you've got somebody who, you know, you can hand down your iPad Air 1, 2 in your family or something like that. But I don't think these are products that are made for a one-year buying cycle. They're not. They're not. There's nothing that jumps out. I think even the glare thing isn't quite.

It's better, but it's not like they solved the glare and now it's like a Kindle paperwhite. That was foreshadowing, by the way. It's not like that. This is a product that the real question is, is it a lot better and thinner and lighter and faster than the iPad 3 and the iPad 4? And it is. And it is. But if you've got a 3, I wouldn't, unless you just are somebody who loves, loves, loves Touch ID. And shine on you, Touch ID and uh you know shine on you crazy diamond if that's you uh and then for the iPad mini 3 I wouldn't recommend it to you know anyone who's got an iPad mini 2 there's no point so let's talk about that retina iMac yeah it's right behind me have you set it up I'm in the future yeah it's right here and how do you feel about it

like what what was your initial impression when when apple showed it off and you got to see it for the first time was it like the you know how you mentioned that if you look at it like you lose twenty five hundred dollars from your wallet like is that is that how it is it's just you have down so it's beamed out um well i'm i'm in a weird position too because I've got a amount of money on Lex Friedman and Dan Morin and John Maltz's podcast, The Rebound. Dan was referring to this as his rich uncle is that there's some money that those of us who left IDG get to toward our future, you know, work endeavors. And one of the things we can do is buy computer equipment with it. And at the event, Dan Frakes reminded me that that was the case. And I was like, oh, no, because now I look at that iMac and I think, oh, I've got to buy a computer.

It could be that iMac. I've got to buy a computer. It could be that iMac. If you've seen the Retina MacBook Pro, that was the revelation, right? Because it was like, oh my God, it's a Mac at Retina resolution. This is, I mean, it's like four of those screens tiled together, but that's what it is. It's a Retina Mac. It's not revelatory in that way because it's just a Retina Mac. Now it's huge. And because the 27, I mean, it's a huge screen. It's all Retina. It's a pretty powerful computer too. I mean, it's easy to lose sight of that, but this is the, you know, both of the processor options for this thing are powerful quad core. You know, there's an i5 and an i7 with some pretty impressive graphics capabilities.

So the specs look really good, which is why so many people we know who are really gigantic Mac nerds who are Mac Pro users or Mac Mini users are talking about buying an iMac. And these are people who back in the day, remember the iMac was the, you know, the low-end computer for not serious people. This is the opposite of that. This is the antithesis of the original iMac, other than that it's an all-in-one. Because this is a, you know, an amazingly powerful thing with this crazy screen on it. And, you know, like Marco Arment is, you know, he made an order. He's going to buy one. He's going to ditch that Mac Pro that they spent like a year talking about on ATP.

And I don't, I totally understand that. I'm probably going to get one myself. I made an order and then I canceled it when I found out I was going to be reviewing one because I'll find out a lot more about what I feel about it by using it myself for my review. And then I can make an order if I want to buy one. But it's understandable why people who would not have bought an iMac before would want this thing, not just for the screen, but because of all the other specs. But it's not for you, right? You're not going to get something.

I mean, even if it's a good deal at 2,500 or 2,000 pounds, that's still a lot of money. It's a heck of a lot of money. It's a good deal, but it's really expensive. And what you do, and really what I do, but what you do is, I mean, a big screen is nice, but it's not quite as necessary. No, I'm not massively interested

in putting my money into the desktop computer. I just need something that can process audio quickly. But I never do anything on it other than the editing. So I just need something that can process audio quickly. But I never do anything on it other than the editing. So I just need RAM and an SSD, really. I have a decent amount of RAM in the Mac Mini. I can't remember how much off the top of my head, but I never have problems there. It's just the speed that it takes to read and write from the disks that causes me problems. And you wouldn't get a Retina MacBook Pro because of the audio in and out dedicated. Well, I'm using a Retina MacBook Pro now as my main computer, but I don't ever record on it.

So, like, for example, to do all of the work, I have a Retina MacBook Pro, like to do all of the show stuff and things like that. That's my machine. But the production machine, the Mac Mini. The Mini is just for production. It's purely for Skype calls and recording and the posting of the episodes. But everything else I do in a Retina MacBook Pro, which I adore. But my main computer, the computer that I'm spending a lot of money on, I would want it to be a laptop.

Right. Because you get the added benefit of portability. Yeah, having a pretty good MacBook Air, which is what I use as my main system now um what this would do if I got the iMac I mean now that I've got this office in my garage and I I'm working out here I realized that's why I was in a market for in the market for a Mac mini is the um is I thought you know I leave the laptop docked a lot of the time and maybe I should just get a desktop and have the laptop live in the house the rest of the time and maybe I should just get a desktop and have the laptop live in the house, the rest of the house and me use it when I'm on the couch and things,

which a laptop is good for and have something dedicated out here. Um, and so I'm still thinking about that, but, but, uh, I agree with you. If, if, if I had to choose, I would not want to have some like compromised, awful thing that I could take around with me and have some amazing thing that stayed rooted to the desk. But I'm fortunate to have a pretty good MacBook Air. It's a last year's model. So it's in, you know, it's great shape. So I get to do both if I get that iMac. It's good though. I mean, it looks great. We'll see how it performs. Everybody's got questions and I'm looking forward to testing it out. But, you know, in terms of what it looks like, it looks like an iMac. And in terms of what the screen looks like,

it looks like the Retina MacBook Pro, except more, much, much, much more. More Retina. Yeah, more, more pixels, right? Because it it's just it's enormous that it's a 15 and a 13 inch diagonal on those macbook pros and this is a 27 so it's a lot of dots that's an awful lot of dots is the pixels per inch lower i don't know i haven't looked uh probably not but i don't know i i can't remember. I think I saw something about it, but because I guess with a screen that size

probably doesn't need to be that high because you're far away from it anyway. Because that's the thing, right? Retina is relative pretty much. It kind of just depends how close you are to it. Yeah, it's all about how close you are. I'm on the site now trying to find something, just anything, that would give me that information. But I'm not having much luck at the moment.

Yeah, I don't know. So let's say yes and or no. Sure. It's one of those. I'm sure we'll get some follow-up on that and we'll feed back on it next week. How about that? I'm sure we'll get some follow-up on that, and we'll feed back on it next week.

How about that? Chatroom real-time follow-up. 218 PPI on the Retina iMac. 218. Neil Posner, I think, in the chatroom. 218. So it's lower than on a phone, but the idea there is that's always been the case with the Mac, that you're using it from a little bit further away.

Cool. That's a lot of dots. iOS 8.1 was released today. It was. I updated immediately because nothing ever happens that's bad. Did you update your iOS immediately? I was terrified to do it, but I did it anyway. Why'd you do that?

Just because you wanted to have it? Yeah, why not? Dangerous. I need to have faith. It worked fine. I wanted it because I wanted to try out Apple Pay. So I could write something about Apple

Pay, which I did. I downloaded it and walked to Whole Foods and bought some stuff. And I used my phone and it worked. And then I walked home. And I blew away the guy at the checkout line because he was like, what just happened? Because, I mean, he knew I was doing it because they have little stickers everywhere. That's like, oh, Apple Pay, you can use that now.

But it was all very abrupt. It's just sort of like he was waiting for my next part in the payment process and instead uh the receipt just printed out i pulled out i pulled out the lines from your uh your review your live review of apple pay uh tyler your checking out assistant yeah um said both oh you're gonna try that when you try to do it. And whoa, I don't know what happened. Like, I love that. Clearly, Whole Foods had not trained him at all on what he was going to be using today.

It felt to me like he had been trained. So he was ready to do it, but he'd never seen it actually work with a customer before. Because, I mean, literally, I walked over there as soon as my phone rebooted. So unless they had some sort of beta, you know, Apple beta tester person, they've just got the corporate like training about it, but nobody had actually used it in practice. I was probably the first person in their store to use it. And so I, you know, I told him I was going to do it. And he was like, Oh, and it sounded very much like, Oh, yeah, they told us about this, but I've never seen it. And then, so then he saw it in action. He's like, whoa, it's, you know, is what just happened was very much like, you know, unbelievable. You didn't do anything. You were just standing here with

your phone and it says you paid, uh, which is true. That's exactly what it was. I mean, the, the, I didn't even need to like tap the phone to the thing. I just, I kind of held it in my hand and roughly in front of where that was, the little terminal was, and it slid out the little Apple Pay thing. And I put my thumb kind of like put my thumb on the Touch ID like to unlock the phone to do something. I don't know. I wasn't really thinking straight about what I was doing. I was like, oh, well, this Apple Pay thing is happening.

I'll unlock my phone and see what I do next. And, you know, that just paid for it. I just put my thumb on it. It just paid, which is fine because that's what i wanted to do and just before i knew it i had paid for my chicken and peanut butter and i was out of there weren't you gonna get manchego i don't even know what that is so i was manchego is a kind of cheese it's from spain so it's near you mike and it's a very it's a very tasty, tasty cheese. And I was going to get some manchego and some beer too. But, um, this morning when I was running over there, my wife said, we need chicken for dinner tonight. So buy some chicken. I was like, all right. And, and I,

and I didn't want to do a big shopping trip because I really needed to get back and write the story before my phone call, uh, with Apple actually about the IMAX. So, um, so yeah, I, I didn't get the cheese. I'll have to go back over there sometime. Whole Foods is five minutes from my house. I can go there anytime I want and I don't even need to bring anything but my phone and I can buy everything in the store. That's how it works, right? Yeah. I mean, because it's free money. Yeah. It's just my phone. It's Apple's money. I think that's what that means. Apple pays. I think that's what that means apple pays i think that's what apple i think that's probably probably it apple's paying for this apple will pay if they were our enemy we'd say someday apple you'll pay you'll pay but now they pay every day now apparently so yeah

yeah i'll have to go back for some manchego later because that's a good cheese seems like that it hasn't moved out the hiccups though i've seen a couple of people just either a like it's just not working um or b apple said these cars would work however no it's day one it's it's the morning of day one and so i think some uh some people like Dan Morin found out like his cards are supposedly, supposedly work, but, um, but don't. Um, but I'm unclear on whose cards are working today and whose cards are working eventually. I have a chase, uh, a chase Sapphire card and it was, it was, uh, it worked. Um, I could, I couldn't use the, take a picture of it,

use the camera to enter in the numbers thing though, because my credit card is strange and puts the numbers on the back instead of the front it can just confuses everybody i don't know why they do it um it's to make you look more elite jason i think so it's a weird credit card but anyway it was in there but this is going to take time because you know it's not just apple it's your bank has to be an apple system and and support the new thing and And that's going to take time. And this is all US only, we should say. I mean, this rollout is starting in the US and will eventually go elsewhere. The US is certainly ripe for disruption in this area.

But it was cool. It was fun. I'll do it again. It beats, even if I have a card in my, in my wallet, in my pocket, it, you know, it, it beats taking out the card and swiping it and saying, okay. And signing and all of that. I mean, I'm not going to sit there with like the lady in the video and be like, Oh, getting this card out. It's so hard. I wish there was a better way. Apple pay.

Uh, thank you for saving the day. Yeah, exactly. Thanks. Apple pay. You you for saving the day. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Apple Pay. You made it all better. Bling. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. It was, I'll do it again.

It was fun. It's fun and it's easy. And everybody who's used to having their phone out in the checkout line anyway because they're bored, now you just leave it out and pay and you're done and you walk away it's pretty cool i think but it's early days from a pure infrastructure perspective it's very surprising to me that um like stores like whole foods and i've seen other people like tweeting of the other things that they've been you know buying today it's just interesting that everyone's ready. You know, I mean, I know that there's hiccups, but yeah, it's a huge undertaking. Yeah.

I mean, and then they announced it, giving them a month to prepare further, sort of openly about it. But yeah, Apple's got some clout and they've got good connections with the banks and retailers are getting on board. And I'm sure, you know, the part that we don't read about is the people who make these systems. And presumably that's a big part of this too, is the people who make the payment systems, who are integrating the payment systems with all these companies, you know, they're probably getting leaned on by the retailers saying, well, this sounds cool. Maybe we should support this. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a software update that'll do that. And, uh, and so that's, that's the part beneath the waterline here.

That's also going on, which is, you know, the provider of payment systems to, you know, these five major companies. Um, and they've got an update in a month that will support Apple pay. And then there'll be, then there'll be on board with it. I mean, that's all it's, it's, uh, it's amazing. I mean, that's why I chose to walk to Whole Foods is that Whole Foods was one of the like five places on that slide on the announcement. And I thought, okay, they've got a lockdown with Whole Foods.

And I've been to our Whole Foods and I've seen the new terminals. I know they're ready to go. And likewise, I knew which one of my credit cards was like on the slide on day one when they announced this thing. And it sent us an email saying you can now use Apple pay. And I thought,

all right, I can do this. Not everybody can yet, but I'm going to, I'm going to make the best case scenario here, which I did. And I got a peanut butter out of it. So.

Yeah. They were probably a pretty good bet for, for one of the ones that was going to work if you went there. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I would have written about it if it didn't work, that would have been an interesting story, but it worked. It worked fine.

And putting in the number was easy too. I mean, it's literally like filling out a form to buy something online. You put in your credit card number and your, and your expiration and all of that. And then my, my bank, it was a two factor. It sent a text to my wife's cell phone with a code. And then I entered in that code and then it was authorized. So it was all, it was pretty, pretty easy and it felt fairly secure. So, yeah. So that about wraps it up for today's episode of Upgrade. If you'd like to catch the show notes for today, you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash six. If you'd like to find us online, I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L,

and he writes over at the fantastic sixcolors.com. If for some crazy reason you listen to the show and don't read Six Colors, you're missing out. It's really one of my favorite new websites on the web, and I don't just say that because I get to talk to this guy every week. Thank you, Mike. Our friends

over at Six Colors, wait a second, that's me over there. And I'm getting my Kindle tomorrow, so we've got more things to talk about. And Yosemite came out and we haven't talked about that yet. Poor little Kindle. One day, Kindle, one day. Next week. I will have used the Retina

iMac, so I think next week might be the week for the Kindle talk, but we'll see. We'll see. Kindle talk with Jason and Mike. That could be our five-minute vertical podcast at the beginning of the show before the real show starts. Poor Kindle. And thank you so much to our sponsors for this week. Smile and Hover.

Friend. Friend. Our friends. Friends and sponsors. Smile and Hover. We'll be back next time. Say goodbye, Jason. Goodbye, Mike. Goodbye, everybody. friends friends and sponsors smile and have we'll be back next time say goodbye goodbye mike goodbye

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