Upgrade - 64: The Law of the Large

Episode Date: November 23, 2015

This week Serenity Caldwell re-joins Myke so that they can talk about their first Apple Pencil experiences. Then Myke quizzes Jason about his iPad Pro review and the new Six Colors subscription drive. Finally, we return to Myke at the Movies with 1985’s “The Sure Thing."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 64 today's show is brought to you by braintree text expander hover and igloo my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell hi mike how's it going i'm very well mr snell how are you today pretty good busy uh busy time busy week lots of uh lots of ipad pro business and uh we had a busy show last week and i think we're gonna have another busy show this week yep we're gonna like at the movies later on today oh yeah everybody's favorite segment but we do uh have to do some follow-up and one of the most important pieces of follow-up this week is bringing Serenity Corwell back onto the show. Hi, Wren. Hi.

So we wanted to do some Apple Pencil follow-up because now both me and Wren have pencils. Because we have them. The big idea last week was that I was going to rely on you guys to tell me about the Apple Pencil. And so we set it all up and nobody could get a pencil. And so we sort of looked at me and I was like, I don't know. But now you both have Apple Pencils. So this is perfect, because I can listen to you who actually

care about these things in a way that I will never care. Talk about the Apple Pencil. So Ren, you now have acquired your own pencil, and you've been doing some drawing and stuff with it. How are you finding the Apple Pencil for the type of stuff that you'd like to do digitally from an artistic perspective? Well, I have to prevent myself from squeeing on the air right now because that's how I feel about the Apple Pencil. Honestly, I've been drawing digitally for about 16 years, which seems insane to me, by the way. And I started with trackpad drawing and I progressed to Wacom tablets. And when the iPad came out, I did a very, you know, I've used a variety of styluses. And I think we talked about this last week where, you know, there's a lot to be desired from digital drawing. You can't

really replicate the feeling of drawing on paper. It's just not going to happen when you have a glass screen or even a plastic screen. So the manufacturers have to focus on other aspects. They have to focus on the lag and the latency being very small, and they have to make sure that the pressure just feels right. And the Apple Pencil has managed to nail both of these things better, as good as Wacom, you know, or if not very, very close. Yeah, I've found that like, so it's still clicky, right? Because it's still plastic on glass.

And I've noticed that when I'm, because I come at this from a more of a handwriting perspective. So maybe I'm kind of lifting and putting down the pencil more frequently, right? So it does make a tapping sound, which isn't as nice. But fundamentally, this is better than anything that I've used as well. And I actually wrote a review, one of the maybe one or two articles I write in a year I actually wrote a review, one of the maybe one or two articles I write in a year, I wrote a review for the pen addict from the perspective

of somebody who is interested in using the pencil for handwriting. And I have to say that fundamentally, this thing is extremely good for handwriting skills, like to use as something to take digital notes more than anything else ever has been before. Like you don't have to zoom in to a specific area so you can write in a way that's basically not every word filling up an eighth of the screen. The precision that the Apple Pencil is able to give

is kind of incredible. I can write smaller than it seems that the pencil can actually pick up. So like I'm making movements, which are my regular hand movements, but the pencil tip seems conceivably too thick to make the tiny, tiny text that I'm able to get from it. Like I am incredibly impressed with how responsive and precise this thing is from a handwriting perspective. Well, you think about the other iPad styluses when previously we were trying to write reasonably sized letters with those big, gigantic nibs.

And even that you could get kind of a simulation of handwriting, but it was just terrible. And, you know, despite the fact that I use this primarily for drawing, handwriting is always the first thing I test with a stylus, because it tells me very quickly how just how responsive the pen is going to be, and how precise the pen is going to be. Because it's a it's a much better real world test for having to trace over lines. And it is one of the first things I tried with the pencil was writing in big letters, writing in smaller letters and writing in the smallest possible letters that I could think of. And not only was it able to write in what I would call four or five point font, but I was able to outline and trace over those letters with pinpoint precision, which has never happened for a digital, a digital stylus that I've used. Again,

Wacom comes close. But the Cintiq, I mean, the Cintiq line has always felt big and clunky and overburdened to me where it's like, okay, there's this big giant display and it's heavy and it has to be tethered to your computer. And the tablet interface is unfortunately terrible. You know, the Cintiq Companion, I just wasn't impressed by um as a portable solution and here's this thing this thing is probably half the weight of the cintiq companion um and has a retina screen and can connect to your mac via astropad and you can take notes on it on the go and it just i don't know i the more i work with the ipad pro especially when paired with the pencil the more impressed i am i was drawing a birthday card for my little sister this morning. And it was just one of those things where prior to this, if I was if I wanted to do a full color card for somebody, that was

that would probably be nine or 10 hours of work because I would do the original sketch, then I would scan or take a photo of the sketch to put it on my device. Then if I was working on an iPad, I would just have to suffer through at like 200% zoom with my with one of my styluses and pray that the stroke coming out is the stroke stroke I want. If I was using Photoshop, then I'd have to hook up my Intuos to my laptop. That mean I'd have to bring my Intuos and I'm on vacation right now. So that's, you know, extra stuff and heavy and then so much, so much effort. Whereas the iPad, I did that in three hours. And I've been doing, I did all of these drawings. I was on the plane.

I did three or four like live sketches, some with some typography in under three hours. I think I did three or four. And that just, it feels like a real, it doesn't feel like a real pencil in terms of the plastic on glass feeling. That's not going to happen unless Apple figures out a way to make tactics fool your brain. But it feels as close to a real sketchbook as you possibly can with a digital instrument. And the thing that really excites me about this is that Apple's just getting started. This is a 1.0 product, and it doesn't work the way that the Microsoft Surface

does. It doesn't work the way that the Wacom does. It's using an entirely new type of technology to try and achieve this, which means that it can only get better from here. And that is mind-blowing to me. That is so exciting. Because wacom's been working at this for what 20 years 25 years now apple's on year year one publicly yeah that that's the thing that blows me away as well as that this is 1.0 like we've gone from me wanting something to me just having what i wanted you know but you know this is the thing that i've wanted since 2010 though right like i've wanted to be able to do this since the thing that I've wanted since 2010 though right like I've wanted to be able to do this since the iPad was introduced but only now am I able to do it but

it's it's fine because now I've got what I want and it's perfect and it's perfect exactly it's not half it's not half-assed I don't care that I had to wait and it was it's funny because I've been writing this sort of this experimental series on iMore and people responded after my first day at the pencil being like, yeah, but they should have done it three years ago. And I'm like, no, you know what? They started working on this three or four years ago because that's when we started to see patents. And I like to get a 1.0 that's perfect.

I would have so much rather had a 1.0 that was perfect than get a 1.0 that was half-assed and felt like every other stylus on the market. The fact that Apple, and also, you know what? I will defend, a lot of people are like, oh man, I love this. Now I want it on an iPad Air or a Mini. I can definitely see this coming to the iPad Air in future installments, but I will defend the 12.9-inch screen with my life the more I use it with the Pro. Because for sketching is it is the perfect

size it really is it's sketchbook size um and and even for writing you turn it in portrait and then all of a sudden you have a clipboard that you can write on it it feels so good in my hand and i like i feel like i'm just throw heaping praise on this there are definitely things that it doesn't do perfectly um but it i don't know i'm just so impressed that apple was able to to do this and make it work so well and even in third party apps even third party apps that haven't taken um that haven't taken full advantage of the apis that apple's now included for the pencil they it still works well yeah um saying about the perfection thing we both keep saying it's perfect and you touched on it a little bit uh when i say it's perfect the result is perfect i actually think the the hardware

the ample pencil itself whilst an incredible feat you know like i was listening to jason and john on the talk show just before we started and the idea that it's just it works right you just pick it up it works you plug it in and it charges there are a couple of things that that leave a little bit to be desired like for me personally i think the fact that it is just a cylinder um it doesn't work for me i really wish that they would have put a flat edge on this thing or a clip and i know you know i talk about it in in the piece that i wrote the way that apple tried to combat this is to put magnets in in the pencil so when you put it down it shouldn't roll away but what i've found is if you put it down quickly like if you drop it down it shouldn't roll away but what i've found is if you put it

down quickly like if you drop it down on the desk which is something i do like i'm writing i'll just put it down like i don't place i put it down if you put it down with any force the magnets can end up giving the pencil momentum to move further right and it just like off it goes like it's just running away from me yep um which is you know i can see why they did it because the magnets also serve a dual purpose because well the weights are magnets right so they sort of serve that kind of that dual purpose in the device i would have liked to have seen a clip i'm looking forward to what will inevitably be third-party clips right i just feel like they're going to come there are already kickstarters i don't doubt that there are probably already just pencil clips and pen clips for other

devices for other pens and pencils you probably just throw on top yeah it'll work um but it's just you know we're completely gushing about this because for people that care about this thing it does exactly what we need and one of but one of the things that um i keep coming back to is this thing is so perfect why why is it so difficult for me to get it i haven't even mentioned how i got this yet they're still not in london marco armand bought one of these for me and fedexed it from new york and somehow it got to you that's how i was able to get my hands on one of these things they're still like i've i'm talking to people in in london still about this like in the business teams they're still not available anywhere in london and it's like this thing is so amazing and i'm talking about it everybody's writing about it everyone's saying

how incredible it is but nobody can actually buy one still that problem still remains and it's it's a little bit shocking to me that apple it's shocking to me how poorly this rolled out but my my guess is something happened with quality control where there was just a huge batch of pencils that something something was wrong and when it comes down to it just like would i rather they shipped it two years ago or whether would i rather they shipped it today i would much rather uh pencils get shipped that didn't have terrible defects in them because then you're looking at a bunch of people who are really upset, and they're like, oh, these reviewers told me this pencil was perfect,

but then I pulled it out of the box, and it has terrible lag, or the pencil tip falls off, or the cap. You know, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if shoddy caps were what stopped the whole thing, because I'm still frustrated with the cap. That's one thing we're talking about, build quality. The weight of the pencil feels amazing. I love the length. It's actually, it's the exact same size as one of my HB pencils, which I need to photograph at some point, which is so funny to me.

But the lack of a clip is annoying. And the stupid cap. I had what felt like a near-death experience where I moved into, I was coming into the, you know, where we're staying for vacation and I dropped all of my stuff on the floor. And then I was, I picked up my pencil and the cap was gone. And I had this, like, my heart leapt in my chest and I'm like, oh my God, I'm never going to find it again. And luckily it wasn't that far away, but I'm like, this thing could just fall off and I could never see it again.

And then I just have this ugly little lightning nib that I'm going to snap off inevitably. So that is very frustrating to me. And also I will say, I love the fact that you can charge it with the iPad because I was drawing, I forget, I was drawing the other night while watching Jessica Jones and not close to any of my chargers. And I got a blip on the screen that was like, Apple Pencil is down to 5%. So all I did was I stuck the pencil into the iPad and set it aside for 10 minutes and that charged it up to like 45%. That kind of thing is really, it's a really smart idea. But Apple, you have a smart connector on the iPad. Why would, why lightning and not the smart connector? Maybe it's just the quick charge wouldn't work quite as well.

But sticking the pencil out of the device just does feel very awkward. As cool as it is. It's still goofy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And very precarious um my boyfriend almost snapped it off while we were sitting on the couch and charging it i'm like okay one thing i find weird about that is it doesn't sit flush no it doesn't it pops out a little bit

yeah which i i really don't like that pause like it's it's crazy enough not having to do this but it like it wobbles in there like it doesn't go all the way in and that that freaks it freaks me out but i will say the same thing i was taking some notes earlier and i noticed it was down to 10 i was just going to take a break for a bit i just plugged it in 10 minutes later and it's like 60 just like well i mean you know it's like i i get why they're doing it this way but it you know it still kind of is a little bit like, ah, but it does work, right? So it's the way I would want to do it is I have the device with me. I'll just plug it in.

It basically takes no power away from the iPad to charge the thing. It works, but it's still super freaky as a thing to do. Yeah, exactly. That's the part of it that really feels like a 1.0 to me. And again, I wouldn't be surprised if the cap is what's holding up a lot of Pencil shipments. I ended up getting one. Ironically, I had the PR team finally send me one, and then it got delayed because of a crazy shipping malfunction. So I heard that Pencil pencils in the northeast might have gotten around

so i ran to the nearest uh my nearest store and they had like eight on display and it took all of my gumption not to buy all eight and send them to various people that i knew who wanted them but i just i ended up just getting one and then the other one came the next day so now i have now i have two pencils but uh but one is still in the box because i feel like yeah i when i when mine arrived i was like great i'll cancel my order so i canceled my online order and now i've regretted it because i'm like oh i'm gonna lose this like i'm gonna lose it i'm gonna break it and then my life's gonna be over it's like i know i need to track one down now so i'm probably gonna do that yeah i feel like i need i feel like i need a spare

because this is so quickly become an integral quickly become an integral part of my workflow that if I lose this or break it, I'm going to be so sad. Because it's just so nice. I have sketched more in the past four days than I have sketched in three years. in three years um it's just it's it's fluid it's natural um it you know i i wrote 3 000 words on it on i'm more just because it's just it's so easy to and i haven't even done thorough handwriting you know i've just i've been doing typography with my drawings but mike it sounds like it's it's really phenomenal and we haven't even talked about palm rejection how good palm rejection is it's magical so this this is the thing right so one of the issues that i've always had with palm rejection like the palm rejection that people build in software is i'm left-handed and it tends to be that there may be left-handed modes but they tend not to get the same amount of care and love but the palm rejection like i was

just testing this like i was just drawing a line on the pencil i'm running my other hand all over the ipad and nothing happens it's like the the pencil is the only thing that's recognized. It works perfectly. The handwriting, it's just, you know, I write with this thing and it looks the way I would expect it to look. And that is the most important part for me. And the palm rejection is 100% perfect for me. I like lay on this thing and write the same way that i would be laying on a table and writing but there's one other point though that i find really interesting which is using the pencil as an input method for the ipad full stop yes like i i sit and just use the i use

the ipad with a pen like it is for starters constantly and it works great because there are some things where the precision really helps like text It's with a stylus constantly, and it works great, because there are some things where the precision really helps, like text selection. Hitting a word and dragging the pointers is way easier with the pencil. I sit and scroll lists in Tweetbot, and one of the reasons this is so comfortable for me is for the last, maybe, month,

I've been using a Intuos tablet, a Wacom Intuos tablet, to control my iMac. That is how I now interact with my iMac so it works so perfectly for me to pick up the pencil and interact with my iPad in that way one thing that I tried that I liked was I installed the swipe the swift key keyboard and I was using the swipe stuff like as a way to type out messages you just swipe it but you know keyboard support on the iPad sucks so bad that you kind of don't want to really use it seriously but like eventually when they fix the keyboard problem

uh it will work even better for me but like i've just been really pleased with just using this this device with a pencil and and it works so great for me to just like tap this piece of ui drag this over here drop it down type something above hands pick it back up i could not be happier and it is complete i mean i already love the ipad pro but now it's like a whole next level the pencil the pencil makes more of a difference to the ipad pro to me than any hardware keyboard ever will whereas hybrid hardware keyboards they're nice for for writing. But you're absolutely right. It's funny to me, because I think of the pencil as very much an

old world device, right? Pens are one of the earliest things we moved to after touch. It's like, okay, now we're cave painting. Oh, hey, we can sharpen a stick and then write with it. Hey, that works. So it's so funny to me that we're going back to that sort of integral, we're holding an input device, but we're also using our fingers. And we also have the opportunity to use the keyboard. And it really gives,

like what I love about the iPad Pro right now is that it's giving you the option to choose which input device is best for you at what particular point. And I absolutely agree with you about the input. People being like, me, me, me, stylus is blah, blah, blah, doomed, can go just sit in a corner because here's the thing. Some people, you know, some people don't want to touch the screen all the time.

Or you're right, absolutely, the precision. I've been using the pencil to do a lot of video editing. And what's really, really cool about iMovie on the iPad Pro, absolutely the precision. I've been using the pencil to do a lot of video editing. And what's really, really cool about iMovie on the iPad Pro, and it is very limited, but there are some really great gestures that allow you to do things that you would normally just use keyboard commands for. And one of those things is cutting up clips. You swipe down to cut a clip in two. And I've been using the pencil to cut and move clips around with no problems whatsoever. And I love it. And I also, I love that you can use both the pencil and touch gestures. You know, you can do multiple things at once with it. And it's just, I don't know, it feels so natural. And the fact that this is 1.0

just makes me so excited for all of Apple's problems with 1.0 products in the last year they're like we're gonna mess up everything else but the pencil is gonna be the one good 1.0 products you just wait guys it's all gonna be okay now that's that is how i feel like you know we've we've had so many things on this show recently that have made us sad and angry um but this one you know it's it's filling me with the joy and delight that apple products should and have done for so many years yeah and even if you're not a sketch like someone who draws or someone who writes with any regularity i really think you should go give a pencil a shot like people listening if you can find one and even

just in the demo room it's so funny to me because I've been giving, you know, I've had my iPad Pro around and people are like, oh, hey, that's a thing. And I'll hand the pencil to them. And like, step one, I say, you can put your hand on the screen, because inevitably, they start to try and write like curved around. And I'm like, no, put the hand, put your hand on the screen. And then I say, try writing, because they automatically dismiss writing as something that you could even do with the pencil. And their face, like everybody I've handed this to, their faces light up in a way that's really, really impressive to me. Like the original iPad made some people really excited. Some of my friends really excited and some people are just like, yeah, whatever.

The pencil, everybody I have tried this is like oh my gosh oh i could use this i need this this is awesome like it's it's universal joy which is really awesome without a doubt yeah i'm we could probably do this forever but uh oh yeah i'm concerned jason's actually just left the room now i know jason's like i'm bored i'm done he's sleeping i'm getting a lot of other unrelated work done right now so thank you there you go i did want to say really quickly before we wrap up um i tested the i tested the microsoft surface book and surface pro 4 against the ipad pro not really against it was more like i visited the Windows Central offices and was like, hey, guys, let me draw on your Surface Book for a little while. Because I know some artists who have a Surface right now, and are like, well, I just spent this money, should I go over to an

iPad Pro? What's different? What's awesome? The Surface is still pretty good. Like the entry technology that powers the the Surf's pen is actually not bad. But I think the pencil wins hands down in writing. Just absolutely. And there's so much, even though the Surface runs a full operating system, I think that there's so much you can do with the iPad as is. And then also you introduce apps like AstroPad, which turn your display into a second screen specifically for artist work.

So using Photoshop or any app that has those kinds of compatible tools. There's a lot of ways to work around this. And there are great native apps on the iPad that you can start a drawing, say in Procreate, and export it to Photoshop if you really need to finish in Photoshop. drawing say in procreate and export it to Photoshop. If you really need to finish in Photoshop. Um, I don't necessarily know if people should trash their surface and immediately run out and buy an iPad. The surface is still a pretty, pretty good tablet, but I think it's a difference between this is Microsoft. You did a pretty good job. This is not a bad tablet. And it's a, it's an interesting concept to the iPad pro is the device that I want to carry around. The pencil is the device that I would hands down, you The Pencil is the device that I would, hands down,

you know, buy this in a second, not look back. Without a shadow of a doubt. Now, I'm sure you're going to continue writing tons of great stuff on iMore.com about all of this. So much, so much. Ren, thank you so much for joining me because Jason wouldn't have given me this level of excitement back.

So that's why I'm here for you, Mike, by bringing in other people to be here for you. Ren, thank you so much for joining us. Where else can people find you online? Thanks, Mike. I can be found at Saturn, S-E-T-T-E-R-N on Twitter and Instagram. And of course, on iMore every single day, where I'll be writing and drawing lots about the iPad Pro and Pencil. Thank you, Ren. Thank you. All right, Jason, let me take a quick break where I'll be writing and drawing lots about the iPad Pro and Pencil.

Thank you, Ran. Thank you. All right, Jason, let me take a quick break and thank our first sponsor for this week, and that is Braintree, code for easy online payments. If you are a mobile app developer, you should check out Braintree. Braintree is the payment solution used by companies like Uber, Airbnb, Hotel Tonight, Living Social, and Muntry. Braintree has made the payment experiences in these apps completely seamless, almost magical, you could say.

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in transactions fee-free, go to braintreepayments.com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to Braintree for their support of this show. So Jason, would you feel better now if we spoke about some kind of clicky keyboard for a while? Would that make you feel a little bit better? We talked about the keyboard a lot last time.

It's fine. It's good. We're still in the follow-up too. Do you realize that? I am fully aware of that. That was like a... We'll have to come up with some new name for what we just did. Yeah, I don't know. That's another John Syracuse and not approved uh adjective to use to describe

this thing or preposition i guess follow over but there is a piece of yes there was special guest follow-up it's good it's exciting special guest follow-up there we go we got it nice work there was something from a couple of weeks ago that we mentioned that you ended up digging up which was you mentioned in passing a week well or was it a month, where Apple basically announced something every day, right? Oh, it was even longer than that. It was a long stretch of time where they kept on. Every Tuesday, there'd be another press release that would drop. And at some point, we mentioned to the PR people, hey, it's been three or four weeks in a row with press releases and they said up we're just getting started it's going to be a busy year and and we all looked just like seriously and sure

enough the next week another press release in the next week another press release and it went on seemingly forever and they have an awful stuff what are some of your favorite highlights from 2008's press release so 2000 2008 it turns out i did dig around and find that that 2008 was the right time um 2008 at the beginning of the year uh let's see they on the 8th of january they introduced a new mac pro and they introduced the x serve on the 15th they introduced the macbook air time capsule i think this is basically a macworld expo uh keynote uh iphone software update uh ipod touch software update uh apple tv software update that was the macworld expo keynote um on the 22nd of january they added a pink ipod nano big big deal. Seriously. But seriously,

that was one of those things where it's like, we need a press release this week, but we're really tired for Macworld Expo. What should we do? Just put the pink Nano in the press release

and that'll be fine. There's a whole press release about Apple adds pink to the iPod Nano lineup. Literally, that is what the press release is. Oh, these were innocent times. On January 30th,

they announced that the MacBook Air was shipping after having announced it 15 days before on february 5th they added new uh iphone and ipod touch models which is uh that basically they did a 16 gig iphone and 32 and 16 or 32 version of the ipod touch so they added some new sizes of of the iphone and ipod touch on the 12th they released aperture 2 on the 19th they uh cut the price of the ipod shuffle and introduced the xan which is their crazy storage thing for the for the x serve

on the 26th they introduced new macbooks and macbook pros our listeners through the hell now that you had to go through? Is that what's happening here? Then it was March, Mike. And in March, they did, March 6th, they did an iPhone 2.0 software beta. March 12th, they did an announcement about how many developers had downloaded the iPhone SDK.

That was a light week, I guess. March 17th, they introduced the new Airport Express. And the next day, they introduced a new version of Safari, new version of Aperture on March 28th. They did some iTunes stuff in the first week of April. So that was kind of a slack week. But there were two press releases that week anyway. The next week, they announced the Final Cut server was shipping. A couple weeks after that, they did their financial results. And the week after that, they updated the iMac. So it trailed off in April. But January, February, March, pretty much every week, we were scrambling on a Tuesday because there was an Apple product rollout. It was pretty

insane. And we contrast that with what has happened this fall, where they had one event and they announced basically everything. And we've just been watching it roll out, which is a little bit of a different strategy. But then what's quite funny is the June, July of that year was probably one of the most in history, most important announcements to Apple ever made, which was the iPhone 3G in the App Store and the SDK and all that sort of stuff all came in that year as well. It's a huge, huge year. Yeah, oh yeah. Because, yeah, you got the iPhone 3G and they kept on rolling out the SDK

and then we had the big launch of the App Store and that all happened. And then they took a nap. Yeah, until the end of the year. So it's quite funny, right? We've been inundated over the last couple of months with product releases. But 2008 is an example that it all happened then, but just at the start of the year. They just did everything.

Yeah. And it's funny because in October of that year, they did the Unibody MacBook. That was the first Unibody MacBook was in October. unibody macbook that was the first unibody macbook was was in october um and then the big news the big news mike um in november they hired mark paper master everybody's favorite paper several months later they fired and uh and then to top it all off in december of that year that is when they cut they they cut all ties with mac world and announced it was their last year and all of that. So it was an eventful year, but a pretty crazy start to it. The heady days of 2008, right?

Those were wild times. Wild times. Talking about wild times, you have gone ahead and launched a new subscription. What's a subscription? How are you describing what you've done here with Six Colors? Yeah, so a couple weeks ago I launched it. This is the way for people, I've been hearing from the beginning that people wanted to support me in doing Six Colors. And they're not going to be sponsors because they don't have products to sponsor or something like that.

But they wanted to find some way to do it. And I listened to that and then got really uncomfortable about asking people for money for quite a while. And then two weeks ago I launched what what I'm calling Six Color Subscriptions. I actually had a whole, there's a whole thought process behind that, right? About whether you call it subscriptions or memberships or the club or what, or support or patronage or something like that.

And I decided that subscription was what I wanted to say. Partially, maybe that's my background of working for a magazine for all that time. But the idea is you are subscribing. It is an ongoing relationship. You are, the reality is you are paying annual or monthly amount of money to get some stuff. And it does have the net effect of supporting the site,

but I wanted to not have it just be purely like, give me money because you'll feel good about giving me money i wanted to have some other things around it so i just decided to on the wording of subscription and subscriber and rather than like a membership and member which i i thought about um i just i for whatever reason this is the this is the one i was more comfortable with that's the world you come from i think I think that might be part of it. Like, you know, subscription was the word that you used in your brain to tie this thing together, right? Magazines. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. Well, I decided to go with that theme too. So rather than having a,

like I was going to do a weekly or a monthly newsletter. And Federico came out with Max Stories, Club Max Stories, and the Max Stories weekly newsletter. And I thought, okay, well, do I really want to go down that path of having something that sounds very much like what Federico did, even though I was working on this before I ever heard that he was working on it. I just delayed it forever, and his delay was less than mine. But I didn't want to seem like I was producing the same thing as Federico because I just didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be seen as a copycat. of where I come from. And also that it is a thing that you get in your box every so often.

And by not saying it's weekly or monthly, that gives me some latitude. It's going to be monthly at least, but we could decide to do it more often. And by calling it Six Colors Magazine, this newsletter that shows up in your box if you're a subscriber, then I have the leeway to do that,

to change the frequency of it as we see fit. So that all kind of was in there. But rather than calling it a club that you could become a member of, I decided to go with the other approach. Again, because reasons, but still. Yeah, that was, you're right. It does go back to sort of like, this is the world that I'm from. But I think more than that, it's also the world that I'm somewhat identified with. And I kind of wanted to play on that. So as well as the warm, fuzzy feeling that you get for supporting you and Dan, right? I assume this will also be helping support Dan Mara as well as Mr. Jason Snell.

Well, I mean, I'm paying Dan to write for the site. And by having, if I have more of a budget, then I can pay more to Dan and he can help with the magazine newsletter thing. And yes, so yes is the answer. It's not direct because it's basically the way it works is Six Colors is me and it's my company. And then I pay Dan.

Dan is basically a contractor. So more work for Dan is more money for Dan. And that's i think that dan likes that and we like working together and we're we're we're it so yeah so as well as that warm fuzzy feeling people the perk if you would call it is the magazine then right that is that is the little additional thing that members will get as a thank you for being a member or a subscriber sorry i wanted it to be sure whatever um i wanted it i just i had this strong feeling that i didn't want i think the primary reason you so you support a site or

podcast or whatever is because you want to feel good about supporting it i think that is the number one reason you do it i didn't want a pure patronage thing where it's like look please donate because you'll feel good. I want to give something back. I want there to be something that's part of it that's tangible, even if it's not something, even if people don't ever read the magazine, the newsletter, whatever it ends up looking like, even if they don't actually use that. I was talking to Sean Blanc about this because he's got a membership for his site. And he said, you know, he does a podcast for members, which I'm not going to do because there are too many podcasts that I'm on already. But he expressed to me some skepticism about whether a lot of the members actually listen to the podcast, but it's good that it's there.

And I agree completely with that idea that psychologically, I think it's good to feel like you get something out of it, that not only are you doing something good and supportive for something you like, but you do get something in return, even if it's not the, you know, if, if no, if you didn't know who I was and you didn't care about what I do and entirely you're viewing it as a transaction, that is, I give you money and you give me this newsletter. I don't think that's a good enough balance, right? I think, and I had a couple of people email me and say, why would I give you $60 a year for a newsletter?

And my answer is, if all you're doing is paying the money to get the newsletter, it's probably not a good deal for you. You know, you need to be kind of, this is about supporting me to get the newsletter, it's probably not a good deal for you. You need to be kind of, this is about supporting me to write more things on the site that I give away for free that you're not going to get as a special. You're going to get it like everybody else gets it, but you're going to be one of the people who makes that happen. And as a thank you, there will be some nice things that we do that nobody else can see that you will get to see.

But the primary purpose of supporting the site is to make us, uh, give us the ability to write more stuff on the site for everybody to see. And then the bonuses are just a little bit extra because I feel like I didn't want it to be completely intangible that all you get is warm fuzzies. I want it to be warm fuzzies and other stuff too. And so that's what the, that is, if we do a do a if we do a like a membership subscriber only forum at some point that would be a similar thing um if we offer like discounts or deals or something it'll be a similar thing but those are not going to be um we're not going to gate stuff on the site nor is that the primary objective of the of the of the membership is it's not to to do that and i've i've also heard from people that who have asked,

I mean, you get a lot of questions like this, like, why can't you charge me less? I don't want to give you $6 a month, but I would give you $2 a month. And my answer is, I'm asking for $6 a month. That's a decision I made. And you know, that's the threshold. And if you don't feel strongly enough about this to hit the threshold, that's the site's still going to be there but that's the number that i i decided to set and sixty dollars a year also the site's called six colors so there were going to be sixes in the prices that's how it is personal brand right like i guess i don't have a specific affinity for the number six and i'm colorblind and yet here we we are. What are you going to do? You're stuck in it now, Jason. You had a good idea for a name and now it controls everything. That's how these things go.

The domain was available. Yep. The pricing is, you say, $6 a month, $60 a year. So basically you get two months free if you sign up for a year. How have you felt about the reaction so far? The response, has it been good? Have you been happy with it? Yeah, I think the response has been fantastic. It's been very supportive. It's not too surprising in the sense that one of the reasons that this actually happened

is because I heard from so many people who said, I want to support what you're doing. And right now there's no way to support what you're doing. And we're living in this world where Kickstarter exists and Patreon exists. And I had sponsors on the site, but no, you know, no direct means of support for readers. And, you know, to get back to the subscriber thing, a lot of the people discovered me from a place where there was a subscription relationship, right? It's like, you know, there was a way when you read Macworld, you felt like

if you were reading the magazine, you, you know, you paid for it. And so there was that connection there. And you had ads in it, too. But, but, you know, you were you were a participant in that process. And I learned a lot when I was at IDG about the fact that especially in harder times, when things like sponsorship, advertising revenue can drain away, it really is helpful that you've got people who read your stuff and are willing to give you money for it, because that is another way you can weather a storm. And a lot of the executives at IDG come from the sales side. Almost all of them originate as being ad salespeople. And it's interesting to see, in good times, the business decisions are all made sort of with the audience as a secondary thought.

I'll put it nicely. Like, it's all about the customer or the advertisers, not the readers. The readers are your product, basically. They're the audience. But your customers when the advertisers all kind of disappear. And suddenly, at IDG anyway, having that subscriber base became incredibly powerful. Like, oh, I didn't realize that people were giving us money. Yes, people, they, I didn't realize that people were giving us money. Yes, people,

they are your customer too. And so I've never forgotten that. And I like, as I'm setting out on my own here, between the feedback that I got from people and trying to have a diverse set of places where I make money, that seemed like a good idea to me. The idea that if I can't sell sponsors on the site, that the site still has a way that it's supporting me. And quite honestly, if I had three or four weeks where, which hasn't happened, but if I had three or four weeks where there were no sponsors on the site before, essentially I'm doing Six Colors completely for free at that point, because there was no other means of support. And I know some of this is just psychological, but now I feel like even if I have no sponsors on the site, the site is still operating because I have subscribers. It doesn't matter that I don't

have sponsors some weeks, which I've been very fortunate. I have had very few open weeks, shocking compared to what I expected actually when I started of sponsors not being on the site. But you get my point that if they were to vanish, I would still have a reason to do the site because the readers are also supporting the site. And that makes me feel good. So people have been positive. It's unsurprising given like it was one of my motivators for doing it that people have been very supportive, very positive. And like I said, I think I've received two emails from people saying, I don't think I'm going to pay you, which- That's a pretty good ratio, to be honest, Jason.

Yeah, it's somewhat surprising because the internet is full of people who want to tell you things that they don't need to tell you, that they can just, it's fine. It's like, it's seriously, it's fine if you disagree with what I write. It's fine, it's seriously, it's fine. If you disagree with what I write, uh, it's fine. If you, if you, uh, if you don't think that what I do is valuable, that's actually, it's fine. The site's also not going anywhere. It's free for you anyway. But sometimes people have this behavior on the internet where it's like, well, no, I'm going to tell you that I'm unfollowing you on Twitter. It's like, why, why do that? I'm going to tell you that I don't think it's worth it. So I had two people who wrote in and said, I don't think it's worth it. And I wrote back very politely. And I said, I said, well, but what sort of what I just said to you, which is

the site's still going to be there. These are the prices. If you feel like supporting me, you know, you're not just doing it for the newsletter. This isn't like Stratechery where Ben Thompson writes an amazing newsletter five days a week, and only one of those gets posted online. It's not the same kind of balance. This is more about supporting the public site and also getting some bonuses. And if you don't feel comfortable with the way that it works, that's fine. The site's still there. Please read it. And thanks for reading it. So I wrote back to both of those people with that. And one of them wrote me back and said they subscribed. And seriously, that's where I am. It's weird. This is a funny world that we live in with patronage, you know, with Patreons and Kickstarters and things like that. But I would say overall, it's been positive. And I'd say that my to continue to grow the number of members and not feel like if you told me that in six months my membership number would

be what it is today more or less i would be disappointed but i'm very happy with where it is right now as a as a starting point so it's where you want it to be now obviously not where you want it to be going forward but that's kind of accepted because it should go up over time. You would hope. I mean, you would hope that I would build subscribers and not lose them. That's always a bad sign. But in the end, if you back up

and look at the bigger picture here, I now have two ways that I make money from Six Colors. That allows me to have Six Colors be more prioritized and more part of my job. It allows me to say no to some of the freelance assignments that I've taken. I didn't plan when I quit my job to be a freelancer. I planned to do podcasting on Six Colors, but I had freelance work offered to me. And so I took it. But it takes up time that could go to Six Colors.

So one of the things that this does in addition to diversifying my income is it allows me to turn away from some work that is not the work that I want to do, which is the work on Six Colors. So it's good. It's a good – it's been great. It's been a great experience. And, you know, I could not stop doing everything else I do and just do Six Colors. And the addition of the membership revenue doesn't really change that. But when I was talking to John Gruber over the weekend on the talk show, you know, I said to him, I think it's a very similar story to the story that he has, which is, I would like it if my job

was do the podcast that I do and do Six Colors. I would like it if that was my entire job. And I think that would be great. And right now it's not. I also scramble around and do some freelance stuff too. And some of that freelance work is great. I mean, it's fun writing at Macworld every week. I am writing there way more than I ever used to and they pay me and that's also nice. But I also pick up lots of other assignments that are like, eh, you know, it's a, it's an assignment. I'm not going to denigrate them on the air. Right. But you know, some, some of them are more, um, are more mercenary than others. And I would really rather not do those and pour that effort into six color stuff. So people should go and sign up. Where can they sign up? Uh, you go to, uh, six colors.com slash subscribe. Or if you just go to sixors.com, there's a big link at the top of the page that is become a subscriber. That would also get you there. And it's, as we said, $6 a month or

$60 a year. We're using Memberful, which is the same system that Federico uses for Mac Stories and that Ben Thompson uses for Stratechery. It uses Stripe for payments. So it's a credit card payment. You can't use PayPal. I wish there were a way for people to use PayPal, but that's just not how Memberful is set up. And yeah, if you like what I write at Six Colors and want to support me, that would be the best way to do it. Listeners who were hanging around on the live stream last week, Jason, they found out a very exciting little Easter egg, which has occurred. Who is subscriber number one? Who is subscriber number one?

Is it you? It is me. Do you remember last week? 001, that's my number. I'm the subscriber number one. That was a lot of subscribers ago now, Mike. I mean, you're just one of the pack now. One of the many now.

One of the horde. Yeah, I have to go way back and review older orders scroll to get back to you. But I appreciate that you were, well, I turned it on, right? It was the test. Uh-huh. And I finally turned it on and said, hey, it's turned on. And you went, okay.

Bing. And got right in there. Mr. M. Hurley. There it is. Member number one. Perfect. Joe Steele, you're member number four. There was one, while we're talking about this sort of stuff,

one very quick thing I want to mention. We sell t-shirts at Real AFM, lovely Real AFM t-shirts. We're currently doing a 40% off sale for the holidays. I'll put a link in the show notes. You want to use the coupon code ALLTHEGREATSHIRTS at the Real AFM store and you'll get 40% off. We have men and women's shirts in a bunch of different sizes. I think we want

to do a new design next year. We're doing a little bit of a sale for 2015 to kind of get rid of some of that stock. So go in there. All the great shirts get 40% off. And we should say there is a plan. There is a plan early in the new year for an awesome

upgrade item. Piece of apparel. Seriously, this is just the best so next year let me just take our second break for this week and thank our good friends over a smile and today i want to talk to you about text expander if you ever type the same sentences phrases or words on a regular basis over and over again then then you need TextExpander in your life. TextExpander will be able to save you time and effort by expanding your short abbreviations into frequently used text, even pictures if you want to. TextExpander is an app that will improve your communication. So let's say, for example, you are somebody who you send a lot of emails, and a lot of the emails that you send have very similar text in or, you know, you send some support email or maybe you send out maybe work in HR team and you send out an email which asks people for references.

Or maybe you do what I do, right? Like I send a bunch of emails to sponsors and I send in information for like payment stuff and things like that. It is really, really easy with TextExpander to make all of this stuff consistent and quick. So you can type in like a regular response and you can have little drop down fields so you can personalize them, which I do. And what it will do is it just gives you a way to one, make your communication more consistent. So you're sending very similar, you're sending the exact same thing to different people with some slight tweaks if you want it. But it also allows you to save time because you're not sitting there and writing that stuff out all the time. Like, you know, like at the end of the week,

I send some stuff out to our sponsors to confirm some stuff. And I use TextExpander to help me get through that, those pile of emails super quickly, because otherwise I'll be sitting there for ages. And I love TextExpander for that sort of stuff. TextExpander has a new look and feel now with TextExpander 5, and it can help you type even faster than ever before, because now TextExpander will make suggestions of frequently typed phrases to abbreviate and save time for you. I also use TextExpander for common errors that I

make. So if I make a spelling mistake frequently or if I don't capitalize something correctly, like some brands will use like camel case and things like that in their words, I throw those into TextExpander. So I just never get them wrong because TextExpander corrects them for me. You can also sync them amongst multiple devices using iCloud Drive or Dropbox, and they're available in a bunch of different apps or via the iOS custom keyboard that comes with TextExpander for iOS, allowing you to use your snippets absolutely anywhere, whether an app supports TextExpander snippets or not. TextExpander 5 costs $44.95 US, and upgrades are available for $19.95 for existing users.

It's also free to those who purchased on or after January 1st, 2015. You can find out more about TextExpander 5 by visiting smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to Smile and TextExandit5 for sponsoring this week's episode. Please note that TexasBandit5 requires Yosemite and is ready for El Capitan. So, Mr. Jason Snell, today, just before the show, you published your iPad Pro review. I did. I did. You published something, too. Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of mentioned it in the pencil part but yeah I also today did my Apple pencil review

on the pen addict which is also in the show notes if people want to read that I didn't write as many words as you did though you know I have to say I'm disappointed your review was actually typed on like in text in a webpage when I really expected that it would just be a series of JPEGs of you writing it

by hand. There is one section in the review which is also handwritten. So you can see the images in there. But yeah, my handwriting isn't good enough that people would be happy to just read it. It would have been very upsetting for everybody involved, I think. Yeah, your handwriting is not... For a pen addict, your handwriting is not as good as I would expect. It's better than mine still but still hey i i don't think your handwriting has to be great to enjoy pens you know um one note

was able to properly ocr my handwriting even though my handwriting is terrible but i found out that what it does is it just makes some really it indexes um it indexes every possibility for a given word so you know what you actually wrote it doesn't know what you actually wrote but it could have been one of these four things and if you search for any of them it will find it because it doesn't actually know but it's kind of magical to use um use one notes automatic search thing where i i wrote a whole page full of notes and then i searched for a word on it and it came up with it. It was pretty cool. Beautiful. Okay, so yes, iPad Pro review. I wrote it. Let's get your overall feeling then. You spent a bit more time with it than what we've spoken about on the show. How are you feeling about the iPad Pro? Maybe also compared to the Mac,

because I really like the title of your piece, No Country no contrary for old max which is which is very very smart i like that a lot so explain a little bit to people about what your kind of thought process is here well it's um a lot of it kind of came out when i wrote that piece um last week i wrote a piece about uh about who the who the ipad pro is for And that one was new tricks for old dogs, which I've been writing a lot of wacky headlines. But the idea that the days of us saying the iPad and iOS can't be used for real work are over. It is undoubtedly capable of using it for real work.

And if you stop me and say, but in my industry, I need this. Like, yes, yes, of course. there are going to be things in certain industries that, that just can't be done. But I think for a huge amount of work, it can be done. You can use this. The challenge is, do you want to? And that's sort of the conclusion of the piece is, you know, this is, this is an unapologetic iPad. It is not, I did a whole section that I actually wrote in the intro planning to write and then wrote the whole thing and forgot to write and I had to insert it last yesterday afternoon when I was finishing this about the Surface because everybody talks about the Surface

and, oh, this is like the Surface because it's got the keyboard and all of that. But I actually think that this is a startling contrast with the Surface because the Surface is the ultimate compromise. Surface is all about what Microsoft is about, which is Windows and people who use Windows and people who use PCs. And so the Surface is a PC that is also a tablet. It is not the best PC. It is not the best tablet. It is the best thing that's a tablet and a PC, probably. And Apple has been very clear that this is not how they want to make products. They want to make a Mac that's the best Mac and an iPad that's the best iPad and not a toaster fridge, right? Not something that's in between. And Surface is in between. So I think all of that is true. And I

think it speaks to what those companies are about. Apple has no reason to do that. Mac sales are great. The iPhone is huge. And if you take the big picture, look out five years or 10 years. Do we really think we're going to have combination devices that are both a classic PC and something else? I don't think so.

I think this is all about transitions, about how there are going to be people who are comfortable using a computer and there are people who are comfortable using touchscreen mobile devices. And you want to provide tools for both of them. So I think the question for me is, could the iPad, could Apple make an iPad that's also a Mac and it looks like a MacBook

and then you pop the screen off and it's an iPad? It absolutely could. It would definitely feel like a toaster fridge. Would I want one? Possibly. But would that be a better product or would that be some kind of a Frankenstein product that is a hugely weird, awkward compromise for a time of compromise. Yeah, I mean, that's what it would be because we are in times of compromise. We're in times of transition. It would be a transitional product. But the bottom line is that's not the iPad Pro. The iPad Pro, and this is where the title comes from, there's a line in the piece that is the iPad Pro does not exist to give comfort to Mac users. That's not what it's for. And, you know, I, having used the Mac for 26 years now, am a Mac user, and it is not comfortable using iOS for me, although I'm getting better at it. And, you know, I think that that's one of the problems

with evaluating the device is that it's a pretty great device for what it is. I don't think the smart keyboard is a great buy for most people, because I think you'd be better off just getting a Bluetooth keyboard, unless you absolutely need to have a keyboard that you can carry around with you at all times on the device as a cover. That is a very specific use case. But beyond that, I think it's actually too expensive and not as good as just buying a Bluetooth keyboard and having like a regular cover that you can use as a stand. But in general, I mean, I can't just say thumbs up, thumbs down on the iPad Pro, because I think that's the bottom line is, do you want to work on the iPad Pro? Do you want to work on iOS?

You can. Do you want to? Do you want to make the switch? If you're somebody who's like a casual user, somebody who doesn't have a million different workflows and scripts and things like that, if you're somebody who does what I said to Gruber was, you know, it's office work, like capital O office work, Microsoft office work, you could do that on the iPad Pro, and it's pretty great, actually. So for a lot of people, you get the benefits of portability, of ultra portability here, even more than a laptop, and of convertibility in that you can pop the keyboard off and you've got a tablet. But that's the trade-off is you're you're not

you're out of your mac metaphor and you're on your ios metaphor and that's just what it is there's a couple of pieces in here that i wanted to pick out um yep like a couple of quotes that i like and we could discuss them so i'm going to be quoting you here so the first one is you get used to the size fast after a week using the ipad pro, I dropped my iPad Air 2 down onto my trusty old origami workstation and just started to laugh. It's like a tiny baby iPad. On a tabletop or other workspace, the size of the iPad Pro's screen really shines. This, to me, is just like what it was like when I switched to the 6 Plus. Yeah.

So you get used to the size, and then it's like, this is normal. I mean, and I have an iPad Air 2 here as well with me sitting on the desk, and it's like a mini, and Adina uses a mini, and I think that thing is hilarious when I see it now. I know, right?

It's like, why do you even exist, Minnie? You're so small. It puts it in perspective. It's, yeah, it is. There's got to be some law that is named after somebody. That's the law of the large. It's the law of large displays. That the larger a display you get, the more unacceptable.

I used an 11-inch MacBook Air as my main computer for so long, and I've used the 27-inch iMac for a year. And people always ask, doesn't the 11-inch Air feel cramped? I'm like, no, it's fine. It's great. Now it feels cramped because I'm used to the bigger screen. And the iPad is kind of like that. I mean, I really expected that when I dropped the iPad Air down on the origami workstation, that I'd be like, oh yeah, see, this is fine.

With the software keyboard slid away, this is totally fine. And it's fine, but I also laughed and went, oh, look at you, you little baby iPad. Because it is dramatically smaller than the Pro. It is a huge difference. And I love the size of the iPad Pro

and I know that you talk about in the review the places where you use it and kind of saying that in bed for you and that kind of stuff it doesn't work. But for me it does. I'm very happy with it. It's obviously not the easiest. I mean if you're going to talk about what's the best ipad to use from a comfortable perspective when you're laying in bed it's always the mini because the mini you could just throw that thing around there's nothing to it yeah but you know a lot of a lot of devices like you have to accept some kinds of trade-offs and for me it's like yeah the ipad pro maybe isn't as comfortable

when i'm sitting in bed but i love it. Like it's fantastic for me. It just really, really works. It's like, yeah, okay, maybe it's a little bit less comfortable to hold. Maybe I have to somehow change the way that I'm sitting or laying when I'm looking at this device, but it really works for me. And I really love it for that. It's like carrying a clipboard and you gotta be kind of accepting that it's like carrying a clipboard. And when I wake up in the morning and I'm checking Twitter while I'm kind of basically laying down, it's not the best. It's not the best ergonomics for me. Sitting up, I don't have a problem with it. Standing up or at a desk or something, it works great.

But in that more reclined kind of position, it doesn't, you know, it's not my favorite. I mean, I get that. I totally get why you would feel that way about it and i understand why many people would but it it works well enough for me that i'm happy with it uh one thing that i'm not happy about which you know i'll have a quote from your review fuzzy graphics um and a keyboard that's hard to type on this is one of the worst parts about the upscaled app problem that we have on the Pro. Yeah. Yeah. There's just a lot of apps that haven't been updated for it yet. And I'm a little surprised, but this, I mean, this happened with, I launched an app on my iPhone the other day that is still upscaled, the iPhone 5, and that's not good. And we still have some,

and it is frustrating. uh those all need to get updated because that that is one of the problems that we have with the uh with uh you get the you get the weird software keyboard that's the upscaled software keyboard so now you've got two different software keyboards depending on the context which is something that iphone users know from the transition to the six and the six plus where you would get some apps would open you're like why is this keyboard different? And the answer is because it's an upscaled iPhone 5 keyboard. And now that is happening on the Pro.

There are upscaled apps from the iPad, and it's no good. And everything's a little bit fuzzy. And there are a lot of apps that are like that. And it'll get better over time. But right now, it is a problem. I also like this part where you're comparing the iPads. What's more, the iPad Pro doesn't need to be for a broad category of users. It's not the iPad, just one of three different models, each with different characteristics.

For most people, the iPad Air 2 is probably the best choice, but that's not a knock on the iPad Pro. It costs more and gives you more, and if you want more, it's the one for you. knock on the iPad Pro. It costs more and gives you more. And if you want more, it's the one for you. Yeah, this is, maybe this is my pet theory, but I feel like the burden is off of a lot of Apple products once they're part of a family. And I really felt this when the, like the iPad mini didn't have to be the iPad. It was the iPad mini. It was like another iPad. And the iPhone 6 Plus doesn't need to be the iPhone. It needs to be an option for iPhone buyers because there's also the iPhone 6 and the older models that are also out there. And if they added a smaller iPhone, an updated version of the smaller size, it would be the same deal. It would be an iPhone that you can get. And I think that it used

to be the iPhone and the iPad. And there's a whole lot more burden, I think, on that product because it needs to serve everybody that Apple's trying to reach in that market. And the iPad Pro doesn't need to do that. The iPad Pro is unabashedly a big iPad. And if you don't want it, it's not like there isn't another iPad for you to be and I think it's a good place for a product to be. That's one of the things I loved about the first iPad mini is that it was allowed to be itself and didn't have to feel the burden and be compromised in a lot of ways so that everybody would want it because it wasn't made for everybody. And then this was your kind of conclusion. You mentioned this a little bit, but I want to read this part and then talk about another part about this Frankenstein product. And that's why I can't help but ask myself, if Apple made a Retina MacBook whose screen popped off and became an iPad, would I buy it? It seems like such a Frankenstein product, so inelegant a concept, and so clearly not the way the world is going. And yet I would be tempted, not because it's a bold direction forward, but because it's a compromise that grants me some comfort in a time of change the ipad pro does not exist to give comfort to

mac users this combined with that piece that you mentioned uh on that you wrote last week i get a feeling of nervousness from you that kind of the computing landscape is changing underneath you and there's kind of nothing you can do about it whether you like it or not? I don't, I wouldn't say it that way. It is interesting because Gruber's review ends with a similar statement of like, it's not for me, but I am open to the possibility that I'm a dinosaur, right? Which is something I say in the new tricks for old dogs, right? Steven also wrote a thing on 5. 512 effectively the same kind of idea

where you all sound really scared and i'm not it's that's not it i think it's i think it's being um i think you need to be able to identify in yourself your own biases and uh and lay them out there and be able to think beyond them and And I suspect, and I think that Stephen and John writing similar things also suspect this. I suspect that a lot of the people whose reaction to something like the iPad Pro is, it's stupid. It's not a computer. You can't use it to get real work done. Why are they bothering? It's a waste of time. I suspect that those are people who just don't want to accept that for some people, the touchscreen computing metaphor is what computers are going to be. And that they may have, they may, the thing that they think of as how you interact with

computers is now very clearly part of an era. And eras have ends. And they aren't finite. They aren't sharp ends. They're trail-off ends. But it happens, just like it happened with going from command lines to GUIs. It happens. And so I think step one is acknowledging that it's true, right? Acknowledging

that this is a thing that's happening. And I have no fear about it. This is about acknowledging the reality of it. So step one is saying you can work on iOS. And that the reasons that you won't work on iOS are more to do with you and your preferences. And again, that's not judgmental. More to do with how you want to work than it is about the device. And I think that's important, especially if you're somebody who writes about technology. I think you need to be able to say that and understand that. Now, step two is also being flexible enough to try and change and see what

it's like. And it may not all work for you, but being able to make those judgments and see what it's like gives you the flexibility to communicate that to other people. So I think that's the next step. But to get there, I have to make the acknowledgement within myself that I have a bias here, which is that I've been using computers like the Mac. I've been using the Mac for 26 years. And of course, it's going to be hard to switch to something like iOS for productivity stuff that I think of as computery stuff. So step one is to say it is, and then you can decide whether you want to make that effort or not. I don't want to make that effort to permanently switch because I don't see the need to do that as anything other than a stunt, but to be able to mode switch, to be able to not have to carry around a MacBook Air when I want to do work elsewhere,

but just carry around an iPad, that I see benefits in. And I feel like the platform is robust enough that you can do it, even if I don't have the iPad Pro, even if I have the Air 2 and an external keyboard. But yeah, I think it's fair. And I mentioned this earlier when I picked up my review unit at Apple and got my briefing. You know, one of the things that they said in the briefing, and it's all kind of background-y, so I'm not going to quote them directly. But I got this vibe from them about the keyboard, the about the, the keyboard, the smart keyboard, that it was almost a legacy product. And that was a moment where I thought, Oh, huh. Interesting. Like

is, is a hardware keyboard, a legacy technology. That's crazy to me. And yet I think it's worth thinking about that and considering is a hardware keyboard and is a mouse cursor tracking across a screen, an old metaphor that is being supplanted. And if it is what's new and how does the new stuff work? Because the work, the, you know, people are still going to need to get their jobs done. It's just, you know, the tools that are the tools of choice for some people have changed. I don't know. It's, but, but that's where it comes for me is not, I'm not, I'm not, there's no fear or concern. And I, change doesn't particularly bother me. I just, I think you need to call it what it is and not pretend that it's not an aspect of anything that somebody who's been writing about computers

for a long time, it's part of their frame of reference. And the iPad Pro doesn't care, right? That's the last line there. The iPad Pro doesn't care. It is not like the Surface. The Surface is meant to make PC users feel better about having a tablet.

The iPad Pro doesn't care. Yeah, so screw you, buddy. This is my time. Yeah. Like I look at all of this and I feel like it's safe to say now that the personal computer's time has peaked and it's changing. Well, look at the, I mean, take the tablet out of the equation for a minute and look at smartphone numbers and computer numbers, PC numbers. It already peaked. It's been off the peak for a while now.

The PC market shrinks and the smartphone market is insanely growing. So, you know, and the tablet is a tweener and it's interesting, but it's already happened. People interact with the internet and use technology to do what we consider computer things with smartphones and other devices too but with smartphones that is the computer now and presumably all future or many future computing device innovations are going to be keying off the smartphone because it's the metaphor now in a way that windows you know that the mac led to windows 95 and the suddenly that gooey mac style gooey was everywhere and that was the metaphor the smartphone is the metaphor now and the ipad is a computer that uses the smartphone metaphor, basically.

Man, I am very excited about this product. I wished I could take all of my work to it, right? I can't. I can do the podcast stuff on it if I want to jump through a lot of hoops, but I'm not ready to do that yet. But I see the future of it and I know how happy I am using this device for the majority of things.

Like today, i've been working all day today i sat down at my imac just as we were about to start recording this show but i've been working all day and i've been working on my ipad pro well like i said i i think people get obsessed about this idea of switching like federico because federico is the switcher right he has switched but i think that i you know i think that there's context switching i think the idea that you might have a computer that you use. Like, I stopped, when I set up this office, I stopped working on my Mac laptop in the house. I very rarely bring where I need to use the computer or I travel. It gets very little use now. And that's in contrast to even when I worked at IDG and I would bring the laptop home and I would have it and I would do my computery things.

Now that I've got the desktop, I've got like, if I want to do work in the Mac framework, I do it here at my desk in the office. In the house, it's the iPad or iPhone, but usually the iPad. And so that's what I start to think about is maybe the iPad is now my thing that I do everything I'm going to do productively that is out of the desk where I'm sitting right now. And if I go to my mom's house in Phoenix to visit her for a few days, I't bring a computer you know a mac i don't bring a macbook air i bring my ipad because i'm out of the house and that and and to get that's the hump that i'm getting over is not can i switch entirely to the ipad it's just can i use it when

i'm away from my mac and that's you know that that's a lower bar should Should we take a break, do some Ask Upgrade? Yeah, let's do it. This week's episode is also brought to you by Hover, the best way to buy and manage domain names. I love Hover. Whenever I need something on the web, which is a lot of stuff, really, you know, lots of things need websites these days,

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Let's do it. We didn't do any last week so i'm sure that people have been clamoring for the the only sound that could indicate the ask upgrade is occurring jason well it would be a sound of lasers although we got somebody to complain that we should use the sound of real lasers to which i would say i think actual laser sound effects would be more annoying to more people than us simply saying, ask upgrade. It's the only way to do it. Art would like to know, and this is an iPad Pro related question. I travel a lot for business and I'm thinking about getting an iPad Pro to replace my laptop.

It will be thrown in a bag and into luggage bins, etc. during my travel. Do I have to worry about the ruggedness of the iPad Pro? et cetera, during my travel? Do I have to worry about the ruggedness of the iPad Pro? So for me, I think one of the key things that you have to remember is that this device is basically just a screen, right? Like a laptop kind of protects itself by closing. So like all of the stuff that could easily get broken

is contained within itself, right? The keyboard and the screen. So I think you gotta get a good case, a nice rugged case, and you'll be fine. I have a smart cover on mine. You can pay an incredible amount of money to get the smart case which goes in the back as well um i don't know just how good at protecting things they are but i've always had smart covers on my ipads and they've always been fine but of course this thing is bigger it's probably easier to break because of its size um but i i you know you know it's pretty tough it's pretty rigid in a

way that laptop screens aren't because laptop screens yeah when you close them they're also sort of protected by the rigidity of the base of the laptop and um here the whole it's it's an ipad it feels like an ipad it's got that aluminum back it's pretty strong but you want to cover the screen so that the screen is protected and and yeah i've just used a smart cover on all of my iPads. But if you really are going to be hard on it, then I would say try to get another, something more rugged, something, you know, but that's fine. I think it'll be fine as long as it's in a nice case. The question is what kind of cases are out there right now for the iPad Pro? I don't think there are many.

You may have to wait a little bit, but I think it'll be fine as long as you get a case for it. Yep. I completely agree. Mickey would like to know, should I choose Apple's keyboard cover or the Logitech Create? Have you actually had any time with Logitech Create? None. None. Haven't even seen it. Haven't touched it. So basically I've spoke to a few different people about this and everyone seems to say the same thing. If you want a good cover that's a keyboard, go for the smart keyboard. If you want a good keyboard that you can put on your iPad, go for the Logitech Create. Yeah, but the Logitech Create, I mean, it's sort of you snap your iPad into it. So you're basically turning your iPad into a laptop by snapping it in.

And I mentioned this in my review. I think unless you're somebody who really needs that combination of, I've always got my keyboard with me and it's ready to go at a moment's notice. If you can slip a Bluetooth keyboard in a bag somewhere and bring it out when you need it and not have to walk around. I mean, that's what the smart keyboard and I think the Logitech Create keyboards are good for is like, you're sort of treating it like a laptop. You always want to have your keyboard with you, but I don't

generally use my iPad that way. And so you can save a lot of money and get a better keyboard by buying a Bluetooth keyboard and pairing it. And yeah, you have to charge it or change the batteries, but pairing it with your iPad and getting, and then getting a, something like a smart cover that you can use as a stand. Um, I think in a lot of contexts, that is a perfectly reasonable way to use even the iPad Pro, and it should be part of the conversation. You should think about whether you really need one of these two accessories just because they're made for the iPad Pro. That's not enough of a reason.

You need to, you know, will I use them in a way that makes it necessary that I use them? Will I use them in a way that makes it necessary that I use them? Luca would like to know how we use Slack at RelayFM and why do we prefer it to iMessage or other messaging platforms? So the reason that I love Slack over anything else is in this one application, I have all types of communication with people. So we have instant message. So like one-on-one conversations like me and Jason may have it. We're just chatting about stuff or maybe we're setting up stuff for a show.

We can have instant messages like that. We have group chats. So like for connected, we have a connected, like a private connected group. It's me, Federico and Steven. We talk as a three. We talk about things as a three as friends

and also talk about things as, you know, for the show, for business. Then we have official business communication channels, which have everybody in them. And we want to say, as a business, we are doing this. We want you to know about this. You should look at this. We have official business communication we can do there.

We have massive group chats. We have the general room that All Slacks have. Ours has like 30 people in it. And people are just talking about whatever. They could be talking about tech they could be talking about video games video games about pens and pencils no matter whoever may like that or may not it's all going in there and there's nothing anybody can do about it sorry casey sorry casey uh it's just the way it is and sorry jason because we haven't pen checked today you didn't like that but that's it right it's just a big chat room that everyone's in.

So it's basically, we have all of these different types of communication all in one place. It's all searchable. It's all archived just in case we need it for later. It stops people from having conversations in email and then they get lost and then you continue in IM. It's just a way of keeping all of our communication in one place and everybody just goes to that place

when they want to talk to somebody in our company. And it's very, very cool for that. I love it. I mean, the small group conversations could be done in something like iMessage. That would be fine. But the nice thing about Slack is that you've got the general group too.

So you've got a whole bunch of people who are able to have conversations and then you can set up interest channels and you can set up private groups of different sizes and uh and it's all in one place so i think that's the advantage there also cross-platform i mean our our uh our friends the hosts of the material podcast on uh on relay cannot read those i messagesessages on their phones, right? I'm not sure they can get email on their Android phones either, right? That's the thing I heard. It's only the Gmail they don't get email.

Oh, interesting. It's a different letter I think. Yeah, I'm sure that's accurate. Email Jason. Lex Friedman posted a thing the other day about how many different ways people can get in touch with him and I replied to him. I sent him a Slack message on the incomparable Slack. I sent him an iMessage. I sent him an AOL Instant Messenger IM. I sent him a Google Talk message and I sent him a Facebook message, all saying the same thing as a reply. because it's true.

It could be everywhere. But that's the nice thing about Slack is that you set these groups up for people who are working together on project or other, and it forms like a little mini community. And then you've also got your private messaging that's kind of built in.

And if it was just private messaging or just the group chat room, I think it would be less effective. But once, you know, everybody knows to sort of like keep an eye on Slack, then it becomes easier to get their direct attention

in Slack via a direct message in a way. I don't have the iMessage addresses of a lot of the people that I work with, but I don't need it because I can just see their name in Slack and send them a message or a couple names. And that's been very effective, actually. So I use iMessage a lot less now. Joshua would like to know, what do you think of using SoundCloud for podcast hosting? I'm using Squarespace right now. What better stats? Now, I would say I have never used SoundCloud. I know Jason has, so I'll get his input on the actual service itself. I would say if you have a podcast, you should be using some sort of service

that has statistics. Squarespace is great for creating websites around podcasts, and you can host your stuff there, and it's fine, but you don't actually get any statistics for the uploads of the files and the downloads of the files. You don't get any of that. So I always say you should use a third party in that scenario. I use Libsyn. We use Libsyn at RelayFM.

They've been around forever, and their statistics their statistics are well trusted. There are loads of other great services. There's one that I really like as well called Simplecast, which also creates really good looking websites as well for you. So you can check those guys out. But there is of course SoundCloud which I know that you've used, Jason. Yeah, SoundCloud,

you know, they've added podcast functionality but their goal is to sort of be the YouTube of audio. So they try to drive people to the website. So you can post sounds on a SoundCloud account that's got the premium version that has podcasting built in, and it'll generate a feed. I don't like SoundCloud because their attitude, they are very reluctant to share the MP3 file with you. There are ways to get it, but like the default is they want you to,

if you're seeing a podcast on the web, they want you to use their player to play it. They don't want to provide you with like a download URL, which makes it really frustrating if you want to use something like HuffDuffer or you just want to download the file for later. Or most importantly, sometimes there's a download button. So that's okay. But mostly like the download button generates a download URL that doesn't seem to be the permanent

download URL. So if you want to link to an MP3 on SoundCloud, they don't want to let you do it. If you want to put it in a different RSS feed, they don't want to let you do it. It's kind of like they want to be a podcast citizen, but they also want the control and i don't love it and so if you like soundcloud and it works for you it's super easy we used to use it for some stuff for macworld and for the incomparable but at this point i'm using libsyn and it's pretty cheap for the for the basic plan and uh i think i think that's the and it's got stats so i think for most people that's what i recommend at this point is Libsyn because you can start off with a very cheap plan

and you do have to pay, but it's probably not a lot of money, you know, whatever it is, five bucks, eight bucks a month or something like that. I recommend the $20 a month plan. I know that obviously you're getting into an amount of money there,

but the $20 a month plan gives you advanced statistics, which it doesn't let you know a lot of stuff, but you can get geographical breakdown, technology breakdown, so you can see what apps people are listening in and stuff like that. I like it for that. You can definitely go with a cheaper plan than that. You can start with five bucks. And the way it works is it's about how your upload is. So if you've got a short podcast or you only have a couple of podcasts a month, the $5 plan, it's 50 megs in podcast files. And for $15 a month, it's 250 megs, which is perfect for like a weekly podcast. Definitely. Right. So that's Ask Upgrade this week. So this is usually where the episode will end. However, we have, of course, a Mike at the Movies week, so we have a special segment, and we're about to start talking about The Sure Thing, which is our Mike at the Movies

pick for this week. But Mike at the Movies this time is brought to you by our friends over at Igloo, who give you the intranet you'll actually like. Now, we're about to start talking about an 80s movie, and some intranets look like they were made in the 80s, right? They were made in the 90s. They were made in a time where the internet was a very, very different functioning and looking thing. And I remember the intranet that I used to use in my old corporate job was very much like this. It felt very much at home in Internet Explorer, right? I mean, it maybe tells you all you need to know. That was where it did its best.

But this isn't what Igloo makes. Igloo make a great product, which feels like it was made in the internet world of 2015. It is full of responsive design and beautiful little touches throughout. Like for example, they have status update stuff. So like a little microblog or a little mini Twitter all inside of your own Igloo, so you can keep everybody up to date with what you're working on. You can chat. They have commenting on all of their stuff. You can upload images and you can like stuff like it's all very internet of now right it feels like the way it should and you're able to access your igloo from any device no matter where you are as long as you have a connection to the internet it's going to look and feel exactly as you want because you can customize it you can set up all of the branding

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So I went into a bit of a panic mode over the weekend as I could not find this movie. I have a theory. Also, speaking of Slack, our friend Casey had a file in the slack of this movie did he i wouldn't know yeah you could it's available digitally in the secret slack channel about this movie um yeah it i have a theory about it which is that um the music in it has made it difficult to, so it's available, like the DVD is a Shout Factory DVD,

and a lot of the Shout Factory stuff, it's higher priced than, it's like, it lists at $25. It's higher priced, and they do that because they're, the main company doesn't want to release it because it's going to be too much to get the music rights. And then Shout Factory basically says, OK, we will clear all the music rights and release it at a higher price and a lower volume for the people who really want to see it. Because the soundtrack to The Sure Thing is staggering. In fact, I think it seems much more impressive now as a representative of the 80s than it did at the time.

a representative of the 80s than it did at the time. It feels like songs selected for a movie we'd make today set in the 80s. Like, well, we got to have a song by these people and that song is very 80s and all of that. But it's just the songs they pick for this movie. By the way, the musical supervisor I looked up while I was watching it for this movie is also the musical supervisor for Real Genius.

So it's the same person picking the songs for both, which also made me laugh. But it's a very 80s soundtrack. And my guess is that the music rights are probably very expensive. And that may be why it's not available streaming. That is a good theory. I like that theory. There is a lot of music throughout this. A lot. When the movie opens, it opens

very 80s. It has a very 80s song and has this beautiful 80s font. It's all fluorescent streaking across the screen. You would know this if you could find the movie. Did you end up seeing the movie,

Mike? Yes, luckily I did. It stumbled upon me somehow. Somehow. I just want to mention about the music. Rod Stewart, Huey Lewis and the News, Sammy Hagar, Quiet Riot, John Waite, Jay Giles Band, The Eagles, or sorry, Eagles, The Cars, Wang Chung, Lionel Richie, and Peter Wolfe. And it's Lights Out by Peter Wolfe. So it is a, it is a super uber 80s kind of soundtrack, but I could also see why that might be very expensive

if they didn't have all the, if they had to relicense all that music for streaming and home video. So the only thing that I knew about this movie or believe that I knew about this movie is that you referred to it last week as a sex comedy so my question before going into this was is this real genius or is this american pie i will find out i i yeah and and i think the reality is it is like um like some of the other movies that we've watched including say anything it is a it is a movie that wants you to think that it's a horny teen sex comedy sort of movie when it's not yes that i will get to this a little bit later on let's put a pin in that for now but this one tries harder than say anything does right say anything doesn't really they have the one party scene but say anything really doesn't get too far down the road where sure thing spends a good 25 minutes really wanting you to think that this is all about a couple of guys

who want to get laid yeah and the time before you realize so yeah the sure thing is the sure character the person that the girl who is a sure thing like that we're gonna get our main character john cusack who plays a character called gib walter gibson is gonna go to his friend's college in california because there is this girl there who is a sure thing for him like his friend anthony edwards from er and top gun very young as his friend the dude in going to college in california and nicolette sheridan who went on to be on like knots landing and she did a whole bunch of other things and her her role is credited in the credits as the sure thing that is that is who she is she never has a name she's blonde and beautiful and sits out on the beach and appears in the various fantasy sequences of John Cusack's Gibb but before we even finish the credits there

was something that I noticed that really made me smile. Executive producer, Henry Winkler. Yes. Where did that come from? So it's a funny thing about what Henry Winkler did sort of post-Fonz,

which was get into producing. And he produced a bunch of movies that would surprise you and tv series i believe he was he was one of the producers on macgyver the tv series as well but he did um he did this film and uh there was another there was another big big movie that he's listed as a producer on um god what is it anyway yeah he had a whole uh or did he direct he also directed he directed um he directed some movies and he produced some movies it was very much his uh okay i've been a sitcom star on happy days and now i want to do some other things

and so he produced and directed a bunch of stuff so he is listed as one of the uh one of the the executive producers on the sure thing i have no idea oh i'm looking at his imdb page right now there's a ton of stuff like i was thinking oh i'll just go and find out what that thing was i will be here all day yeah oh yeah it's uh it's crazy the stuff that he's uh that he's produced so i think that's i think that's part of the uh part of the story is that he he did a whole bunch of sort of post-Fonz things. But yeah, he's listed as an executive producer on Sure Thing. So I like that it kind of starts off with Gibb. We should say this is directed by Rob Reiner, who we've already seen This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride from.

And then stars John Cusack who we've already seen with say anything so it starts off cusack is is giving his chat up line to a girl and it's about space and i wonder if this was potential for why you love this movie is that he uses space as a pickup line he's so bad at it yeah it doesn't work it doesn't consider the universe he says with his high voice he's 19 in this movie very young he's four years younger than this is four years before say anything and his voice hasn't dropped basically yet and i like that the movie the movie's set up really well like it begins at the ending for these two friends they've just graduated high school and they're about to go

off to college like that's i really like that as the way that the movie begins because it just puts a pin in where these people are in their lives they do they don't do it in a ham-fisted way they don't do it with a lot of exposition just a couple of minutes and then they move on to the rest of the movie and i think it sets it up really nicely did you notice uh something we talked about when we talked about say anything was that's a movie entirely set in a period where, which we rarely see in a film, which is the summer after high school and before college. And I laughed when this movie starts in the same place, which is graduation night and scene two skips all the way to college. And I thought, wow, say anything just happened in between those two scenes, because this movie's got to, it's time to move on. The point is shorthand they're in high school. It's all the

expectations of going off to college. There's, there's that funny line where, uh, Anthony Edwards is trying to give him a pep talk about how he's going to be more, more, uh, more lucky with the ladies in college.

He said, forget about these high school girls. Pretty soon they'll all be college girls. And he says, but it's the same girls. They just go to college. And he says, no,

no, no, there'll, there'll be college girls. Then this dream that is nonsensical about it it's just so it's so naive and and funny and um and uh and then we cut to he's at an unspecified northeastern university so he's he's taking english and i really love his lecturer um oh yeah she is such a fantastic character she's so full of life and fun um and i love that like you know she's she wants

them to express themselves more in their writing and she says stuff like sleep when you want to not when you think you must make love in a hammock like it's like she's just saying all this stuff like just prancing around the room she's swedish so she's got this accent so you're like she's this vaguely european uh dynamic yeah and i really like that um i really like that a lot uh i also love the swimming pool monologue right so as uh so at this point gibb has set his sights on um amanda that is who he is really interested in and he's trying to get her to to go on a date with him and she is going for a swim in a pool and she's doing lengths and he's just walking up and down the pool in increasing desperation uh of why like absolute

melodrama of why she should give him a shot and how it like completely end his life and then he jumps into the pool it's like would you save a drowning man like it's all i really like that it's allison by the way allison sorry you got bad bad handwriting there but we knew that i was trying to do it from memory didn't do a very good job yeah so yeah he he he follows her he it's it's it's sweet he's uh he it's also he is he fancies himself i think as a lot of is this in reality or not but it's certainly certainly in movies that a lot of teenage, you know, young men fancy themselves powerful pickup artist type people where they're like, oh, I can get the ladies to go out with me. I've got a line, you know, he's working on his lines and stuff like that. You got to get some new material. is that he's going to get her to help him with his

studying, his paper, because he's got to rewrite this paper that he wrote about not burning the roof of your mouth when you eat pizza. That is what his paper is about, by the way. And the moment, so she finally agrees and the moment that they sit down

to work on the paper seemingly, he's like, let's get some air, let's get out of here. It is the thinnest tissue paper sham. It is just so – it made me laugh because it's like he doesn't even go through the motions of like we don't see that they've been working on it now that they're leaving after the study session. He's going to ask her out. He can't wait.

He immediately is like, no, no, let's blow this off and actually go out on a date, which I didn't ask on but now i'm gonna ask you on i like that when she finally agrees to go on a date with him uh they like you know they agree on a time and stuff and allison goes to walk out of the door and gib says where like where shall i meet you like this is one of my biggest pet peeves in movies when people set up dates and never arrange a location or a time. Or they'll be like, yeah, I'll pick you up for lunch. All right. What?

Like, where are you? Do you know where she lives? I like that they just put that in there. It really annoys me when people leave that out in movies. It's like just this ambiguous time and or location of where this date will occur. Yeah. And then, you know, he's kind of psyching himself up in his dorm room

and I really like the scene where his friend is Jimbo is trying to like give him the lines to use for the ladies. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, this like real sensitive line.

I feel like we've got a connection. And he's like stroking his arm and that sort of stuff as he's giving him the full patter, as it were. Mm-hmm. Which he uses many times throughout this movie on various ladies

or at least tries to indeed and we also at some point in here he also gets the letter from his his friend who's at at you know ucla or something like that he's in college in southern california telling him about how amazing it is out there while it's just the brutal winter and it's getting on toward getting on toward christmas and it's the brutal brutal cold has come to the northeast and his pal is just uh in a in a like a parody of almost of of what you'd expect because they that's that's how i always viewed it is that even though he goes there and it actually is this way but it is like the dream southern california college thing which is we don't really go to school and we hang out on the beach and everybody's got there's a beach house and there's a pool and and the the beach is over there and there are girls in bikinis and we're all just

partying and drinking beer and that's all we do all the time at southern california university which is not university of southern californ. It's slightly less academic. Anyway. And they have a phone call, don't they? Which I really like. Yeah. So his friend, what was his friend's name? Lance.

Lance. They're having a phone call and like Gibb is like freezing in a corridor and Lance is like walking outside by a pool in the sun and he's got a Hawaiian shirt on and his girl's playing volleyball and it's like, it and he's got a Hawaiian shirt on, and there's girls playing volleyball, and it's just fantastic to just watch this night and day. It's like, hey, it's amazing here. His friend has a lady in his room,

and there's various sounds coming from the room, so he's just completely shut out in this cold corridor, listening to his friend being like, come on, man, it's a sure thing over here get your way to california um so they start the journey to california right um and he goes to like this board and it's like some ride like what what is that about okay so so yeah so so anthony edwards tells him come to california she's got to go on her semester at sea on decembernd or whatever, which is hilarious because that's exactly when you'd start the semester at sea is right before Christmas time.

That's not a thing. But anyway, that's the idea here is you got to get to see her before she goes off and leaves because she's a sure thing. She was in a parochial school or something. She is built up as this basically like she's beautiful and we'll have sex with you. So come to California. And, you know, also it's warm here, but you got with you. So come to California and you know, also it's warm here, but you got to get here by a certain date and it's about to be the Christmas break. So he goes to the ride share board, which Mike, this was a thing that there would be a place that you could go. If you were, I had, they had this when I was in college, I never used it, but if you were driving to, I went to school in San Diego, Southern California university,

we didn't have the swimming pool and the girls playing volleyball in the swimming pool, I have to say, as somebody who went to a Southern California University. But they would have the board and it would have like driving to LA, you know, and you would, people would like sign up to go with them and you drop them off. And we actually had that when we went to LA for Thanksgiving one year from up here, had that when we went to LA for Thanksgiving one year from up here, my wife's sister was at Berkeley and she had a friend and it was like, you know, it was the same idea. It's like we dropped her off along the way because she lived in the Northern part of LA. So we kind of went out of our way a little, dropped her off and then continued on. And back in the day before the internet, especially, that was sort of how you did it is you pinned these messages up and they

did like ride share and you'd share, you know know you'd buy the gas or whatever and uh so everybody would win and you that was how people got uh maybe not across the country i don't know that's kind of extreme but it would totally that the ride sharing thing would would happen so they they do that right they go on a ride share and the funny thing is is that when uh g gets in the car Alison is there, right? Yeah, she is also taking this ride share in the car that is being driven by a very young Tim Robbins. Yep, and Tim Robbins and his lady

are singing show tunes. They are a lovely, wholesome couple and the whole time Alison and Gibb are just at each other's throats because Gibb tried to get fresh, I guess, with Alison and she wasn't having none of it. couple and the whole time allison and gibb are just at each other's throats because you know they've uh gibb tried to to get fresh i guess with allison and she wasn't having none of it and so now that they don't really like each other so much but they're missed they're wacky and mismatched in the back of this car with the the husband and wife in the front who are super perky

and don't have kids of their own so they're expecting this is going to be a really fun road trip with the college kids and the college kids are silent and staring daggers at each other and uh and there's a lot of funny contrast and they sing the show tunes and um and they're totally bringing down the the happy couple um and then it gets to the point where uh they get thrown out onto the road and they have to make their own way right like dim robbins has just had enough and he just chucks them out of the car so they begin the process well you remember the reason why ultimately he goes uh gibb after after having a thing where we hear about that she's got this boyfriend jason sounds like a terrible guy uh in la um that uh and and he

they are sharing the hotel room and she's gonna says, I've got a schedule. It's very proto when Harry met Sally in some ways, like she's super, she's super uptight and he's not. And so, um, she's like, I got a schedule. You'll sleep on the bed and alternating nights and I'll sleep on the, on the floor and we'll alternate. But tonight you're on the floor. And, uh, he gets really frustrated with that. And he, he needles her in the car the next day and says come on you got to do something spontaneous and she says i like to do things that are spontaneous when it's been planned out or whatever she says it's very funny and then he finally

basically gets her to to take to lift her shirt up and show her uh boobs to the on on an oncoming bit of traffic and this outrages tim robbins and uh wife. And they throw him out of the car in the middle of nowhere. Well, because they get pulled over by the police and he gets a ticket, right? Oh, that's true. That's true. Cut to he's being written up for indecent exposure and reckless driving and whatever else for things that would not be his fault. But he's the driver of the car, I guess. And at that point, they just leave them.

They leave them by the side of the road in a place that looks suspiciously like where I grew up. It's very clearly the foothills of Northern California, which is where they shot a lot of this movie. But it's supposedly out in the middle of the United States somewhere. So because I knew where you grew up and that kind of thing, right? Gibb and Allison go hitchhiking at this point. So have you ever hitchhiked? No. Okay. It seems horrific to me as a thing to do.

Yeah. Like, it seems horrible. I don't like meeting people, Mike. And hitchhiking is meeting people roulette. No. Never. There's this one scene where Allison andison and give her a big argument and she jumps into a van he tells her not to go gib jumps into the back of the truck and yeah um allison is

kind of accosted by the gentleman driving the car and he and then so then gib jumps into the to the front of the car and like acts like a crazy person yeah uh it's it's a really great scene and it's like he saves her i'm talking about a total maniac like it's it's a really great scene and it's like he saves her i'm talking about a total maniac like it's it's really fantastic they try very hard to lighten it because it's very dark that basically she's been she's been uh picked up by a a guy who picks up pretty girl hitchhikers and and rapes them that's that's a dark way to go but then it's very quickly counterbalanced by the fact that that gib pops up in the in the back of the of the truck and is looking in the window, which is a very funny moment because you're like, oh, man, he's back there. And then he pops into the – they pull off by the side of the road and he pops into the door.

And the guy claims that Allison is his wife. And so Jock, he's like, oh, your wife. And he goes like a crazy person. He says, now I'm just going to go out. I'm going to oh your wife and and he goes like a crazy person and he says i i'm now i'm just gonna go out i'm gonna take my wife take your wife with me and he pulls her out and pulls the stuff out of the back as the guy speeds off and and it's a it's a nice moment i guess where where um she is willing to forgive some things about him because you know he he was looking out for her. It's kind of interesting to me how this movie at this point becomes like a buddy cop movie, which I wasn't expecting.

For me, this is the moment where the movie flips over into brilliant. We've set for half an hour, we've sort of set up that they're in opposition really the pitch of this movie is these two people who don't like each other but actually are going to fall in love um are forced to hitchhike across the country when you know and this is where it starts it's really it's right here yeah because it becomes one of those scenarios where like they grow to love each other and they're pushed apart like it's it becomes that which i wasn't expecting this movie to be at all um i really love it when uh so they're going to get a bus together right they end up hitchhiking to a bus station and they're about to get a bus and have their first real heartwarming moment where um allison gives give the money to get a bus ticket but she's gonna go earlier than him um so she leaves to get the bus he sits down start watching tv they and they

quickly just do a quick cut of the camera angle and allison has gotten off the bus and she's just standing over him watching the tv with him i really liked that moment that was it was really nice yeah she doesn't give him the money yet she offers to give him the money later but he doesn't have the money uh at that point she gave him the money at that point no no she offers to give him like 50 or something like that of her 70 but he refuses and he he's basically going to just sort of sit there at the bus station i think is how it is but she she can't this is her opportunity to not leave him behind so she doesn't leave him behind okay they're gonna they're gonna go on and you know go on together and hitchhike the rest of the way so then they kind of like they're going from place to place

like they're growing closer together right during this period of time um they're warming up to each other uh even to the point where like gib gets angry that allison is on the phone to her boyfriend right yeah and he goes out and gets drunk goes out and gets drunk yeah in a bar because um because he's he thought that they were making that connection but she's still talking to the boyfriend and he comes back and he's super drunk but she like tucks him in at night and that sort of stuff is kind of kind of cute and then the next day like he's he's rushing her to leave and she leaves this schedule book that she has which has all of her money in it and she's planned out this whole trip for them she leaves it in the hotel

they go on a few different hitchhiking adventures before they realize uh that the book has actually been lost and it but then it starts to rain it starts to rain but the way that they they do the the schedule book being lost is fantastic she's like right we can eat every 200 miles so they go to a certain point they go to a cafe they're so excited to go in and eat they're talking about what they're gonna order they walk in and the camera just stays on the door for a few seconds and then they stall back out again and gives like how could you lose your schedule book and i really like that at this point they've quickly assumed the stereotypical roles of a married couple which is really cute then it starts to rain and they start to like try

and find a place and then allison remembers that she has a credit card that can only be used in emergencies uh so then cut to this extremely lavish hotel that they're in with this beautiful And then Alison remembers that she has a credit card that can only be used in emergencies. So then cut to this extremely lavish hotel that they're in with this beautiful meal that they're eating. They're drinking wine. It's the only place that took credit cards. Of course. They're eating veal and salmon. And this is kind of where the movie ends up for me, like, having more heart than I expected. Like, there's this scene that evening where they're lying in bed together.

Like, usually it would be one of them on the bed one of them on the floor but this is the first night that they're they're going to share a bed together like nothing's really going on because she trusts him she she says you know this is unlike before she's like no no you can sleep on the bed too it's fine she's like there's a there's a level of trust that they have with each other having been through all of this and in the morning uh he wakes up and his arms kind of around her on and and uh he's super apologetic like i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't mean to do that i feel really bad and she and and um so he's learned this you know he's trying to honor her choices and and and be a good guy and be a good friend and her response is like it's fine

right like she because she does she totally trusts him it's fine and they they have built that connection now where it's the complete opposite of that first hotel room scene where he decides he's going to sleep on the bed and she just goes and sleeps on the floor because and then gib goes and stands out on the veranda to cool down i assume like he's just like i'm gonna go stand on the veranda like and he just goes out there and just stands there for a while uh but it's really nice how they warm to each other in this way. But they end up getting to LA. So they get into this truck and Alison is asleep,

or at least they believe that she is asleep. And Gibb is talking to the truck driver and telling him about the sure thing, the reason that he's going to California. Because at this point, Gibb is pretty convinced that he hasn't got a shot, right? Because Allison seems to still be hung up on her boyfriend. That conversation actually begins with the guy saying, you know, you and your girlfriend. And he says, no, she's not my girlfriend.

She's got a boyfriend in L.A. And the truck driver says something like, oh, that's a shame. And John Cusack looks back and makes sure she's asleep. And he says, yeah, it is. And it's like that's his moment of revealing that he's written her off and is very sad about it, but she's got a boyfriend and that's just how it is. And he's got to deal with it. And what happens next is that they're talking about the sure thing.

And that's when she wakes up. So she doesn't hear him regret the fact that he can't be with her because she's got a boyfriend. All she hears is that he's going to go to Anthony Edwards' place and meet Nicolette Sheridan. But the truck driver puts the foot down, right? He's like, you can't waste this opportunity. He's got to get in there.

She's going to be gone in a couple of days it's like all right if you pay the speeding tickets off they go with the truck through other parts of California that we're being shown and then it's really great like they're in the same university right so UCLA apparently Allison is going to visit her boyfriend

who thinks name was Jason yes he's Jason and he's really boring and likes tea. So he's the worst. The worst. And he wears glasses. I just realized that. He is the worst human being. You find a Jason who went to college in Southern California, drinks tea, wears glasses.

Super boring. Boring. Dump him. Dump him, ladies. Dump him. Why would anybody want to spend time with a guy like that? Excuse me, I'm going to sip my tea now. Yeah, please do. Their nights really diverge at this point.

Allison is super bored now of her boyfriend and everything about him. They're playing cards. She wants to shotgun a beer because Cib taught her that. And he wants to make tea and play cards. And when she says, let's do something exciting, he says, how about i spot you 50 points at cards so it's insulting because he's saying she's not very good at it and still really boring and then uh gib is off at a party right where he meets the sure thing and but then allison

sees the party and she wants to go to a party too so they she kind of arrives with her boyfriend and uh at this point gibb isn't sure if he wants to go through with the sure thing because he's in love of allison but when he sees them two coming together he's like screw it and there's this whole scene where they're like both as couples dancing near each other and then it comes out that uh gibb is actually a virgin even though he had claims of sexual prowess, but it seems like that has not been the case. Or I'm not clear on if that's actually the case, because they say in the first scene in the movie, he talks about having sex a few times. I think so. Yeah, I know that.

I think that was bravado. Yeah, but I think it's possible, though, because the implication is that Anthony Edwards has also downplayed him to the sure thing to make her, I guess, seem more charitable toward him. It's, you know, the sexual politics of a teen sex movie from the eighties are questionable at best, but I think that's because he also, Anthony also, Edwards also suggests that he might be gay. So that's in the mix here too, which is not, you know, it's not the best, but the idea is regardless uh gibb feels insulted by anthony edwards um and then it also there's a breakdown between allison and jason because um she is way too familiar with gibb and he is not aware of the fact that they've been traveling

together and sleeping in the same motel rooms and all of those things and and so he's like how do you know this how does he know what you look like in the morning and you know all of those things. And so he's like, how do you know this? How does he know what you look like in the morning? And all of these things, right? So everything is kind of falling apart. She's like complaining to her boyfriend about how much this boy annoys her. It's absolutely fantastic. And then it kind of cuts to back at university, right?

They're back at school. kind of cuts to back at university, right? They're back at school. So the last scene in LA is he takes Nicolette Sheridan, the sure thing, to the bedroom and they're talking. And earlier, I should say, he has a series of dream sequences with Nicolette Sheridan that are kind of amusing where there's a really great one where she is sitting by the side of the pool,

basically begging him to have more sex with her. And he's sitting in this pool chair floating around and saying, no, you know, I'm tired and all of that. It's staged very amusingly. And then there are several of those, which are very, you know, teen boy fantasy kind of scenarios. And then the last one, he has that same kind of scenario and it's Allison, right? So that's that moment of like, like oh he's really got now so here he goes up with her like uh this is the time he's finally going to be able to do it with the sure thing and um and we uh we cut away and we don't we don't really see a realization of what exactly happens there other than that we know that he

is uh you know he's thinking about allison and we cut back to college after winter break and gib has written a paper that the lecturer starts to read our swedish lecturer yes and it's called the sure thing and it explains the whole story up to the point where he says that he couldn't go through with it because that's right the sure thing wanted uh do you love her that that he loved her and he couldn't do that because now he knew what love was. The answer was no. And at that moment, she's looking back. Allison was looking back at him and he's looking at her and she realizes that that he didn't go upstairs uh have sex with the sure thing because he's in

love with her and this is the way he chose to express it is several weeks later in an essay in the middle of class being read by the swedish lady the only way to express true love jason as you do so i really like this movie the problem my problem with this movie is i'd seen say anything my problem with this movie is i'd seen say anything uh yeah yeah well it's it's it's it's funny too because he's like kind of a proto he's more intelligent than the guy in say anything i think because in some ways because he does go off to like an ivy league college instead of sort of staying home and trying not to uh join the army um but he is a similar kind of character. And Allison is very much like the lead, the female lead in Say Anything, right?

They're similar. I would say if you, we haven't done When Harry Met Sally yet, have we? No. Have you seen that movie? No. Okay, maybe we'll do that. That's another Rob Reiner movie with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.

And in the beginning of that movie, there's a drive from Chicago to New York that they take. That also, I feel like, is very similar. And their relationship is very similar to the relationship in this movie. So you saw them out of order. I feel like this is like a proto movie of other movies. Like it leads to Say Anything and it leads to When Harry Met Sally, but it is not,

and it leads to High Fidelity, maybe in some ways, I don't know. But it is earlier, right? So it's, yeah, it's not quite as fully formed. Say Anything kind of picks up after two minutes. And here I feel like it takes 25 minutes of setup before the movie really starts to crank. And the first 25 minutes is not particularly warm

or likable because it's about, you know, freshmen in college who are on the make. And it's just kind of like, that stuff really doesn't interest me. And then it really kicks into gear. And then the last whatever, the last hour of it is spectacular. But you're right. It is like a lot of these other movies.

And Cusack is a lot like he is in Say Anything. And it is a similar kind of mismatched relationship. And it's because I loved that movie so much. That's a better movie than this movie. Yeah. But I did really enjoy this movie yeah but i did really enjoy this movie i also like that it was like 100 minutes that felt right yeah a lot of the movies that we've been watching are two hours more so many two hour long movies that are made

these days and this is 95 and it's it's it's uh tight and bright as they say. It is a solid, you know, it sort of sweeps you along. It's very, it's, yeah, I like it a lot. I have not seen this one in a very long time, and I remember liking it. And as I started to watch it, I thought, oh, no, what if my memory is faulty and it's not that good? But then, like I said, 20 minutes in or somewhere, I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, no, no, this is really great. oh yeah oh yeah no no this is really great and i will say my my experience actually i i part of the reason i love this movie is that it's got some resonance for me and it's not because there's that boring jason who drinks tea um it's because i i my my relationship so i met my wife in college and i had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend and i see us in this movie in the sense that um these two characters make a connection

but they are not capable and it's one-sided and in the case of this well unless you consider the sure thing the thing that's pulling him but that she's an illusion i actually really like that that although she does exist um it is a it is a stand-in for kind of a male fantasy of a woman as opposed to a real woman. And that's what this movie is about, is that he falls in love with a real woman. And the fantasy is not going to measure up to reality. The reality is better. She's a real woman and he loves her. And that is the most important thing, right? But I have that mirror because that was exactly the same situation my wife and I were in in college college where we were dating other people and we formed a really tight connection. And there was definitely a moment where she broke up.

I heard that she had broken up with her boyfriend right after I graduated from college. And it was exactly like the moment in the movie where he says, you broke up with him? It was like, oh, what a relief. Well, now there's nothing stopping us from getting together. And that is how this movie ends. So that's great too. But I do like that overarching message that for all of the stuff at the beginning, that's kind of gross, especially, I think 30 years later about things you say to get women to go out with you and to get women to sleep with you. In the end, what's the core message of this movie?

That the sure thing is not what he wants. That she's a fantasy and that Allison is who he wants and she's a real person. And she's not perfect for him in the sense that she does all sorts of things that he doesn't like and he does all sorts of things that she doesn't like. But in the end, they're the ones who should be together oh i like these movies of like the heartwarming love story i'm a sucker for it and this one ticks those boxes so recommended another great mic at the movies pick jason you're doing very well thank you thank you this is i'm happy we could combine Rob Reiner and John Cusack. This is where they come together.

So now the past will diverge again, but we got them together right here. This series is all about Cusack for me, I've got to say. We've got to go for High Fidelity soon, I think. Yeah, it's in the 90s, or maybe even 2000, but we may have to go there. We may have to take a time machine forward to there if you want to find the show notes for this week's episode you want to head on over to relay.fm

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You can also find Jason. He is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L, and I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks so much to you for listening, as always, and we'll be back next time with Upgrade. Until then, say goodbye, Jason. Goodbye. as always and we'll be back next time with upgrade until then say goodbye jason goodbye