Upgrade - 68: The Cryogenic Chamber of Topics

Episode Date: December 21, 2015

This week Myke and Jason talk about Amazon drones, Christmas traditions, and Apple’s product-release strategy. And at the end of the episode, we fire off the Spoiler Horn and discuss “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in a special Myke at the Movies installment.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 68 this week's episode is brought to you by braintree text expander and hover my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell hello hello mr mike hurley hello j Snell. We are one week away from the Upgradies. Oh my goodness. Well, we're not prepared. We are completely unprepared for the Upgradies. Oh no. But they are coming. So if you are listening to this and for some reason you still have not put in your suggestion for a category or topic you would like to be given an Upgradee Award to, make sure that you do that within the next couple of days and you want to use the hashtag

AskUpgrade, the normal hashtag. And next week we will have a special episode of the show which will be the Upgradee Awards for 2015. Woo! But we do have some follow-ups, some regular follow-up, as always.

We found a dashboard user. Yeah. There are a couple of people that claimed to be dashboard users after our discussion last week. But the most impressive, I think, would be the right word to use, is definitely

Joe. Joe Sarcero on Twitter. Joe uses Dashboard for calendars, weather, stocks, TV schedules, a TV guide. He uses iStat, Apple Remote, desktop deliveries, and many, many more. And there's a link in the show notes to a picture that joe has sent over twitter for us so you can get an idea for yourself just to what extent joe continues to use dashboard you will see my reply to joe if you follow that link where i asked him is this serious because this picture looks very much like it was taken from 2005. Like, it's so full of stuff. In a NASA launch center somewhere, also, because it's got lots of Earths, lots of Weathers.

There's three globes. There's, by my count, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven Weathers. There's a test tube full of red liquid. Yeah, there's a lot. It's a lot. It's amazing. I guess the modern equivalent of something like this would be to have, I don't know, to have just apps or some different spaces or something.

I mean, the nice thing about Dashboard is that you can put a whole bunch of stuff right where you want it, and then it's just available with one keystroke or one gesture. The modern equivalent of this is widgets on Android home screens. Yeah, I suppose that's true. That's true, but on the Mac, I think what you would do if you wanted to approximate this would be you'd have a bunch of apps that launched into their own space. Or a bunch of stuff in Notification Center. Yeah, that's true. Notification Center widgets. You can get a lot of this stuff in there.

Yeah, you can. But he's got a workflow and it works for him. Dashboard, essential. There's a reason they haven't killed it outright. They've just pushed it off to the side. It's sort of like it works, but it's not being updated.

I don't think anybody's making new dashboard widgets. You could. If you know some JavaScript, you could do it. But yeah. All right. Well, we tip our cap to Joe. I also, I mentioned in passing a couple of other things that we could have chosen. And I actually heard from people who said, hey, don't make fun of that. I use that all the time. That's useful. And yeah, that was the point is, I am sure that we could mention almost anything that comes with the OS. And that's why it's there. Somebody is using it.

Yeah, the reason it's not been taken out yet, it's not an accident. It's not, it was just forgotten about. Like someone in Apple was like, oh, dashboard's still there? Like they heard that on our show last week and it'll be gone in the next point of date uh it's because people are using this stuff apple knows that people are using this stuff and also i want to i want to make the point because i did hear i get the sense from a couple of people that when i say that i think

apple wouldn't make launchpad today which is where this all started there's a sense that i'm saying launchpad is is stupid or the people who use it are stupid. And that's not true. I don't use Launchpad. I don't find it useful. I've got lots of apps. Launchpad is a complete disaster for me, but I'm not the user it was intended for. And I did hear from somebody who said that they love it because they are completely visual, that typing a word of an app is not what they want to do, and they can do a single keystroke or gesture, the list comes up, and then they can point at the icon that's what they want, and they can't put all those apps

in their dock because then they would be too small. And I think that is what that is designed for. But also I'm not saying Apple should remove it, and if I did get that across, I didn't mean to. What I'm saying is, I don't think today's Apple would make Launchpad. I don't think today's Apple would make Launchpad, or at least make it in the way that it was made. Because it feels to me like it was made by an Apple that was trying to make everything on the Mac look like iOS and that they've changed direction.

So that's just that was my point was today's Apple, if they if they were trying to solve the same problem would have a I think a different solution. But the fact that it remains suggests to me that it's not painful in a way that makes them want to demolish it or yeah, it's not, they don't want to demolish it. And it seems like they don't want to put in the effort to redo it to be something that is more in keeping with what their vision for, uh, app launching is on the Mac. Um, which honestly is, I think spotlight, I think all the work they put into spotlight in the last couple of releases to make app launching faster and to, you know, have it show immediately to autocomplete to an app and have that box be,

you know, dead center in the interface. All of these things suggest to me that they think that's the primary way that this is a nice secondary way and they don't care enough to, to turn it into a new metaphor because it's already there and it's not a priority for them. And that's my, a new metaphor because it's already there and it's not a priority for them. And that's my, I'm not judging it based on that. I just, I think that Apple itself today, my read on Apple's philosophy today is they wouldn't do it that way, but it's there and people use it and that's great. And Dashboard still lives. Moving on, as Steve pointed out, we were talking about the Apple logo on the iPad Pro still being in portrait and how this seemed kind of peculiar considering that the device is pretty much even established as, from a marketing perspective, a landscape device now. And Steve mentioned that, and he's very true, the initial setup screen for iPads and iPhones remains portrait. I see lots of people when they get their new iPad Pro, they tweet pictures of this,

that they have it in landscape, but the device forces them to put it into portrait to continue the setup process, basically. And to be able to read it anyway. Yeah, it's a legacy of, I mean, this is similar to the launchpad conversation.

It's a legacy of the iPhone. Like they got to do all the setup screens in portrait because that's how the iPhone, that's the primary orientation for the iPhone. Yeah, I mean, there's only one, you know, it's only the 6 Plus that has the landscape. And if you think, you know, there's still multiple devices that they're targeting, right?

They're going all the way from the iPhone 4 all the way up to the new 6s with this setup screen. Even the 6 Plus, though, the primary orientation is portrait. Oh, yeah. That's what I was going to say. It's just the home screen you can rotate into landscape. The others, you're right, you can't even rotate the home screen into landscape. So the OS is a portrait OS. It remains a portrait os because even in on the six plus it's it feels a little bit like an afterthought at times yeah and the um and this goes back to what we were saying earlier on previous episodes about the ipad needing some love and some space to be its own product that um i you know it doesn't matter in the end oh no i got a new ipad i have

to hold it this way instead of this way to set it up no it it doesn't um but it does say something about apple's priorities because apple does sweat some of the details and you know could that be landscape could it be both could beatable? Probably it's not because of the iPhone really, because if you have to pick one, you're going to pick that one because of the iPhone. Um, uh, you know, again, that's fine on, on one level, but on another level, it, it, it burns a little bit because I feel like it's a, just a little example of a larger problem with, uh, with iPad software. I do feel like the more I use it, that it is just... There's some things I enjoy doing

in portrait on the iPad Pro. Sometimes I actually like writing in portrait on the iPad Pro. It reminds me when I was in college, our page layout machines that we would use at the college newspaper were all... They were Mac SEs because I'm old.

And they were attached to radius full page displays, which were these. The idea was you could see the entire page on this display. It was a huge external monitor. Well, by today's standards, it was tiny, but it was a portrait monitor, which was kind of brilliant because if you're in the publishing industry, right, newspapers and magazines and stuff are in portrait mode. They're not in landscape

orientation. So I use my iPad Pro like that sometimes, and it gives me a flashback to those old full-page display days. If I'm in a text editor, I can see more of my text. And usually, you don't need the width in a text editor anyway. So unless I'm working with a split view or something like that, sometimes I will put the iPad Pro upright and work on it that way. And then sometimes when I'm reading, I'll do that. But most of the time it's in landscape. And so it is kind of this funny thing where I feel like the iPad Pro wants to be a landscape device. And there are just these occasional design touches and software touches that suggest that Apple is like, me meh we're comfortable with portrait this isn't really a follow-up item it was just something that i wanted to mention

um i have one of those uh sphero bb8s you know the one that you can control with the iphone and it rolls around you mean bb8 the droid introduced in the new major motion picture star wars colon the force awakens yes that will be occupying mike at the movies at the end of this show this is your pre-warning okay i'm not there will be a spoiler horn before that section begins i will just not accept anybody complain about spoilers i'm telling you now we're like 45 minutes away maybe from the even beginning you know plenty of time to pull off to the side of the road and turn off the podcast before we get there which will be at the very end of the show

exactly so it's going to be we've still got a lot of stuff to get through but i just want to mention it now okay yep okay that is your warning everyone um and the bb8 so the bb8 is like it's this fantastic thing that was developed by a company called Sphero, which Disney took a major stake in when they saw what they could do because it allowed them to develop the technology to create not only the actual BB-8 that's in the film, but also to create this line of toys. So it works with these crazy motors inside of a ball that makes it roll around. It uses a bunch of cool magnets and stuff. Now, I bought this when it came out a couple of months ago, and I love it.

It's a great little thing. It charges by induction charging in this little dock, and you can run it around, and it's really a lot of fun to play around with. But it updated today because all of the sounds that the toy would make came out of the companion iPhone app. You control it with the iPhone app, and the sounds come from the iPhone app, not from the BB-8 toy itself. And they updated it today with

actual movie realistic sounds of BB-8. Huh. Obviously before, it had just some placeholder sounds. I wonder if they were the placeholder sounds from the movie but they weren't the final movie sounds because that happens a lot where they've got like temp tracks that yeah they put in the the toy previously didn't sound it doesn't sound anything like bb8 yeah like you know there was it was really different which is awesome and

it's now been updated and it's also he's also got some uh little different actions that mimic some of the actions that he made in the movie too which is awesome and i just like that they did that and i would just wanted to mention if you don't have one of these or there's a star wars nerd in your life that you think would like something like this you should get them it because it is awesome and i think there's a perception that this was going to be and maybe it is the hot toy for christmas that people are thinking well you know i didn't get them when they were first on sale um they're available i looked on amazon the other day and um and they were available for for amazon prime shipping that day immediately before christmas

the whole thing and they may be in stores too because i haven't i haven't been in a store because why would i do that to myself uh in the last couple of weeks but um but they're they're around so don't if you if you thought that that that would be a cool gift but you've given up hope on it you could actually check it out because you may be able to find the bb8 they were hard to get when they were released and i wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons they released it so early, they released it as part of that Force Friday thing, which is so it gave people the time to get one. So you can still get them.

And if you're interested or know somebody that is, you should because it's awesome. Yeah. Very cool. I saw when I was at Twit doing new screensavers, I think, we had a guest who was, they did a teardown of BB-8, the BB-8 toy,

and it was pretty cool, like, how they make it do what it does, like, where the chips are and where the magnets are, and, you know, it was... and the physics of how it works. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool.

I'll put a link to that in the show notes, the episode of the new screensavers. Yeah. I have another thing that to that in the show notes, the episode of the new screensavers. Yeah. I have another thing that's also not follow-up, but this is the pre-Christmas show, and so we're like, well, what's going on? Nothing. Nothing.

And I wanted to do a follow-out, so it is sort of follow-up, about the episode of Top Four that featured on this very podcast network, Real AFM, that featured... It's Marco and Tiff Arment and their Top Four Things of Whatever. That should be the show description, Top Four Things of Whatever. And there was a special episode, number nine, that also featured you and your girlfriend, Adina, talking about Christmas songs. Yep.

And I wanted to mention that because I just finished listening to it, in fact, the other day. And it was, I'm so backed up on podcasts, it's a disaster, but I did listen to this. And it was delightful for many reasons, including the fact that it was set up so that you could all play the music and respond to it. And the way that was all set up and the way Marco edited it, it's great because you want to hear the music you're talking about, and you do, but more than that,

you hear the people who are talking about the music react to it, which is beautiful. I also, my other things that I like about that episode is that marco only has one selection and it's number four yeah because that guy does not know how top four lists work which is a problem for a show that is about top four lists uh and uh and the you know the and the selections were hilarious and some of them I agree. I actually agree with you completely about Last Christmas by Wham.

Good man. It's a great song. Great song. Great song. I am from the 80s, so I've got that going for me. That's a great song. The Wham version is the only acceptable version. Yeah, I agree.

And that's amazing to say, because if there were a Michael Bublé version, you would think that you would like it. Is there a Michael Bublé version of that? There probably is. I don't think there is. I haven't come across that. But I don't think it would be able to, even though as great,

because that's the other thing I learned from that is that basically Mike Hurley's musical take on Christmas songs is, that's good, but it could use more Michael Buble. He's just really good at this type of music. Yes. You know, the Michael Buble song

that you should listen to that I have in my library is when the, when, I think it was the first Spider-Man movie. It might've been the second Spider-Man movie

came out. They had Michael Buble do a swinging version of the Spider-Man theme. I think I've heard that. It's so great. And I used to, I used to do,

we had a guy I worked with had a basically a karaoke band they were a live band without a singer and you could uh you could uh pick a song and they'd play it and you got to sing it and they they did uh it's the one that was at jim dowell ripples party at wwdc it's that band um and the first time it was it was a long time ago like 97 or something first time we did a party with those guys, I said, I'm not singing, forget it. There's no way I'm singing. And they're like, oh, come on, you have to.

I said, okay, I'll make you a deal. If they know the theme from Spider-Man, I'll sing. Well, guess what? The last item on the last page of their song list was the theme from Spider-Man. So I did it. But I always dreamed of how it would be like, sound really good as that slowed down

kind of swing version of the Spider-Man song. Michael Buble does that. It's brilliant. So there you go. I wish I could have had you, had you do that. Baby One More Time by Britney Spears, which I, which is the rock version, like the Fountains of Wayne version of that, which is also an excellent cover. People should seek out the, the Fountains of Wayne version of Baby One More Time.

It's pretty great. But you know, I've mentioned this before. I'll mention it again. If you do want to see Jason sing, there is a place that that happens. It will be in the show notes, episode 17 of It Might Get Personal.

And you sing Don't Dream It's Over, which I love. I've listened to that many times um i also wanted to mention what we're talking about um in respect that top four and christmas there is now a b-side the first ever non-attached to a podcast episode mike at the movies required a revision of the relay CMS. Yes we don't need to get into that but yes it did. There is now a B-side and it's also on the Incomparable feed of myself and Tiff Arment talking about National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. So if you want to get in the holiday spirit and that is a movie that you like you should listen to that. If you've never seen that

then you should go and watch it and then join in with the Christmas Vacation episode. I'd never seen Christmas Vacation, so it was kind of perfect, and we watched that, and it was a very good Christmas-feeling movie. So there is your follow-out for this week's

episode of Upgrade. Should we move on with our sponsor of this week's show yeah let's do it let's take a moment to thank braintree code for easy online payments if you're a mobile app developer check out braintree braintree is the payment solution used by companies like uber airbnb hotel tonight living social and munchery braintree has made the payment experiences in all of those apps seamless and magical. And now you can add a similar experience to your own app as well.

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payment types that your customers might be looking for. This could include PayPal, Apple Pay, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, and more with one single integration. It's with you across all platforms with superior fraud protection. They have their fantastic customer service to back it all up. And as I mentioned before, those fast payouts. to learn more and to get your first fifty thousand dollars in transactions fee free go to braintreepayments.com slash upgrade thank you so much to braintree for their support of this week's episode of upgrade thanks braintree neither a brain nor a tree by the the way. Indeed. Oh, I've got some exciting news, Mike. Oh, yeah?

I sent you a package. Oh, it hasn't arrived yet. When did you send it? I sent it like Friday. It's going to be late. You'll get it eventually. I might get it for my birthday. You'll get it. When's your birthday? January 31st.

Yeah, you'll probably get it by then. But I did send you it sort of. Yes, it's got some good stuff in it. It's all themed around our show and our sponsors, actually, strangely. But we'll talk about that when you receive it. I did want to do a mini analog, your podcast with Casey List, where you talk about more personal stuff, which is a very interesting podcast. I wanted to ask about Christmas stuff, since this is Christmas week. We're only a few days away.

I was just curious. We don't have to take a lot of time with this. But I was curious, do you have any particular Christmas traditions that you do? And what are your plans you know not not in detail you don't need to tell me where you're gonna where you're gonna be mike but uh sort of like what you know what what are you looking forward to like for actually what you do like during christmas week and christmas eve and christmas day uh christmas eve i'm actually going to see star wars again um i'm taking my brother yeah because he just got back from Australia so he hadn't yet seen it

so I booked tickets for the two of us to go on Christmas Eve we're going to an IMAX because I haven't seen it in IMAX so we're going to go do that together then we'll have dinner with my dad on Christmas Eve, we always do that's when we exchange presents with my dad this year is slightly different

we're quite a small family um especially over christmas it's just like a it's basically it's me my brothers uh his family's wife and kids um and it'd be my mom and my nan that's usually it for christmas but this year is going to be my first christmas without children in the house on christmas day because my brother is having his first family christmas at home where he lives down on the coast so they're having that and then coming to us on boxing day which is the 26th for those of you that don't know um so we're it's actually just going to be me my old my younger brother who's 21 and my grandma and my mom and it's going to be very different we're going to wake up late you know like it's going to be very different we're going to wake up late

you know like it's going to be a very different feeling christmas so i'm very interested to see how that is um and then i guess for traditions wise i guess we just had the little things that we do in england which are different right so um we have i don't know about you but we have dinner at lunchtime we have a christmas dinner at lunchtime oh yeah yeah um we have things like christmas crackers are you familiar with christmas crackers jason yeah i i am but people out there are are we we do those at uh on new year's actually we try to buy some crackers at the this there's a store that sells them that's like the international things store um and we get them we can get them there and uh we try to do that like a new year's new year's eve we do those but not not on christmas i i don't think well we did that we actually did

get those and do those a couple years ago just for fun but i know that's an english tradition they're little little uh bundles that you you pull open and they pop and they've got like a little toy or a little surprise inside yeah a little hat so we do a crown yeah and then we all wear the crowns the hats as we eat dinner yeah that is that is pretty great i have a picture of my family uh from a few years ago and we all have uh little you know pink and red crowns on our paper crowns on our heads it's adorable and then we tend to repeat christmas dinner on boxing day that's not something that happens everywhere but but we have like another one on boxing day oh interesting with the same stuff or or yeah all

the same food i mean the turkey is yes the left that's what we do with our turkey basically we eat it on boxing day as a full-on second christmas second christmas that's neat yeah that's fun yeah and my grandma does the cooking because she's the best and it's just so good. That's one of the reasons that we have Christmas at her house because she loves to entertain. She loves to cook for us and it's always good. So that's basically my Christmas. Probably this year's Christmas will include more alcohol than usual because there's no children around.

So that will probably be the theme of my there's no children around so that will probably be the theme of my Christmas I had already figured that one out Mike just spelling it out for everyone out there actually I was talking to one of my friends who's a Doctor Who fan and they were talking about it Doctor Who is on at like 5 o'clock this year it's very early

because the TV Christmas TV is apparently a thing in Britain too here the networks basically abandon television that were like reruns or maybe sports, but you know, that really there's kind of nothing. Whereas in Britain, it's a huge thing that in the evening of Christmas night, that there,

there are things on, on, on television, but also we were talking, so Dr. Who does a Christmas special. This is going to be like the 11th or the 12th or something. It's kind of crazy that they do one every year now. But but when i when i was talking to this person they mentioned that one

thing that americans also don't understand about uh christmas in the uk is that uh people are drunk when they're watching tv in the evening that is also a thing that happens yeah and i think maybe more than it does in america yeah we're a boozy nation. Yeah. What about you guys? Lots of candy too. Lots of candy per capita. Oh, yeah. Lots of chocolate. So many selection boxes of chocolate.

It's going to be... Selection boxes. That sounds like something that would be in a user interface. It's basically lots... You know, like you can get like... It's a sampler box. Yeah. A sampler.

There you go. We call them selection boxes. Yeah, I know. It's just that I don't think I've heard that term before, but Ipler. There you go. We call them selection boxes. Yeah, I know. It's just that I don't think I've heard that term before, but I know exactly what you mean. We have like the famously is the Whitman sampler in California and in the West Coast. We have See's Candy that has that. They have the sampler boxes. So, yes, absolutely.

Selection boxes so much for me. It's similar to your brother, actually. This year, I told my mother and the other, we told everybody in our family, we weren't going to go anywhere this year for Thanksgiving or Christmas. We just decided for Christmas, especially every year for the last, I don't know, seven, eight years, maybe even longer. We have gone to, uh, gone somewhere else for Christmas, generally to Arizona where my mom lives. Um, and, uh, that was, that was fine. Going to grandma and grandpa's house for Christmas was a fun thing to do when my kids were little, but there is something so dispiriting about having a tree. Some years we didn't even have a tree here.

Um, and some years that was so sad that we're like, okay, we'll get a tree. Some years we didn't even have a tree here. Um, and some years that was so sad that we're like, okay, we'll get a tree and we would get a tree right after Thanksgiving. And then on the 20th or 22nd or whenever we would have to leave to drive all the way to Arizona, which takes two days, by the way, which is another reason we didn't want to do it. Um, you got to take the tree down because you're not going to be back for more than a week. So we take the tree down and put it outside. And than a week. So we would take the tree down and put it outside. And it was the saddest thing to take the tree and dismantle it before Christmas. And I know that's like a kind of a funny thing, but it's like, no, I want to have Christmas. I

want to have my tree. I want to be in my house on Christmas day. And my mom is coming this afternoon, actually, she's coming and she's going to stay with us for the week. And that's great. But we didn't want to do it somewhere else this year. So I'm looking forward to it. I assume we will replay. Lauren and I actually have to figure out our game plan here. But I assume we're going to replay our Thanksgiving in some ways with the dishes.

I'm not sure if we're going to do a turkey. We may actually do a steak instead, like a big flank steak. But we have to put that together today, basically. We're going to do our shopping list and plan it all out and what are the sides and all that. But otherwise, it's quite similar. In the morning, now that the kids are older,

they get up a little bit later, but we'll do the presents thing on Christmas morning and then there'll be a dinner, but it'll be midday or maybe two in the afternoon, something like that. And, yeah, it's fun. It's fun, but we're doing it here. I'm looking forward to having it be at my house and being able to—I think that's one of the great things about Christmas, being able, especially as an an adult is being able to have that uh nesting kind of feeling um of of christmas and it's at your place and i i've enjoyed the kind of christmas christmas trip thing for a while but it's time to go back to to home so christmas at home this year you're saying about turkey i can't imagine christmas

about turkey because it's our only turkey dinner. We don't have Thanksgiving. I use a brine. I brine it. There's Alton Brown, the TV food guy, has a recipe for that that he did on his show, Good Eats, that I love. And it's, you know, you make this big briny liquid in a five-gallon plastic bucket from the Home Depot. And you stick the turkey in it. And it sits there overnight in the garage out in the corner. And then in the morning, you pull it out and pat it down and put stuff in it and like aromatics and stuff, not the actual stuffing. And it's great.

It's juicy and tasty and all of those things. So we might do that. But it is a lot of hassle and nobody seems to like the dark meat. And so I feel like it's kind of wasted, although the leftovers are pretty great. So this is the internal debate is it would be much easier to marinate a flank steak and just do it that way. And everybody would enjoy it and it would be great. My kids like that better than turkey, but we may just we may we may end up with a turkey anyway. That's fine. I feel like you're talking yourself into it.

Now I go back and forth on it i i see all the pros and cons and i i this is this is the nice thing about having a having a marriage is that you know i don't have to make the call we're gonna we'll talk it through and see you know and if lauren's inclined and i'm inclined then then we'll go that direction there's also the question of like can we get one you know i'm sure we can but we should probably plan that so yeah yeah it's fun you know traditions are fun and and uh i think they can become a problem when you become chained to them and uh you don't want to do them but you do them because you feel like they're necessary or that you'll be judged if

you don't do them but if you enjoy them and enjoy the rhythm of it i think that people in general it's like in human nature to um patterns and repetition. And that can lead to bad habits and things like that too. But it can also be kind of fun. And the whole Christmas experience from the decorations and the music and the family and the meals and things like that, it's kind of comforting and also is cyclical. There's something about that, that this is the end of one year and the beginning of the next. And you can mark the passage of time with it. So I love Christmas. It's great. So we have in our document here, we have an area of our document,

which we have now started to refer to as the cryogenic chamber of topics. Yes. It's the graveyard. It's the, it's the, or the evergreen. We used to call it in the magazine business. It's evergreen,

meaning just put it over there. It never goes out of date. It just sits there. Eventually it does actually go out of date, but you don't need to do it this week because it could go on forever. And we got a lot of stuff in there. We could, we could do like the wheel of,

uh, of fortune from the cryogenic chamber. There is so much, there is so much stuff in there. Home networks, comic books. We should talk about comic books sometime. That would be fun.

Family sharing. Family sharing is in there. And that was one where we, we were just, we felt like we were being so negative for a while that it's like, we need to give some, we need to give some space to that because that's going to be a rant. We'll just invite Joe Steele back. And we'll just tear it apart because family sharing and sharing Apple IDs and the way Apple's got Apple ID stuff set up is a total mess.

So that's in there. YouTube Red and Google Podcasts and stuff is in there. Preparing for a New OS was in there from when we were talking about upgrading to El Capitan. Home automation is in there. I've written about that a lot. So many things to talk about. So are we pulling some things out of the deep freeze today? Is that what's happening? We're pulling one thing out. All right. And that's Amazon Prime Air.

Okay. Was this topic delivered from the cryo chamber by drone? Yeah, that's how it came to me today. All right. They dropped it into the document via a little Google Docs drone. You put a little placemat down and then the drone drops the topic in. It's just wherever you put your cursor. That's where they drop it.

And the drone drops the topic in. It's just wherever you put your cursor. That's where they drop it. So this is, for anybody that doesn't know, Amazon Prime Air is a kind of future initiative from Amazon. It's something that they are talking about that they want to do. They're developing the technology that they need. But one of the main reasons that Prime Air exists as a thing right now is my belief, and what is, I think, quite evident,

is that Amazon are trying to use the excitement behind something like this to lobby the agencies that make the rules for drones and stuff like that. It's the FAA in America, right? A lot of this stuff exists as a way to try and lobby the decision makers and the lawmakers into helping them make the decision, that will mean that Amazon can start delivering packages via drone flight. Was that fair to say? At least how it seems to me. Yeah, I think so. This is about, yeah, it's about demonstrating this technically and politically

and trying to build some kind of consumer understanding about how it might you know how do we picture this how might it work and why would that be uh good for everybody so they created a video about this many months ago um where they just kind of gave a demonstration of what this type of thing could look like and more recently and within the last month or two, they have used their brand new company spokesman, Jeremy Clarkson, in all of Amazon's ads now,

to kind of show an update video. And they show a little bit more of a finalized drone and what that could look like. And they show some non-computer animation, like it looks like computer animation, but they say that this is the thing really flying. And give a little bit more detail into how this type of thing could work. Because I remember originally people saying like, oh, if these drones, they're going to deliver things outside your home and people are just going to steal the stuff. And they showed some more real world scenarios into how something like this might work.

and they showed some more real world scenarios into how something like this might work. So kind of the overall view of this is Amazon expects this to be like a 30 minute delivery type thing. That's how they're kind of dealing with this. So they have their Prime Now, I think it's called, which is one hour delivery in certain areas. So they're expecting Prime Air to do things in 30 minutes. So like the idea being you would be at home

and you would realize you need something. You go on Amazon. You see that it's available for Prime Air and you ship it. So you choose what you want. You select it. It probably costs an exorbitant amount of money. And then you go out to your backyard and you place down this little map, which has got the Amazon logo on it. And what I expect is occurring here is that the computer system inside of the drone is looking for that map because that's where it lands.

That's where it drops it off. So what it seems like you would do this for, you are at home and you need something. Yeah. So it comes and delivers it to you at home. That's how it works. And I think that this is a very interesting thing. And I'm kind of wanted us to talk about like why we would want this if we would want this. So how do you feel about this kind of idea, Jason?

Do you like the idea of having the magic trackpad that you need delivered to you by drone? I don't know. I mean, how often is it that we need something delivered to us immediately i mean the video is cute it's the girl who's lost a shoe and i and i think well she just lost it unless they unless the dog ate it and then they cut to the dog and the dog ate it so that and it's a cute english bulldog it's adorable um and and so, but how often does that happen? And you probably have a shoe store that you could go to. But yeah, oh, no, no, we can't go outside. That's crazy. So it sounds like a good idea on very specific scenarios, but I don't know how... Then again,

wouldn't it be great if you realized you needed a thing and you could have a little thing bring it to you? But, you know, other people are trying this with Uber and, you know, there are other services in cities that will do this. So, so I don't know. I don't know. It's a great video. It seems really. It makes it seem more practical than perhaps it actually is i like the putting the mat down is really smart it makes it feel like uh that that extra bit of user interaction i think makes

it feel more like a uh i don't know more understandable and controllable in a strange way that the idea that like it's not like oh the robot doesn't just appear at your door you go outside and throw a mat down and then the thing lands because it sees where you're telling it to land. It's like a little temporary helipad on your front lawn. I don't know. You've got to be near an Amazon distribution center. What's the range of these things? What's the markup and cost?

of these things uh what's the markup and cost i actually the airspace issue is one of the things that concerns me uh the least in in a sense because this does seem like kind of unused airspace and i do believe that the technology is going to be good enough that these devices are going to be able to navigate around and be smart about not crashing into people's houses or killing birds or whatever. But I don't know. It's really weird. And it's really weird that they're trying this because is this something that has huge potential? Is Amazon going to have thousands of drones

flying around cities all over the world? I don't know. I don't think we're ever going to get to a situation where it's like constant like the sky is just littered with drones for the reason of like you brought this up earlier

how often you're going to need this but I think that's inbuilt in the reason for it existing this exists for the thing that you need right now and that doesn't happen very often that you can't wait a day for prime delivery. Well, and there are, you know, Amazon's also experimenting with same-day delivery

in certain cities, right? And you pay an extra fee, but you get somebody brings it to your house that day, whether it's a delivery, traditional delivery company that they're working with or whether it's a, you know, some person in a van comes to your house and says i got your box here you can assume that amazon won't doesn't want that to exist they want

because my assumption looking at this is amazon are trying to replace prime now this same day delivery with prime right because the only reason prime now exists is because you're close to a distribution center, which means a drone could bring it, unless it's a big thing. So my assumption would be that they don't want delivery drivers

bringing video games to people's houses anymore on the same day. They want it taken by a drone because that is so much cheaper. Right? That's my assumption in looking at this.

In the long run, it's cheaper because you can just build it out of hardware and you can program the software and then they all you know you don't have to pay a human and yeah i i can see it i can see it i mean i'm i don't think this is unreasonable i i actually i mean you always start to think about your own your own uh situation and think well i don't have't have an Amazon distribution warehouse anywhere near me. And I know what they're trying to do is they're also trying to build these things in cities where they've got a limited supply of the most popular items. And that's one of the other ways that they do this. It's, you know, I don't know. I definitely thought about it. And there are those moments

where I thought, oh, well, that would be great. But in most cases, I can just go to the store and buy things, right? Maybe I can't get the exact thing, but there's going to still be some luck about whether the exact thing is at that Amazon warehouse. Anyway, like I can go to the shoe store and buy my kid some new soccer shoes if the dog eats one of the shoes, which is the scenario in the Jeremy Clarkson video. So I actually started to think that this would be really cool in areas that had more kind of geographic issues.

Yep. And there are different kinds of geographic issues. Like I could see this being valuable in cities that have horrible traffic problems, that where you, you know, you really can't get to wherever you need to go. You don't, but, but especially in places where there aren't things near you, the challenge there is that the, the drone's got to fly to you and it's got a limited range. So, you know, somebody out in the countryside who doesn't have access to something, is a drone drone gonna fly 30 miles to them or

something like that maybe but that seems like in the short run this is going to be for people in pretty densely populated areas where you know again you're you're you're investing all of this effort in a service to keep to save people from having to to drive or walk or take the bus down the street to get something at the shop so i was thinking like you know i live in a relatively suburban area um and there aren't really any stores where i can get the majority of things that i would buy from amazon um you know like there aren't i mean there's like a couple of food stores and that's about it where i live and if i want to get to anywhere where i could buy things i would buy on amazon like computer computer things, games, Blu-rays, that type of stuff, right? Books, things you tend to buy on Amazon.

I would need to get on public transport because I don't drive. And then I'm looking at a probably, you know, 30 minute each way type scenario to get to somewhere where I could be pretty confident it has the stuff that I want. So for me, I would use something like this. And then the other part of it is so the Prime Now service doesn't deliver to my area currently, they tend to do that within the big cities, because they do what you just mentioned, they have these places that have the most popular items, and they do it in the big cities because where the most people are they'll get the best coverage that way but if you think about it if you take it out far enough the place where it's probably cheapest for amazon to build and operate new distribution centers is in places like where i live where it's cheap where real estate is cheaper so in the future i could have a amazon warehouse not too far from me because like there are there are a bunch of factories and warehouses like about another 20 minutes down the

road from where i live so they could build one there and then could could ship things to me i also see stuff like this as a you know if amazon ever wanted it they could open you know stores in these distribution centers and stuff like that. I can imagine a Best Buy or something. I saw somewhere in Seattle they just opened their first retail location. Which is really interesting that they operate in both extremes of this.

So for me, Amazon Prime Air seems like something I would really like because I use Prime, I love Prime, I love the next day delivery, but there are certain things like I just bought Fallout 4 on PlayStation because it was, it was like 30 pounds on Amazon, which is a pretty good discount. It's like 25% off already. And I had bought it and it came to me today. I ordered it yesterday, but there was a,

you know, when, when thinking about this topic, I this topic, when I bought it, it was because I wanted it. If I could have paid £2 or £3, £4 extra and had it in 30 minutes, I would have done that. Because I can imagine that's the kind of price it would be on top for a Prime member, right? Because

you're already getting discounted shipping, you pay a little bit extra and you get it delivered to you by drone. And the whole thing is like impulse buys, right? These drones are small, but what tends to be small is impulse buys. The things that you buy, like there's a movie that you want and you want it on Blu-ray,

so you just buy it and have the drone bring it to you in 30 minutes or a video game or like a new mouse because or something, you you know let's say that my keyboard exploded not that it could do that but i'm sure in the future there'll be nuclear powered so they will um my keyboard explodes and i'm halfway through writing something i need a keyboard and the drone could bring it to me in 30 minutes otherwise it's going to be a 90 minute trip you know there are things that i'm like yeah i i want this like this is something

that would i would find useful and i know it's lazy but it's convenience and and i think that laziness and convenience whilst they are kind of two sides of the same coin in most instances in most instances i think i can see the difference between them and it's just because i am at home now i work from home i don't work in the city anymore like I used to, where I could pick things up on the way home. For me, because I don't have a car, these things become more tricky, and especially in London and in England,

less people of my age are buying and owning cars because it's too expensive. So in that future, again, I understand more why something like drone delivery starts to make sense. I see what you're saying, but at the same time, I have that moment of like, you can't wait till tomorrow to play Fallout 4. But that's an impulse buy. I mean, and I did, and I happily waited.

But if I could have had it delivered to me by drone in 30 minutes, I would have done, because why not? Well, there you go. I think that is a great slogan for this service done because why not well there you go i think that i think that is a great slogan for this service because why not because why not and i know that a lot of people are going to be like oh listen to him he's so entitled but this is my generation ladies and gentlemen because we were brought up in the internet age and for example that's why you can buy fallout 4 on the playstation store and download it but my internet

connection can't cope with that it can't download a 30 gigabyte game so i have to buy physical discs so things that should be digital and are digital i can't access that way so i have to buy the physical copies which makes it less of an impulse buy you see like it's my generation is the generation of things being instant and you think about your kids you know like i at least still have the the hang-up and like the hangover of the 90s and the early 2000s but your kids they're in this world way more than me or you are right everything is just a click of a button and it's there and you think about that that's why stuff like i believe what stuff like this exists because and will exist because for the things that you need that you can't download you want

them quickly because like everything else so this is essentially these are downloads for physical items yeah that's how i look at it because it's 30 minutes that's a download wait time right and then it arrives job done yeah i just so i come back to the practicality of it which is can it can they do short of a revolution where like all the stores close and everything is brought to you by robots which you know could happen you know it's it's not i seriously You know, it's not, seriously, it's not beyond the realm that I could, like, I can shop by the web right now at my local Safeway store. I can check with the boxes of all the things that I want and somebody will bring it to me and we never do it that way. But we could do it. That's how me and Adina shop.

We have all of our groceries delivered to us. Yeah, we can do that. I know a lot of people in New York that they do it that way too, because it's impractical to go. And also there are places in New York where you shop at the store and at the end of the process, you pay and they deliver it to you later.

When I was 17, that was my job, Jason. To deliver the groceries. Yeah, well, I was always like the assistant guy because I don't have a driving license, but I was one of the guys that was in a van. It was in a supermarket called Waitrose, which is a fancy supermarket. And people would come in. They would do their shopping.

And then they would say, I want this to be delivered. Someone would come along, bag it, and they would book in a time. And then me and the delivery guy, we'd jump in a van and take around all the deliveries the next day it was i loved that job jason aside from this it's my favorite job i ever had i loved that job it was so great because it was so simple right we just used to just jump in the van there was no stresses you know there was no like corporate crap i had to deal with like in my later jobs the worst thing that could happen was we drop a bottle of wine which we did once and it was horrific it was

actually six bottles of wine um and it was horrible uh but aside from that you know no stresses but yeah um that's i've totally cut off your point but yeah that that is something that happens a lot of people have their groceries delivered to them now and again it's like for us it's because we can't go to the store put them in the car and drive them home exactly right exactly like i was saying i know i know people in new york who do that and that's the reason is that they can't they can go to the store but they can't take a shopping trip worth of stuff home with them because they would have to carry it themselves and they've got kids or whatever and it's just it's not practical so instead they they do that and it makes, it actually makes sense. So that's,

I guess that's what I'm saying is I can, I can extend that out and say, you know, I could do that too. Other people could do that. The storefronts could become less important as the delivery. You could have large items delivered by self-driving car. You can have small items delivered by little drones. It's possible. It's entirely possible. I think where it breaks down for me is I'm not sure I believe that the range and the availability will be beyond sort of like urban centers. And as somebody who grew up out in the middle of nowhere, I actually think like longer range delivery would be more exciting because there are people who have access to nothing. Yeah. I think that that is a, again, this is already the future. That just feels like future times two, right? I feel like it's definitely possible that that could be the case, that

this would be a way for Amazon to service everyone. one that sounded a little threatening it did i i added that in but like that is it though right like that is the that is obviously like the you know the evil maniacal goal of this this puts amazon everywhere and like why would if you if you are jeff bezos that's what you do as well right because these things will be cheaper to run and operate than putting people in vans well and i think the argument would be more efficient than rather than people in vans you've got people loading uh drones yeah people still loading the vans though that aren't the same people that drive the vans yeah but i i'm just saying you you you're you're reducing the inefficiency the people are part of

the inefficiency there but i think it's also just the the time you know the driving and all of that and the idea is that then you've got everybody working back at the warehouse and they don't have to go out they just stay at the warehouse and they're you know and they work them to death at the warehouse instead um yeah interesting interesting world we live in it was like uh it's a great video people should watch it yeah there was one last point on this like the reason i wanted to talk about this anyway which is because i watched a mythbusters episode yesterday um in which they tested uh how deadly drones are and basically what they did was they took two drones, one that was like a one that anyone can buy, like a toy one, and one that was used for commercial use.

Like it wasn't, they had their own custom built drone for camera work, but this is one that you could buy, right? That people can buy and attach cameras to, and it's used frequently. And they created like a neck analog with veins in it and stuff right um and were flying the drones into this neck and both of the drones that you can buy did no damage like they were built so that the the rudders would not slice anyone basically um was the thinking but then they used their own one that they built and it had like carbon fiber blades and it just destroyed the neck of this that they created so you don't want to run into

the mythbusters drone but basically the idea of this was saying that as long as people stick to the current kind of ways of doing things and safety then these things are fine and probably stuff like amazon would use would be built to not um to not be able to kind of cut somebody open if it crashed into them but it was just it was just interesting to me that it is that is part of it though like that is part of the risk i guess is that oh yeah people are dangerous well and and it's it's part of the political risk i think even even more so is this fear of of uh death from the skies right that people are like oh no it's gonna crash into us it's gonna ruin everything the robot drones are here to kill us all and so being able to say no it's fine you know it's okay don't worry about it it's it's all it's all good that's good

but that's that's drones there's nothing anybody like us can do about it unless you work for the faa they can do something about it otherwise you're gonna get little packages delivered to your home by some kind of flying robot before we go to ask upgrade uh i wanted uh i wanted to mention something that i i intended to be in follow-up and i and i i, I didn't think of it at the time. And it's just a fun, it's just a fun little thing, which is I sent,

I sent our friend Merlin Mann a little something in the mail, just a thank you, a little Christmas card kind of thing from the incomparable. And, and without going into any of the details, I just wanted to point out, he sent me back a handwritten thank you note in an iMessage. Genius.

Isn't that great? Isn't that a great idea? That he wrote with, is it iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, perhaps? I don't even know. But whatever, right? It was a handwritten thank you note that just appeared in my iMessage. And I tapped it and it opened up and it was full screen and it was a handwritten thank you note that just appeared in my iMessage. And I tapped it, and it opened up, and it was full screen, and it was a handwritten note. And truly,

we live in a world of miracles. This is all I am saying. It was just such a clever fusing of, it is the delightful personal touch of a handwritten thank you note, but just done on an iPad and then sent via imessage it just uh it was more immediate but it was also just had that kind of uh really nice personal feeling it was it was uh it was really cute so yeah it's good for the holidays coming up right you want to do your thank you notes that's right and a little uh little uh pencil related uh follow-up too so just throwing it out there nice life hack there merlinlin. Uh-huh. All the great pencils. All the great life hacks as well.

Uh-huh. Yeah, that's what he's known for. This week's episode is also brought to you by TextExpander from Smile. If you ever need to find yourself, or if you ever do find yourself in a situation where you're typing things frequently, you know, different phrases, sentences, words, even whole paragraphs, you need TextExpander in your life. TextExpander is there to help save you time and effort

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And I'm able to create and have done many different snippets of TextExpander. Some just fill in a couple of words, like I have TextExpander snippets for all of our show names because I type them quite frequently. Or I have TextExpander snippets for whole sentences of things that I might use. But where it gets most powerful for me is in the little forms that you can create. So I can type a couple of characters in this little code that I've created. And it will pop up this form where I can choose for some drop downs what I want it to say. So it might be a couple of words or a couple of phrases that are different. Or when I fill in our sponsor information in our CMS, I just type in the name of the sponsor and it pops up a

little thing and I can say, oh, this is upgrade. So choose the upgrade code and I can manually enter in any discounts and things like that if it's needed for that week. It is super, super simple and really just saves me a ton of time. And when I was talking about sending emails as well, it helps improve your communication, especially if you're in like a customer support type thing or even just for the work that you do. If you just want to make sure that you are sticking to the same responses each time,

you can create these stock replies really easily and TextExpander will just keep that nice and sorted for you. I really love TextExpander. It's on iOS as well, where I have my snippets synced with a bunch of my favorite apps, and they have their own keyboard as well for iOS, so you can access them in any app that you like. TextExpander 5 costs $44.95 US, and upgrades are available for $19.95 for existing users. But TextExpander 5 is free to anybody who purchased any version of TextExpander on or after January 1st, 2015. You can find out more about TextExpander 5 by

visiting smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. Please note that TextExpander 5 requires Yosemite and is ready for El Capitan, and TextExpander for iOS is available from the App Store for iPhone and iPad. Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show. Time for some Ask Upgrade, Jason. Lasers. Bartek would like to know, how do you upgrade apps on the Apple TV? Asphalt 8 is telling him he needs to update, but he can't work out how.

Jason, help him. I can't. I don know i thought they're supposed to automatically update right aren't they i believe so i've never done any updates but i've had the little blue dots appear yeah yeah i think it's meant to automatically update i would say so i have to go back to the old standbys and in a situation like this, which is, you know, reboot it. I never thought we would have an Ask Upgrade where we were going to tell people to turn it off and turn it on again. But that's what I would suggest as well.

Yeah, reboot it and see if that gets it back on the track of looking for updates. You could look in the App Store to see if there is an update button, update submenu, but I don't know. I have never done that. I'm really going with the flow with the Apple TV. I'm seeing what it does when I do nothing to it other than use it. It's worked so far.

I don't know, but I don't have Asphalt 8, so I can't say. Sorry. Failure. AskUpgrade failure. Boo. As the laser's turning off yeah the laser's misfired and killed a guy oh no will would like to know he wants to know if it's time to join the year of tiki and to get an ipad air 2 now or cross fingers and wait for an air 3 and the the the caveat to this which i think makes it the most important

in the way that I'm going to give my answer, is Will has said that this would be his first iPad. Well, I'm intrigued by what your answer is going to be. So why don't you go first? I would say to wait. I believe there will be an Air 3 at some point in 2016. And considering this is your first iPad, you're already okay with living without one. It's been out for five years at this point.

I would suggest waiting until the new one comes out so you can take advantage of whatever features it brings. Okay. I think I replied to Will and told him to wait or to not wait because there's always a new iPad and it's pretty a powerful device as it is. And there probably won't be one until next fall. There is a rumor that there might be an iPad Air 3 in the spring. And, you know, Apple keeps doing crazy stuff that is not like what apple used to do so if that if that's the case if if there's a new apple approach here which is you refresh sort of like the high end of your line in the in the fall and then you do some sort of like backfilling in the spring

with let's say a smaller iphone because there are more rumors about that now. And something like an iPad Air 3, maybe. I currently believe in the small iPhone iPad Air 3 rumor of April, March, April, along with Apple Watch 2. I think we're going to get an event that has those three products lumped in together because I don't think any of them are exciting enough for their own event. And if you put them together, it might bring a bit more kind of pizzazz to it. Plus, you attach the word iPhone to any announcement and it gets a little bit more buzz. So even though it's maybe not as exciting an iPhone, it might help put the spotlight on these products as well. That's my thinking. That's basically the same thing can not ahead for when the ipad pro would be

released which was the event with the iphone so yeah uh we'll see uh i think it's i i think it's intriguing this idea and i think the reason apple might do this because that's the question it's like well apple does everything in the fall why might they do this the answer is because apple does everything in the fall and maybe this is a good kind of off you know off cycle like six months later cycle to to release some other stuff plus it's worth remembering that this this apple the idea of apple does everything in the fall has only been around for a couple of years they always had the music event which was around that time of the year. Yeah, that's true. You know, like, yeah, Apple does do everything in the fall,

but it's only been a couple of years that they've done that. Well, the iPhone, right, was in the fall for all but the first one, and the iPad's been in the fall for all but the first one. Is that true? I thought that they did it in April for quite a while. I don't think. Well, maybe they did. I think they did. I have for quite a while I don't think well maybe they did because I have memories no you're right they did it in the summer for several years before they migrated it to the fall

that's true you're right now we're going to get people who tweet us because they heard me say that immediately paused it tweeted at me that I was wrong and then pressed play again and heard that you immediately corrected me because that's how podcasts work on the internet in this instance I would like you to still send that tweet to jason because

no don't do it i get the pleasure of working with mr jason snell it's the first four iphones were in june and then they relocated so since 2011 every iphone has come out in the fall but what about the ipad i think that was that was around march april time the first one was well anyway as i was saying i get the pleasure of working with mr jason snell and uh one of the great things about working with jason is his great knowledge um and experience of these products so every time i get the the uh time where this is, where I am able to be correct. I take great pleasure in it because I can't believe the luck that I have, not only to work with Jason,

but to momentarily at least know something that he doesn't know. I am so old, Mike, that it all runs together to me now. I'm not accepting that. The iPad, the story, if you recall, the story with the iPad is that when they did the third generation, which was the first Retina model, they very quickly turned around and did a much more capable fourth generation that they called the new iPad, right? That whole line of the third and fourth generation was like, we're not going to even explain what this product is. and that was the moment that they shifted from spring to fall because they did that quick turnaround with the

fourth generation and left that third generation Retina iPad kind of hanging out there Was that when they gave it, that was when they gave it Lightning, wasn't it? Because it was the only device with 30 pin then, I think? Yeah, I think that's right too, although now I don't, you know, you've shaken me to my

foundations, Mike, I don't even know what's true anymore. I'm going to PC World. Yeah, it's crazy town. But that was when it happened. So basically they've been for the last, yeah, you're right, like three years for the iPad and four years for the iPhone. They've been in the fall. But they could do anything.

I think it makes sense because it's the holiday quarter. But it's absolutely true that there's too much going on there. Not just too much for consumers or too much for us to cover it, but it's too much for Apple to have the cycles all hit in the fall. And it's bad product rollout to have every single product you do drop at once because then you lose track. And they did a good job of rolling the products out over an extended period this fall. But there's too much. There's too much in Apple's, even the iOS product line. So having that stuff, having more of that stuff come out in the spring makes sense. So if that is true, that rumor could be true, and that would be interesting. So that leads me to be less

inclined to tell Will to dive in now if there are some interesting rumors that there might be an iPad Air 3 sooner rather than later. So that's, so I kind of have to, that rumor makes me, gives me pause and makes me revise my thoughts. I don't know, Will, I don't know if we've actually given you an answer here, but. Wait, I think, I think wait is what we're saying. Okay. We'll go with that. And Mr. Tony Sindelar, this is Tony, would like to know, and this is an interesting conundrum, Jason. I'm interested in what you think of this. So Tony says, I struggle at Christmas with non-e-media items like books and music increasingly feeling like a bad gift.

What are your thoughts on that? Hi, Tony. music increasingly feeling like a bad gift what are your thoughts on that uh hi tony um i uh i don't know i think books feel like a good gift to me i think books feel feel pretty good that even people who are are dedicated ebook readers i, I think a nice book is a gift. I don't know. Plus, there's so many books that are not as great digitally. Comic book collections or books for kids. Big history books or novels or things with pictures in them. I don't know.

I think they're okay. Giving music, like a CD, yeah. I think you could argue that that's not as good. But I think music as a gift has often been bad because music tastes are so personal that it's very difficult to buy music for somebody. All of us, I imagine at some point, I certainly had that moment where my parents got me a cassette tape for Christmas that was some band that I knew a song of. And they thought this was like the best thing. They're like, hey, that's a band that I knew a song of, and they thought this was like the best thing. They're like, hey, that's a band that I know you were aware of, and I bought you their album on a

cassette tape. And it was just a terrible gift that I remember all this time later, because I didn't care, and I didn't want it. And it wasn't a thing that I... It was so personal to me that buying me music was not something I wanted wanted to do so i think media is problematic in general but i think books are great gifts i think i think there are so many books and there's so many different things that even even with uh even with uh people reading on kindles and on their phones and things like that uh you know i i feel i feel pretty good about books as a gift yeah movies are better than music i think if you're gonna buy physical things but i agree books books if there's enough meaning to them as well book can be nice um but stuff like music and

you know i don't you can't there isn't anything like an app right i guess don't buy anyone's software on a cd i guess is the thing right don't do that aside from that i think i think it's still pretty good as long as there's meaning in it, I think it will work. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, this is one of your two final warnings for Star Wars spoilers.

We are about to take a break. Once we come back, we are going to be talking about The Force Awakens and we will play a spoiler horn immediately and then it's going to be straight about The Force Awakens and we will play a spoiler horn immediately and then it's going to be straight up spoiler town. Everything I'm going to be talking about and we will be

talking about will be laden with spoilers. So we will be addressing The Force Awakens. On the other side of this sponsor break, this show is brought to you by Hover, the best way to buy and manage domain names. When it comes to buying a domain name, it's the first place that I think of and it should be the

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use the code upgradees that's u-p-g-r-a-d-i-e-s at checkout and you will get 10% off your first purchase at hover.com and show your support for this show and relay fm so that is code upgradees thank you so much for hover for their support of this week's show. And now, spoilers for Star Wars, colon, The Force Awakens. All right. Okay. So here we are. We're in The Force Awakens time.

Now, this is the only place. It's time for Mike at the Movies. Is is an english guy he watches some movies is this flop house like no it's not as good as that and that is bad so and now here's mike at the movies. I haven't even said. Starring Mike Hurley. Okay, I'm done. What I think of this movie anywhere publicly. Oh. Because I'm going to start by talking about spoilers.

Now, you had a great discussion about spoilers on the episode of Incomparable that came out this weekend, which was fantastic. And it's basically the episode of the Incomparable that you were destined to make right like a new star wars i don't think we ever expected that um and it's it was amazing it perfect and the end of the episode is about spoilers and it's just you and john because i think everybody else has gone to bed at this point yes yeah yeah and he wasn't ready yet. So we talked for another half hour. And John spoke about spoilers. And there is a key thing about spoilers that I think that John believes this.

And CGP Grey planted this nugget of information in my brain and it's ruined me ever since. Knowing if somebody thinks a movie is good is, in my opinion, a spoiler. Because it sets expectations. It's not a plot spoiler but it definitely changes your anticipation for the thing that you're about to consume especially this movie because if there are people like you or john and i had known that you thought the movie

was good before i saw it my expectations may have been set too high. Right? Because I may have thought, well, it's going to be perfect. It's going to be the best movie ever made. You know, that's how I take these sorts of things. I like to know absolutely nothing. But I also, at the same time,

didn't specifically do anything in the run-up to protect myself. I watched the trailers, but that was it., didn't specifically do anything in the run-up to protect myself. I watched the trailers, but that was it. I didn't go and search anything. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to see anything I didn't want to because I wasn't looking for it. And then also, what I did to prevent... Because I do see that... My main concern was knowing what people think about this movie when it came out. That was

what I thought was the biggest risk of spoiling for me because I didn't want to know what people thought about it. I wanted to go in clean. So I implemented a bunch of mute filters the day before the movie came out. So I wouldn't see anybody's opinions. And then I also made sure I saw it as early as I could, which was like 11 a.m. on Thursday because it came out a day earlier. I could have seen a midnight show on Wednesday, but I didn't want to do that. So I saw it like the first showing at my local cinema on Thursday morning. So I was able to see the movie unspoiled. This was something that I was gloating about to you and to many people that I was going to see this movie first.

It actually turned out to be a terrible thing because i i didn't have anybody to talk to however luckily there was a couple of people uh the main person being friend of the show mr james thompson who'd seen a midnight show and so i realized a couple of hours afterwards james has seen it so i was talking to him but i couldn't talk to anyone for like any of you guys, for like 24 hours. No one had seen the movie. And then basically it was like I was getting ready to go to sleep at like 1.30 a.m. or something that night. And that was when everyone was going to see it, which I thought was kind of hilarious. So it was like everyone's going to be talking about it when I'm asleep.

So do you – I mean, I can sum up my feelings about this movie in one word um and it was the i think no it may be even better than that and this was the way that i felt about this the moment that i left the cinema and and i have i actually think that my feelings about this movie in this regard are stronger than anybody else. I think The Force Awakens was perfect. Wow. That's the one word that I keep coming back to. No movie is without interesting plot foibles and stuff like that.

And this movie has them. But that's not what I'm really referring to. them but that's not what i'm really referring to like this movie to me was the exact movie i wanted it to be in every single way and that's what makes it perfect i loved this movie so much it's easily my favorite star wars movie wow because all right jason i'm gonna, this is probably going to upset a lot of people. I really, really love Star Wars. Like many nerds. That's outrageous. There are lots of moments in the original trilogy that are slow to me. Especially the first.

Especially New Hope. are slow to me especially the first especially new hope uh i actually enjoy a new hope the least of the three star wars movies huh um my favorite is uh my favorite is empire uh then jedi when i was growing up it was always uh jedi was always my favorite because i love the opening scene no not the ewoks actually no it was it was badass luke that was my favorite thing okay um i loved that scene uh i always did as a kid but also also my favorite obviously but there are i don't know the it's basically just i think it's just a a thing of the times and maybe oh yeah it actually reminds me of how people talk about the original star trek now and it's been long enough now from the from 1977 that people can say the same thing about the

original star wars movies it is from they're from another era and people who who didn't live through that era don't have the nostalgia aspect of it and are not used to the um the way entertainment was made back then as much i think I just like a little bit more action. That's just me. That's just my tastes. And this movie delivers on that. It's a fantastic action movie. There are so many action set pieces in it.

It's kind of stunning. And we could argue maybe one too many, but there are lots of them. I, having watched it a second time, I was struck by how the, uh, how it just keeps rolling.

And there's just like, this happens. And then this happens. And then this happens. I, I, somebody, I saw a troll on Twitter basically say,

Oh, it's so boring. And the pace is really bad. And I'm like, you didn't, you came into that movie wanting to hate it because there's no, I just watched a different movie, buddy. Like you could argue that the pace is really bad and i'm like you didn't you came into that movie wanting to hate it because there's no i just watched a different movie buddy like you could argue that the pace is unrelenting and that there's too much but you can't argue that there isn't enough pace because it's all pace it's it it rolls from scene to scene there are barely there there is there in

the middle in fact there's a moment that the first time i saw it i thought it sagged a little bit uh and watching it a second time i decided that it doesn't sag in the middle, but it is a moment where there isn't wall-to-wall action for a few minutes. It's just like a movie at that point. And I think that that pace is part of what makes me think this movie was so amazing. And the reason that I say that this movie is perfect

is because of how I felt watching it. I have never seen a movie that I have been so emotionally involved in. I, from the very first moment, from the sound hitting, right, the orchestra blaring up, blaring up i was in i was just so in uh i cried so much during this movie um i obviously laughed a lot but like everybody did but i don't know if everybody else would cry oh boy did i cry a lot like i had like those kind of every time every time an original trilogy person popped up i had i kind of had the lump in my throat like the happy feeling you know but when when han dies i was like i was sobbing like i was gone man i couldn't deal with it because i i know that many people saw this like i wasn't completely sold on the idea that he was going to be killed in this movie.

Like, I see it now. It's like, of course he was. This means he never has to do another Star Wars movie. But I didn't really think of it that way going into this. And when that scene began, whilst it looked like he was going to get killed, I think the idea of just how much it looked like he was gonna go off that bridge made me think that he might not right it was like this looks so obvious that he's gonna go off this bridge because there's no rail on it um that he's that he'll be okay and the scene like they i think that they set up quite nicely the idea of of kylo ren turning away from the dark side.

Like when earlier in the movie when he seems to be quite conflicted and this is when he's on his own, right? So it is a real emotion he's feeling. He feels the conflict. So I don't know, like when he was just, when he was then saying it on the bridge

and he threw the mask down, I was like, or the helmet, I was like, yeah, this could happen. Like the movie is so, this new band of heroes is so young. Maybe he could join them and, you know, but yeah. So when he, yeah, when that lightsaber went through him, man, that got me. And I kind of didn't stop crying for a while, like for quite some time.

I think I was still crying when leia and ray see each other and then they start hugging and that made me go again i was i was all in on this movie um and i think that's why it felt so perfect to me like i left the cinema and i was just like i was just gobsmacked i just couldn't believe what i'd seen. It was just superb because I loved every part of it. Like I loved all of the characters. They're all so fantastic. And there was just so many things about this movie that speak to who I am now and like the way that I look at the world, like Ray and Finn as like the main characters of this movie like that is so much about like what i think the world should be now like strong women and inclusion and the all of this just led to this just what i

think is just this incredible piece of work that abrams has created I just love this movie. I really love this movie. I agree with you. It's a good movie. I wouldn't say perfect. I have some issues with it, but nothing is so perfect that it can't be criticized as somebody we know might say.

I have some issues, but it is overwhelmed by it is overwhelmed by a feeling of of joy in watching it and also a feeling if i take one step back what i say is um some of the criticism that i've seen of it is that it's sort of a stealth remake of the original star wars and there's certainly some truth to that but as i said on the incomparable i feel like this movie needed to do two jobs it needed to hold the hands of the fans and say it's going to be okay star wars is back and it needed to set a direction for the future and those are the two things that it accomplished and people who say

well there's too much fan service it's like no no there's just enough fan service if i was making this movie i would have done that too like i would have done that because the idea is exactly that to show that guys it's okay like look this is star wars see we can still make those ones it doesn't have to be like the other ones we can still make this star wars movie you you could argue that that there has not been a good slash real Star Wars movie since 1983, right? If you think of it in those terms, if you think about the special editions and you think about the prequels, this is that moment of saying, look, remember the things you love. Here are the people you loved. Here is the attitude and the approach to this that you loved.

And there's new people who you're going to love. And we're going to put it all together in a big ball. And it's going to be exciting about the past and also exciting about the future. And a movie that's just one or the other, I think, would have been less successful. It would have been really risky to do a movie that just turned its back entirely on the past. And the huge asset from a business standpoint of Star Wars is that it's got this mass of people who love it because of the past. But a movie that was entirely about the past

would also, I think, be a failure. But I don't come out of The Force Awakens thinking, isn't Star Wars good? I like those old movies. I came out of The Force Awakens thinking and talking with my family, including my kids who really loved it. My kids loved it.

I think that also says something. We came out of the movie talking about, after we got far enough away from the people who were waiting in the line for the next showing, because we didn't want to spoil them. And there were people, I actually saw a guy stick his, because we were coming out the doors on the side of the theater and into the line of the next showing. And there was actually a guy with his fingers in his ears. And I was like, oh dude, good job. But I feel bad for you, but good job. But once we got about, you know, 50 feet, 100 feet away, we were all talking about what happens next. Right. Not, oh, hey, look at Han and Leia and Luke.

Isn't that great? But like, what happens next? Who is Rey? What is her story? How did she get where she was? What does she do now that she meets Luke? What's going to happen with Ben, with Kylo Ren? What's he going on to next? Poe and uh get the engine back on of a of a franchise like this and and they did it they did it in a movie that is and you know it's as entertaining the second time as the first i

watched it twice in about a 14 hour period um and uh it was not a problem to watch it a second time. Yeah, I have my next two showings booked. So I'm going on Christmas Eve and taking my brother and then me and Idina are going to see it on New Year's Day. She did see the movie today, actually. She took her mom. She's back home in Romania right now. And Idina is a relatively new Star Wars viewer um she actually saw the original trilogy this year for the first time and she told me she thought the film was perfect as well so my

thinking about this is the people that are like super into Star Wars like really into Star Wars maybe see a lot more of the faults than other people like i love the movies but i'm not like really deep in it you know well i'm i said this on the incomparable i think it's like i'm not a i'm not a star wars fan i am i am a star wars fan in the sense of i was um six years old when star wars came out and i was 12 years old when uh return came out. And I was 12 years old when Return of the Jedi came out. And every single kid who was alive during that period was completely surrounded by and a part of Star Wars. Because it was one of the defining things. But, you know, I read a Star Wars book when I was in elementary school.

And I read a Star Wars book when they came out with those supposedly authorized and now decanonized books about what happened afterward. I read one of those. But that's it. I was always a Star Trek fan. Later, I was a Doctor Who fan. But Star Wars has just sort of been like, I like it. It's great. I'll go see all the movies. But it was never part of my been like, I like it. It's great. I'll go see all the movies.

But it was never part of my, like, fan identity or anything. So it's kind of, I'm a Star Wars fan like everybody in the world is a Star Wars fan. Which, if you look at how many people saw this movie, I'm that kind of Star Wars fan. Like everyone. I'm that kind of Star Wars fan, like everyone. And, you know, yeah, my criticisms about it are maybe informed by that a little bit, that it's like the Starkiller base thing. It's like, do we really want to go back to the Death Star thing again, Death Star analog again? I thought that was maybe not necessary.

And I think some of the space science stuff is so ridiculous that they would have been better off having it be even less sciency and and and more unexplained like we suck the the the the energy out of the sun until it goes dark and then we fire our beam across the galaxy and everybody can see it and everybody can see the planets exploding and as i said on the incomparable that's not how space works doesn't work like that i would have actually rather it been more vague. But, you know, these are minor points, and it didn't stop me from enjoying the movie. Like, there's similar points I have about the J.J. Abrams' first Star Trek movie, but it doesn't stop me from liking it a lot. I want to talk a little bit about the characters.

Rey is perfect as a hero, right? A hero right a hoan she's just brilliant right she smashes down gender stereotypes doesn't take any crap from anyone like i love the whole like wouldn't let finn hold her hand like what are you doing like why do you keep taking my hand like even better is when there's that explosion he's knocked flat and sort of semi-unconscious and when he wakes up he looks at her and says are you okay and she's like yeah because he's playing his role right he's playing his gender role of i've got to hold her hand and make sure she's okay and protect her and she's fine he's the one who's getting the crap he's beating beaten out of him he is having a very bad day right yeah that's i i you know take my hat off to writing, because when you think about something

like this on the face of it, the way that you would like the way that most people would show her strength is to not even address any of those things. Right. You're just like, we don't even think about this. This is the world. Right. Everyone's strong, male or female. But it actually makes a bigger impact when you do have those moments where the guy tries

to play the stereotypical role and is shot down i think that is what makes her look so so strong because of the comparison like if they would have just had her do all of those things and they didn't have those interactions i don't think it would have hit home as hard well so the first order is obviously uh has a sexist culture because he was raised in a stormtrooper education facility or whatever. And he believes that these are the proper, the proper gender roles,

but, but his boss is female. Yeah. Even, even so, even so that's, this is true. It's interesting.

Even Ray, Ray is also interesting as an inversion of Luke. Cause she is also kind of a loner. I mean, he's got his aunt and uncle, but he always sort of feels it removed from them a little bit. And he's, although she's like alone, alone. He's got friends and they shoot womp rats and Bigger's Canyon and all of that.

She's alone. Do we ever see him? No. But she's alone in the desert. And it's interesting because Luke has a lot to learn. He has raw skills, but has a lot to learn. And he wants to get out of there. And Rey, Rey is waiting.

So she's staying there and she does the opposite. She's got a lot of skills. She's improving herself by surviving and navigating her world while she waits. And I find that kind of interesting, along with just the nerdy kind of art direction stuff about how Jakku, although it is not tatooine has so many of those very things that just feel like star wars because it's these funny like i don't even know what to call them little antenna pillar kind of things out in the desert and garbage and sun setting and things and little speedery things where it just it feels like star wars um and that that's the world she lives in but it's uh

yeah it's a she's a it's a that's a great uh she's a great hero character um and I like the fact that she's also still learning um you know she she doesn't flip on the Millennium Falcon and take it out right she kind of smashes it into a few things on the way out and there's a really nice moment that I think says a lot about these new characters about finn and ray that um when they're in the millennium falcon for the first time they both have that quiet moment separately when he's in the gunning pod and she's in the pilot seat of like okay i can do this that is a wonderful moment about these new characters trying to talk themselves into this uh being you know being the hero of their story here because neither of them had ever done the thing that they're doing before right well i mean if you discount like the tie fighter scenario that that finn was like but when

finn sat down in the tie fighter he'd never operate something like that before no he was in sanitation and just got promoted to be a to be a an infantry which is basically you know i think i think that's the empire or the first orders cannon fodder so he was not a high ranking anything he had been this was his first combat that he had seen before that he was working in the trash compactors so this asks one of the first questions that i have i mean ray is obviously is great at everything that she is because of the fact that the force flows through her. Right. She is incredibly strong and is powerful. And her control of the force is clearly unlike anything that we've seen in the movies before, because she is able to use the force without any training from anyone luke couldn't do that um so there is

there is a great power there that we're going to see later on i imagine when when they say there has been an awakening when that when that line comes out and this movie is called the force awakens it seems to me that perhaps this is all about Rey, that she has her force power has awakened. And it is the start of a new era where previously it was only sort of the people that Luke had trained and something bad happened there. And Han and Leia's son went off and explored the dark side. But Rey's force awakening is this the beginning of this story. But Rey's Force Awakening is the beginning of this story. But my question around Finn is, does he have any of the Force in him? Because he does some interesting things in this movie.

Like the idea that he can just, he just feels it in him to be an incredible fighter fighter and a pilot right like not like he doesn't fly but he is great at operating a gun yeah and he'd never done it before he can wield a lightsaber and he'd never done it before and he does a relatively good job of it and i just wonder like will they both to certain extents have some of the Force in them? I don't know, but I think that that's an interesting thing to explore in between now and the next one. I kind of hope not, only because not everybody can be a Jedi. Although, and I kind of like the idea of him being, his special power is that he is a decent person. He's the stormtrooper who refused to be a stormtrooper. And how special is that?

Now, maybe there's a reason behind it. Maybe it's his connection with the force or fate or whatever that led him down this path. But it doesn't need to be because you could say he is the one in a million or one in a hundred thousand stormtrooper

who absolutely refuses his training and his conditioning there's the implication that they're almost brainwashed too and he was raised in this first order dynamic so we're talking about this pretty serious uh just uh propaganda and and brainwashing happening here and he refuses he refuses to shoot in the village and he runs away at his first opportunity and takes the pilot with him you know and and gets out of and gets out of the first order and wants to run then he wants to run as far away as possible which is the tension that he has with the other characters is that he isn't interested in this adventure that they're on you know and ray is on it kind of reluctantly because she wants to get back to her home um because she's waiting for something unspecified and uh but finn just wants

to run uh still he's remarkable because he is the he is the stormtrooper who refused and that that i think is uh i think that's really interesting about his character regardless if he's got the force in him or not one of the reasons that made me think that he may uh is because there is a big franchise to be built here and there are limited jedi they need more jedi so let's have another jedi it's possible i love that he wields the lightsaber because i think in the original trilogy especially there was this idea that like it's only the special people who get to wield the lightsabers and and with uh with him he's like well the button's right here right i can do this so force doesn't turn it on and he's not and he's not incompetent with it he's untrained but he's you know or or lightly trained uh uh serenity had a good point on the incomparable episode about how we see ray with her stick that

she fights with um that her she's got this kind of martial arts stick fighting thing that she does and her her use of the lightsaber is informed by that style of fighting yeah i totally that's a really nice touch that she didn't fight like anybody else has with the lightsaber like right she was operating it in a different way kind of like up holding it up down as opposed to down facing up and she was like prodding it like she's poking right and it was a very different way of fighting right which comes from her having that stick that exactly which is genius it's genius that they they set it up by giving her that weapon and i think the impression you get with finn is that he's trained on what that other stormtrooper is trained with, which is that sort of like stun gun stick thing that he that he fights that stormtrooper with.

Yep. And then takes from him and that that's his method of fighting with a lightsaber, which is kind of more brutal and stormtrooper like nice touches that are not necessarily obvious on first viewing for everybody, but are definitely there and interesting. I mean, one of the things that I like about this movie is that these characters are, they aren't direct analogs. These characters are all remixed into, they are fulfilling, they seem to be fulfilling roles in the Star Wars universe that are familiar roles from the original movies, but they're not in the slots.

They're all kind of mixed up. Star Wars universe that are familiar roles from the original movies, but they're not in the slots. They're all kind of mixed up. So Rey is sort of like Luke, but like we've said, sort of not like Luke in that, you know, and she's, Finn especially, you know, he is, what is he? Is he like Luke? Is he like Han? Not really. Poe Dameron is kind of Han-like, but not a scoundrel. Like Poe and Finn kind of share Han as like their sensibilities. A little bit. Yeah, Poe's got the roguish part, but he's also kind of gung-ho like Luke. He's like, yay, we're going to fly, and I'm a great pilot. Finn wants to run away and just get out of here, which is very much like Han. But Han Solo

in this movie is kind of Obi-Wan. I mean, by the end, he is Obi-Wan, essentially. But Luke is also kind of Obi-Wan in this movie. It's just like, they are all not exactly analogs of the characters. And that's good because they're their own people. As John said on that incomparable episode, you know, Rey is a person called Rey. Finn is a person called Finn. They are not Luke analogs and Hana analogs and Leia analogs. That's not who they are. They're kind of mixed up in their roles. And that's great because that's how it should work. Their paths will be different because their histories are different and their attributes are different. But it's exciting that these characters do seem well-defined, that their actions make sense and and uh yeah again without

throwing the prequels under the bus i felt much better about these characters and in the prequels i felt like even the characters that had potential to be great uh were squandered like um i uh pod may is the best example of that where that's a great actress and a character who had a lot going for her. And by the end of the series, she's just completely wasted. And, and yeah, so here, these, these characters all seemed fully formed to me and yeah,

they're, they're iconic and, and larger than life and all of those things. Cause that's what the star Wars is. But, but they felt like real people, but I am conflicted between the light and the dark Jason. Oh,

are you now? Cause I think my favorite of all the characters is Kylo Ren. And this was something that it took a few days for this to settle in with me because I just couldn't stop thinking about this character. There are so many little things about him that make him so interesting to me. Like the idea that he doesn't need the mask and he uses it as an intimidation thing and he's he got it as john john said on that incomparable episode he just got it off of vaderfan.com yeah he's like i like i need a mask too like darth vader and he doesn't need it but he does it to

to be and there's that shot of like the knights of ren that's in that vision shot where it's like that this seems to be like they're almost like cult kind of force cult thing where they've got masks and dark robes and things but yeah he doesn't he doesn't need it he just does he just wears it because it's cool and because his grandfather was darth vader who he thinks also fascinating he he says i want to finish what you started i'm not sure he knows that darth vader repented at the end i don't think anybody knows me and steven were talking about this like nobody knows that part of the story just did we ever see luke tell anybody anything luke's luke saw it and then luke saw the force ghost at the end of return of the jedi and that's it so it may be that did did luke not share that with his pupils did luke you know not

want to talk about darth vader let's just not talk about darth vader and you kids, if you don't talk about the subject, they're going to learn it on the street. They're all talking about Darth Vader out on the street. But he's become a Vader fetishist, basically, which is, I think it's a fascinating take. The seduction to the dark side has a family aspect. Your grandfather was Darth Vader. And you've got this guy, whoever Snoke really is, because I'm skeptical about that that that character is not that there isn't a much more of a story there but you've got somebody whispering in your ear and you've got this curiosity about your grandfather and and your uncle doesn't who's training you doesn't want to

talk about it and you you know he's become obsessed with it but also um he's a brat he's a whiny kid who um who wants things the way he wants them and is uh and i love that about him too i love that darth vader his his uh his icon right was so you know controlled in his rage right like in the first star wars movie where he's choking people right but it's like i find your lack of faith disturbing i'm going to choke you now with my hand right from across the room uh and there's a beautiful call back to that in this movie where there's the guy brings him the bad news and you you totally are expecting him to just get murdered by kylo ren and instead he turns around and smashes up the,

uh, smashes up all the equipment and then pulls them across the room with the force and lets him go. It's like, what? This is a different guy. And it's like, yeah, he is a different guy.

He's no Darth Vader. He's a kid and he's a, he's a big baby and he has rage problems and he's not under control. And that's scary on one level, but it's also kind of intriguing on another level that he is that he does not have it together. And we see it. We see him in The Incomparable that I feel like there is some possible redemption for him. And everybody else is like, nope, nope, he killed Han Solo. There's no redemption for him. Like, I think, I don't know.

I think that's what makes the story interesting is you've got the rise of Rey and you've got the rise of Kylo Ren as dark and light avatars. And that's interesting, but also they're connected. And he has the temptation of the light side of the force. And that is really interesting to me that he, you know, can he be redeemed? He is Han and Leia's son. At what point is he irredeemable? And, you know, maybe it ends all with him sacrificing himself nobly, which is sort of what Darth Vader did, right, at the last minute. It's that deathbed confession kind of thing.

But Darth Vader took out the Emperor. That was his thing where he finally turned away from the dark side again. Fascinating seasoning there. So, yeah, I agree with you. This is a really cool character. And I like Adam Driver. I heard somebody complain that he's like a whiny Jedi. And it's like, eh, a whiny is not what I would say.

He doesn't strike me as being like Anakin in the prequels. He is a big baby. This is true. But he looks weird. And I understood why he was behaving the way he was, even though I didn't, you know, approve of it. And what I also really like is that he now probably needs his mask, right? Because Ray leaves him with a lightsaber wound to the face. He still doesn't need it, but yes, he is scarred now.

Yeah. Or that may leave some damage that we haven't seen yet. Right. We don't know. I mean, he's left there kind of scrabbling away. And the guy, the general is told to go get him and bring him back to Snoke. I like that he's going more Vader. Like he's going more Vader.

He's on the path. He's embraced that now by killing his father. And so that's why I think that maybe like because again i think about somebody i wanted her to chop off his hand and i felt like even jj abrams thought that was too on the nose i was waiting for it i was like who's gonna lose their hand in this battle which one of them and i like that he didn't do that right wait for it next movie maybe next movie because so would i be right in thinking like this is the only star wars movie where someone hasn't lost their hand i think that's true no i am your cousin um let's talk about the family aspect very quickly uh do you think ray is luke's daughter

yeah you think i mean that's the i think that's the obvious setup although there's a lot of explanation that needs to go on there why was she left behind what's the complicated story there maybe maybe she's not i i think i think that's what the movie kind of wants us to to feel is that this when she meets luke it's not just um it's not just the the great jedi hope meeting luke skywalker for the first time but that they have a they have a connection but you know it's possible that she's that she's not. I have a hard time with her family history being so mysterious that it isn't something other than, oh yeah, well, I had a family, but then they left.

I don't know. I totally understand all of that. I just personally just don't think that's the case. I just think there's more Jedi we don't know about. That's how I look at it, and it's setting up. This is like the start of the next 30 years because this is gonna star wars is just a thing now like like marvel is yeah i i think that um but my gut feeling would be that she is she is related and that she is luke's daughter and

that the story is going to be who was her mother and what what happened and why was she taken away and why was she hidden away on jakku and uh but we'll we'll find out that's one of the great loose loose threads regardless it you know we're going to see uh her trained by luke in some way which kind of excites me that i feel like the you know empire strikes back one of the things about it was that it was about Yoda training Luke. And I feel like, cause also Snoke's last line is, um, tell, tell,

uh, um, tell, uh, Ren that Kylo Ren, that he needs to return here to complete his training. We're setting up a second film where the dark and light Jedi are receiving their training.

And it's just going to be a two hour long montage. It could be. Oh, Mike, can you imagine that? That would be so beautiful. It's training montage to be a two hour long montage. Could be. Oh, Mike, can you imagine that? That would be so beautiful. It's a training montage. The motion picture.

So how do you feel about the fact that Star Wars is just here now? Is Star Wars going to become less special over time? Yes. It is going to become less special because of the familiarity with it. When the Spider-Man movie came out in 2001, no, 2002, I was so excited because Spider-Man was my favorite superhero. And now, you know, these superhero movies are all around us. And I think it's great.

I really like the Marvel movies. My family just watched Ant-Man this weekend. I had already seen it, but they hadn't seen it. And everybody liked it. It's a good movie. But it's not special, right? It's not special like it used to be, but it can still be great and fun. And I think Star Wars has this potential to be like that. And I read a story over the weekend that was poorly written in the sense that it said something about how Star Wars will now be like the Marvel movies where everything is kind of interlinked. It's like, no, that's actually not true. It is a shared universe for telling stories. But what they're not trying to do is have all the movies take place in sync with one another. to do is have all the movies take place in sync with one another. Star Wars has this rich history that the Marvel movies, they pushed everything into the present other than Ant-Man basically has Michael Douglas was Ant-Man 20 years ago or something, but mostly it's in the present.

Star Wars has this whole history. So the next Star Wars movie, which will be out in a year, is one of these movies they're calling the anthology movies, which are set in other parts of the Star Wars universe. So that's the movie about stealing the plans for the Death Star that leads into the original Star Wars film. And that's fun because the art direction can be quoting the old Star Wars movies and stuff, which could be a lot of fun. And then separately, they're doing what they're calling the saga movies, which are episode seven, eight, nine. And then who knows where they'll go after that. But that's telling a kind of a continuing, the mainline continuing story.

So it's going to be less special. It's not going to be quite like the Marvel movies are. And I think that's good. I think that's kind of a, I like to see that restraint that they've they're um they've got a main storyline that will be in successive movies they don't have the confusion of all the kind of crossover stuff happening and they've got other stories that they want to tell that are they feel are good stories and good movies in their own right set in the star wars universe which quite frankly what took them so long it's such a great idea this um i saw somebody talking about that about star trek too and i think

i think it's worth asking about any of these things is, do you need a core set of characters that you tell stories about every year or two? And that's all you do with, and that's your franchise. Or are you better off taking, if you've built a rich world, taking different views into it? And Star Wars is this rich world that people know kind of like you know because it's been in the culture for so long so i would say the long short version of this long version is i think it's less special but there but it could be way better because we have more of it

because it you know if you didn't like the prequels it has been a long time since there's been good star wars in the movie theater yeah we can end up in a better scenario. We probably will because over time, the overall quality of Star Wars movies is going to increase because there will be more of them, right? So just by percentages, because currently, you know, we've just passed the 50% level of good Star Wars movies. There's now slightly over half of the star wars movies that have ever been made are good right we're now past that which is great but

over time there's going to be more there's going to be some bad ones but there's going to be a lot of good ones because they're going to have it's going to continue for many years to have all of the best of the best want to work on this franchise like the same that we have with marvel right there are very few bad marvel movies um i mean i don't think there are any bad ones there are just varying levels of good in my opinion of what's been made um and the worst maybe the thor 2 it's not actually that bad it's just the worst of all of those movies it's not well i i it's not it's not atrocious but it's not good i don't like that movie but it's not i i it's not i don't it's not atrocious but it's not good i don't like that movie but it's okay it's it's fine it wasn't for me so i think that's what we're going to see with stars and i think i think people when they say it's going to be like marvel they

get confused what they're trying to say like we're not going to have a connector universe but there is going to be a star wars universe where things occur in like that's what's going to happen but they're not all happening at the same time which is exactly what we have with marvel but this is about to become a rich universe which is why i assume is one of the reasons why that they decided to say that like the expanded universe is not canon exactly because now they now they have the ability to kind of paint their own universe like to stitch their own tapestry. Disney is now, and Lucasfilm, is in the Star Wars business for real.

Like there is a machine that is up and running that is determining stories for Star Wars, for on film and TV. And I think that's great. I think that's actually pretty awesome that they are doing that but you need to give them the latitude to decide what are the story decisions that they want to make

and I think it's great yeah I think it will be I love the fact that these anthology movies don't have to they can stand on their own and be their own thing and tell their own stories and be judged as thing and tell their own stories and be judged

and as good or bad movies without having it be connected to the overall star wars ongoing story i think that's really uh i think that's a good thing and that's a nice twist on what they're doing with marvel i think it's actually a lower degree of difficulty in some ways and with a chance of a better product because you know marvel it's a tough trick because they've compressed everything and it's all happening simultaneously and i think that's kind of hard um in fact i think guardians of the galaxy benefits from being so far out into space that they didn't have to worry about it and uh and you know star wars gets to do that gets to say well this this happened a long time ago and not just in a galaxy far far away but like 20 years further back than that.

And I think it'll be good. I'm excited about it. I'm actually curious if they are, since I mentioned TV shows, if they would consider doing something like that too. Yeah, probably. Right? Because Marvel has done that. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been successful enough. And Agent Carter has been successful enough. And then the Netflix shows have been very successful.

Yes, I forget about those. Of course, yes. Oh oh they'll definitely do it i mean i'm sure netflix is already like writing the huge checks like how big does this check need to be disney give us star wars give us a star wars tv show most likely i mean because again the thing with the marvel universe is the marvel universe is written. And I think that's a problem for Disney. They can't really do anything that doesn't already

exist. I think it's going to be a long time, if ever, before we see a Marvel movie created where the character doesn't already exist in Marvel comics. But with Star Wars,

Disney have an open book to write whoever they want because it is a world where they can create everything because the main story, the story people care about has already been told. So it's like the Rogue One, right? The Rogue One movie. Yeah. We don't know any of these characters.

They never existed to us before. No, exactly right. But they're in that world and they're telling a story in that world. Exactly. Because the thing is, the world of Marvel movies is America, right? That's the world that you can't create new things in that world. You just create new people. But with Star Wars, the character is actually the world, the place that they are in. That's the character.

A galaxy. A galaxy of people and aliens and planets to explore and tell stories. In fact, I think it's great that Rogue One is the first of these non-saga Star Wars movies that's coming out. I'm more troubled by the fact that they seem to be creating a lot of like Boba Fett movie and Young Han Solo movie and all that and those might be good movies but

but I would like to see them not just be let's explore characters we already know I would like there to be some like Rogue One that it's like in the Star Wars world and it's something we understand, but it's just a good story. The thing though, with all the movies you know about, you're like 50-50.

Because like 7, 8, and 9 is characters you don't know majorly. That's true. And then we've got Rogue One, which we don't know. And then there's going to be like Boba Fett and Han. And I think it's good for that, though, because those characters, we only know what we've seen. I think it might be nice to go back and see a little bit more about them. Like, especially Boba Fett,

like what an incredible movie and even series of movies you could make about the things that guy does, right. Which is completely out of everything like to do with, with what happens in the original trilogy like just what does he do like how does he go around the galaxy collecting bounties like i'm i'm interested in seeing what those sort of movies look like as well as then after they're established just seeing like bob space you know that's just a name i've disney can take that name if they want yeah and just like you

know person in that world who does things kind of like this like give me a jedi movie for a jedi i've never seen before i just want to see what that looks like like a singular guy or girl trying to make it on their own in the world like they are a jedi or like they've been trained they are like a full-on jedi and they're just going out and doing jedi stuff. What were all of those Jedis doing in the prequels when they all got murdered? What film was that? Was that two or three where everyone got killed? What was it called?

What was the... What did they call it? It was some number. I don't even know. Operation something something. Don't make me think about it. Protocol something. Anyway.

Whatever. What were they all doing? I want to know what they were doing. Yeah. Although some of that I think is in Star uh star wars rebels have you seen star wars rebels no it's good it's a uh computer animated uh tv series that's um set between episode three and episode four yep it's very good it's actually a lot of fun it's got it's uh and uh one of the one of the dan moran in the chat room order 66 thank you one of the characters is a jedi and you're you're asking yourself like well how could there be a jedi when they killed all the jedi and it's like he was an apprentice and his master was killed but he survived and it's like they're it's not

i i actually think that there's more to mine there, but they do some of that in, in, in rebels, this idea that, that they didn't get all the Jedi. There are still Jedi out there. What were they doing? How did they survive?

What did they do? Were they able to do some good while hiding their identity from the empire as the empire was ascendant? Sure. There's a story there probably, but, but there is a little of that in Canaan story in, in star Wars rebels, which is a good one. I havean's story in uh in star wars rebels which is

a good one i have one last question for you and we'll wrap this up do you know why the disney logo thing is not shown before this movie like i just got lucasfilm limited yeah me too um i think they decided that uh it was that was like a branding decision. I think they maybe decided that the 20th Century Fox fanfare thing was so iconic that replacing it with the Disney thing was going to be weird. And maybe like Lucas

Lucasfilm and Star Wars is all you need after your 30 minutes of trailers. Yeah. So they're continuing to operate Lucasfilm as a wholly owned subsidiary. Yeah, like Pixar. Right. And, but I think, I feel like they made a decision.

I think it's a great decision. They made the decision not to stick the When You Wish Upon a Star in front of it and just have it be sort of silent Lucasfilm and Star Wars. And, you know, I think that was a great call. We'll see, We'll see whether it continues in that way or if they will eventually stick the Disney. I was hoping John Williams would do a Disney fanfare that was sort of in the style of the 20th Century Fox fanfare and compose that and pop that on the beginning of it. But, you know, I thought this was good. I was glad not to

see the Disney logo there. We don't need to see it it's the lucasfilm and star wars that's the branding yeah it's weird like um i recently bought the star wars movies from itunes they don't have it in them they don't have interesting like episodes four five and six and that was really weird like it was weird enough seeing it here but it wasn't something, you know, it was fine because I wasn't used to it but seeing those now and there's no fanfare on them it's like, oh okay, that's strange. But there we go.

So that's The Force Awakens, double thumbs up from me. I can't wait to see it again this week. I'm very excited. I saw it in 2D so I'm going to be seeing it in 3D IMAX just to see what that experience is like. There's a great shot where there's a Star Destroyer kind of sticking out of the screen. That's the best thing

that's in the movie in 3D, but that one is pretty funny. Yeah, I heard about your daughter kicking it. She kicked it, yeah. It's funny. I like that. So that's it for this week's episode. If you want to go to our show notes, find links and stuff, you can feel free to do that. We're over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 68.

You'll also find some buttons there. If you want to help support the show, you can do that and sign up for a RelayFM membership. If you want to find us online, you can find Jason at sixcolors.com and he is at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. We'll be back next week with the Upgradees. So strap in. That's going

to be a ton of fun. I'm really looking forward to that. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Smile with Text Expander, Hover, and also the great people over at Braintree for helping support this week's episode. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you out there, and we'll be back next time. Until then,

say goodbye, Jason Snell. May the force be with you and with you live long and prosper something like that