Upgrade - 7: Hot Dog Allergy

Episode Date: October 27, 2014

This week Jason and Myke tackle a host of Apple Pay follow up, before addressing Gamergate and the Retina iMac.

Hello and welcome to episode 7 of Upgrade on RelayFM. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Backblaze, online backup made easy, and Igloo, an intranet you'll actually like. My name is Mike Hurley, but I'm joined by the man of this hour, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Mike. This hour? Yeah.

The figure of this hour that's about to proceed. You will be the man. 3 p.m. is Jason time. It's Jason. Jason daylight time. Yeah, we're in that time right now where we have switched to daylight savings time in the in the united kingdom but you you change in a week in a week so that the trick-or-treaters can have a little

more light that's really it seriously that's why oh really yeah yeah they moved it to after halloween on purpose so that halloween would have a little more light in the evening for the little kids who are wandering around demanding candy. My word. It's true. My word. Doesn't that mean we're closer? Doesn't that mean we're closer together, Mike? It does.

I prefer this, but I only get one week of it. When it changes back to summertime, we change three weeks earlier than you, which is horrible because that's the wrong way. We're far away. That's nine hours. Yeah, yeah. With the West Coast, with the best coast, yes. That's upsetting because I can deal with things when it brings things forward an hour, but pushing them out makes it harder. However, next time it happens, it won't be a problem for me.

But pushing them out makes it harder. However, next time it happens, it won't be a problem for me. That's good because you'll just be living in your vampire hours as a new – living East Coast hours in England. I'll be walking around here going, what are you guys talking about? Daylight savings time. We've got another three weeks of that. What's the problem, guys? My cousin and her husband, he used to work in a job in Louisville, Kentucky, and they lived in Indiana.

So they lived in Central Time, but he worked in Eastern Time. And she was a telecommuter to a job in Florida, which is Eastern Time. So their house was all the clocks were in Eastern Time, even though if you went to the store, it was Central Time. But they just pretended that they were in Eastern Time. It was easier for everybody if they just acted on Eastern time because all their work was Eastern time. Probably not easier for the people around them. Probably not. My wife used to work.

Her boss used to live, still does, I think, half the year in New Zealand and half the year here. And the way that works, because it's the other hemisphere, the times come closer each way by an hour and then they go away from each other by an hour. So actually when my wife was working with her and it was winter here and summer there, I think the difference in time, I think it was like four hours. It was almost no difference in time. It was very much like a New York, San Francisco kind of thing.

So it was actually really easy to work with people from New Zealand. But then the other half of the year, they're much further apart. Time time zones how do they work apparently however anybody likes is what we've learned today just do whatever this is our top of our top of episode digression for this week is a vertical the vertical this week as we said our vertical podcast of the week this is about time zones yeah and we're not actually the kindle will not be a vertical this week who knows if it'll be a topic you know yeah it's in there i know there is a chance that there's a chance it might be there's a chance it might not be just so people know so we can kind of keep it keep abreast of uh kind Talk, which is part of the Vertical Podcast, which is part of Upgrade.

Do you have your Kindle Voyage? I do. Okay, great. The Kindle Voyage is in the house. So now if we don't talk about it, we'll really not be talking about it. I think it's time for your favorite part of the show. Sponsors? Who are our good friends.

No, follow up. Follow up is what you mean. I do. Okay. Listener Shep wrote in to say, Mike, please, I beg you, don't buy a Mac mini. Wow. Wow, Shep. You really mean this.

Please tell me more, Jason. Shep, please tell me more via Jason. I think you might have gotten this email, but I thought I forwarded this to you. But anyway, he says the new machines are not only limited to dual core, which we mentioned last time, but the RAM is soldered onto the machines. The upgrade price from 4 gigs in the Lois & Machine to 16 is a ridiculous amount because they know you can't do it later. And he said, I'd strongly urge you to find new old stock. I assume he means something that's still floating around or refurbed or something of the previous superior version of the mini that had the quad core i7 processor, then do your own

30 second RAM upgrade. And so he's recommending you seek out an old previous generation Mac mini that had the quad core processor and upgrade the RAM and use that instead of buying one of the limited new model Mac minis. That's not a bad idea, actually. I haven't decided. Quad-core is something. If you're doing multi-core, I don't think it's going to be much slower to do single-core,

and it would be much faster to do multi-core if you could find it yeah yeah it's the problem if i can find one um yeah definitely not a bad idea maybe i'll save myself some money who knows or maybe there'll be like a black market um of these machines listenership says that powermax.com for example has a quad core at $699 US right now. Jason, have you ever heard of PowerMax.com? No. Okay, good. Well, I'm not going to buy from them then.

Just as an example of a... PowerMax, it's like Max Power. It's like Homer Simpson's alter ego, Max Power. I don't remember that. It's just like that. Anyway, Mike, don't buy a Mac Mini that's the you only move twice you should see that that's a great is that is that oh is he max power in that no it's a different episode where he's max power he changes his name because there's the uh the police cops star who's a character called homer simpson and in the pilot episode he's really cool

and then in the series he's a loser and so he changes his name to max power that i remember that you only uh is it moved twice you only move twice is the one where he gets the job as the james bond villain played by albert brooks is uh nuclear power guy that is my favorite simpsons episode of all time oh that's a good one it ends it ends with a great joke that you wouldn't understand which is a an nfl joke because he talks about dreaming he owes the dallas cowboys but instead he gets the denver broncos denver broncos marsh's well i don't know it seems fine he's smart you don't understand football because back then the denver broncos were terrible then they won the super bowl and

ruined the joke and then everyone on the internet shared that clip for 24 hours that's yeah that's what i found yeah that is i think you only move twice it kind of has everything that is good about the simpsons um yeah yeah i kind of stopped watching the simpsons in recent years there's a lot of things there's everything bad about the simpsons so there's our simpsons vertical done they're not tangents anymore. They're vertical. You can sponsor these verticals in the future. That'll be good. We'll just get just totally vertically aligned sponsorship deals.

This vertical was brought to you by Fox. Yeah, exactly. By the new Simpsons app from FXX. Listener Joseph wrote in. We had some Apple Pay comments and listener Joseph said obviously Apple Pay works with any NFC compatible system he says I think Apple's cache

will push retailers to enable NFC and advertise that they're Apple Pay participants but it doesn't look like they have to specifically partner with Apple this is true and of course as we found out some drugstores in the US which we call that a chemist, Mike, in your part of the world. Or a pharmacy.

Or a pharmacy. Okay. Well, indeed. So many drugstores, pharmacies, chemists in the United States have actually, they had it on. And when they discovered that it worked with Apple Pay, they quickly turned it off because they are plotting their own system. But yes, theoretically, if you're an NFC terminal, it should be able to work with Apple Pay. And I think I read somewhere that somebody in like Australia was able to pay with something using Apple Pay because they had a US credit card and there was an NFC terminal and they had to pay like the conversion rate and all of that, but it actually did work. So that's good. Yeah. If you have a US credit card card you can basically pay anywhere in the world it's very interesting that that works but it's all the thing is like i i have a i have an understanding of this stuff

kind of a little bit from a technical level from my uh soon-to-be previous employment. And these things like the machines and the NFC chips, they just see each other as very basic technology. Apple's not doing anything magic that requires... It's sending numbers, right? I mean, it's like numbers. All it's doing is like if you have one of these chips in your credit card or your debit card, it's the same thing that's inside of what Apple's doing.

And a lot of it, like the terminal doesn't know what is necessary talking to it because then it's kind of by design. The only difference is that Apple's system is generating that one-time credit card number. Yes. But the terminal doesn't need to know that, right? All the terminal knows is that it's got a number,

it's valid, and it clears the sale. But obviously the mean people at these American pharmacies have found ways to stop it from happening. Well, there's a whole harebrained scheme to build their own mobile app that has a barcode that you take a picture and then you show a barcode on your phone and it links with your bank account so they have access to just take money out of your bank account.

It sounds so evil and so bad. And they can track your purchases and aggregate all that data and presumably resell it and market it. Walmart is apparently one of the prime movers in it and it sounds really bad. And it's all basically to just get out from paying MasterCard or Visa for transaction fees. The thing is about this— Not to help customers at all, right?

Consumers are not supposed to be aided by this in any way. It's just for them to save money. I read about this yesterday, and it just made me laugh because, like, this is— Like, Apple's not giving up on Apple Pay. I think that Apple consider Apple Pay, I mean, I'm not the only one who obviously thinks this, as a hugely important thing to the future of their business. Like Apple Pay is a big deal. Tim Cook said as much. Yeah.

Tim Cook in his phone call with analysts, he said this is a huge services move for us doing this. And their whole idea is that they're basically making money at this, one, from the halo of selling more devices that use this thing that's awesome. But also by – they're taking a piece of what was the credit card fee basically as part of the deal. And it's not you know it's just sort of like inserting themselves in the middle there anyway it's uh yeah it'll be interesting to see i think that uh a a uh customer hostile attempt to aggregate uh user data in exchange for coupons is probably going to fail uh or or at least will i doubt, they're going to be able to succeed at making it in either or. It's more likely that they'll finally say, because also keep in mind, they

can't turn off Apple Pay. Like you said, they have to turn off NFC. So everybody's going to get these chips in the US, these chips in their cards, and they're going to want to do the tap to, you know, and they're going to say, well, no, you can download our app and scan this barcode and all. And people are not going to want to do that. That's crazy. Nobody wants to do that. I like to say retail, say hello to the music industry. Because if the music industry tried to do this with iTunes, you will not win in this scenario.

And your customers will want you to buy your to buy your products via this and there will be people that decide to go to a competitor they just will you know whether you think that's a you know like people who maybe go to walmart will go to another supermarket jason help me if if one of those exists safeway or publics orite. Now I'm making up things. They'll go to – people who want to go – let's try this. Who want to go to Rite Aid will now go to Walgreens because Walgreens accepts Apple Pay and Rite Aid does not. There you go. It's sad for me because the Whole Foods where I can buy things with Apple Pay is surrounded by a CVS and a Rite Aid, both of which have now had it turned off because they're part of this cabal.

And you used Apple Pay at the ballpark. I did. I bought a hot dog with Apple Pay. Alert! Stop presses! New story, just breaking. Man buys hot dog. Seen at the ballpark today.

Yeah. Is that hot dog he's carrying purchased with Apple Pay? Could be. So i do have a question about purchasing with apple pay now you've used me using it for like all of a week and a bit are you using it genuinely or ironically at the moment still or has it changed or do you think it will change i am going to use it every damn chance i get. And not ironically. I think it's, first off, it's fun. And second, I like the idea that I am just taking my phone out of my pocket and holding my thumb on the little button and it's all done. I think that's really cool.

Plus, yes, as a writer, I'm also interested in getting into those weird circumstances where things are not quite right and just experiencing it. Like with the hot dog, the guy wasn't ready and I beeped his little terminal with Apple Pay and he was like, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait. And he pressed a couple of keys. He said, now do it. And I did it again and it went through.

So I thought that was interesting that I couldn't just jump ahead. Like at some supermarkets, it's not so true now because I think they realize that people use their terminals differently than they expected. But it used to be you would sometimes run your credit card and put in your PIN or whatever you would need to do. And then they would get to the end of the transaction and they'd say, okay, now put in your credit card. And that was because the terminal wasn't ready yet. And now I never experienced that. Now they all know, look, if you're going to run your credit card now, I'll just hold onto it, wait until the checker says that they're done, then I'll verify your credit card and we'll move ahead. I feel like that's where Apple Pay is

right now. Some of these terminals aren't ready to take your payment information yet. I don't know what to do with that. yet like i don't know i don't know what to do with that and this is what happened when i bought the hot dog at the world series that that the way that you explained about the teller ringing i had absolutely no idea what what that means no because basically it's the same like with chip and pin transactions what happens is and this is all part of the terminal and security and all that sort of stuff the transaction is finished and then the transaction is sent to the terminal which the security and all that sort of stuff the transaction is finished and then the transaction is sent to the terminal which dials to get the authorization to begin the

transaction and then that's who it is here and then you put your card in my supermarket line in my supermarket line so you you put you put your groceries on the conveyor belt or whatever and you go and they're they're scanning them all and putting them in bags. And there's usually a terminal. This is actually one of the rare cases where you actually have a terminal now in the U.S. Because so many of these cases, you give them the card and they take it and do things with it. But here, there's a terminal so you can run your own credit card, put in your PIN if it's a debit card or whatever, put in your affinity card if you've got a club membership or something that gives you a discount on some things.

And so it used to be that it would be there waiting for your credit card. And you could run your credit card. You could run it through and say, okay, I'm ready before they were done ringing up your order. And it got very confused. And you usually have to do it again. and it got very confused and you usually have to do it again. However, at least at Safeway, where I go supermarket shopping the most often, they've outsmarted me.

Now, even if I start running my credit card when they've scanned the first two items and they've got 50 items left to scan, I can run my credit card through. And what the terminal does is it just waits until the checkout says i'm done here's the total and then it runs the card and then all i have to do is press the button or put in my pin or whatever i need to do but i don't need to run my card again it's just sort of holding on to that information because i think they realize that people are impatient and want to just run their card right away and not have somebody say wait wait wait don't do it yet so they just it just it's working around the human desire to jump the gun in terms of swiping the credit card and now it just caches that temporarily until uh the the clerk presses the total button and then it runs the card so it's interesting so that's what i mean with here with chip and pin

do you just have to wait there is if you if you try and use your card in any way it will just fail and if you like put your card in before it tells you to put the card in whilst the transaction is in process it will also fail yeah it's literally fascinating the person rings you up you wait and it says please insert your card you then insert your card and the transaction begins well so you can understand then the equivalent of that is what happened to me with a hot dog exactly which is which is he it looked like he was at the end of the transaction so i i got out my phone and went beep and then he was like no no wait wait wait and then he pressed a couple buttons and then i did it again and then it cleared so but i i think you could do that you could change the software around so it will accept that because it's not like you're um I don't know if you're actually approving a specific amount when you do Apple Pay.

I think you're just sort of approving that it happened. I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting. This is fascinating just from a purely social and sort of like what your script is when you purchase something aspect. Separate from the technology. That it like upsets our recipe for how we buy things. separate from the technology, that it upsets our recipe for how we buy things.

And this is why, so to answer that question that you asked, this is one of the reasons why I'm going to keep using Apple Pay is not only do I think it's kind of cool and I want to do it, but also I want to have this experience of, so I can write about it probably, of what happens in these situations and how does it change what you do and what, you know, could there be ways to make it better or worse? And, you know, so I can at least tell that to myself that I'm using Apple Pay for research and not anything else. Related to this, by the way, we have, we also in the chat room, there's some, there's some real time follow up or a real time question. Brian Hamilton was asking about loyalty cards and credit cards. My understanding is that Apple Pay can transmit your loyalty card at the same time

that it transmits your credit card. It can actually say, oh, I'm at Safeway. Here's my club card ID, and now here's my credit card ID, or that you might be able to pick one or the other. It's capable of it. I'm not sure anything has been implemented yet. So I'm not sure they actually are doing that yet. But I had an Apple person at the Apple event where they unveiled this say that you could piggyback affinity card stuff on top of credit card stuff, which is cool

because then instead of running two cards, you're just going beep. And it says, oh, I know you're Jason and you get these coupons and now I'll charge your credit card and we're done which is exciting the ability to have the loyalty cards attached and used automatically i find interesting more uh appealing than just using my my credit card or debit card right it saves you another step yeah it makes it that much just doing incrementally better i would be more likely to sign up for loyalty cards

if I then didn't have to carry them around and I used them every time automatically. I never carry them around. It turns out usually you can give them your phone number and then you just put in your phone number and that works. But I would much rather just have it be in there and know that my loyalty cards are in there. Related to this, by the way, another piece of follow-up,

since we're still doing follow-up, believe it or not, listener Tim wrote in to say he's not bugged about extra stuff like Office Depot asking if I want my receipt emailed or even entering in a prompt confirming the amount that he wants to spend or Walgreens asking for his phone number for the store rewards program. What he wants is not to have to enter his PIN, and I've heard this from people. He said, I've already used my super cool guy Uber phone to for the store rewards program. What he wants is not to have to enter his PIN. And I've heard this from people. He said, I've already used my super cool guy Uber phone

to make the payment. Don't make me slog through the plebeian mud of a PIN number. And this is one of the great questions that a lot of people have had about Apple Pay, which is verification. And the fact is my understanding is that Apple Pay, because it's the one-time charge, because you've got your thumbprint,

it's no other validation is required by the service, that it's the equivalent of putting in a PIN. The problem is that a lot of these systems have policies put into them, I think by the store, saying above a certain amount, you need to validate. And so I've heard people say they paid with Apple Pay, but they had to put in a PIN, or they paid with Apple Pay, but they had to put in a pin, or they paid with Apple Pay, but they had to sign something. And I think my understanding is that in the long run, this probably won't need to happen, because I believe what Apple Pay is supposed to be transmitting is basically saying, this is verified, you're good, and don't ask for anything. But the software in a lot of these places is set to ask above $25 or $50 or $100. And so it'll be interesting to watch this and see

whether this can get resolved because it becomes much less exciting to do Apple Pay. If you were just saying if it eliminates a step, it makes it more interesting. Some of these cases, it's adding steps back in from the old way, at which point, why even bother, right? If you have to put in your phone number and put in your PIN number and sign something and all these things, then why did I even use Apple Pay? So it'll be interesting to see. I have never had to do anything but go boop,

but I've also never bought anything more expensive than peanut butter or a hot dog. Don't have a peanut butter hot dog, by the way. That's a bad, bad meal. Don't do that. Especially if you're allergic, like me, to hot dogs. Yes, you especially. I'm kidding. I'm allergic to peanuts.

Poor Mike. The hot dog allergy is the worst. Oh, so bad. Do you know if Apple Pay has a limit on transactions? I don't recall seeing this anywhere. I think it's only whatever your credit card limit is, but I think that individual stores can have a policy on it. So if you went into the Apple Store even and bought $2,000 worth of equipment with it, they might have you pay for that. I had somebody tell me that they had to sign something at an Apple Store, and we thought he was crazy on Twitter. Glenn Fleischman and I sort of engaged

him. And his fault was he said, Apple Pay is stupid because you always have to sign something at an Apple store. And we thought he was crazy on Twitter. Glenn Fleischman and I sort of engaged him. And, you know, his fault was he said, Apple Pay is stupid because you always have to sign. And we said, you don't have to sign. He said, well, I had to sign once. I was like, okay, that's not always. That's once. I only used it one time, though. You know, forget it, Mike.

It's Twitter. This stuff happens on Twitter. But it is an interesting wrinkle that individual stores may ask you for more information. But like I said, technically, I believe the Apple Pay thing is at that other tier of fraud prevention where they basically said, look, this has been verified and you don't need a signature or a pin or something like that. Because the reason the stores do that is to protect themselves against fraud. If they ask and there's still fraud, then it's off of their plate a little bit more. They've gathered more information. But my understanding is that Apple Pay actually means you don't need to do that, but they still may.

And for a while, they might. Just because of policy or because of technical limitations, it's possible that some readers only just know that it's a card number. And if you tapped your NFC credit card to make a purchase and it was for $5,000, they may just have a policy that, no, we really need to see your ID and you need to sign or put in your PIN or whatever it is. So it'll be interesting to see how that pans out over time. Most definitely.

Mr. Snell, I would like to take a moment to thank our friends. Our friends. Our new friends at Backblaze. I want to talk about Backblaze. I'm a big fan of Backblaze. I have come to fall in love with them recently. They've been helping me out. Does your girlfriend know?

Yeah. I mean, she's okay with it. So these aren't even our friends. These are like our loved ones at Backblaze. It's that good. It is. Do you know why, Jason? I'm looking at it right now in my menu bar. I do know why, but why don't you tell the listeners why?

I'm going to tell you why, Jason, because it's time to upgrade your backup strategy. Oh, good. If you're not backing up your data at all, you have to change this. And if you're just backing up locally, even if you have an OmniFocus task to remind you to do it twice daily and swap out the drives, you still need to listen to what I'm about to tell you. What if there was a fire? What if there was a flood? Exactly.

You'd lose your backup anyway. It'll be gone. If it's not backed up, off-site, and in the cloud, you need to address this. And this is where Backblaze can help you. Backblaze is an online backup solution for all the data you have on your Mac and your PC. This includes all documents, photos, videos,

movies, everything you have on your Mac or PC will get backed up and made available online via the Backblaze web and mobile apps for Android and iPhone. Even if you have a slow connection, like I do, this is something you should do. So yes, the first backup can take a while, multiple days, weeks maybe in some instances, but it's just a minor inconvenience on your machine you will have for that period of time. You can set schedules for when you want the backups to occur. You can set upload limits. You can set, like, if you want to throttle it, you can. Backblaze offers unthrottled backup,

but you can put your own throttles on if you want to keep the connection, if you want to keep, like, the load on your connection down. And you can very easily just pause the backup if you need it from the menu bar or from system preferences if, know if you live in there and once you've got that first backup out of the way everything else will back up super fast simple in the background you can set it so when you don't even ever see it and then what you'll have is the peace of mind that all of your files are safe and secure they all become accessible online if you need them you can grab individual files or everything at once backblaze can even put all of your stuff on a hard drive and ship it to you if you have a catastrophic failure and need it all back in one go. So I have been using Backblaze and I'm super

happy. I feel just better because before Backblaze, I didn't have a good backup strategy. Now I feel a lot better about it. And if'm you know if i knock another drink into my laptop then i won't be concerned so go now and start your risk-free no credit cards required full feature trial at backblaze.com upgrade podcast i did think when i when i was working with uh backblazing these urls that our shows it may be difficult for some of our pod for some of our sponsors to just have slash upgrade yeah they're probably already using it but hey that's why we have slash upgrade podcast so there are no add-ons gimmicks or additional charges after your free trial which is five dollars per month per computer for unlimited

fast online backup so go to backblaze.com upgrade podcast and you'll be helping support this show thank you so much to backblaze for their support of relay fm and upgrade oh uh we have a little more feedback but i'll try to move quickly through this because we have been doing all feedback we are becoming more like atp all the time uh just it's all feedback that's good it's a good problem to be more like atp we would have to find a we would have to find a like ATP. We would have to find a Casey. Or would we have to find a Marco? Or would we have to find a John?

Who are we? I leave it to the listener to decide which one of us is Marco, John, and Casey, and who our third would be. Fantasy casting upgrade as a three-person podcast. Go to it. I look forward to your feedback in our fantasy casting vertical next week. Lister JP wrote in. JP is blind.

He says, shopping is always hard. Card readers at retail establishments are never blind friendly. Shopping has never been secure for somebody who's blind. They often require assistance from a clerk. Every time his card or pin leaves him, he's at risk.

Even if the clerk is completely honest, he says Apple Pay makes this a distant memory. It's 100% accessible. I can use my cards without assistance, which makes it more secure to me. It allows me independence. And then obviously companies like Best Buy and Walmart who are trying to turn off Apple Pay, he says they're actually turning their heads away from disabled customers. I thought it was really interesting. Stephen Aquino, who writes about accessibility, wrote a really quick post on his site about this too.

Apple Pay is an accessible feature that actually makes life better for people who are blind in this case. And I thought that was really an interesting angle. So thank you, JP, for sharing that. I thought that was really great. Listen. So thank you, JP, for sharing that. I thought that was really great. Listener Colin wrote in just to say, we talked about, this is not about Apple Pay,

we talked about beta app review a week or two ago. And we were complaining about how, since they need to app review betas for TestFlight, which has launched now as part of Apple, but TestFlight app is out there and all of that, if you're beta testing apps, we thought that was ridiculous that you had to app review betas

and who was going to do that. Lister Cullen wrote in just to say he got beta app review for his app and it took about two hours, much faster than a normal review. So it may be beta app review is something programmatic where they're running a scanner on it

just to make sure that nothing particularly notably, you know, automatively bad can be found. And if so, that's great. That's great news. I look forward to seeing how people use TestFlight because it has this huge benefit of being able to attach to Apple IDs instead of device IDs so that when people upgrade their devices, you run out of slots for beta testers. And now it'll be the person with their Apple ID as your beta tester. And if they get a new device, if they drop their phone and have to get a new one, you don't have to do anything. They just log in with their Apple ID and they're back on your beta list, which is really cool. So that was great news from listener Colin. I have a quick question about that. I want to get your opinion. If it is the case that it is just going through a machine

and then the machine spits out they're approved, should Apple communicate this so people can set their expectations that it's not going to be a two-week delay? Or should they not because then you might as well just not have it done like that in the first place because people will still abuse it maybe? I don't know i mean i like the idea that it's uh that that it's less because we said it was untenable if it's more and and right the

stand the standards can be lower the the the bar can be lower for the beta app review so i like this i like this news because it suggests to me that beta app review is perfunctory that it is automated it's basic it's like let's do a sanity check before we let you send this thing out because if it's so crazy that it's breaking things that this thing finds you should not distribute it to your beta testers because you will kill them which is good that is a good that is a good thing instead of it being like a full-on app review kind of thing which would be really annoying so uh i think it's i think it's good also the percentage of people who actually do beta testing of apps is so low that uh most people are never going to care but as somebody who beta

tests apps i think this is really great that that uh the turnaround was so fast because the prospect of not having to register all my devices is really exciting because that really was terrible like yeah you drop i dropped my ipad and I had to write to everybody whose apps I was beta testing and say, I'm so sorry. Uh, if you want me to not beta test your app, that's fine.

I understand. But I, here's my new UDID for this new iPad. That's my replacement. And then they have to enter it in and they lose a slot and it's terrible. So this is better. This is better. There's no reason in my mind where it shouldn't be that

if you can just delete someone like i know i just can't get my head around it it's paranoia they they are concerned about beta testing being used as an external app store that's what it is it's like you add somebody you give them sorry it's like to delete a udid that i don't know i probably can't but it'd be good if it you know somehow then just a udid that i don't know i probably can't but it'd be good if it you know somehow then just cut that device off i don't know how it would happen but you know i don't know well if this works then we won't have to worry about it because it won't be per device it'll be per person which always has made more sense so if you have uh you listener ahoy listener if you've had a listener ahoy listener if you listener. Like Colin, if you've had anything, if you put an app through and it's gone through quicker than usual through the test flight process, please contact us and let us know.

All right. Listener Brian Hamilton in the chat room, by the way. Listener Brian says that I'm John and you're Casey. That's not bad no i probably how i would have gone actually but but do we need a marco then probably is can you can you find another marco i don't know i have talked about having guests on this show from time to time so that would be interesting to see how that how that changes the dynamic but we got to get our we got to get up to speed ourselves before we get there. Maybe we just bring Marco on.

Sure. Let's try him out as a Marco. See what kind of a Marco Marco is. I got a couple Twitter things that I wanted to throw in here. It mentions to at underscore upgrade FM, our Twitter account. This is Ahoy Telephone related. Both of these. Um, this is Ahoy Telephone related.

These both of these, um, uh, Leon, listener Leon says the best way, Leon, I don't know, L-E-O-N, uh, the best way I've encountered to activate Siri to say hello telephone is to use the song We Built This City by Starship. You know that one, Mike? Do you know that song? Well, of course. We built it on rock and roll. That's right. That song's now going to be in my head for the next week and a half.

So thank you, Luke. Well, it's going to activate the Siri in your mind. Just think Ahoy Telephone as you listen. And then listener Connor wrote in with a, he sent us a little video that basically is him saying Ahoy Telephone at the Apple store and activating phones there with it. I mean, not saying Ahoy Telephone, obviously we're not going to say what he actually said, but it activated the phones there. What's funny about the video is that he sort of almost whispered it and the out and the video only shows

two phones activating and when i asked him about that he basically said well i didn't want to shout it because i thought that they would think i was a crazy person which maybe so but thank you to connor he is he has answered our question from last week that it is on and it is on yeah so yeah have at it. Yeah. So I've got one more item of feedback, which isn't quite feedback, but I just wanted to mention it. I don't want to spend too much time dwelling on it. Anybody who's listened to ATP has heard some really great discussion, mostly from John, about this.

But I just wanted to mention because Brianna Wu is somebody who's been on my podcast a lot and she, if you don't know, got some death threats and had to move out of her house. And it's all related to Gamergate. I wanted to just say, first off, I wanted to send all my best wishes to Brianna. She's great. I've never met her in person, but she's been great on the podcast and on Twitter. And I really appreciate working with her and look forward to working with her more in the future. And about the Gamergate thing, I'm not really a gamer. I'm kind of a fake gamer. What I would say is it's really dispiriting and John Syracuse says everything that he said on ATP is pretty much what I think. It's really sad to see people making threats, attacking people, bullying people

and essentially using troll tactics on the internet to silence discussion of issues that they don't agree with. And the fact that I approach this on this show with some trepidation shows that this is actually what they're trying to do. They're trying to make it so inconvenient to talk about these issues that everybody just shuts up about them. And I definitely feel uncomfortable about it. And I've been hammered on Twitter by expressing relatively mild things about Gamergate by the trolls and their sock puppets.

Which, boy, trolls and sock puppets sound so much more fun than it actually is. Wouldn't that be a great game? Like sock puppets that just kill trolls or something? I don't know. Anyway, it's really a dispiriting way where the darkest parts of the internet get used by people who have agendas that are not related to what the Gamergate is supposedly about to attack people, mostly women, to push forward an agenda that is mostly anti-woman and has some pretty serious political undertones as well that they will deny.

has some pretty serious political undertones as well that they will deny. It's, you know, I don't know. I don't know what more to say other than people like Brianna have my full support. I feel like gaming is a powerful enough cultural force that it can take a whole lot of cultural criticism. Games make more money than big budget motion pictures. People who like games are not an endangered species. They are, in fact, among the most catered to people on the planet. criticized isn't fun, but it's also a sign you made it. And then you've got to act the right way when people criticize you and learn to deal with the criticism and maybe even listen to it and use it to learn about yourself and grow. And I do believe actually that one of the reasons all this Gamergate stuff is happening, and I've seen it in some other areas, again, I really don't like to

get political because that's not what I'm here for. And although I have opinions, they're fairly moderate in nature and they're for sure to outrage the most outrageable people on either side of me. But I feel like this is similar to something like gay marriage, which in this country is tipping rapidly toward being accepted almost everywhere. And that's when people get the most angry, is when they see that they're on the wrong side and that the world is changing. And some of their well-held-to beliefs are going to go away, that women are part of gaming and aren't going to go away and can't just be used as toys in video games. And of course people are going to react badly when they realize that the arc of history is bending away from them. And I'd like to think

that's what we're seeing now is, and I'm not excusing the behavior, I'm saying it explains why they're so vociferous about it it is that they know they're losing it and they're going to lose it. And they're just going to go out in a blaze of infamy, I guess. Anyway, it really upsets me that somebody as cool as Brianna Wu could get chased out of her home because she has an opinion about how women should have opportunities in video games, like of all the things, to be chased out of your home about that. Very upsetting. So anyway, yeah, there it is.

Go listen to ATP After Show from last week. John did a great job. John Syracusa is a marvel because he is the most, I think what I say is that he's a computer programmer with the soul of an artist. And he did get art training. He's a very empathetic person. I think that's one of the reasons why people love him because he brings a giant bowl of empathy with him when he talks about technical issues. And that mixture is amazing. And he has done a great job talking about this.

I mean, he wouldn't say that. He'd be like, oh, well, I botched it. I talked about this and that, and you should read this article. But I think he actually does a very good job of getting to the heart of why some of these people are so angry and why we should pity them more than anything else, because they obviously have terrible things happening that have caused them to act this way. It doesn't excuse them but uh that empathy is interesting to say you know for somebody to behave like this they really have to be in pain and messed up and that's sad and uh anyway so all my best to brianna and everybody else who's been affected by the gamergate uh crap because uh it's a it's a real shame that we live in a world where stuff

like that can happen me and federico took a bit of time to discuss Gamergate on episode 9 of Virtual on this fine podcast network. I agree with the fact that John is empathetic. I'm not so much and kind of just questioned the terrible side of humanity for a for a bit federico does a great if you if you don't really understand gamergate and this whole thing that's happening because it is very complex federico on the episode did a very very good job of going back to the beginning and explaining it so he spoke for about half an hour or 40 minutes or so explaining everything. Then I basically shouted for 10 minutes. So if that's the kind of thing that you'd like to hear, you should go and check that out. And that's in our show notes for today as well as that fantastic episode of ATP as well.

Yeah, it's all after the end theme song. It's all in the post show for ATP because they like to do it that way. But it's a good, you you know I like to hear John it's largely it's John trying to understand why and list all the reasons why this is bad but also why it happens and then it's Casey just being like you actually you guys and this is why you do the show about the feels too and Casey just being like I don't understand it it really makes me angry you know like which is an absolutely natural response and for me I learned a long time ago that I'm a conflict avoider.

I like everybody to get along. And so something like this is really difficult because your choices between avoiding conflict and saying nothing and allowing it to go on or saying something and getting hit with the conflict. And that's why I said, you know, one of the ways that this is insidious is all the sock puppets, all the anger, what they're trying to

do is get people to stop talking about it. Because that's one of the goals is don't talk about it. Try to divert people, try to make people just want to avoid the subject. And essentially what that's doing is saying, we want people to shut up about this. So we're going to make life miserable for them until they shut up. And as much as I like to avoid conflict, if that's the alternative, then I can't do that because that's a line too far. And somebody I know and have positive feelings toward is on the run now because she had an opinion about video games.

And I can't be silent. So for what it's worth. One last thing. I don't know if i if i did mention this in virtual but i wanted to like the amount of respect i have for brianna because i know that if i was in her situation i would shut up yeah it's so it would be so easy to do that and she said that i mean fortunately and i say this with with actually a great deal of affection uh brianna doesn't back down from anything she's happy to be kind of a loud mouth and get pissed off and uh and good for her because it takes people like that because there are a whole lot of other people who feel the same way who just you know they they look at

like why am i why am i doing this and for for her, she is saying, I am spending huge amounts of time. I am affecting my life, but I'm doing it for the future of an industry that she loves. Also, that's the other thing. She gets attacked for not even just playing games. And she knows that that's not going to happen unless the women in games today say something. And so full credit to her because, yeah, I'm with you. I mean, it makes me, i get i i hate it i i hate even talking about it but you can't not talk about it because that's what they want you to do is not talk about it and i think that like

you know the reason that we are talking about it now is because of brianna because she is making it that it cannot be avoided and that's how it should be you mentioned this right she she is bringing this out now and it's like and is basically putting us in a position where we have to talk about this because it's like, I can't stand by now and watch this unfold as it is. It makes me feel sick. And she set out something very pointed

where she was like, I expected more Apple-related bloggers and podcast hosts to talk about this issue and a lot of them have been silent. And I wrote back to her and I said, well, when the death threats and stuff happened, I wrote a thing on Six Colors about it. But I have a mention on my podcast, and I will rectify that tomorrow, and that's today. And there it is. And maybe we'll talk more about it i i you know uh the only other thing i'll say about gamergate is if it's about ethics and journalism it's doing a really lousy job because there are lots of issues and this is well documented there are lots of great issues about true ethical issues with games journalism in particular and you could broaden it to even more other aspects of journalism

including tech journalism if you'd like um but yet know, that's not what it's about. Because if it was about those things, we would actually be seeing things that address all of the issues of ethics and journalism. Instead, it's conspiracy theories and attacks and misogyny and people being used as, and the phrase is convenient idiots, people being used by people with ulterior motives and lied to and pointed in directions that they might not go if they knew the whole story. And it's sad, but it's not about ethics because there are lots of ethical issues in journalism and,

uh, these people aren't addressing them. They're just, uh, spinning conspiracy theories and attacking people. Sad. So Mike, ahoy telephone ahoy

let me take a shower I'll be right back do you want to take a break here? yeah let's let's take a break and we'll come back with something awesome after a word from some friends of ours I bet

let's reset and talk about talk about igloo we love igloo yeah igloo is an internet you'll actually like igloo is built from the ground up for people that have had to use intranet products right it is built to be the complete opposite of what you are used to it's actually built to be easy to use it's not always a thing for intranet products it's it has fantastic apps like you're used to. It's actually built to be easy to use, which is not always the thing for internet products. It has fantastic apps like you're used to. It has stuff like shared calendars, Twitter-like microblogs, file sharing, task management. It's the full solution that you'd want in a product that's supposed to make you more connected and productive with your co-workers.

That's what Igloo is all about. It helps you work better together with the people you work with. You are easily able to do things like co-author documents. Maybe you want to share status updates on what the food truck outside is serving today. Or maybe you want to be able to manage your projects easily with the people that you work with all in one place. You can do all that with Igloo. If someone makes changes to an item in Igloo, they send out notifications and you choose the way that you want to receive them, which is really great. The types of things you want to receive notifications for, how do you want to get them? That's the sort of stuff that you can finally hone and make to be the exact way that you want. This keeps you up to date with everything. All items like documents that you save have a complete version history maintained.

This keeps you in touch with everyone, and in case Crazy Annie decides to delete that thing from the spreadsheet that you put in the other day, you're going to be able to get it all back again. Recently, Gartner, I love this bit, released their famed report, The Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace. And Igloo appears on this report for the sixth consecutive year alongside Microsoft, IBM, Google, and SAP. Jason, would you like to hear an excerpt from the Gartner profile of Igloo?

Would I, Mike? Well, let me tell you. Feedback from Igloo's reference customers was consistently positive. They praised the product's quick deployment, configuration, and customization flexibility with self-service options for non-technical users, control over branding and information organization ease of use. They also praised the responsiveness of Igloo as a whole organization. Basically, what this is, if you need me to help you sift through that, is Igloo is really easy to set up, even for people that are not that technical. You can very easily customize it and make it fit with part of your business.

You have complete control over it, and it's super awesome. I don't know what more you need than that. If your company has legacy intranet software built on SharePoint or old portal technology, you should be giving Igloo a try. Quite frankly, you should be trying them if you're in any business because they're free to use with up to 10 people, and you can sign up right now at igloosoftware.com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to Igloo for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Before we get to the Retina iMac, which is our next discussion today, I want to tell you about one other little quick thing.

Yes. We're trying to find... Very quick. I want to... At RelayFM, we want to make sure that we're connecting you, the listener, with the best type of sponsors and advertisers that we can. A great way to do this is for us to find out just a little bit more about you. So we have a short anonymous survey that we'd like you to take.

It takes no more than five minutes to complete. Your answers will help us match you guys with the best advertisers for you to make sure that we are keeping a good match between the types of things that you enjoy and the types of things you hear on this show. Anybody who completes this survey will be entered into an ongoing monthly raffle to win a $100 Amazon gift card. We promise that we will not share or sell your email address when you do this.

No email will be sent to you unless you are a winner of the $100 Amazon gift card. So please go to podsurvey.com slash upgrade and fill that out and help out Upgrade and RelayFM. Thank you. Yes, you know, Mike, not to make you all feel guilty, but Mike and I recently left our jobs or in the process of leaving our jobs. And this is one of the ways we actually hope to support ourselves, if not the only way for Mike mike so filling out that survey really helps because it helps us find good advertisers and uh allow them to be happy and allow us to uh live so you know no pressure it helps us find new advertisers because we can kind of say to them

this is what we know because at the moment aside from knowing that you're all very very handsome and beautiful people we only know that you download the show that's effectively it, and we know where in the world you are because that's what we get from our hosting provider. That's all we know. Yeah, exactly. So podsurvey.com slash upgrade. Upgrade.

Upgrade. I don't think we're going to talk about the Kindle. Oh, no, no. Well, what do you – so, well, the Kindle has lasted this long. It could last another week if we need to. The fact is there's so much going on now. Somebody was telling me, you know, wow, you've been doing a lot of stuff lately. I was like, well, yeah, I happened to launch my new site and my new podcast right as apple does like its busiest six weeks of the year

which is now where all the new things are coming out and uh you know in april we'll have plenty of time but right now things are crazy so if we don't get to the kindle this week you know we will get to it and i i've only you know used it for a couple of days. So if I learn more about it and we give it the room that it deserves, then so be it. In April, we'll really be exploring the verticals. Oh, man. April is maybe vertical month. So, hey, Jason, what did you have for lunch today?

Lunch vertical. Important food-related vertical. Okay, what do you want to know about the Retina iMac? I've had it for a week. My review went up on Six Colors last Friday, Thursday, somewhere in there. And so it's right behind me, as it was when we recorded the last episode, but I had only turned it on then. So what would you like to know?

So how have you – you haven't had a Retina computer before, have you? You haven't had a Retina computer before, have you? You haven't had a Retina Mac before? No, I've used a Retina MacBook Pro a little bit, but I've never had one as my main system before. So how have you found using Retina just day-to-day? Hmm, that's a good question. So let me tell you my feelings. Let's see if I can translate. Yes, please.

Because I have a Retina MacBook Pro and I've had it. I've been using a Retina MacBook Pro for over a year at least. And I kind of find it to be here and there. So it's easy for me to forget that it has Retina because I use Retina devices all the time so it's just like this is a screen that i like anything less than this it's just a bad screen and these are all just like standard screens um but i still have a bunch of apps that aren't retina uh ready microsoft word which i do have to use sometimes and it it's just a mess. Like, just horrible. Microsoft Word really still doesn't have retina text display? The text in the documents is, but, like, everything else... All the art and stuff is not...

Just everything is not retina-ready. I'm opening it right now just to confirm all of that, but, yeah, no, it's definitely not. I can see it as soon as I open the app. It's a real sorry state of affairs uh there but anyway so i mean and also you know there there are parts of the web as well uh which don't look great on these devices i can only assume that it's um interesting on a screen of that size so how have you found it to be day to day? It's a fast Mac and that's good. And the screen is beautiful. I mean, the Mac Retina experience is what it is. So if you've seen,

especially Yosemite on a Retina MacBook Pro or something like that, you've seen it and it's very nice. And the images are arresting because you're used to seeing a certain resolution for images and it's almost like they're deeper somehow that you you look at it and it's just the same size and yet somehow there's more in it there's because there's literally much more information in that picture yet there are little tiny details that would previously have just been washed away it's a little bit like going from you know standard def to high def for TV or something like that, where the picture is the same, except the details are completely different. So if you've seen a Retina MacBook Pro, you've seen it, except that it's sort of the screen is the size of four of those screens. But it's, I don't know, it's beautiful. Is it necessary? I had some people tell me that they thought it was.

I think like if you're a designer, if you're a photographer, it's necessary. You should get one. If you're not, then it's or like a video editor. If you're not, it's nice. And eventually they'll all be like this. Is it necessary? Probably not. But for me, the niceness plus the fact that I'm in the market for a faster computer and this iMac is, you know, other than some of the higher end Mac pros for multi-threaded processing power, this is the fastest Mac around. And you can get one for $500 to start, $500 less than a MacBook Pro, and it comes with the 27-inch Retina display. So it's a pretty good deal for somebody who thinks of themselves as a power user of a Mac,

who wants a desktop system with a big screen. If you can afford it, it's a good deal. It's still an expensive computer at $2,500, but if you can afford it, it's a pretty good deal because you're getting that screen and you're getting a lot of power. This is not a halfway kind of system. The processor and the GPU are pretty impressive. I think maybe if you're thinking about what's necessary, potentially the power is more necessary than the retina. I agree. The reason that I want it, well, there are two reasons.

One, I think I mentioned this last week, is what Dan Morin's calling our rich uncle who died and left us some money, which is that our former employer has as one of our farewell parting gifts has given us some money toward a computer to get us on our way and get us on our feet and stop eating beans out of a can. And in order to do that, you've got to buy it within like three months or something. So I'm in the market for a computer is what I'm saying. And I also discovered when we were trying to do some live streaming of the dungeons and dragons podcast i do over on the incomparable called total party kill that my uh my little dual

core uh macbook air cannot uh compress video and stream it on the flight it can't so so so i'm in the market for more computing power and as we said last week, with that quad core that our good listener Shep tells you that you should find remaindered somewhere, with that off the price list, if I want a new Mac, my choices are narrowed. at this system and I think, well, I got some money coming from my former employer. I need a fast system. I want a quad core processor. And yeah, so the processor makes it necessary. And then the screen makes it nice. Yeah. I had the question about the, if I can, you know, your rich uncle, did they assume that nobody had, like, did you all have computers that were provided by the company? Or did they assume nobody has computers? Actually, we all all have computers that were provided by the company? Or did they assume nobody has computers or something? Actually, we all did have computers provided by the company. That is the case.

The company provides you with a computer to work with. So I think part of what they were saying here is, and the way it's tasked is, they say something like you can either take it as job training. They say something like you can either take it as job training. Again, some of these outplacement things are very strange, and they come from industries that are different from our industries. So it may be more like we're steelworkers than we're writers, although you could argue that journalism may be as doomed an industry as being a steelworker. may be as doomed an industry as being a steel worker. But so you could do like job retraining from a couple of different job retraining firms, or you can put the money toward equipment and material that would help you with your future career path. And one of those was very specifically was you could buy a computer.

And I think it's great that they're that flexible about it. Like we can get you set up with something that you can use to look for a job or do a job and we'll pitch in with that and so you know for for my former colleagues who who left idg we that's one of the benefits that we get as part of our departure which is which is really nice and so i you know we need to take advantage of that so dan bought like a macbook air and uh maybe an ipad or something and i'm gonna buy this this imac i bought it i ordered it what would you fill out the form to get reimbursed for it what would you have retrained as like what industry would you

have retrained into if you were going to use it for retraining lessons like circus or something i i yeah i think i think i have no no other useful skills. So if I went to the circus, I'd have to be one of the announcers. I could do that. Presenting now! Maybe not. You know, I don't know. This is what I do.

So I'm sure somebody in the, you know, what is the line from Ghostbusters? In the hospitality or food service industry. Yeah. So you mentioned... Or, you know, I hear steel work is nice. At this time of year. You mentioned something I just need, I feel like I need a bit of clarification on this, technically, if you can.

This is from your view, a great review of the Retina iMac. The iMac's got one in three times the pixels as the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Explain to me, is this just the space on screen? Because the PPI is similar enough, right? The 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro has a higher PPI at 227 than the iMac does at about 200 if my Googling is correct.

So I'm assuming there that what you're saying is it's just bigger, right? So it's better because it's bigger. Am I right in thinking that? Or is it more than that? Yeah, and I think I went back, I changed this section,

so I may have changed it but it basically the 15 inch macbook pro has about 5 million pixels and the uh 13 inch has about 4 million pixels right and the imac with uh with retina display has what what did we say 14.7 million pixels so it's basically three times as many as the 15 inch and more than three times as many as the 13 inch so its size the the the ppi is not that different the but but like literally if you can think of 15 inch diagonal and then 27 inch diagonal is almost double but remember it's not just double because it's in two dimensions so it's quadruple, almost quadruple. Um, and so, yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's 15, 15 megapixels versus five. So triple the triple the pixels more or less if

you're, if you're rounding, which, you know, is close enough, uh, it's size. It's just a huge screen. It's it's. So even though the, it's not like the type is notably bigger or smaller, it's just that there's more of it. This is a,. It's a little bit like when you go to a place, a showroom that has TVs, and you look at a TV and you think, oh, this isn't that big, and then you get it home and it doesn't fit through your door

because it's actually huge. It was just the context of the showroom that made it seem small because it was next to an even larger TV. The iMac's kind of like that. 27 inches, it's big. It is huge. And until you see it, you kind of forget. And then if you put one in the context of your own home, like I have done, it's really big. I look at a 24-inch monitor all day, so the 27 inches is not much bigger, but it is definitely bigger.

I assume it just feels bigger as well. Like the resolution makes it feel bigger than it is it is definitely bigger i assume it just feels bigger as well like the resolution makes it feel bigger than it physically is yeah and it's really bright i mean you can turn down the brightness obviously but it's a it's a big bright super sharp display it's pretty impressive i imagine kind of when you sit at that computer like you know the guy who's sitting in in the armchair in front of the jet engine with like the listening to – you know what I'm talking about, right? On headphones. I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

I imagine that's what you're like sitting in front of the brightness of this thing. You're getting a suntan as you're sitting and working. I did have to scale down the brightness and turn on some lights so that I didn't get just – yeah. There you go, nerds. You could just – we'll all just buy a 27 inch imax we'll turn up the brightness and we'll top that imax can yeah perfect um you mentioned one thing in your review about how um you felt graphics performance was fine but if you open a lot of windows and spaces and use mission control you see pauses and stuttering um i have had this problem on my MacBook Pro. There is an issue in Yosemite,

I believe. Like, for example, if I use, it's weird, if I use the trackpad and I try and swipe between spaces, like I swipe and it kind of moves like a quarter of the way and just gets stuck. But if I use my magic mouse, it doesn't happen so much. One thing that I have found that's helped significantly is turning off transparency, which you can do in system preferences accessibility. That has pretty much solved the problem. I also zapped the PRAM at the suggestion of Stephen Hackett

because that's the kind of thing that he's really good at telling me to do. He tells me to zap the PRAM quite a lot. So I went and did that. It's old school. And it fixed it. The combination of those two things pretty much fixed it. So if you are having problems with this on a retina machine turn off transparency

um i actually think at the moment you i prefer the way yosemite looks without transparency but that's a discussion for another time maybe um yeah but right after we talk about the kindle right after the kindle yeah we'll get to yosemite in about may of next year um but yeah that's something that i think that's a software problem. And I think it will probably, well, I hope it will be fixed. I really genuinely hope it will be fixed. Because if Apple were testing, I actually don't know how that sort of thing gets retesting. Unless it's like it affects a small percentage of people.

And then I still hope they fix it. Because I'm sure they were testing Yosemite on Retina Macs. Well, yeah. Yes, I'm sure they were on the Retina MacBook Pro. Maybe not on the iMac if it was off in a lab somewhere and not announced. But yeah, you would think so. And it's variable. Like if I open a lot of windows, it's more stuttery than if I open a few. And I saw somebody on a post to YouTube video that looked horribly stuttery, and I didn't experience that when I tried to replicate it. So I think there's some strange variability going on here. I do think there's some bugs. Also, individual apps do a better or worse job. You pointed out Microsoft Word has a

lot of issues not being retina-friendly. I found out that Logic Pro 10 has huge performance issues when it's running in retina mode. It'll run, but it's all stuttery. And like pinching and zooming with my trackpad, it's laggy and it's stuttery. And so here's another tip. If you're somebody using a retina Mac of any kind and you're unhappy with its performance, if you go to the Finder and open that app in the Finder and choose Get Info, select it and choose Get info, command I, you'll discover a checkbox that you may not know existed because it doesn't exist on non-retina Macs. And the checkbox is open in low resolution. And if you check that box, when you open the app,

it basically runs it at 1x scaled instead of at 2x retina and when I did that with Logic Pro X totally worked totally fixed it no stuttering no lag so but something like iMovie was able to run in 2x and you know scrolling on a timeline and zooming in on a timeline and all the things that Logic couldn't do flawlessly so it's logic's problem not uh the imax problem but uh you know you would think that they would fix that it's really sad that you have to do that like really sad i love that that features there right i love that features like just forget it forget retina on this app. Just forget it. Don't even try. That's good. I like that it exists because it fixed the problem.

I was going to edit an episode of The Incomparable on the Retina iMac, and that was what I had to do. I had to do get info and set it to low res mode. And then it looked normal. I mean, as normal as it normally looks. It looked like 1X. Didn't look all fancy, but I don't need all fancy. I wanted the processor power, not fancy graphics for something like Logic, because it's audio.

And that little checkbox solved it. I just did it with Tweetbot. Oh, my. Oh, this is horrible, Jason. What have I done? Well, it it's not you shouldn't try it you should only do it when you need it well i just wanted to see i just wanted to see what it looked like word word maybe well no because you don't want the text to look awful but if you have if you have issues with uh something looking totally broken on retina you can check the box and i just

wanted to see what would happen and and now your Twitter is all fuzzy and awful. Yeah, it looks bad. Yeah, so for Word, like to give a bit of a real-time follow-up on Word, the text that I type in does render correctly. But like menus and toolbars, that does not render in Redner. I can't understand what they're doing.

It's so confusing to me. So strange. Okay, we touched on it briefly but do you have any different feelings about yosemite now having used it more extensively on a retina machine if you haven't already i mean when you reviewed were you using a retina machine at all well i have so uh my my yosemite reference system is a Retina MacBook Pro that is a loan from Apple. So that's been my experience with Retina, has been on that system. Right. So you kind of, your feelings remain the same, in essence, about it.

Yeah, it is. I mean, the experience is not any different running it on an iMac than running it on a MacBook Pro, other than that you've gone from a smaller screen to a bigger screen. And Yosemite, you know, that Helvetica Noia Lite is way... The way I would put it, when I was booting up the Retina iMac, I was looking at that font and I thought, wow, that font is that's sharp enough. It could cut you by looking at it. And I think there's I mean, it is so sharp. Whereas on a regular screen, it's it's you know, it's it's a font. It's there. But on the Retina screens, it's it's super thin and sharp and it looks great. and it looks great and yet also it looks like a font that

is designed for that kind of a screen because it's just super thin and it's very impressive. So, I don't know. It's a Mac. Eventually all Macs are going to be like that. But it looks great and then I turned, I pivoted from my iMac

to my regular display while working on the review and had one of those moments where I was just like, ah, like there's a film across my, what happened to my screen? It's all messed up now. And then after like 10 minutes,

it went away and it seems normal again. And then I look at the Retina display and I go, ah, what happened? And every time you get used to it. The future of Apple Computers Incorpor incorporated is to go all retina i assume everywhere everything will be retina um yes i mean it's safe to assume where we stand right now there will be you know all of the laptops will be retina there will be retina as that you know we don't know when that will happen there will be a retina uh cinema display the mac pro will

be able to drive it etc etc, etc. It will happen. But, you know, you look at these things, you're like, okay, screens are better now than they were previously before Retina. Pre-Retina screens were better than, like, you know, lower resolution screens before it. Can we go any further than Retina? Like, I know it's a dumb thing to say, like, this four megabytes of RAM is all I'll ever need.

But, I mean, at what point is it just like, okay, the changes you're making, people just can't see them anymore. Further than Retina. Well, we've done that with the iPhones, right? We have Retina HD now because it wasn't high definition enough. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that is the answer

about what you get when you go further. I don't think beyond the point at which you can't see the dots, you don't get anything as a user except flexibility in what screen size you see. the idea with the iPhone 6 Plus is unless you are a really sharp-eyed and picky designer, essentially, or John Syracuse, I suppose, you can't tell it, you can't tell but the iPhone 6 Plus screen is scaled, right? It's 3x scaled down. And the reason you can do that is that screen is high resolution enough that when you scale, it used to be if you scaled down an interface, you could see it was all fuzzy because you could see the dots that kind of fuzzed it out. But when the dots are all too small to see individually, the fuzz kind of just fades away and you can't see the fuzz. You just see what it wants you to see, which is a scaled interface. So that would be the advantage in all of these

devices of getting high resolution is having an infinite number, or maybe not infinite, but you know, a very large number of different resolutions that you could scale to. So you could basically say, I want everything to be a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, and it would all still look clear instead of it being like right now, where you can do a few steps on the iMac, but even then some of them you can kind of tell. But although like the Retina MacBook Pro, I believe is a scaled interface. I think it's scaled down from a higher resolution, just the iphone 6 plus and you can't really tell um so that's that's the big advantage of going even further is the more of that you could do in terms of uh of scaling the interface to make it whatever size you wanted it to be and it would all just look

good and it wouldn't matter that it wasn't the native resolution of the display because all of the anti-aliasing and you know and all that is happening it's like you know sub atomic anti-aliasing it's like you can't see it and so it looks fine the problem with anti-aliasing was always that you could see every pixel and so you could see that half shaded pixel and it made everything fuzzy. But when that half-shaded pixel is something that is just imperceptibly small, then everything looks good. So I think that's it.

Because otherwise, yes, practically, text can't get more sharper than sharp text. It's just once it's sharp, once you can see it all, that's it. But there are other ways that it can get better for things like changing resolutions. That's all. But there are other ways that it can get better for things like changing resolutions. That's all I had. I don't know if you want to talk about anything else about the Retina iMac or anything in general today.

I don't know. I think people should check out the review on sixcolors.com. Do that if you haven't already. Great. Check your show notes. Or they're at relay.fm slash upgrade slash seven. If you want to find them. Lucky seven.

We finally made it to lucky number seven, Mike. Yay. I got a Kindle, but I guess we don't really have time to talk about that. So I'm reading things on the Kindle now and I will report back perhaps next week. Who knows? Oh, man. I am sorry, because I really thought we would do it this week, and then I was looking at all the follow-up and the fact that I also got the RedKnow iMac. I had a bunch of people who are, I assume, upgrade listeners who were very excited when I said I got my Kindle, and they're like, write the review now.

And I thought, I got this iMac here I got to review. And let me do that. And then I'll get to it. So I got to get to it now. And honestly, I was working on that a lot to the point where I wasn't reading as much for pleasure as I usually do. So I've only had a few hours reading with the Kindle Voyage and I want to spend some more time with it.

But it's neat. I like it. But we can talk more. Because I want to spend some more, some more time with it, but it's neat. I like it. Um, but, uh, we can talk more cause I want to talk about Kindles in general too, and why they exist and why you would even want one and all of those, all of those things to maybe we could get a guest. Oh,

Hmm. All right. I'm going to ponder that one. Maybe we could get a good, like Kindle related guest. Maybe not. Mr. Kindle.

Mr. Well, Scott McNulty is Mr. Kindle. Well, Scott McNulty is Mr. Kindle. Dare we dream of getting Scott McNulty on this podcast where he could be like on The Incomparable and be on but never say anything? He may even be here today.

Wouldn't be the first time. Scott buys, he may have a problem, he buys every Kindle. I've only bought about half the Kindles. But yeah, we'll talk about it. We'll talk about any books and Kindles and different reading modes and stuff. That's totally going to happen.

It's not going to be like the, you know, what is it John Syracuse always talked about? He was promising an episode about file systems forever, I think, and he finally did it. So we'll get there. It's our white whale. It's the uh the kindle episode it's gonna happen just not this week so that's it that's all i got i i my apple pay

total is up to two so in the in the intervening week i only bought one other thing with apple pay and it was a hot dog at a sporting event and uh yeah and i and the retina imac has to go back this week to apple but but mine is on order. I ordered the one, this is something we could talk about right before we go. I ordered the one with the VESA mount on the back instead of the foot. And I don't know if people know this. It used to be that you could get an iMac and you could buy a $30 kit from Apple and pop the foot off of it and put on an adapter that was a VESA mount so that you could then put it on an arm or mount it to a wall.

And with the last design rev of the iMac, that was no longer an option. You can either order it with a foot or with a VESA mount. And once it's in one format, you can't get it in the other. You can't convert it back. So you're committing. So I've got my 24-inch monitor here on an arm, and I really like it. I've got my desk, and it's got stuff on the desk. So I've got like a little thermometer that tells me how warm it is in here,

and I've got a little remote control for my speakers, and I've got a little foam orange brain that I like to squeeze because it makes me happy. I have, I love it so much. I have, this was sent with a, some sort of game that we were all sent at Macworld like 15 years ago. And I took, and I had one and I loved it so much that at one point I went around because I look, I was going to order more and it turns out they didn't make them anymore. So I went around to all of my co-workers and I said, do you still have that orange brain? And they all like had just put it in a drawer and forgotten that it was there. And I said, and can I have your orange brain?

So I have like three of these Nerf brains. I love them. So I've got that on my desk. And then I put the Retina iMac on my desk. And we'll put a picture of the brain in the show notes and suddenly my desk was gone all there was was this screen because it was at the front of the desk

where I'm working and it was huge and then the foot was there and then I have to like go around the iMac to see that there's a desk behind it and everything's inaccessible and you know what I really didn't like it and that was the moment where I decided I'm going to put this thing on

an arm. I don't want it sitting down on my desk. I like it floating. I like this monitor floating six or eight inches above my desk where I've actually still got a desktop below it. And the way I figure it, although there are ways to hack, there are hilarious ways. There are people who make these Visa mounts that are literally like a clamp that goes onto the foot of the iMac, and then you mount that, and they look terrible. I decided if ever there is a day where I want to put that on a stand, there are people who make Visa mount monitor stands. So I'll just go the other direction direction and it won't have the metal apple foot look to it but I don't care I really want it on a on an arm so we'll see supposedly my monitor arm can hold 23 pounds and the iMac is about 20 pounds so it should work but we'll see that's the one I ordered and I

upgraded I got the upgraded CPU and GPU because I decided if Uncle IDG was going to help me pay for it, I was going to splurge a little bit and get something that could last a long time. Was it the Nerf Brain Ball? Possibly. It is a Nerf Nickelodeon co-branded. Yeah, I got it. Oh, did you find it on the internet? Yeah, the N and nerf brain ball

it was uh from the 90s shaped like a brain uh meant to throw like a football oh man put that in the show notes it's in there it is okay uh that yeah so i have three of those and it's from the 90s that's how long ago we got that it was some like some piece of software or cd-rom or something that was like it'll magnify your brain power and to demonstrate that here's a foam nerf brain and like i said uh i don't even remember what that thing was and i went around and collected everybody's foam brains a couple years later because i really liked it it's my little thing that i keep at my desk and i kind of squeeze it and um and uh i'm you know it's it's it helps me think i stare into

the brain i give it a little squeeze it helps me think mike so i want that is why my iMac is going to be on an arm because i gotta have the i gotta have the phone brain handy words to live by with that if you'd like to get the show notes i mentioned earlier really.fm slash upgrade slash seven you'll also find some contact links for us there. I am imike on Twitter, I-M-Y-K-E and Mr. Jason Snell is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter and he writes

theglorious6colors.com Thanks again to our sponsors for this week, Backblaze and Igloo and we'll be back next week with another episode of Upgrade. Bye-bye. Kendall, Kendall, Kendall. Bye everybody. glue and we'll be back next week with another episode of upgrade bye-bye candle candle candle bye everybody