Upgrade - 71: Muffingate

Episode Date: January 11, 2016

Will Apple remove the headphone jack when it releases the iPhone 7? Myke thinks it’s inevitable, while Jason is skeptical. Your hosts also revisit baked goods in the British Empire, discuss Twitter���s possible expansion to 10,000 characters, and answer your #askupgrade questions.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 71 today's show is brought to you by mail route and fizzle my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell hello mr mike hurley how are you i'm very well sir how are you i'm doing uh doing. It's a Monday morning here in San Francisco, as always. It's a dark Monday evening here in London, as always. This is our Monday. This is our kickoff. People listen anytime they want, but for us, this is how the week gets started, which is exciting.

It focuses the mind. Upgrades your mind. We don't have a lot of follow-up this week because it's been completely dominated by Muffingate. We have a lot of muffin-related follow-up. It was funny when I was going through the Ask Upgrade questions for this week. I said, there's not a lot of Ask Upgrade because it was all muffin-related. There were very few actual questions like usual. It's all just muffins.

I want to just say, so I'll put a couple of tweets in the show notes some people eat in muffins some people showing us them in supermarkets i think this is one of those things where the united states of america has twisted my understanding of my own country because it seems that everybody else knows what a muffin is and everybody else thinks of muffins as these. I maintain that the average person on the street in the United Kingdom, if you say to them, what's a muffin? They would say the chocolate chip muffin kind, right? That's just how I feel.

That's how I feel. But what has been proven to me is that muffins run rife in this fair land. And they are the Egg McMuffin kind. Have you seen the Muffin Top episode of Seinfeld yet? No, not yet. Oh, that's the American kind of muffins. Yeah, because that's what I think of. Chocolate chip muffins, blueberry muffins. Yep.

But it turns out what we in America call the English muffin is indeed what people in Britain call muffins. And we actually had several people take pictures of muffins in stores to assure us that they are, as Wikipedia said, available in every store. I still say that that is incorrect. There are people that have contacted us and they are basically stating that fact. I still say that that is statistically an incorrect fact. We don't have any evidence. We haven't received photos from all the stores. People of the UK!

I want photos in all of the stores! All the great stores. They're apparently a kind of muffin. These little flat things that are not quite crumpets, but apparently not quite crumpets,

but apparently based on crumpets and baked. Crumpets are thicker and more spongy. Yeah. Yeah. That's that. It sounds like it. And that's what we in America call the English muffin. And those are widely available in the United States. And that's what I have for breakfast many mornings is the English muffin.

So the answer is yes, English muffins are available in England and they're called muffins, but it's, it's a bit confusing because you have other things that you also call muffins that are what we call muffins here. And they're not called like American muffins or anything like that. No. And the egg McMuffin came up, which I thought was like a good precedent that neither of us failed to set. I've eaten food at McDonald's. I don't know how long it's been since I've eaten food at a McDonald's. So it just doesn't come up. But yes, Egg McMuffin is a McDonald's meal where it's what, an egg and ham? and ham and it's inside a sausage meat or sausage something like that and uh it's egg and meat and then it's uh in between the the sides of the english muffin so the funny thing is like even in the mcdonald's here you can get an eggplant muffin and a muffin and they're both called the same thing they're both muffins i feel like i need to add muffins to my shopping list now to eat for breakfast just so I can fully

indoctrinate myself in something that everybody else seems to know so much about. You toasted. I'm surprised that we didn't get more commentary on the fact that I said that I toasted and put peanut butter and jelly on it. Why is that? Because nothing makes the internet judge you more than when you express

a preference for food. And especially I've learned, because peanut butter is my favorite that um that lots of parts of the world consider peanut butter a monstrous invention and so i i rarely can mention peanut butter on twitter without somebody complaining that that peanut butter is is a horrible thing and why would anybody eat it because it's poison i'm'm still standing, Mike. Poison for me. It makes me stronger. A peanut butter muffin, Jason, would kill me dead.

Oh, it's so good. Sometimes I just have the peanut butter on it. Yeah, I would die, I think. So it's the best with some tea. So anyway, that's sometimes my breakfast. Not always. Sometimes it's a yogurt. Sometimes it's cereal. I had cereal this morning. I'm not not big into cereal but i had no english muffins this morning so

cereal it was the cat loves the cat loves it when i have cereal because i let the cat have the milk at the bottom of the bowl oh man that's the best part of the cereal you must love your cat yeah i decided that i wasn't getting enjoyment out of it and that i thought that the cat might and it turns out now the cat like when i come back without the cereal bowl he is uh you could i i pay attention he he is notably uh paying attention to me and then is is sad or at least stops paying attention to me and when i bring the cereal bowl back he he keep he plays it cool for a while and then eventually he like stands up and moves closer to me and sits upright on the bed looking at me. And I think, oh, yeah, here we are.

Got to wait for it. I'm not going to rush myself here, Kat. But anyway, hopefully we'll get some new English muffins in and then I can go back to that for my breakfast. I also mentioned in passing, sort of jokingly, the Australian toaster biscuit, which was hilarious because I got a whole bunch of Australians who are very upset because they have no idea what an Australian toaster biscuit is. So we'll put a link in the show notes. It was a product made by a company called Aura Wheat in the United States marketed as the Australian toaster biscuit. I suspect it's kind of like a crumpet they we we

did buy them they're they're softer um and butterier than um and spongier than uh english muffins they're no longer sold they they they died they had their ad campaign that the link and the show notes will have you'll have an amusing uh tv commercial for them but what i need to explain to aust to Australians is that they, Australia, you don't understand. Americans consider anything Australian to be exotic. Basically, you can slap a koala on some shampoo and it is now just magical Aussie shampoo.

Crazy. Put a boomerang and a didgeridoo on a mediocre steak restaurant and now it's very exciting. These are things that we do in America. So just know that we call lots of things Australian for no good reason, because it's just exotic and exciting to have things that are Australian in the United States. Don't ask me why. I don't understand it. Usually the reaction to foreign things in the United States tends to be to recoil and run away, but not Australian things. Not Aussie food. No, you put that koala on something or a kangaroo.

Oh, it's over. Game over. So you got to understand that. And that's the story of the Australian toaster biscuit. They're crumpets and then aren't made anymore. And they weren't Australian. and then aren't made anymore, and they weren't Australian. Or perhaps they were because somebody went to Australia and had a crumpet and said, well, this is brilliant, and brought it back and said, we've got to stick a koala on this.

But anyway, that's the answer. Sorry, Australia. We stole things that weren't yours and called them yours, and that's what we do. In other important technology news, in our recent twitter corner that we've had um yes there was some news that came out just after last week's show that twitter is considering a 10 000 character limit for tweets um the the implementation of this currently is a little bit up in the air like what people believe it's going to be yeah but that's a key yeah exactly but i think the general consensus will be that it will be the original tweet and then the ability to have a longer text or it cuts off after 140 characters you have to click to see more yeah so this is

kind of something in the realm of what we've been asking for recently, in that it is proof of advancement of the platform, right? Yeah. And it actually feels very much like a lot of the features that Twitter has added, which are trying to see how people are using the service and add features that fit with that. Because, you know, at mentions and hashtags, there's so many things and retweets. These are all things that were invented by users and then eventually supported by the platform. And although I saw a lot of people saying, oh, no, Twitter, this is a disaster. You're you know, you should never you should never allow more than 140 characters. The fact is that users are already bypassing 140 characters by doing text shots, by posting images of text.

And so obviously people want to attach more text to a tweet. And they're doing it in a really bad way because images can't be indexed. They can't be searched. They can't be read by a screen reader. If you're somebody who has to rely on a screen reader in order to read things, there are lots of reasons why you would want it as real text and not images. So, you know, obviously the users want this feature. So I think that the devil is in the details in how this is implemented, because there are many ways that you could do nasty things or peculiar things in this.

Like, for example, you could write a tweet and then have like 10 000 characters of uh app mentions yeah yeah the making it easier for people to spam things i think i mean i should mention also that i wrote a piece on six colors about uh notes app uh on the iphone because this is it turns out you can't unsee it once you hear this but it is the most popular way for people to do text shots on Twitter. And especially on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. See, so it's,

it's, um, and I, I noticed it a lot for, uh, football players, college football players in the U S when they commit to, uh,

go to the NFL draft or when they're a high school players and they're committing to college or things like that. A lot of athlete announcements are done this way where they take screenshots. They write a note in notes.app and take screenshots of it and then they post that to twitter it's a thing i mean and then i wrote about this and not four hours later jack dorsey posted his thing about how twitter was considering this and his was a screenshot from notes which was fantastic i thought i loved i loved that he actually commented on it, right? And basically just saying, look, this was where we started.

We started with it because it was a restriction. We loved it, like the 140 characters. But the idea of what people are doing right now with these screenshots, like what he's doing, it's not optimal. It can't be searched or anything like that. They want to evolve the product. They're going to make sure they stay true to the core of it, but they want to add more features. And I think it it's great and what i really love is that they say we're going to tell

developers well in advance so they can prepare accordingly yeah yeah that was that was an interesting uh little tip of the cap to what we were talking about next week about working with working with developers on this i'm going to i'm going to guess that the way they're going to do this a lot of people just assumed it means your tweets are going to be 10,000 characters in length. But I'm going to guess that one of two things is going to happen here. Either you will still have 140 characters for your tweet, but you'll be able to add a text attachment or a read more. Back in blogging, like if you're using MarsEdit or something, you know, a lot of blogging systems have like the extended entry field, which is essentially, you know, more on this after the jump kind of things in the old blog days.

Right. It'll be something like that where basically you can write a tweet, but you can also attach text and that text can be up to 10,000 characters. And it and it and it shows as a preview that there's more text and you have to click to read more. click to read more. Or they may just do it where above 140 characters, you get a warning that it's going to be truncated, which is like some of those services like TwitLonger do that where, and I actually don't like that as much because what you end up with is people crafting, they don't craft the first 140. They just don't pay attention. And they basically say, you know, too bad for you. If you want to know what the sentence says, click on this link to go to this other service. And I hate that. So I would rather that Twitter give you a hard limit at 140 and then have this, you know, say more kind of text attachment.

And that way, when you're in a Twitter client, whether it's the official Twitter stuff or it's a third party client, what you'll see is just like with a photo attachment or something like that, you'll see that there's an attachment to this tweet, and then you'll need to tap to read more instead of having somebody's tweet flood your timeline. And I think that's the way to do it. I think that would be good, because the fact is people use Twitter this way already. Some people.

Not everybody. Not everybody does anything on Twitter. Everybody uses the service different. this way already. Some people, not everybody, not everybody does anything on Twitter. Everybody uses the service different, but this is clearly a need where people want to express more information on Twitter and they don't want to do it with a tweet storm. And I don't really love tweet storms either because then that does fill my timeline with 14 tweets from somebody. I think this is a good combination where the spirit of Twitter still exists because the main tweet is 140 characters and then you have the ability to express yourself in a way that is searchable

and readable by screen readers indexable in all sorts of ways i think that's a better way to do it yeah i i think this would be great if they implement it in that way right like the idea of you write like a title it would be and then you could add the rest. But like you just know that they're in two different fields even. Right? So you get your 140 characters then you get your 10,000 characters. And when they come up in a little timeline

there's a little button that you press and you can see more. I think that that would be quite nice. I wouldn't object to that at all. Yeah. I think that's the way to do it. And we'll see how people use it, right? Because that'll be interesting too, is like style-wise, how do people use this? Do they just say, hey, check out this thing I wrote?

Or do they write a headline? Or do they say, you know, I had some thoughts about this thing that just happened and here they are, and then attach it. It'll be interesting to see how that would evolve too if they do this. But I think it's a good I think it's a good move because the text shot thing, it's just it's a thing. It's a real thing where people are trying to sometimes they're quoting other sites. And that's problematic, but not as problematic. But sometimes they are literally just writing things and putting them on Twitter. And although I am not a big advocate of that, I'm somebody who has a lot of different outlets where I can express myself without putting it on Twitter at length. But not everybody does. And I think this is you are seeing you're seeing a group of people who want to do this and use the service this way. And I think it would be a mistake to do what I see some people do on Twitter and say, well, I don't want to do this and use the service this way. And I think it would be a mistake to do what I see some people do on Twitter

and say, well, I don't want to do that. So they shouldn't let people do that. Because I think Twitter is at its best when it looks at how some of its users are using the service and says, oh yeah, we should probably support that natively. And that's what they're doing. And do you know what this feels like?

This feels like an old school Twitter move. And do you know who's back? Jack. Yep. I think this is great. this is exactly what we're looking for i think this could be done really well i'd be really interested to see if any like websites or bloggers just post their entire articles yeah i was i was seeing this argument about uh medium today there was a discussion about medium among and i'm not sure whether it was just happenstance or whether

they were seeing each other's posts, but it was a bunch of people talking about Medium. And one of the arguments was, why would I not set up my own blog and post something on Medium? Medium is not my site. I don't own Medium. I don't get the benefits of it. And there was an argument that Medium provides you with exposure. But I think the question is, well, the web is accessible from everywhere. So is posting on Medium good just because there's enough of a social network on Medium where people are looking on Medium to find things to read? I don't use Medium that way. I don't know any people who do, but maybe. But this is an interesting approach for some people where it's like they're not even going to have, they have no, a lot of people have no place to post things.

They don't. They're not bloggers. The place where they get their thoughts out on the internet is Twitter or Facebook or Twitter and Facebook. And so give them a space to do this. It turns a micro blog platform, which is what Twitter was always sort of called, into a blogging platform in a way. And while I would not choose to have my blog be Twitter, because again, it's not my service, they have the content, what if something happens and the content gets wiped out? For me, I would be hesitant there, but I'm a bad example here,

right? The good example is all these people who are trying to get their expressions out to the widest possible audience and their widest audience is on Twitter and they have no other way to do it. Let them express themselves. In fact, they're doing it already, just in a bad way. Let them do it in a good way. Let them do it in a better way where it's not going to clog up everybody's timelines because there's going to be a way to put it in there as an attachment. But to let them do it and just embrace the fact that this is a way people want to use Twitter. If I'm at Twitter, I like to find ways that people like Twitter and encourage them to continue to use it that way. It's like, oh, yeah, all of you future millionaire athletes want to use Twitter to announce what you're doing. We're going to make that even easier for you. You're not going to have to use the Apple Notes app anymore. It's like, for me, if I wanted to post something somewhere, I would want to post it on Twitter rather than Medium if I was going to post something like this somewhere. Because Twitter, for me, feels more like my home on the internet than Medium does does. Like it's where I talk. You have more followers on Twitter than on Medium, right?

That's the reality of it is most people have more followers on Twitter than Medium. Because who has followers on Medium? Unless you're one of these brands that's posting on Medium. And even then, are people really checking their Medium list? Or are they checking Twitter? For the posts that people's posting on Medium. And even then, are people really checking their Medium list or are they checking Twitter? For the posts that people link to on Medium. You know, you're on Twitter to find links that people send to Medium and other places.

One thing, well, the last thing I find quite interesting about this is Ev Williams, CEO of Medium, is on the Twitter board. And this is clearly a shot at Medium. I think so. Although, you know, who who knows maybe there's a notes app yeah and then i should take it we're coming for you notes.app um i i don't know it depends on how they do it too because do they style it kind of not particularly styled do they create

something that's more kind of medium like do they provide like an api so that blogging services can, you know, feed the text of a post into a text attachment on Twitter so that you could post it at Medium and say, attach this to Twitter? I don't know what the details are there, but I look at it and think that, you know, if Medium is trying to give people a place to post, then it's pretty and it's got a nice CMS and all of that. Um, yeah, Twitter is a great place for people to post things instead of something like medium. If they're just, if they just need a place to put their text. I think it's clear something's happening.

Um, we'll keep our own. Yeah. Because you know, Jack has basically said they're looking at it. So which probably means it's happening. Thus ends the Twitter vertical for this week. Should we thank our sponsor?

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mail and supporting this week's episode of Upgrade. I'm so happy the mail bagging is back. It's back. All right, do you want to know something that's not back, something that's going away? I don't, but I know you're going to tell tell me the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack this has been rumbling around for about a month or so um we'd originally planned to talk about it a while ago but decided not to because jason got really mad yeah um i i what i believe what i said is these rumors are too early and there's no point in me getting really angry about something that Apple hasn't done. And that may happen today, too. But it feels like there is at least more evidence that this may happen.

The rumblings are confirming rather than denying that this might happen. So it's probably worth talking about. So in the last week, there's been a bunch of stories, but I guess the most interesting one is one posted over Fast Company. And the Fast Company article, to many people, and I think I feel this way too, feels like one of those anonymous sources inside of Apple articles. It's very much along the lines of like,

this is going to happen. We had a person say it. It doesn't feel like an Apple source to me. It feels like a Cirrus Logic source to me. That's the company prominently named in this story by Mark Sullivan, who I, disclaimer, I work with Mark. He was an editor at PC World.

But that's what it struck me is that this wasn't necessarily an Apple source. This was a partner source. Because Apple tends to leak from the supply chain and from partners. Well, someone is leaking it somewhere. But anyway, there's no smoke without fire, and this one really feels like it's heating up.

And the idea, in case you're unaware or would like a summary, is that for the iPhone 7, that it will be slimmer. And one of the ways that they're going to make it slimmer is by removing the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, because it's one of the components that Apple has the least control over and is one of the wider components on the phone and on the inside of the phone as well. It's like a little box that goes around the circular port, which is taking up a lot of space inside. So one of the ways that they're able to get rid of this and make, well, one of the ways they're able to make the phone get thinner is to get rid of that port. So if they do this, it will obviously cause some issues in that basically every set of headphones you or anybody else on the planet owns will not work with your iPhone unless it is Bluetooth

or what is starting to happen now, lightning. And so this is kind of where we're at right now. And there's many things to discuss. But Jason, I want to ask you first and foremost, do you think this is going to happen? I would say I think it's increasingly likely, but I don't think that the reports we've seen so far are quite strong enough for me to be completely resigned to it yet. I feel like, although there was, I think, did 9to5? I'm not sure if 9to5Mac has done a story that it's gone. They've heard that there's going to be cord-free Beats with charging cases and stuff like that ahead of the iPhone 7.

Which is an interesting story in its own right in terms of that it's really cord-free, which is one of my big complaints about wireless headphones. But we'll get there. I'd say that, again, it is a possibility. I don't feel super confident about it. The Fast Company report, although it cites specific sources, it cites specific sources saying that there's no headphone jack and there's wireless charging and it's waterproof, which is a lot of detail and it could all be true. But, you know, I remain a little bit skeptical of it. There are some sources that are cited in that story that are not quite right, which decreases my confidence a little bit. You know, it's another log on the fire here, but I feel like it's not enough to take me over into, yeah, that's probably happening, or at least not until it's certainly happening.

I feel like it is going to happen. kind of counter argument saying, no, no, no, that's not actually happening, which oftentimes you would see often, I think, from inside Apple leading out somewhere just to kind of downplay something that isn't going to happen. And we haven't seen anything like that either. So, you know, I think I'd say it's more likely than not, but I don't feel like complete confidence that it's definitely going to happen yet. Because one of the things that I think about when looking at this is, and I know you don't like this logic, it's going to happen eventually. The sun will expand and swallow the earth eventually too.

On an infinite timescale, Jason. But the 3.5 millimeter jack is one of kind of the last bastions to fall. It is an older technology and it's just that nothing's happened to it. It hasn't really changed in many ways. It's kind of dumb, you know, in like the sense of smart and dumb that we have these days. It is kind of a dumb technology. You just plug your headphones into it,

and that's all it does. And it has to happen at some point that it will go away. It will be replaced. To be fair, it does also carry your microphone signal and your remote control clicker. But all of that stuff is not incredibly smart, and it's been around like that for a very long time. That has been the exact same technology

since the original iPhone. Sure. There isn't a lot of advancement in that field whilst everything else is advancing. So it has to go away at some point be replaced um and i think that that time is may as well be now as any other point like so so this is my this is my question for you is uh okay it's been around a long time something being around a long time is not in and of itself a reason to get rid of it it needs to there needs to be something that

is gained by it i have really been amused, maybe not amused, maybe amused is not the right word. I've been interested to see how once these reports started to come out, a lot of people who follow Apple and like Apple products have been saying,

essentially, kill it with fire. We must destroy this port. It is old and must be destroyed. And I have this question of like, why suddenly now is this thing that we've relied on and that is on every set of corded headphones and that have essentially that have been made in the world except for a handful of weird headphones um why why the sudden need to kill it what what i don't feel like it has to die like i don't feel like it must die but it's like

if it's gonna then why not now like we have bluetooth now bluetooth headphones are getting better i just got my first pair of bluetooth headphones and i really like that what i don't like is that they have to be charged right that that is frustrating because you could be out somewhere and they die i still get all sorts of stuttering issues with bluetooth where things where and and that happened in ios 8 happens in ios 9 where things i don't know what it is things get out of sync, I have to turn my headphones off and back on to get them to work right. Podcast stutter, music stutters or stops and then stutters again.

I've had it happen in my car the same way. It's like, I'm not entirely convinced that Bluetooth is reliable enough. It's better than it was. It's a lot better than it was. People who remember it from not syncing properly, having lag and stuff like that, it still does actually have lag, but they built it into the OS. Like if you watch a video with Bluetooth headphones on iOS, it delays the video essentially so that it syncs with the headphones and it works. It works quite well. Actually, I used that over the holiday when I was cooking. I had Bluetooth headphones in andad playing video worked great so you know there

it's got issues i'm not sure that bluetooth i think it's arguable that bluetooth is good enough it might be but it's arguable and and yes now you need to charge your headphones but then the other option is lightning headphones um and it's like all right you don't probably don't really gain a lot i mean i don't really know if you're going to get any noticeable change in audio quality. But I think with Lightning headphones, it's just the headphones as you know them, just have a different port. And I really do feel like the majority of people that own iPhones use the headphones that come in the box. Well, so let's set aside the earpod users because i agree with you the majority of people use earpods with the iphone i'm one of those people like i've just

got those bluetooth ones but up until then i just used my earpods yeah the majority of people i would say do that even though apple bought beats which is an entire company whose business is predicated on the idea that they can build headphones with this plug and you can plug them in anywhere. And that is a sizable audience and those people spend money. And so that's what we need to talk about here. Because I think you're right in the premise that if you just use earpods and the earpods that come with your iPhone are lightning, then those people just don't care, right? It means that their fancy earpods won't plug into their laptop or any other device anywhere, but it does give them earpods

that they can use on the iPhone. And so maybe it doesn't matter. But if you think about everybody else, there are so many issues about compatibility because all the old headphones are no longer compatible without a dongle. Any new headphones that get made that are lightning only work without products. So they're not repurposable the other direction, which is problematic. So you've got to buy an adapter. And I think that there are problems with that. I agree that that's just for the group of people who are using third-party headphones, but that's a lot of people.

I don't think saying it's not going to bother EarPod users is a good enough argument, because I will completely grant that it's not enough for them. But there is this whole market segment that is important. Beats shows it. I think a lot of Apple users are people who care about third-party headphones, and you end up in this situation where, unlike some technology changes where it's painful and Apple does it early, and then the world catches up, and then eventually it's not painful anymore.

This isn't a transition that everybody's making to lightning headphones, because lightning is owned by Apple. Nobody else is going to do... Lightning headphones are not going to show up everywhere to the point where now everybody just uses lightning headphones. It's always going to be an Apple thing. And so then you invest in a pair of nice headphones, and you either will always need an adapter for your iPhone if they're wired headphones, or you will buy lightning headphones and never be able to use them on any other device that isn't an Apple device with a lightning port on it. I think that's problematic.

It's not a deal breaker, right, because you can have adapters. It's just it's not the same as a lot of other transitions where, you know, yes, we got rid of Mac ADB and serial and went to USB, but everybody went to USB. So in the end, the pain kind of went away. That's not the case here. Here's a quick question for you, and we'll get back to this. What happens to Macs? Do they get lightning ports on them? Maybe. I don't know. And the problem there too is that then, so are you then forced to buy an adapter that has a mini jack on it so you can plug in some external speakers?

If you're at a, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're at a party with your iPhone and there's a speaker that you can plug into to play or in a conference room or something and you don't have your audio adapter with you, you can't plug in your iPhone to the speaker system. It's, there's a lot of that. But yeah, the Mac, I think that's a real question is what's happening with lightning. And if Apple does this and puts lightning on the iPhone, lightning is the only audio connector on the iPhone 7. Also, I have some questions about what that means for the future of lightning, because that would seem to me to suggest that lightning will be around for a long time. And it's weird because there's also usbc which apple at least adopted with the with the uh the macbook and it's very similar but not the same as lightning so how do they get along will you see a macbook that's got lightning and usbc on it

i really don't see apple move because I've heard people mentioning this and considering this. I don't see Apple moving to USB-C on iOS devices. I just don't see it happening. They will be on Lightning for as long as USB-C is around, in my opinion. So do Macs get Lightning ports? I think that they do. I think that they do. If they're going to start saying... Because it will mix the message, right?

Because when they announce the iphone 7 they will say that it's the best way to listen to music is by using the lightning port or bluetooth so continuing to have headphone ports on max would be kind of weird i think in that regard right or then you have to have like a 3.5 millimeter jack and a lightning port and bluetooth right that's the only way it works when you think about the keyboard and the and the trackpad and the mouse all charging by lightning and those are all mac products that charge via lightning the you could argue that the writing is on the wall there that lightning is coming to the mac because the peripherals already mac peripherals already have lightning ports on them but you can't there aren't lightning to lightning connectors are there

not yet but if there was a lightning port on the Mac, there would be, right? I don't know if it would work, but then you could just have lightning ports in the plugs as well instead of USB. You could, or the answer could just be, look, it's USB, and we also sell an audio adapter for USB, because USB and Thunderbolt will go out to audio. My audio actually doesn't come from my Mac because I've got this Thunderbolt hub, so the speaker on my desk is fed by the Thunderbolt will go out to audio. My audio actually doesn't come from my Mac because I've got this Thunderbolt hub. So the speaker on my desk is fed by the Thunderbolt hub, not from my Mac. So it's already using an adapter. Yeah, mine goes through USB as well because I use the pre-tool and all my equipment.

So I did want to mention while we're talking about this that why you make this change. I do think you have to ask the question, what is gained? I did want to mention while we're talking about this, that, that why you make this, uh, this change. I do think you have to ask the question, what is gained? And I think, I think Apple is going to have to sell that. Apple is going to have to say, here's why we did it. Here's the benefit.

Because if the benefit is, well, it's thinner. So we dumped it. Sorry, suckers. That's not good enough. They're going to,

they're going to sell this, right? There'll be some software features that they'll say couldn't have existed. Otherwise, maybe I saw some posts this last week, sell this, right? There'll be some software features that they'll say couldn't have existed otherwise that we don't see yet. I saw some posts this last week where suddenly people were talking about noise cancelling in regard to this move. And I thought, well, that's interesting because that seems to have come out of nowhere. And I wonder if that is the start of the Apple explanation campaign of like, why would you do that?

But I think you need that. I think you need the reasons why. Like you said, the headphone jack is dumb. With something like a lightning connector, you could add more stuff outboard. You could, you know, because lightning is configurable. You could have all sorts of things happen

in those lightning devices that were smarter than standard headphones can really be with the headphone jack. And maybe noise cancellation is part of that. I wonder if you could provide more power so that if you built hardware that needed more power for sensors or microphones or noise canceling or something, I'm not sure if lightning can provide more power. I would assume that it can. So there are probably reasons and Apple's going to need to make that case. Like, here's why we did this and why you shouldn't be angry at us because you get benefits by switching to this. Hooray, we're providing all these good things for the user.

What we will hear from some people who are already sort of defending this move that hasn't happened yet is stuff that's completely misinformed. And the one that really kills me is that, well, these will be a pure digital connection instead of the analog connection in the headphone jack. And that's completely wrong because headphones are fundamentally analog because sound is fundamentally analog. All you're really doing, at some point, there are wires going to speakers, right? So the question is, audio has to be converted through a digital audio converter, a DAC. And there's a really good DAC in the iPhone. And so you could move the DAC out into the headphones, although that's really expensive.

And my understanding is Lightning has an analog audio pass-through already. So presumably, in most cases, you would pass through analog from audio from the iPhone out to the headphones anyway. Presumably you would do that. So, um, and even if you didn't, you would still need to convert digital to analog in order to get it in, uh, in, in the, uh, in the, uh, headphone speakers. So the D the DAC, the digital to analog converter is, um, it has to be a part of the process anyway. So if somebody tells you it's pure digital until it's like going directly into your brain, I guess your brain isn't even digital.

Your brain is also analog. So no, that is not a reason that it's now not an analog. We're going from analog to digital. It's a bad, bad reason. But there could be good reasons. And I think Apple is going to need to make those cases because it would be possible to have a much smarter device if you attached it via lightning let's talk about adapters yeah they have to make one right flat out they have to make one absolutely my feeling would be you don't put it in the box because that undermines the change most people use earpods yeah they don't

need it yeah even even if people didn't right even if most people didn people use AirPods. Yeah. They don't need it. Yeah, even if people didn't, right? Even if most people didn't use AirPods, you still don't do it. Because it's like admitting that you made the wrong move, in my opinion. Like, if you put an adapter in, it's like saying you still should be living in the past rather than coming with us into the future. Which is why they didn't put any adapters in the MacBook box either either and made you pay 80 for them yeah but these ones have to be cheap in my opinion they just have to be i've seen speculation what do you think the apple uh lightning to classic audio adapter costs it should be five dollars wow i was gonna uh i i'm gonna predict 19 all right uh which is

lower than i've seen some people predict 29 i'm gonna predict 19 i feel like apple doesn't make any products that are less than 19 dollars but um uh i do agree it should be cheap also i saw somebody made a really good point. Here's one for you. Yeah. Apple make an iPhone micro USB adapter in Europe because they have to. Right. It's seven pounds. All right.

All right. Well, let me rephrase that. The 30-pin one's seven pounds, and it always was. The Lightning one is 15 pounds. All right. So it's still. The Lightning one is 15 pounds. All right. So it's still cheaper than usual stuff that they do. 15 pounds though, that's a $20 product, right? Yeah.

Yeah. But they still do make a seven pound one. Yeah. And it was seven pound when it came around as well. But then they moved to Lightning. I think the Lightning adds cost too. I did see something that I wanted to mention, which is it's also how this adapter works,

that if it's a rigid adapter that sticks out half an inch or an inch that's going to be awful, just like in your pocket with your iPhone So I had a thought about this because I thought the exact same thing one of the reasons I thought it should be cheap

is you buy a bunch of them and you attach them to the headphones and they fix to the headphones so it's not sticking out of the phone it sticks out the end of your headphones yeah but still in your if it's rigid then it's sticking out of the um it's sticking out of your pocket yeah but so a lot of headphones like the 3.5 millimeter jacks anyway like on over the ear headphones they're large they're quite large yeah but now you've got even more because you're extending it. I think somebody mentioned the idea of having it be a flexible cable, that it's as small as possible lightning adapter. And then what it comes out with beyond that is flexible instead of just straight. And I think that's a good idea. And I hope that's what this

is if Apple makes this just because it makes it a little less painful for people to use. And I love the idea of having it be cheap enough that you can attach it. I mean, most people don't have eight different sets of headphones, so you attach it to your favorite set and forget it. I think that's a perfectly reasonable use case, and I think a lot of people will do that. Stephen pointed out in the chat room that the MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter is $9. Yes, that's true.

I was actually going to mention that, but that's like a piece of metal. I know. It's pretty dumb. But yes, that is the cheapest thing you can buy in the Apple store, I think. And what about what goes in the box now? What goes in the box? Do they go crazy and go Bluetooth

or they put some lightning earpods in there? Lightning earpods. Because this is where that 9 to 5 Mac story comes in, right? Because what it looks like is Apple is developing something called AirPods, which they would be the additional one that you would buy. Like there used to be that in-ear, but there has always been the in-ear AirPods or iPhone or iPod headphones that they've always done. Yeah, so this is the markup. This is the, we'll give you a pair of boring old headphones. I can hear

the keynote pitch here, right? It's the, it's the well wired headphones. They get in the way, look at all these ways that the, that your iPhone headphones get tangled. We made a video of how annoying it is to have the, uh, we got the lady from the Apple pay commercial back to say, Oh no, my, my headphones have been tangled in the doorknob. Aye. And then, but imagine a wireless headphones. And everybody would be like, yeah, we've seen Bluetooth headphones. And then Tim Cook says, or Phil Schiller or whoever says, aha, but they still have a wire because they have a wire that connects the two parts

across the back of your neck or the front of your neck. And it's really annoying and it bounces around and makes sound that ruins the sound of your neck or the front of your neck, and it's really annoying, and it bounces around and makes sound that ruins the sound of your headphones. What if both of the things you stuck in your ears were themselves wireless and not connected to one another? That's what we've done. I think that's what the rumor is from 9 to 5. And as somebody who has got a set of Bluetooth earbuds, I'm totally on board with that because the wire that connects them is really annoying and it does make noise and it bugs me but then you've got two of these things you have to keep track of them, don't lose them

and they both have to be charged so apparently there's a charging case that's what this thing comes with you charge the battery in the case and then you pop them in the case and it charges I like that as an idea the battery could the case, and then you pop them in the case and it charges. I like that as an idea. The battery could be quite large, really, because it's just a case. You pop them in there and it charges wirelessly. So whenever you're not using them, you don't lose them,

and they are recharging on the battery that's in the case. And then when you get home, you plug in the case with the AirPods in them, and they charge. It's smart. That's a very smart idea and if it charges by lightning all the better sure right because they're everywhere right lightning cables are everywhere in my house i could just plug them in anywhere because like these new sennheisers that i've got they're charged by mini usb yeah and i only have mini usb ports in like one room yeah my

my blue buds are the same way because Because I just don't have as many requirements for mini USB as I do lightning. You can just pull the mini USB cable out of the BB-8 dock. Not a bad idea. That's what I do to charge mine now. I steal the power from BB-8 and charge my headphones.

Poor BB-8. Yeah. So it's, you know, I think that is an interesting idea and I think people will lose them, but I would be, I would actually be excited about that depending on how they sound because I do wear in-ear headphones. So something that I stick in my ear is not, it's not a problem to me. And when I use the wireless headphones, although I like the fact that they're wireless, they are, that cord that runs between them is not is not great.

I'm not a fan of it. I would love to be rid of it. As somebody who does use third party headphones with my iPhone all the time to listen to podcasts and stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm not thrilled with having to have an adapter for it. And I think that I actually think one of the big problems here is that it feeds into public perception, negative public perception of Apple. And they're just it's something you're going to have to deal with is public perception of Apple is that Apple likes to ruin the stuff that you own in order to force you to buy new stuff.

That's the public perception of Apple. People are still complaining about the conversion from the 30 pin connector to lightning, which I think is unfair because the 30 pin connector was around all the time. And if you look at Apple's competitors like Samsung, and you see what connectors that they put on their products, they have been all sorts of proprietary connectors that are on a single product, and then they're never seen again. And Lightning is much better.

30-pin was around for a long time. Lightning is going to be around presumably for a long time. I think we just said that we think it will be. So I think it's unfair there. I think the defense is a lot weaker with a move like this. I think this feeds into perception that Apple's making all of these headphones that are out there obsolete. It's forcing you to buy a dongle if you want to use them. The party scenario I mentioned where there are mini jack plugs everywhere in the world, and now you're going to be in a situation like you are with a mac

that doesn't have the right video connector on it where if you don't happen to have your audio dongle with you for your iphone you can't plug into that sound system that you were going to plug into um it just it's it's not enough of a reason not to do it, but it's worth considering as part of the math that perhaps Apple's already considered about what do you gain, what do you lose, and how do you sell it. And I still think it's happening. And I still think it's happening. It's a very Apple move. It's got all of the forward thinking. You know, it's like a combination of arrogance and forward thinking that is required for this.

And Apple's always been very good at this. And Steve Jobs was great at it, which is we want to drag the world ahead, but the world doesn't want to go. And then you have that moment when I say arrogance, then you have that moment where it's like, well, you know what? They're going to come along with us. Even though they don't like it, they're going to come along with us because we're great. And that's a very Apple move. And it would not surprise me at all if they did it. Because even though I can complain about it, and I'm not entirely sure that I believe all of the reports and that it's 100%, from the beginning, it's been very clear, And we talked about this off air a few months ago that it is a, it is a

quintessentially Apple thing to do. So on that level, it's like, would Apple do this? Hell yeah. Apple of course would do this. Will they do it? You know, probably, maybe, possibly, but, uh, but it's complicated and how they do it is going to be interesting to see if they do it. Like what, how do they sell it. How do they sell it? How do they explain it? What are their reasons? Why is this a benefit to users? And then how does the public react to it?

It'll be interesting to see if it happens. We've only got like eight months to go. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Let the speculation about products to be announced in september begin should we do some mask upgrade i think it's time i'll warm up the lasers while you tell us about our sponsor this week's episode is brought to you by fizzle fizzle is for anyone creating a personal business or side project anyone who wants to get an idea off the ground this is who fizzle

is for it is a new year it's the perfect time to get started on off the ground, this is who Fizzle is for. It is a new year. It's the perfect time to get started on your million dollar idea. Chase Reeves is one of the founders of Fizzle, and he's a very good friend of mine. And he's a little bit of an inspiration to me as well, because of the way that he looks at business. He's given me lots of things to think about over the last couple of years as I've been thinking about doing this. He was one of the people that pushed me to think about doing Relay in the first place. He was very inspiring to both me and Stephen when we were looking at starting all of this. And the reason is because the way that Chase approaches this stuff and the way that Fizzle approaches this stuff is in a humane, not sleazy, and very creative way. And this is the way that Fizzle will teach you how to build a business.

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and it's open for you until Friday. You don't have to do this alone so head to fizzle.co if you want to make some progress on your personal business this year. Thank you so much to Fizzle for supporting this show. Ask Upgrade. Start off with Richard. Do you know where your biggest share of your audience comes from is it podcast app itunes or any others and do you use statistics jason uh well you are the uh

co-founder of relay fm so you might want to talk about this too. I did look up the upgrade statistics and for upgrade overcast is our number one client. And then after that, it's the podcast app, the iOS podcast app, and then iTunes and then Pocket Casts. Those are the top four. And those are by far the most substantial four in upgrade history and current. I actually checked last episode and then also the aggregate for the history of upgrade and it's basically the same so for all of relay fm depending on where it's obviously different um it's the same as those statistics it's like you look at material which is our android show overcast is not going to be number one i would imagine pocketcast does very well there it does very well yeah the developer of Pocket Cast is on that podcast.

It's funny. I looked at the incomparable stats, and on the incomparable podcasts, the podcast app is number one. And Overcast, I think, might be number two. It might be like neck and neck with iTunes, but the iOS podcast app is number one. And I'm not surprised because that is a more general interest show. It's not just for Apple nerds, even though Apple nerds are my audience. And so that's sort of where it started. And so many of my panel's audience, too.

But it's grown and changed since then. And not all Apple nerds are interested in pop culture stuff. And there are other pop culture people who are interested in that show that aren't Apple nerds. So for that, it's the podcast app. But it is amazing. And I would not be surprised if this is generally true, maybe not as extreme as it is for us, but generally true that the Apple podcast app on iOS is the number one because it's on every iPhone. And the iPhone is huge. And Google has not yet, you know, even when Google Music assumes all podcasts bodily into heaven, it's not going to be a podcast app, right? It's going to be an app called Google Music. And so I feel like Android still is not doing podcasts right until there's a thing called podcasting, you know, a podcast app that is on the deck of every Android phone. So it's not surprising to me that the iOS podcast app is sort of number one in a lot of places.

Do you use stats? Oh, yeah, of course I do. Yeah. I have to. Yeah, I mean, we tell our advertisers, actually, how many people, you know, download, how many downloads the shows get. And that's important. And podcast stats are a thorny subject that perhaps we will never get into here, but if we do, it'll be another time. But it is difficult

to measure podcasts. There are unique things about podcasting that make it not like other forms of media or not like forms of web media, because you can't measure exactly what people listen to. Now, if you're somebody like Marco or if you're Russell with Pocket Casts and you make an app where people listen, they could, and I'm not saying they do, I'm not sure what they measure. Or that they should. Yeah, I'm not saying they should, but they could if they wanted to, and Apple could do this, who knows, again, if they're doing it or not, measure what actually gets played, how long you

listen to it, when you stop it. And you could get some very different statistics about it. But from the perspective of the provider of the content, when you download the file, that's it. Unless you're on a web page and you're sort of scrubbing around and listening to it, because then you can actually look at the web server, if you've got sophisticated stats, and see sort of scrubbing around and listening to it because then you can actually look at the web server if you've got sophisticated stats and see sort of like when the web client is sort of streaming the file and where in the file it's seeking and pulling down data. But if you're on an app, the app just downloads the MP3. It downloads it and that's it. And then you never see anything more unless somebody clicks through to a link in the show notes. And guess what?

People don't click through links in the show notes, mostly. So basically, it's just a mystery. All we know is that the MP3 got downloaded. We don't know if it got listened to. We don't know if it got re-downloaded somewhere else. We don't know. So it's an interesting thing, very different from the web, where you know every single click that happens.

Yeah, our statistics come from our host, our audio host, which is Libsyn. Yeah. That's where they come from our host our audio host which is libsyn yeah that's where yeah and i and i i use libsyn for the main comparable show and the rest of them i don't but i have uh the rss feed runs through feedpress which has a podcast uh stats add-on so that's where i get my uh non non main show incomparable stats to solomon has a similar question um and it goes like this aac is ubiquitous and superior to mp3 at low bit rates but you choose mp3 for podcasts i'm curious as to why for me it's simply because not all devices can play aac and we used to get lots of complaints from people that used Android devices. So I decided when we started RelayFM that we would be using MP3 because it is more widely accepted and

used. Yeah. And it may be that in, you know, that in 2016, this is not true anymore. AAC may play everywhere, but it certainly didn't used to. And I would go back to our argument about why do you get rid of the headphone jack and say, okay, we've got a format that plays everywhere, like literally any device that's capable of playing audio can play an MP3 practically. It is such a broadly supported format. so if we're going to switch to something like aac what do we get out of it and soliman says uh superior at low bit rates um what i would say to that is for spoken audio at the bit rates that we export our files 96 you know per second i do 64 for incomparable, 64 mono, and it's fine.

I would say at the bit rates for spoken audio, it doesn't matter. And even if the AAC at that bit rate would be superior, you probably wouldn't lower the bit rate. And it's just there's no gain to be made there. And it used to be the argument was that AAC had chapter support and MP3 didn't, but MP3 does actually have chapter support now and clients are increasingly supporting it, including Overcast, which is our number one. And so, yeah, that's the reason. There's no reason to switch because it will lead to more potential incompatibilities. And the fact that it might sound slightly better, and it probably doesn't sound

better for spoken words like the stuff we do. It's just not worth it. John would like to know, do you guys still use specific RSS feed apps or just social apps like Twisted to keep up with news? Jason? I'm on the record about this. I don't use RSS feed apps. I have never really reliably used RSS feed apps. Even when I was using NetNewsWire, I didn't open it a lot of the time. So I've always been a bad RSS user. I'm still a bad RSS user. The number one way I read in a feed at this point is Nuzzle, which I've written about. It's great. It aggregates links from Twitter and Facebook and puts them on a page, a web page for if you're on a Mac and there's a nice app if you're on iOS. And it uses your Twitter account,

but you can also see feeds that other people are following. If you have Twitter lists, it'll generate story lists based on that. And it looks like a newsreader. It's a socially powered newsreader. So it's showing you the headlines and summaries of the articles that your people in your social media are sharing and floats the ones that are most shared to the top. And in fact, and also sends out alerts. You can have it send out alerts when there's a story that's trending where a bunch of people are sending a story. In fact, that's how I found out that David Bowie died, was I opened my email this morning and I had the Daily Nuzzle email and the top shared story in the last 24 hours when it sent the email out was that David Bowie died. And then I went to Twitter and I read a bunch of stories

and a bunch of remembrances of David Bowie. But it came from Nuzzle because everybody on my timeline was sharing articles about David Bowie after it was announced that he had passed away. Yeah, I found out on Twitter. Yeah, I mean, I essentially found out on Twitter time delayed through Nuzzle because I was – I watched last night. I closed my iPad apparently and watched TV for a couple hours and then went to bed and didn't check in. Because you would have in it that i would have seen it last night but um i didn't i didn't i just uh i just went to bed after after we were done watching tv so yeah i'm twitter only if it's if i don't see it on twitter i don't see it

anywhere yeah i agree so well yeah it works for me too. In fact, I would say I use just scanning Twitter more than I use Nuzzle. But I do when I'm trying to think of, you know, I want to see something that I want to read. What do I want to read right now? I will go to Nuzzle because Nuzzle will find links that I didn't notice because I don't read every single tweet that's in my timeline. I will miss things. And Nuzzle is really great at floating that stuff back up. I didn't remember this or I didn't know this about you that you didn't use an RSS app and that does surprise me because of the work that you have done in the past as well as what you do now

is very link-based and finding out what's happening and being able to respond to stuff. It's just interesting to me that you don't. and being able to respond to stuff. It's just interesting to me that you don't. If I was running a breaking news site or I was the news guy at a website, I would have to do it. Yeah. But I have never been that.

When I was a news guy, it was either in the days when instant reaction wasn't necessary because it was before there was all of the web media that we have today. It went into a magazine, like how instant can you be? I've got a month to write that story now. Or I was in management and I had people who were the ones who were doing that and I was not doing that anymore. So I never had to do that. And my social media sphere is really great at pointing out everything that

is interesting. So when I started six colors, which is not intended to be a breaking news site, I have, since then I have paid more attention to things like nuzzle because I do want to see those links as they happen and get them posted before John Gruber posts them because I've got a, like a little personal, like I w it's not that I want to beat Gruber. It's like if Gruber posts the link, there's no, I feel like there's no point in me posting it because I, I'm going to assume almost everybody who reads my site also reads daring fireball. So I want to get it before John gets it. So, um, you know, that's one of my little points of, or, or, or anything before anybody else gets it. If I see something really interesting, it's usually not even news. It's usually like an

interesting, like a Dr. Drang post or something. I'm like, aha, I got the Dr. Drang post and then I'll link to it. So, or a Stephen Hackett, Stephen Hackett post. I'll be like, I got that one first. He's, he wrote about another old Mac and now it's on the site. So I pay more attention to that. But, but, but still, that's why I never did, needed to do RSS. And I found it just, I just don't live that way where RSS would just get out of control

I was always very web focused I have my favorite sites bookmarked I would read them on the web once Twitter happened that solved that problem entirely where all the good links were passing through so I've never had to really do it Last question comes from Ayan

The new Apple TV does not have Siri in my country Ayan is in the Netherlands is it still worth it to upgrade from version 3 I think so I don't think I thought this was an interesting question I don't think Siri is the reason to get the new Apple TV anyway

no I don't ever ever ever, ever use it. I almost never use it. I have to say, I'll put this on record now. I like my Apple TV. Yeah. I like it. I'm using it for airplay to the TV in the occasions where we're watching something downstairs

because we're watching like Seinfeld, which maybe you did or didn't know this internet. In the United Kingdom, you cannot get Seinfeld digitally. maybe you did or didn't know this internet. In the United Kingdom, you cannot get Seinfeld digitally. You cannot buy it. It is impossible to do or stream. So we are having to watch it through other means.

DVDs, of course, ripped via Superdrive. So we're using it for that. I use it for YouTube and stuff. When I eat lunch, I go downstairs, I have it in front of my computer, and I put YouTube on or something, or Netflix. Yeah, I'm liking it for that.

That's all I use it for, though, just that top four row. I never play games on it or anything like that. Right, right. But I am using it. I think the larger point is that a lot of the benefits of the new device are that it's faster, it's got the new interface, it's got the new remote, it's got all the apps, And those are reasons to upgrade. Siri alone is not, I would say. So don't

let that stop you. But you still need to weigh whether you're happy with your version 3 Apple TV or whether you want to go up to the fourth generation. But Siri, it's nice and I use it occasionally, but it's not the reason that that product exists. In fact, if you had given me, had me list all the reasons to upgrade to version 4, I would probably not have placed that high on the list.

Agreed. Right, so I think that wraps up today's episode. If you want to catch our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 71. Thanks again to our sponsors fizzle and mail route if you want to catch us online you can go over to sixcolors.com that's where you'll find jason's work and he also is the host of clockwise and liftoff on relay.fm as well as a whole slew of podcasts over at the incomparable uh you can also find jason on twitter he is at

jsnl jsn e double l i am at i mike i m y k e we'd love it if you checked out our new shows on Twitter. He is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. We'd love it if you checked out our new shows on RelayFM, Canvas and Remaster. There's a couple of great editions there that you should go and check out. Yeah. But we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, everybody. Thank you.