Upgrade - 72: I Spent Four Months Not Buying It

Episode Date: January 18, 2016

Jason and Myke discuss what iOS 9.3 might mean for the future of Apple’s OS update strategy, Jason buys a clicky keyboard, new Mac audio tools arrive, and we close the books on Muffingate.

from relay fm this is upgrade number 72 today's show is brought to you by pdf pen 7 from smile and squarespace my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell hi mike how's it going pretty well pretty well uh we were just discussing on the live stream before uh that we're both drinking caffeinated beverages today during the show which is uh irregular so expect a severe uptick in energy uh around topic number one it's irregular for you it's not irregular for me oh yeah because it's very early for you isn't it it's monday it's monday morning i always have a cup of tea with me i'm very british of course as i am i always have a cup of tea with me. I'm very British, of course, as I am. I always have a cup of tea in the morning to prepare me and to energize me for upgrade. And I'll take the American coffee in my Portland mug today. See? We're going across the Atlantic. It's only fitting.

Talking about Atlantic and the UK, I bought muffins. English muffins. Oh no! Okay, muffin vertical. Here we are. Muffin vertical. When we were doing the online shopping, I said to Idina, can we put muffins in, please? And they arrived this morning.

I haven't eaten them yet. But I'm saying this to close Muffingate now. That's right. The circle has closed. Mike bought muffins. Eventually I will eat the muffins, but you will not hear about my opinion. Toast them, and yes.

I'm out of muffins, so we're going to go to the store today, and one of the things we will buy will be muffins. And, uh, that's good. Cause I miss them for my breakfast. I'm going to toast them and put jam on them. Oh, good. That's a nice, that's a nice one.

That's great. Yeah. It's all, it's all good. Jam on a muffin is wonderful. But apparently as Twitter would let me know, you say that, uh, biscuits, what you call biscuits, which are closer to scones uh than yeah but aren't scones um you say that they are superior to english muffins oh yeah buttermilk biscuits so buttermilk biscuits uh southern style buttermilk biscuits are are fantastic and there

are many ways to to eat them and i bake them myself here at home on many weekends and they're great but they're fresh. You know, fresh homemade anything out of the oven is going to be better, and those southern biscuits are better. The difference is that they're really only better right when they're hot and fresh out of the oven, and then, you know, when they cool off, they're not as good. Whereas muffins are good because they're storable, and they toast up very well and all that. But biscuits are fantastic. And if those of you, we'll put a link in the show notes to my recipe for those. I got it already.

The little screenshot that you did. Yeah, from out of Vesper. Yeah, if you're somebody outside of the United States who doesn't even know. if you're somebody outside of the United States who doesn't even know. They're kind of like scones, but they're not because they're moist and sort of flaky layers and scones are a little kind of harder and drier and stuff. But thus ends Muffingate. Jason, would you say that early January is a quiet time for technology news?

No. Well, the muffin conversation would indicate that maybe it is let's move on to some follow-up in regards to the uh 3.5 millimeter audio jack we had a bunch of interesting uh tweets sent in to us we picked out a few uh the first one is from at la french fab and they said replacing the 3.5 millimeter jack and lightning port of a smart connector would be a way to waterproof an iPhone. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, there are rumors that based on the teardown of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus that Apple is already kind of experimenting with more water resistance in the iPhone design. And I don't know enough about the design of the headphone jack to know whether it's

just always going to be a problem in terms of waterproofing a device, but it is a big, you know, hole in your phone that water can get into. So possibly, I'm not sure whether the lightning port is better at that or not, because it is also, you know, it's also a port and it's got a hole that water can get into. So my super unknowledge about all of these things, having just looked at devices, like potentially the lightning port is waterproof because the hole is, it ends, right?

Because the port just works via pins. So, you know, the pins will just connect and I guess you could seal that all up quite nicely because there are phones that exist in the world, like Android phones that are completely waterproof. So, you know, the pins will just connect. And I guess you could seal that all up quite nicely. Because there are phones that exist in the world, like Android phones, that are completely waterproof, that don't always use little caps or whatever over the sockets, like the mini USB or whatever. So maybe it's possible. I don't know if you have to have the smart connector to do that.

There are claims that the current iPhone is kind of waterproof. people were dropping them in bowls of water and stuff like that the idea of the smart connector is if you have a smart connector then um then there's nothing right the smart connector is just a little magnetic uh it's not even magnetic but it's just the three little dots and then there's also a magnet the dots aren't magnetic on the ipad pro and so theoretically you are there's nothing right and and uh if you did a smart connector and you did um the if lightning is waterproofable and if you did like you could also do there there are rumors about uh wireless charging uh induction charging then you know there are there are ways to make the the phones more more waterproof so maybe like i don't know i don't know enough about what the smart connector can carry but i mean i would

find it incredibly surprising if the smart connector replaced both the 3.5 millimeter jack and the lightning port in the next device i don't even think that the iphone is going to get the smart connector for some time if ever it really feels like currently more of an iPad thing. It's to connect big devices that require power physically to them. And I don't think that there is an awful lot of stuff that you could really put an iPhone with. Maybe like a speaker, but Bluetooth is kind of the way to go for that kind of stuff. And there's no magnets. There's no magnets embedded in that. No no they could put one in though right well they could but then they're

adding magnets and then what's the surface area of the magnet if they're trying to make it a thinner point iphone you know you're reducing the amount of surface area to magnetize something too it's already kind of a curved side it would be difficult nico uh suggested couldn't apple combine lightning and bluetooth headphones into one set with the new iphone uh they totally could i just don't think that they're going to include those i mean you could maybe have expensive yeah you could maybe have bluetooth and lightning right in one little package that would be nice if they wanted to sell some extra headphones. I expect that this is probably what they'll do with Beats. Sure. Put a little lightning port in the headphones so you can charge them from the phone,

which would be really nice, actually, to be able to do that. Because one of my issues right now is I have battery anxiety with my Bluetooth headphones. now is I have battery anxiety with my Bluetooth headphones. And if there was a way to plug my headphones into my iPhone, take a bit of battery from my iPhone and charge my headphones for another hour, that would be kind of sweet. I would like that. You know, like in the same way you charge the pencil. I would like that a lot, Jason. Yeah, I think these are good ideas, interesting ideas. But I agree with you that it seems unlikely that Apple would include a wireless headset in the box. There'll be a cheaper pair of ear pods that'll be in the box with some sort of wired connection, presumably lightning if this happens. If we get Bluetooth headphones in the box the iphone price just went

up right like they've just put the price of the iphone up i'd be shocked yeah it's not it's not happening uh joe steel wrote in fake name real person uh did you guys mention lightning removing the ability to charge and listen at the same time last week i might have missed it i think there's a good point i don't know if we mentioned it except in passing but this is one of the use cases that's problematic if all you've got is a lightning port is people often will be listening to their phone while it's charged. And you would need to have a wireless headphones to do that in this scenario, because if you've got lightning plugged in, you can't charge at the same time. If, if that's your method of charging. And that, that happens to me all the time. Like when I'm in the car, when I'm in my car, I've got it paired to Bluetooth.

But when I'm in the car that my wife drives, it's paired to her phone and it gets kind of messed up if it's also paired to my phone. And I've just got, you know, it's got an aux in plug. And so I'll plug it in and then I'll also plug in the power when we're taking a long drive or something like that. And this would not be possible with this setup. I would have to change how we do that. And it is true. It is an added complication, the idea that if you have to plug your audio device in via lightning, but you also want to charge your phone, there's only one lightning port.

Yeah, it's not ideal. Yeah. So we'll see what happens there um previously in the past we have spoken about podcasting and audio production tools uh and i just wanted to draw attention to a couple that i know that you've been using recently which are new and are quite cool i guess for people that are wanting to make podcasts and stuff like that jason would you like to talk about chapters and loopback sure so chapters is an app that I don't know. I don't think it's been approved by the Mac App Store yet. Yeah, we can assume it will be around within a week or so, but they have a website

together now. But yeah, they've got a website and it's been submitted for approval and I've used a beta of it. And basically you point it at an MP3 file and you can put in time code markers and then save out. And it saves out the MP3 file with MP3 chapters embedded in it. And so if you're using a podcast app that supports chapters, MP3 chapters, your podcast will then have chapters. And we talked about this. Overcast supports this now. But there are limited numbers of tools. I believe the ATP chapter markers are being made by Marco using a tool he built for himself.

But this is a public. Thomas Pritchard wrote it. He sent me a bunch of betas of it as he was working on it. It is a publicly available tool. You bring your own MP3, drop it in. It reads the metadata that you've already got in there, which is kind of nice. So it's not like you've got to you bring your own MP3, drop it in, it reads the metadata that you've already got in there, which is kind of nice. So it's not like you've got to retag your MP3. And then you go through and say, you know, at eight minutes, 15 seconds, you know, here's the title,

here's the link, and you build up a list, and then you save it out. And it saves the MP3 with the data in it, and then you upload that file. So if you're somebody who is a podcaster who wants to do chapters, but has no way to do MP3 chapters chapters uh look for chapters which is going to be in the mac app store and i think it's going to be like 20 bucks or something it's not you know he's going to charge for it but if you're a podcaster who wants to embed chapters uh it's probably worth it because i think there are no other mac tools that do that at this point not that i've seen uh thomas has sent me betas for this but i've yet to actually check it out um but it looks really good and it gets the jason snell stamp of approval so

what more do you need yeah i mean there are other i i will say i have i have used other tools say so have i as of you that are not publicly available and may or may not ever be uh so i you know i'm not just using chapters app but, but I have used Chapters app on a clockwise and on an incomparable. And as far as I can tell, it works great. So it's nice to see a public tool for this because tools that are private or in beta don't help everybody else. So it may be great that I've got a chance to try some of those tools, but it doesn't help anyone else. And Chapters App, I can say, it's, you know, Apple.

Assuming Apple approves it, it'll be in the Mac App Store. And if not, then I'm sure he'll put it up on his own. So one way or another, you'll be able to get it soon. So chaptersapp.com. All right. And then also Loopback. What is Loopback? Loopback is a new utility from our friends at Rogue Amoeba, makers of Audio Hijack.

I talked to them a long time ago when they were beta testing Audio Hijack. I asked them about a few things. I said, can Audio Hijack do this? And it turns out this was definitely not a feature that they had planned for Audio Hijack, but they said that they had something else in the works that would probably do it. And Loopback is that tool. Basically, one of the things, I've talked about this before, it's surprising to me how rudimentary some of the Mac sound subsystems are. It actually makes it not surprising that sound is so poorly handled on iOS in terms of being able to record an input and record across multiple apps at once and all of

that. Because even on the Mac, it's kind of rudimentary. You can't natively in the Mac, say, record the audio from this app or route the audio from this app to this other app. It's just, you can't, you need to, you need to add extra software to do that. And Audio Hijack is a good example of that. It'll do some routing and it'll also do recording. Loopback is all about kind of routing audio from one device to another. What it does is if you plug any kind of recording device into your Mac or any output device to your Mac, like speakers, and you go to the sound preferences pane, you'll see in the output tab, you'll see all the output devices listed. And in the input tab, you'll see all the input devices listed. What Loopback does is it lets you create new devices in quotes that are not real but what they are is sounds coming from different

places mixed by loopback and then sent back out so you can create for example a good example is skype when i was building the mac world podcast studio we had a mixer with four microphones on it but skype only ever takes track one from any audio device that you set as the microphone. Yeah, we really, really unfortunately found that out whilst trying to record connected at WWDC last year. Exactly, and Loopback would have solved your problem in one step. So what Loopback, you could do is

you can create a new device, a new virtual device, and put all four of the audio tracks, the audio from the four tracks on your mixer onto track one of this virtual device. You literally just drag them over and drop them on one and then save it and check the box. And now that's a new input. It's a new microphone you can use. You select it in Skype and now you're getting all four together. And you could do lots of other things like you can plug in two USB microphones and create one microphone out of it that included the source for both. So you could record them simultaneously because one of the things that the Mac sound subsystem doesn't do is let you kind of aggregate devices in a clean way.

And so you can do that with Loopback. Some of this stuff you can kind of do through Audio Hijack, but there's also some stuff like Audio Hijack won't let you create a new virtual input. It'll let you route audio to existing places, but Loopback will let you create new channels for audio, including things like saying, play GarageBand to Skype, which is not something that you could otherwise do. And Skype picks up the input of what's coming

out of GarageBand and suddenly the sound is flowing across. So it's a pro tool. I think they're an introductory sale for $75, but in the end it's going to be $100. But again, if you were somebody who keeps having kind of crazy... At Macro, what we ended up doing is running a line out, basically a headphone jack out of the back of the mixer and running it into the little audio in on the back of the old iMac that we were using. It's still using. I think they still do it this way. And using that as the microphone for Skype. So Skype people were receiving this weird mixer audio that was coming out of one of the headphone jacks and running through a 3.5 millimeter jack cable to that little mini jack input on the back

of the iMac. It's ridiculous, but that was the only way we could get them to hear what we were saying. So this would solve that problem because you could just aggregate everything together. So yeah, loopback. It's cool. It's a cool idea. It's not for everybody, but you'll know it if you need it because you'll have that moment where you're like, how do I do this? And the only answer will be to get loopback or try something like Soundflower, which does similar things. But that's an open source project that has been not developed very well over the years. It's sort of on and off, as many open source projects are. And I find its interface to be almost impenetrable. And once you install Soundflower, it is incredibly difficult to uninstall Soundflower.

Yes. So Loopback is much more straightforward. And if you uncheck all the boxes, if you're like, I wonder if loopback is slowing down my system or doing other things that I don't want to my sound, you just uncheck the boxes in loopback of the virtual inputs and they go away

and then they're gone. So yeah, so definitely people should check it out if they're in need of a utility like that. Oh, there's one more bit of follow-up I wanted to do, which is I got something wrong last week. I said that I thought that lightning currently could do analog audio out. And that's not true. I actually got that mixed up from the speculation on an episode of ATP that they thought that they could do, they could build analog audio out into lightning, which they could do, but they haven't done. So it's possible that one thing that Apple

could do would be to update Lightning so that one of the things that it could do was send out analog audio, thereby preventing you from needing a DAC in the external audio device, a digital to analog converter. Although, as Marco pointed out to me privately, Marco Arment from Podcasting's ATP, as Marco pointed out to me privately, Marco Arment from podcastings ATP, the DACs are cheap. So it probably wouldn't be a big deal for most devices to have their own DAC, although the one on the iPhone is pretty good. And so getting the analog signal out from the iPhone might be preferable to having whatever DAC would be in your external audio device. But anyway, that's about speculation and not fact. And I stated it as fact. So I apologize. You know, ATP is part of my reality, apparently.

This week's episode is brought to you by Smile and PDF Pen. PDF Pen is your Swiss army knife for working with PDFs. With PDF Pen, you will have all of the basics covered, such as filling in and signing forms, making edits to PDFs, highlighting, and using OCR to detect text, which you can then use anywhere, where you can take that text and put it into other apps if you need to. You will be a PDF wizard with PDFPen when you use redaction, word export, page numbering, and even Bates numbering. And with PDFPen for iPad and iPhone,

you'll be able to take control of PDFs no matter where you are. You can be able to completely master signing forms. You can very easily redact no matter where you want to be with their apps for iOS as well. If you're the type of person that enjoys living or enjoys the idea of a paperless office, you're going to love PDF Pen. No more printing, scanning, and faxing. Just fill in and sign a PDF pen and you will be on your way. PDF pen is an indispensable tool for me. It's something that I use multiple times a week, signing contracts and stuff like that, which I have to do lots of.

Without PDF pen, I would be spending a fortune in ink and going crazy with scanners. So I love PDF pen for what it allows me to do. And because I use a Wacom tablet for my input in my Mac, I actually do really sign everything, which is awesome. I like doing that. It still makes me feel very important when I'm signing things because I actually do apply my real signature every single time, which you can do with PDF pen. Smile also has a bunch of great tutorials from the very talented Mr. David Sparks. These short videos will show you everything that you need to know about PDFPen 7 and they're on Smile's website.

You can learn all about PDFPen at smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. PDFPen 7 and PDFPen Pro 7 require Yosemite and work beautifully on El Capitan. And PDFPen for iOS is available from the App Store. Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show. You call it Wake Em and not Whack Em? I don't know anymore.

I'm losing my voice a little bit. I don't know if you'd notice that today, Jason. No. Yeah, it's just a little bit croaky. So it's nothing to worry about. You sound like a professional. Yeah, just as an aside to the listeners out there, if anybody has any good resources for vocal exercises,

please send them to me. I would love to know. The more I do this, Jason, the more worried I get about losing my voice completely. And what would I do if that happened? It is true. This comes up at conferences sometimes um i i do have those moments where i realize if i'm planning to do a podcast the next day or something like that like i kind of need to actually watch my voice which is a little weird because what would what would be the impact of having a croaky voice the next day. But if you have to do podcasting or presentations of some sort, it matters.

It really does. It's weird. It's like suddenly we've turned into singers. You know, I need my tea with lemon before I can go on. I don't know how that happened. Yeah, that's right. Crumb crisp coating. Jason, talking about good audio for podcasting and things like that,

you have done something that would, in theory, ruin your audio. Yeah. Would you like to demonstrate what you have done? Okay, sure. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a horribly clicky keyboard, which I'm sureason would not be able to use during this show quietly uh what have you bought i'm very intrigued about this i don't know why i did it but i i was i've been intrigued by uh going back to mechanical switch keyboards for a

while now i i'm not um i have not spent a lot of time exploring it i used a matthias tactile pro for a little while. I have, I mean, I used back in the day and I do actually have an Apple extended keyboard, although the ADB USB adapters are not particularly reliable and it's a little frustrating. The classic kind of battleship. But the thing is, I like, so I always thought maybe I should go back to a mechanical keyboard. I've talked about how I don't like key travel, like short key travel on this, on the show, like the MacBook keyboard. And I thought, well, um, maybe someday I will explore that.

And actually Joshua Topolsky, formerly of The Verge and Bloomberg, now doing mysterious startup things, uh, posted a, a, a tweet with a picture of a, uh, of this keyboard. And it was this little keyboard had no 10, no 10 key, no number pad. It was picture of this keyboard. And it was this little keyboard, had no 10 key, no number pad. It was a super tiny keyboard. It didn't even have a function key row. And it had like kind of different colored keys on it. And I looked at it and I was like, ooh, ooh. I was surprised to find myself really kind of intrigued by that. And I asked him what it was. to find myself really kind of intrigued by that. And I asked him what it was.

And I spent, you know, three months, basically four months not buying it, but just sort of thinking about it. And I looked at some other mechanical keyboards. Matthias makes a mini keyboard in a couple of different versions because I do all my pointing with my trackpad on the right side of my keyboard. And I don't need a number pad and i don't need a number pad i don't want a number pad and all the number pad does is push the trackpad further away from me so i i wanted um i want something that is apparently we learned called uh 10 keyless okay that's a keyboard term and uh and i looked at matthias's mini tactile pro Mini Quiet Pro, which are both 10 keyless keyboards. They're bigger. They've got a bigger bezel and they've got a function key row at the top. And it's funny because they make a quiet one that is only in a PC layout. And then the loud one they make only in a Mac layout. Quiet is an interesting word to use because it's not quiet. layout and then the loud one they make only in a mac layout interesting choice is a uh

is an interesting word to use because it's not quiet it's not well it's much quieter than their normal keyboards it should be the quieter rather than the quiet it's true it's true so i thought about those and i might yet get one of those i don't know but what i did was i actually got the same basically the same one that joshua topolsky had which was a Leopold FC-660M. This is a Korean, I think it's a Korean, well, it's made in Taiwan. I don't know whether the company is Korean or Chinese. I got it from somebody in Korea on eBay, because that seems to be the best place to get them, is you buy them on eBay from somebody in Korea, and then they come to you. It's weird. And I've been using it for the last week, and it's interesting. I bought some custom keycaps

because it comes with a Windows keyboard layout. So actually, I had to change the, you know, there's a system setting that you can set per keyboard, which is pretty cool in OS X. It didn't used to be that way, to flip the command and option keys to be the other way around, which you need to do for a Windows keyboard. I bought some custom keycaps, so I replaced the alt keys with actual keys that say command on them. I still have a Windows key that's my option key. I need to get a blank key at the very least and replace that so that I don't have to stare at the Windows logo. Because why?

Why would I want to do that? I do all the time. I have one of those Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboards and I just look at the Windows logo. You could do. But if I can get away to not do that, then I will choose that. So I bought some custom key

caps for it and it's just been kind of fun. I, I, um, what I've, what I've learned is that I really love it for when I'm in the zone writing, just typing away a lot. It really is great. It is, you know, you feel every key click, you can hear it. You're, you're, you're writing up a storm. You get some almost like it feels almost like momentum or like you're, you're, you're, you're, it's like horses galloping. It's just click, click, click. You just, you're going, that's great. When I'm doing something like editing up, editing a podcast, or just kind of clicking around and looking at Twitter and looking at Skype and doing occasional key clicks that are like clunk, clunk, clunk. It seems kind of ridiculous.

Like it's overkill for that. It's too much. I don't need feedback for those sorts of things. Perhaps one day some geniuses will create a keyboard that is entirely artificial like the uh like the magic trackpad 2 and you can set your um your your uh sound and uh and tactile levels per operation perhaps in the a wonderful future we'll get there but as it is that's that's my thought is that i kind of like it i kind of love it for writing um but when i'm just kind of mousing around and then doing keyboard shortcuts. It seems like really overkill. That said, since I've been using it, I went back.

So I kept my little Logitech Bluetooth keyboard for podcasting because I do need a quiet keyboard while I'm podcasting, which is dumb. But that is part of this story. And I started typing on it and I thought, ooh, like suddenly I feel much less charitable toward that keyboard. And I see what the mechanical keyboard people see in them and have against the kind of mushy keyboards. Because while I've been really used to the MacBook style, not the new MacBook, but the kind of MacBook Air, MacBook Pro style, which is also in a lot of these Bluetooth keyboards. All of a sudden, I can see that they they feel kind of weird and mushy um compared to the the mechanical ones i understand the idea of the the sound and how it makes you feel like if i ever i mean basically all of the writing of any kind that i do these

days is occurring on my ipad pro as many things are And that makes a noise. Oh, that's true. That the smart keyboard, right? Like it's a, it's not, I don't think it's a satisfying sound, but it makes a noise. And when I'm typing on it, like I kind of like that sound, like the noise that it makes.

Just a little bit of, yeah. I mean, this is all about degrees here. I did actually attach this to my iPad Pro using a USB adapter because it's a USB keyboard. It's not a Bluetooth keyboard. And that was hilarious and weird to have this clicky keyboard attached to an iPad Pro. That was kind of maybe a bridge too far. But it worked.

Totally worked. So there you go. For all you people that like super clicky keyboards jason is yeah you can check it out i'll let you know what i think about it in the long run um like i said i'm feeling good about it as a writing as a writing tool um it it is kind of ridiculous because it is loud and uh you know it's very old school i i also just love i love how it looks i love how small it is it's just this tiny um tiny thing it's got almost no bezel it's very old school. I also just love, I love how it looks. I love how small it is. It's just this tiny, tiny thing. It's got almost no bezel. It's got no function key row. And I used, I downloaded actually Keyboard Maestro, which I used back like when it was

the first, I think before Peter Lewis bought it, way back when. And that's actually a really great utility that I've known was really great, but I've never used personally since very, very early versions, and that's been great because it can do some mapping of keys to different things that I need on this keyboard because it's not quite the keyboard I'm used to. Like the tilde and single tick key that's usually in the upper left hand corner isn't on this keyboard it's an that's where the escape key goes so I needed to map that key like command that key to the command tilde that you do to cycle through windows a little stuff like that

along with some more complicated stuff that I've been playing with so it's been fun to to use keyboard maestro a little bit too, which I haven't had reason to try for a while. There you go. Beautiful. Just after last week's episode, Apple dropped something upon us. Almost during the episode.

Yeah, pretty much. And it's the iOS 9.3 preview. So at this point, there's probably not much use in us going through what the 9.3 preview includes. Well, there's a – and I think this is the most interesting part of the story. There's a page on Apple's website that details what is in iOS 9.3. Yeah, which makes it different from being just a beta, right? It is a preview in that apple is previewing it to

the world which is a new thing is this the first time they've ever done this like for a point release i feel like maybe yes i think outside of wwdc announcements it's the first time that apple has done a marketing push for the initial developer release of an os update um and i think it's really smart they talked about this a bit on atp last week so it's worth people listening to that too i agreed with their thoughts about it there i think um i think it's smart of apple because what is what happens is inevitable they uh they release it just to. It's a beta. It's under NDA. And then within a couple of hours, all the rumor sites, all the other news sites that cover developer betas have detailed everything that's in the betas and speculated about things that are, you know, the next day it's speculated about things that are suggested in the betas,

and it goes on and on. So if you're Apple, why wouldn't you own that? If you know that people are going to cover it, why wouldn't you own that? You're allowing the people who are reporting on developer betas to control the story of your, not your major update that comes to WWDC, but your minor updates that come other times that might have a few features in them. And if you're proud of those features, why would you not make, it's not like they did a huge press blitz, but they did post a page saying, here's what's coming in iOS 9.3. Here are these features and they'll be coming soon. And it's very clear that the reason you do that is because they know people are going to write about it as soon as it goes into beta.

So they might as well get on top of it and tell their own story. And that's smart marketing. That's smart PR. So that's what they did. And I think it's really smart. But I feel like that is a new thing. That is to just jump out there like that, that's a new thing. And smart. Do you think this signifies anything? So Dan and I talked about it on Clockwise, I think, and the Six Color Secret

Subscriber Podcast, too. But then dan wrote a story about it on mac world and you know there was some interesting response to that because like mark german was like oh this isn't new they have they've had notable dot releases before but i think i think what's notable is that this is new features that haven't been promised before um that are being rolled into this version of the os instead of iOS version 10. And I think that that might be different than we've seen before. It might not be. I saw a lot of people who are involved in education saying the problem with iOS 10 is that the education cycle happens earlier than that in terms of planning for education for

the school year. And that if they've got something that is announced in summer and ships in the fall, it's too late for education. So taking the education feature of user logins, which is something that's one of the banner features that's going to be in this 9.3 update, and pulling it forward maybe is more about timing and doing some education updates earlier rather than waiting all the way until fall, because they've got quite a battle with Chromebooks in schools. So I think that might be part of it. What my speculation was, and I think Dan's speculation is,

I wonder if this is also a hint that Apple's going to be a little less monolithic with the iOS updates and roll some features out throughout the year, including new features, not just features that are promised but not yet delivered or attached to new hardware. Yeah. Because none of these things are attached to new hardware, nor were they promised not, not the new, uh, version of, you know, basically flux, uh, that, that will get rid of the blue light on your, uh, on your device screen at night. Uh, not the, uh, user login. These are things that are not, um, not things that we had heard about before, and now here they are. Or they're in the betas, and they're coming.

Yeah. So there's slight precedent, right? In the last year, 18 months, there have been updates to the devices that are relatively large things that have come with point releases, right? So Apple Pay internationally, Apple Music and stuff like that. That's why they weren't the minor releases. That's why they got the whole point. Yeah, exactly. So there's been more of that happening.

But yeah, what makes this one different is that we didn't know about any of this stuff until the beta came, which that's the new part of this, right? Is that it is unannounced. So what do you think this says for WWDC? Do you have any kind of feeling about whether we're going to get 9.5 or are we going to get 10? If you're reading the tea leaves, what would you say is going to happen here? My gut feeling is that we'll get 10 because that's how Apple has done it every single time before. So why not?

But, you know, this made me at least stop and think, what would it be like if what they did was announce iOS 9.5? And said, actually, what we're going to do is we're going to do 9.5 now and we're going to release it soon. And then in the fall, you'll see 9.6. And then in the spring, you'll see 9.7. And that we're going to do some individual releases over time. We've got everything worked out now. We can push updates to everybody automatically. We can push updates to developers automatically. We can push them to the beta testers automatically. And then we can push them to the users automatically. We don't need to be

in this monolithic cycle where we're changing everything once a year. We can break it down a little further. They could totally do that. And I think that's interesting. Will they do that? I don't know. I mean, it seems more likely that they won't because that would require them to change their ways. But I'm kind of interested by it just because I wonder sometimes if that would be a better way to roll out features and make the process for developers and users a little smoother, just to sort of spread out the OS development over the course of many months. They could also do iOS 10 and still have sort of more impressive updates in the interim before the next year at WWDC. updates in the interim before the next year at WWDC. They could still use WWDC as the stake in the ground where they make some bigger changes, but also not have it be that if a feature doesn't get in, it has to wait a year, which is sort of what it's been like for most features up to now. I don't know. What do you think? I think that we may see WWDC as the starting point of this occurring

from iOS 10 onward and that they are putting 9.3 out now as an example trying to set the stage so basically from 10 we may see a change I actually do think that at 10

and I'm just going to throw this out there I think that there will be a'm just going to throw this out there i i think that there will be a change in the naming convention for ios um it's at a certain point the numbers get too high uh and 10 feels like a better time to change that than 20 because why would you change it at any other point so like if you're going to change it you may as well go for it now uh i wonder if they're you know like they probably will give it the numeral 10 if they're going to give it anything but i think we may see some kind of change because like for example google from a branding perspective um they're able to to put out smaller updates to

the os but give it a brand new name because they just go over letter every time and they give it you know a candy name um but marshmallow was a smaller um update than than kit kat and uh whatever l was i can't remember it was actually a small lollipop that's it but it still had the branding of a full number so i think we may see apple go that route you know as they have shown us that they can do and do with s10 and i think i X. And I personally think we're going to see something there. But I also believe that we're going to see a change in the way that OS updates are pushed out. And I think that they will be more staggered, more staged,

which I assume internally for Apple will mean that things can maybe stay in the oven a little bit longer, which would benefit everybody. And so I do really hope that this is the case. And because there will be a marketing risk for not doing big number releases at WWDC every year, I hope that they're able to do some marketing magic to make it look better than it is. And personally, I think that giving them names rather than numbers will help that.

So I think those are good points. I do think it's possible. I think this is one of those things that, I mean, who can tell for sure being on the outside, but it would seem to me that going to a cycle like this might be better in terms of the features that are ready get in and the features that aren't ready can go next time. And just my gut feeling is, and again, it's just a gut gut feel, so it could be wrong, but is that changing everything once a

year in one monolithic update and then doing bug fixes for a year seems like that would be more dramatic and fraught than changing, you know, having a bigger change once a year and then a bunch of smaller changes at a few, you know, or not a bunch, but like three more smaller changes, let's say quarterly updates or three, three updates a year. It just seems like that would be more sensible and comfortable for everybody. It means developers don't have to invest all their time all summer long on adopting all the new features of the OS. Apple.

So the arguments against this are there are a few of them. You mentioned one, which is marketing. There's also the argument about WWDC's value being you roll out all the new platforms there and then the developers get them. Taking the second one first, I think what we saw with the Apple Watch development, which although it didn't go well because there were issues with the platform not being very strong, they were able to roll out the Apple Watch SDK and all of that and developers got that and they didn't need to be at WWDC. And most developers aren't at WWDC, right? Yeah, but I don't think that the marketing thing is an issue to how you market to developers.

It's how you market to the general public. Let me take these separately. So the developer issue, I think, is not an issue. I think the fear that, well, if you don't introduce all your new features at WWDC, the developers, you aren't communicating well with the developers. It's already been shown. Apple has lots of other means to communicate with developers. They've done a good job with it. I don't think that's the problem.

Marketing is the issue. And I would dispute what you said. I am not sure that Apple needs marketing about an OS update. And I'm really not sure that they need marketing about an OS update three months before it happens. So the marketing issue, I don't think is what anybody needs or what people think they need. The problem now is if Apple do not do a full number release at WWDC, there will be stories written in the general press about how Apple is slowing down, Apple's failing. That's the problem that they're in, right? Because then these things, they leak into the minds of the general public. I think that's the only reason I think this problem exists.

And it's not necessarily an accurate one, but that's not the point. That's not the thing to worry about, right? It's how things are perceived, which is the issue. So I see what you're saying. If I'm Apple, I would, if I'm at Apple, I would advocate for the fact that, and this is a family podcast, so I won't use the phrase that I would probably use in the meeting, which is I don't think those kind of criticisms matter. I think that's chattering. I think that's inside baseball stuff.

I think that the most important part in terms of marketing their products is when the new products, the new hardware comes out. the new hardware comes out. And I think it would be much better to have these key features highlighted when you roll out the new iPhone every year, which people really pay attention to, than this event that's super technical, and it's geared toward developers, but there's this little PR angle that's in it too, where you're talking about a new version of software that's got some very particular features and isn't going to ship for three months. It is something that's a big deal for our audience. And that maybe, yeah, the financial analysts who are always writing about how Apple is doomed, you know, they may behave even worse if it's taken away from them. But I think for the general public, it's the worst event Apple does every year because it's not tangible,

usually. There usually isn't a product that comes out of it. And OS updates are kind of, you know, they're very much this intangible thing. It's like, oh, there's going to be a feature. Well, do I get it now? No, you don't get it until September or October. Oh, well, why do I care? So I could totally see Apple saying, we're going to take a step back and not make as big a deal about OS betas at WWDC and instead build our, you know, extol the virtues of our hardware and the software features that come with them when we launch the hardware. I think that argument can be made. I understand your argument. And I think that it's true. That would be the downside of abandoning the huge monolithic software release. But as you said,

you could also market the small release and say, this is the year of El Capitan. This is the year of the mountain lion or whatever back in the day. And you'll see some stuff across the year instead of it all being dropped in a load over the summertime and shipped in September. I completely agree with you. And I take the view that it is possible to manage this and put a good spin on it. But the way that i look at it that that is a risk though still right because you can assume everything but you never know how people are going to react and i personally believe that it is that risk that we're not sure factor which is what is what could be potentially holding them up internally from making a change like this um but i think that it is more than possible for apple to deal with this and put it in those terms but i think that it is more than possible for apple to deal with this

and put it in those terms uh but i think that it's it's something worth watching and i do think it's going to happen post 10 uh but it will be right interesting to see what they do at number 10 it's actually logical in fact you you can make the argument that 10 is a great place and you you you alluded to this earlier 10 is a great place to say, we've reached a milestone, here's how we're going to handle this going forward. Even if the analysts look back and go, oh, you know, 9-3 was kind of a hint in this direction, that maybe that would be something that they would do. I don't know. I mean, we're just guessing here. But I think you're right in saying if you're going to change the way that you handle operating system stuff, then doing it on a number, on a big number like 10 is not a bad way to do it. I also, again, I wouldn't put, I think there's a percentage chance that they just punt about dealing with the number 10 for a year and say, we're going to do 9.5 and it's going to be awesome and it's going to have all these features and you know and then we'll do you know we'll do some other updates

over the course of the year and not and just not call it 10. I think that that still could happen although you know I think it's less likely. I think the most likely thing is to expect what we've seen which is new number well one of the things that seems strange to me about about this is why did they put a new user feature an unrequested user feature like night shift in 9.3 and not hold it over for 10 good question i can't work i can't wrap my head around that one um like the education stuff throw it in 9.3 um you know bug fixes and changes and some of the other stuff that they've done in 9.3, that's fine. Because that fits with a point release, right?

Oh, here's a bunch of stuff. It's, you know, things that we're putting in, little bits and bobs, and here you go, take that. And, oh, if you're in education, this is what you get for 9.3. This is really great. But Night Shift is something that's cool. I like it a lot. if you're in education this is what you get for nine three this is really great but night shift is something that's cool i like it a lot um there's been a bit of hubbub about flux but that was nowhere even near like a mass market amongst tech nerds right like yeah this is not something that everybody uses and or wanted uh additions to notes news and health would have in carplay would have been

enough for nine three from a from a user focus i'm really perplexed about what putting something like night shift into ios 9.3 means for wwdc so i've got a theory my theory about why they did it is that there was this very minor in our community hubbub about Flux. And somebody, my theory is that, and this is based on no information, is that somebody at Apple said, well, why don't we do that? And maybe even some engineer said, well, actually, we did do that. It's, you know, it's not implemented all the way yet, but we're working on that. And that's on the roadmap. And, you know, maybe they're saying, well, let's put it in 9.3.

If it's close and you think it's fairly simply done, maybe we should just put it into 9.3 rather than holding it for the fall again. Or maybe there's an attitude like, well, we want these feature updates to be a little more substantive than they've been in the past, and that's a pretty good feature to pull forward. It's fairly simple. We've been, you know, we could implement that fairly quickly. Maybe we're already working on it. Let's, let's pull that forward. My guess is that, that it may have been pulled forward because it became part of the conversation a little bit. And Apple thought that there was some, maybe even good PR to be done by saying, look how great we are in, you know, making our mobile devices gentler on your eyes. And that's a little, a nice little feature. So I've got some, those are my kind of

theories about it is that, is that, you know, it's some combination of those things. So it's a fairly small feature. It was probably already being discussed and it would be something that could be slipped into a small version like this rather than, you know, waiting to roll it out to everybody in September. Yeah, I mean, I can I can totally see that. The thing that I just find so strange about it is iOS 9 was not a big release, really. There actually wasn't a ton in it. There was lots for the iPad, but that was kind of it. it there was lots for the ipad but that was kind of it and i wonder what the next version will will bring uh because i i'm interested to see are we gonna get a lot again or is it gonna be not so

much and if it's not so much then why did they put a user feature in now you know night shift night shift also is funny because it is really simple like yeah but it's a nice little thing right and it's just yeah but it's a thing you can see it's a thing you can demonstrate but what what interests me about it is that it's super simple and and i look at it and i immediately think like you could tie this to do not disturb you could put it on mission control um or is that what it's called? Control Center. Control Center, the thing you flip up from the bottom. You can put a button there to toggle it on and off.

None of that was done, right? It's just, it's kind of off in the display settings, and it's there, and you can turn it on if you want to. So it's not like it couldn't, it could be a lot more integrated into the system than it is. So for 9.3, it looks like, unless they add features, it seems most likely that for 9.3, it's going to be this super simple feature. Like, it's there if you want it. And maybe it gets more integrated into the system down the road.

So that's kind of interesting, too, that it does seem to be a very simple implementation to get it in the system. Driven, now, people will say, well, why not just let Flux into the App Store or let Flux distribute it? people will say, well, why not just let Flux into the App Store or let Flux distribute it? I think this goes to the core of the OS is that there's stuff that Flux does as an app that Apple just cannot allow an app to do. That there's no public API for controlling this stuff. And they don't like the way that Flux... I mean, Flux is acting on the entire display, whether it's running or not, basically. It's pretty invasive. And I'm pretty sure that the engineers at Flux, I mean, Flux is acting on the entire display, whether it's running or not, basically, it's pretty invasive. And I'm pretty sure that the engineers at Apple said, we cannot allow that app in, it does too much. But this is the sort of thing that needs to be tackled by the

system. This is a system feature, you know, not only should it be a system feature, but it needs to be a system feature rather than being done by a third-party app. And I strongly agree with that, that this is something, Flux exists because the OSs haven't cared about this, not because it should be a third-party app that does it. So, I don't know, it's interesting. We're reading the tea leaves again, but it does seem like Apple's trying some different stuff. And that web page is the best example of it, because that is them getting out in front of the story and saying this is an update that's coming you know basically stealing the thunder of the sites that got to make

some hay reporting on the details of the first developer beta yeah i mean the reason we read the tls on this stuff is because Apple do things a very specific way pretty much all of the time. So when they do something different, it's like a pause for thought, right? You're like, what are you doing here? This is a new one. Sit up and pay attention.

Yeah, exactly. And they've been doing that a lot lately. This is, Apple was very understandable for a long time. They went in cycles. They had the rules. You could see what the rule book is. And there is definitely a culture at Apple today that is questioning some of the rules. And why do we have to do it the way that it's always been? And some of that is Tim Cook instead of Steve. Some of that is Katie Cotton, the head of communications, leaving. the head of communications, leaving. There are new people in positions of authority, and I think they're questioning some of the old assumptions. And this one, I have to say, no matter what it means for Apple's long-term software development, I think this was such a good idea to get out in front of it. If you're Apple, why are you letting 9to5Mac and MacRumors write stories introducing new features that are coming to your operating system. Why? Why are you

doing that? We don't live in a world where developer betas are a secret. They're not. You know they're not a secret. So why pretend that they don't exist until... I know it would be better if you could just deliver the features on the day of and communicate them, but you can't. So get out in front of it. Take control of your own story and i think it's great that they did it's super smart should have done a long time ago but um you know what they did it and uh i think i think it's a really smart move for them is there anything else in nine three you wanted to talk about i wanted to ask you i've gotten reports that people who use the apple pencil are very unhappy with the first developer beta of 9.3.

Have you tried it with your Apple Pencil? Sure have. And I wrote a little thing on my Tumblr blog just voicing my frustrations. And I want to make this very clear because I just do. I fully understand that this is a beta. I fully understand that there could be bugs. I get all of that. This could be a bug.

This could be a bug. This could be a change in direction. Whatever it is, it's different. So now the Apple Pencil on 9.3 no longer is able to scroll UI lists and interact with the UI as a replacement for a finger it only works to draw and write now this is a big change in the way that this is working that of course it is potential for a bug but because this is so uh disruptive to me i wanted to talk about it and bring it up just to kind of voice my concern that if this is a change in the way that the Apple Pencil interacts with the iPad, I think Apple is making a big mistake.

Because currently in 9.3, there is nothing to suggest any change to the Apple Pencil to make it, to give it any extra benefit. There is nothing that removing this function is allowing me to do. That may be Apple's plan, but as I say, all I can do is say what I'm seeing. And what I'm seeing is now it has been decided that they don't want people to be scrolling UI and using their ipads as pen input devices um so that that is a concern to me if that is the way it's going to be going forward because i don't know why they would stop that other than a you mustn't use our device in this way and that is a concern for me it seems like a bad user experience in the sense

that you have to mode shift you have to you have to like take the pencil out of your hands and do things and then put the pencil back in your hands yeah where where oftentimes you're just switching you're going i'm going to tap this and scroll this and then i'm going to draw um i have i have two theories one is that this is a bug okay three theories one is it's just a bug one is what they're trying to do is give developers uh the opportunity to decide whether they want to ignore pencil input for things that are not drawing and that this is the kind of emergence of that and then it'll get fixed. And the third theory would be that it's going to be a setting that allows the system to determine whether you want to lock out UI interactions for pencil and only use it for drawing. Because I can see where some people might say, God, the pencil drives me crazy. I'm not, I'm just trying to draw with it. Why does it keep trying to do these UI things? So I don't know

whether that's true or not, but I could see how that might be. So those are my theories is that this is, you know, that this is not Apple saying, no, you'll never use your pencil as this, but that more likely it's either a bug or they're trying to do something that gives either the system or the developers a little more control over whether that non-drawing input can be ignored or not. I would hope that either of those is true as opposed to just no, because that's my thing, right? Like if there's a benefit, if there is some reason that this is being stopped, then that would be great. But that definitely isn't the case right now um i would even call for apple to put a toggle for this accessibility uh because i think that there is a good use case for accessibility here as well yeah it definitely is for me because uh for rsi and things like that, it was way more comfortable for me to use the pen

input. That is my gut feeling, is this is, you know, a side effect of them trying to do something different, and that in future betas, we'll see it. But you're right, if this was in the final product, you would be, you know, you would be right to scream bloody murder about it. But, you know, it's a beta, so on one level, we want to disclaim it on another level we want to kind of draw attention to it in case um this is happening in apple people at apple don't know you filed a radar right uh i didn't file a radar but somebody else filed a radar i sent feedback through the feedback app okay that comes on the device which i believe goes into radar uh yeah i think so but i you know i i got a lot of that people telling me you should file the radar for people that

hadn't actually read what i've written uh in the post which i specifically said i put uh the radar number that somebody else had filed and sent to me very nice um and then i filed my own feedback so yeah look i understand how this stuff works, right? But I wanted to bring it up because I also understand how that stuff works as well. Yeah. Sometimes you have to kind of make a little bit of noise for people to understand what

the issues are. It's very interesting. So I'm going to wait and see on that one. It's a shame. Some people said to me to roll back, right? Oh, you should roll back to 9.2 if this is a big problem for you. But I don't want to do that because if it's going to go away, I need to start getting used to it at some point. So maybe that time will be now.

Plus, rolling back is a nightmare. All right, let's move on to Ask Upgrade. This week's episode and this section of Ask Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace. You can start building your own website today at squarespace.com and you want to use the offer code upgrade at checkout that will get you 10% off Squarespace. Build it beautiful. Squarespace can help you build a site that looks professionally designed regardless of your skill level with no coding required. They

have intuitive and easy to use tools that make building a website a dream and you'll be able to create something that looks and feels exactly a dream and you'll be able to create something that looks and feels exactly the way that you want. Squarespace has state-of-the-art technology that they use to power all of their sites and to give that power to the millions of people that use Squarespace. Squarespace also ensures security and stability which is something that's so important and talking about stability and peace of mind and that kind of stuff they back everything up with their 24-7 support. They have support teams across the world, and they have live chat and email,

so you'll be able to get the answers that you need to the questions that you have if you ever have them. It's just a great thing to know that it's there if you ever need it. Their site templates are all fantastic to look at. They feature responsive design, so they'll make sure that your site looks great on all sizes of device. I'm a big fan of Squarespace's commerce platform. This allows anybody to add a store to their Squarespace site. We use that at Relay.fm to sell stickers and t-shirts at our official store, which you can get to by going to relay.fm. We use Squarespace for

that. They have great integrations that we can plug in. So for example, we have integration with Stripe, so we can actually take payments. I love all of that stuff. I think that it's fantastic that Squarespace do all of that, because it makes it just like a great one-stop shop for people that want to be able to build a fantastic website. If you sign up for a year, you'll also get a free domain name allowing you to choose exactly what you want your site to be called. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com and then when you decide to sign up for a plan, make sure that you use the offer code upgrade. Not only will you be showing your support for this show, you'll get 10% off your first purchase as well. So if you get one

of their annual plans, you'll get a great discount. Thanks so much to Squarespace for their support of this show and RelayFM. Squarespace, beautiful, beautiful. All right, so AskUpgrade, Jason, it is time. John would like to know, which Apple TV model did you purchase and how much space do you have left? So I went with a 32 gigabytes. I have no idea how much space I have left. I know it will be a lot because I don't install a lot of stuff on it.

I have the same answer as you. I bought the, I bought the cheapest Apple TV for, and I don't know how much space I have left. And I kind of don't care because that's not how I use it. I don't want to much space I have left and I kind of don't care because that's not how I use it I don't want to manage the space on it and it hasn't been a problem up to now but I don't have a lot of stuff on it I have you know 10 apps or something like that yeah so it's it's not sorry John yeah we just we just kind of are not paying attention to it and trying not to care I don't put anything on it right so I can't imagine it's ever going to be an issue. Well, he says there could be things, but the way that tvOS is built right now,

like I'm not going to be downloading catalogs of video and games, right? It's all built to not really do that. Well, video doesn't even get stored. It would be the app data. Exactly. Yeah, haven't noticed anything there. Nope, not me. I don't spend a lot of time playing Apple TV games.

I mean, mostly I'm using the Apple TV for purchased stuff, iTunes purchased stuff, and Plex. That's mostly what I'm using it for right now. I didn't know you were a Plex user. You know, I've got... So, yeah. I mean, it casey's fault but um i can i actually have it on a on a server that is also running itunes and those files are i you know i can add them to itunes and they show

up there but the nice thing is if they're not in an itunes compatible format they still show up in plex and it sort of saves a step if you have a file that you just drop on there you don't have to get it in the right format and add it to iTunes. Plex just sort of sees it and updates its library. So I'm sort of shifting to that just because I was doing a lot of effort to get things in an iTunes format for watching on my TV on an Apple TV. And now I don't have to because Apple TV runs the Plex app and that works. Okay, next up we have Brian. Have you tried CloudMagic email for Mac yet?

If so, what do you think of it? I put this in because I've had a lot of people ask me. CloudMagic is an iOS app that has recently made its debut on Mac. I haven't tried it. I actually have never tried CloudMagic. And it sounds so stupid. I hate't tried it. Um, I actually have never tried cloud magic. One of, and it sounds so stupid. I hate that brand name. Um, I just don't like it like that. And, and their whole branding doesn't really excite me very much. Uh, so I've not tried cloud magic and I know that it's like, don't judge a book by its cover type scenario. But the reason brands exist is because people do judge books by their cover.

But more than anything, really, the reason that I haven't tried it out now is I'm really happy with Outlook on iOS. And these days, I am doing about 95% of my email on iOS. So I haven't felt the desire to make any change. I wasn't really that interested in Cloud Magic for iOS so I'm not going to switch over for Mac I'm using AirMail on my Mac and that's doing a pretty good job of what I need it to do

whenever I am at my Mac doing email but the majority of the time I am using Outlook on iOS on my iPhone and my iPad as my predominant email app. Same for me. I haven't tried it. The Mac version looks very much like a Gmail interface. Maybe I should try it only because I'm using Mailplane, which is a Mac wrapper around Gmail. And that's what I use on the Mac. And then on iOS, I am also using Outlook right now. But you know, it's something that I every so often I

will get in a phase where I will have a bunch of email clients and I will try them all out and, and then use one for a while. I'm in the cruise phase with Outlook right now where that's what I'm using. But at some point, I will look around again. And I'll check it out. But right now, I haven't. It's not time. But right now, I haven't. It's not time. Nicholas would like to know what our favorite condiments are. I like ketchup a lot.

And if it would count, maybe maple syrup. Depending on what I'm eating. It's very rare, except for bacon, that I would use those condiments on the same thing. I don't use them at the same time, but bacon I have with ketchup and with maple syrup depending on what is surrounding the bacon. I don't feel like maple syrup is a condiment. Yeah, that's why I wasn't sure about that one.

Maybe. You could argue it, and we could start condiment or not. I don't want to do that. A limited series podcast. And I would actually agree with you. Ketchup is my favorite condiment, without a doubt. Ketchup makes almost everything better. It goes with so many things.

I know. You get a little tomato savory. You get some vinegar action going in there, a little sweet on top of it. It's great. Perfect. There are many great condiments. Don't get me wrong. All the great condiments. Ketchup is the king of condiments.

And Richard would like to know, this is a meta question, and I quite like this. How many questions on average do you get for Ask Upgrade on a weekly basis? I would say that we get probably about 30 questions a week. Maybe I feel like that's a good number, maybe between like 20 and 30. questions a week maybe i feel like that's a good number maybe between like 20 and 30 um but the participants vary quite a lot it's not always the same people which i do really like um and always you know don't forget if you ever have questions and even follow up for the show you just tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and we get them um and as jason pointed out in our document here uh in the last two weeks we we've been getting way more muffin-related things on the Ask Upgrade hashtag than usual questions.

Yeah, I think we got fewer questions and comments than usual because everybody was really focused on Muffingate. And also, Nicholas, I see what you're doing here. You're trying to create a condiment vertical, and you may have succeeded. We'll have to see. But I see the game you're playing. Oh, yeah, you've got to think two moves ahead with have to see. But I see the game you're playing.

Oh, yeah. You got to think two moves ahead with these upgrade listeners. They're smart. They're smart. Devious upgradians. I know. Yesterday evening, I can't remember how this came up. But I think Adina said something about, oh, upgradians happen only once a year. And I was like, no, no, darling. The Upgradies

happen once a year. Upgradians are our listeners. And it just made me realize just how complicated over time the naming conventions have become. But how dearly I love them. Yes. Yeah, we are the secret society of Upgrade.

We should have, like, a seal. A secret seal for the secret society. Oh, you do say, huh? Hmm. That's foreshadowing. What if we did? But we don't yet. But it's so secret you don't even know what it is. We do.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find links for today's show, go to relay.fm upgrade.72. I want to thank again for today's show go to relay.fm upgrade 72 i want to thank again smile and squarespace for sponsoring this week's show if you want to find us online you can head on over to sixcolors.com where you'll find jason jason also uh hosts a couple of great podcasts on relay fm as well as this one um and they are liftoff and clockwise. And of course, you can find a cavalcade of shows over at theincomparable.com.

If you want to find me online, you can head on over to Twitter. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and I am the host of many shows on the fine RelayFM network. Just go to relay.fm and you'll find a bunch of great shows there. All the great shows, as some would say. I want to thank you all for listening, as always,

and we'll be back next week with another episode of Upgrade. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Bye, Mike. Is that you typing goodbye?