Upgrade - 80: I Can Hear Your Future Screams

Episode Date: March 14, 2016

Myke is back to defend the iPad as a TV, before he and Jason discuss the expectations of Apple's March 21st event, and why @AppleSupport exists. They go on to talk about why Oculus is unlikely to ever come to the Mac, and address some more thoughts about Firewatch.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 80 today's show is brought to you by mail route backblaze and it pro tv my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell good morning mr jason snell hi mike how you doing i'm well. How are you, Sam? I feel closer to you for some reason this week. We're closer in time than space. No? No. Just time. Okay. Maybe if I shift my chair ever so slightly.

Oh, yeah. I'll move to the... Well, no, it'll move me away from the microphone. But, yeah, this is that time when the United States has moved forward in time by an hour. And so we're an hour closer to you because the United Kingdom has not yet moved forward in time by an hour to British summertime. How long is it before you move your clock ahead? Two weeks. Two weeks. That's not too bad. No.

But you have two weeks where everything on your calendar is topsy-turvy because the Americans are closer to you. It is nicer though because I do everything just a little bit earlier. It means I go to bed earlier too. It's all good. That's nice. The Upgradians are assembling.

They are. It's happening. So the hoodies and the t-shirts are arriving. The Saturday seemed to be the big day where so many people got their got their upgrade hoodies i have um a hoodie and a shirt in memphis i also have my others on the way they are in the uk so i may have my merchandise within the next couple of weeks. Which means now that the hoodie secret is out there, but we are not going to spoil

it, because people are still receiving them. If you want to know, it's possible to find, you know, if you look through tweets to the Upgrader account, or tweets to me and Jason, look at the images coming in, you will be able to see. Maybe in a couple of weeks' time we can put some nice pictures

in the show notes uh but not right now because i don't want to spoil the secret because everybody on this side of the atlantic doesn't have their hoodies yeah right and yeah you have yours i do have mine i look like they came out really well i'm very very excited actually they did it's funny i i actually so i've had one speaking of time travel, I've had one since like December because they made a sample for us because this wasn't something that they had done before at the Cotton Bureau. And they had to get work with a partner who had the embroidered patch and they had to get the hoodie, which is not something that we'd done with them before. And it's a specific make of hoodie that was one of their ones that was available. And it's, it's actually my favorite heavy hoodie design.

So, so they made me a sample. So I've had that for a while. I wasn't quite right. There were a couple of things we changed based on the sample, but now I've got the real, the real thing. And it's,

it's, it's very nice. So it's, it's, it's fun to have that, that project be over and for people to be getting them. And yeah, I mean, if people want to post what the secret is, they are welcome to. I've heard from a lot of people who just said they liked the secret and then didn't specify it.

And then one person did have a picture of it. So, you know, it's out there if you want to look for it. The truth is out there. Last week was a great episode. You and mr john syracuse uh um oh thanks that's right yes you were you were not here so so i i this is the second uh time it is it is really topsy-turvy we we did that on a sunday night with with john instead of you uh that was fun It's always fun to talk to John. I don't talk to John one-on-one very often, other than when we're talking about robots or not. We only do that every few months. I had many things.

I was many times during the show screaming at the... I'm sure you were. That's part of the joy of you not being on, is I get to say things and I can hear your future screams. So I could pick up many of the things, especially the last segment of things you can't talk to Mike about. Especially the phone portion. But we won't go into that right now. But there was something I couldn't let go.

It was a passing comment. I couldn't let go, which was a very, it was a passing comment. It was a passing comment in a, you know, that looking down the nose from Mr. Syracuse or Mr. Snell. Yep. And I believe it was John that said, but you wholeheartedly agreed with the, the, the idea that the iPad pro does not do well as a television. Correct. Okay.

So I'm glad we agree about this mike this is this is the statement that you made and i need to address that statement because i couldn't disagree with you more uh and these i will list my my feelings about this so one the screen is nice and big and it looks great um i will not take it from anyone it's you know it's not as great as a 50-inch plasma, but it's a really nice screen. And when you hold it close enough to you, it's nice and big. You know, it's like the perspective thing. It looks good.

The speakers are really good on it. I love the speakers. I was listening to a podcast today on my iPhone, and I switched over to my iPad, and the difference is so incredible. Those four speakers are fantastic. But here's one of the other things that I think make it good.

It has all the apps that you want. It has more apps on it than the Apple TV does for content, right? Looking at you, Amazon. They're all on there. So I think that makes it a good TV device. And I think the main thing, though, the main reason why I think that the iPad Pro is a good TV is because it depends on the device that you're looking for. Like, I know what a big

screen experience is like. There are times that we choose to do that. Like we were just watching House of Cards and we watched the majority of episodes of House of Cards on the big TV because it was like a big spectacle thing. But there were some that we watched in bed because we tend to prefer the comfort, me and Adina I'm talking about, my lovely lady friend we like to be in bed when we watch tv and the best way for us to do that is with the ipad pro it's better than trying to fit a 50 inch tv into bed with us and it looks the screen is great the speakers are great it is a good tv so uh that is my feeling no matter what you say um or no matter what john says that is my feeling. No matter what you say or no matter what John says, that's the truth. So what you're saying is Mike was right.

No, it's more John and Jason were wrong. Yeah, I get it. So the ergonomics of it, I think, is what I have a problem with. And maybe, you know, these kids today with their iPads in bed watching TV, it's fine. But when, whenever my wife or I see a, uh, a video that we want to share when we're, when we're, you know, getting up in the morning or going to bed at night, like, oh, there's this funny, a lot of times in the morning, it's like, did you see this funny video? Or did you see this movie trailer? Why don't you look at it? And then it becomes this thing where you're kind of holding it out and both people are trying to see it, nobody's at quite the right angle and you got to

kind of hold the ipad there in order to get it or maybe you try to fit it in uh like an angle that's right and uh like last night we watched uh we watched uh last week tonight with john oliver before going to bed and we have a tv it's not a 50 inch plasma but we have a tv it is attached to the wall in our bedroom and i was able to turn on the tv and and turn it to hbo and watch last week tonight and i didn't have to hold anything but we're not holding though it was big stand so where does it put it down so you you have it you have it in a stand so i have it in the keyboard cover okay and then we just we put it in the middle of us okay is that not is that not tilty or tenuous is it is it does not gonna like flop over never does unless one of us is moving around like a crazy person like if one of us stands up right there might be enough

this sounds so weird so you remember to stay very still while watching tv very still see now you're putting words in my mouth snail and i will not accept that it's that it stays up perfectly fine on its own we never have problems of it falling over also our cat would just come along and push it over yeah that also would happen that that also would absolutely happen because he thinks ipads our cat thinks ipads are the least cat-like thing in the world which means he must rub on them all the time in order to get them to be more cat-like and smell more like a cat. So the iPads, the corners of our iPads are just a target for him. So he would knock it over if we even tried something like that. I don't know, even if it's like down and it's great that you're comfortable watching it that way. But I don't I'm comfortable watching an iPad as a TV if it's just me.

But I'm not I don't find it comfortable to watch a show with my wife in, you know, whether we're in bed or on the couch or whatever with the iPad, because it just it doesn't feel comfortable to me. No, I understand that it works for you. That's great. But I think that's where John and I are both coming from is that while you can do it, for us, it's like that would be a last resort, not a preference. Yeah. No, I get it. Because it's definitely a different strokes thing. But I just wouldn't allow the sweeping statement to be unanswered. So there is my answer.

Yeah. I'm surprised that that was what you uh that was what you complained actually i'm not i i knew you would complain about that i last last week's episode was a series of of things that we just discussed gleefully things that i know that you would not yeah no that you would object to i got it don't worry i got it you know the whole pizza discussion i you know i just don't have the time we would be we'd be spending the entire episode uh with me arguing well yeah you and i are well i mean john is just john john's gonna have his take on pizza i i uh you you and i are are much more aligned on pizza

than i that felt very much like a robot or not conversation where i get in this mode where i'm just trying to probe john and find out what his own rules are. And that's sort of my objective there is not to prove him wrong because he's not wrong or right. It's just his worldview. I'm trying to get at his worldview, but I don't share it, obviously, because I make pizza that is pizza and I make pizza that is something else by his definition and so be it uh this weekend we're making pizza me and anyone decide we're gonna we're gonna make pizza this weekend and uh the ingredients that i have requested a pepperoni and pineapple so i will be making a pepperoni and pineapple pizza this weekend so look forward to follow up on that on next week's show on the pizza cast i think the supreme court pizza vertical the supreme court of pizza it has left an opening for us with the

approval the sort of limited approval of the hawaiian pizza and the approval of pepperoni as a topping i feel like we're so close to getting that passed through you know i don't know i don't know quite how we uh how we will i think our society will have to change to accept that passed through you know i don't know i don't know quite how we uh how we will i think our society will have to change to accept that you could replace ham with uh with with uh pepperoni and it's still valid well see this is the thing right so a lot of john's reasoning was based on the fact that he was judging new york pizza yeah well that's that's exactly it so this is this is mill valley pizza and you are yeah it's california pizza well i mean that's that that john would agree with you he's like yeah california again like he said california you guys could do

all sorts of crazy things out there and that's there's nothing i can i can't really answer that with anything other than yeah i suppose so like make like make weird pizza that tastes good so listeners of this show i I think should go straight away after hearing this and listen to episode 310 of Mac Power Users. You joined David and Katie to talk about your first year

as an independent publisher. And David's first year. Of course. It really is more of David's anniversary than mine. Mine's a little, it's almost coming up a year and a half now. But for David, it is his first anniversary of being out on his own. And that was the motivating factor for that interview. I felt bad for Katie because she had a career change too, but it's not the same sort of thing. She's just doing a different firm kind of thing. But for me and David, it was very similar to the conversations we've had over lunch for the last five years.

He and I have both been talking about this subject and this time we did it for Mac Power users. So I have that queued up. I'm very excited to listen to it. I'm listening to an audio book right now for Cortex. So I have to finish that but as soon as that is finished this is my next is my next listen is that you're listening to an audiobook for cortex is that another like strange 1990s self-help book that is no this has

been disavowed and disclaimed but yet is still available on audio i made the choice this time and choice creativity inc oh okay well okay. Well, that's fine. Because I've wanted to listen to that or read that book for a while. Oh, you can listen to the Incomparable episode afterward. Did you do an episode about that? We did. That's where I know I've heard it. I've listened to that before and I knew I heard it somewhere.

That's it. And that was it. Because you guys, I remember now, because there are things that happen. I'm like, I'm sure I've heard this before what podcast discussed this it was you look at that so yeah i'll put that in the show notes too and i will re-listen to that having uh having heard the book i'm enjoying it i am enjoying it so i'll be talking about that on the next episode of cortex if you want to tune in you can feel free to um i also last piece of uh last piece of follow-up which is something that's happening in my life right now i made my first order with uh amazon prime now today oh is it coming by drone

is it being dispatched by drone this is why we mentioned it right this is why i brought because we we spoke about that drone discussion many many weeks ago um and basically what it was, is it was kind of my, my original kind of thinking about the, the drone was ordering video games. And you're going to have a video game in a box delivered by a drone. That was exactly what I did today, but we're prime now because there's a game out now called the division. It's the new Tom Clancy game based on Tom Clancy stuff. I don't even know if they're books anymore.

I've been seeing great things from it for some friends. Federico's got it. He says he really enjoys it. So I decided I wanted it. And it would be, in my situation, quicker for me to order it by Prime Now than try and download it. It's like a 36 gigabyte game. So I ordered it.

And just as we started recording, I heard a thunk downstairs, so it's come through the letterbox. So I'll be playing it today. Now, where I live, we don't have the within one hour Prime Now. I didn't know this existed, but there is a kind of a second tier of it where it's same day.

So I ordered this at like 11am this morning and it arrived at 3 o'clock and my delivery window is between 2 and 4 and in the app once it's dispatched you can track the person in real time it really is kind of terrible and

brilliant at the same time these things kind of the fact that they exist feels so bad that like I ordered a video game today and somebody brought it to me from a warehouse and put it through my letterbox. But I love that it exists for the exact same reason. I've never used it because Mill Valley is not in. Although we have pizza, it is not in.

Have you checked it recently? It's not in. I checked it last week. We are not listed in Prime now. I have the app. i keep looking but i we haven't gotten coverage it really is kind of cool i mean they have a limit i think it's like 40 or 50 pounds you have to spend which makes sense to me like if i was ordering like a bottle of milk that would be just atrocious um to have this person bring to me but it's really cool for this kind of thing it didn't cost me anything more as a Prime member to have it delivered today.

So, it's a big thumbs up from me, so I know what I'm going to be doing once the show's over. Interesting. Playing a video game or ordering more things on Prime now? Both. Playing the game of ordering things. They should call it Prime soon if you don't get it in an hour.

Prime at some point. Less catchy. Prime today. Later today. Let's take a break. This week's episode is brought to you by ITProTV. Do you have a career plan set in motion? Whether you're looking to start a career in IT,

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Try it out for free for seven days, plus 30% off the lifetime of your account. Thank you so much to ITProTV for their support of this show. Adding to the catalog of American versus British things that we sometimes detail on this show. It's Pi Day today. Do you know about Pi Day? 3.14. Right. Except in Britain, it would be 1.4.3. 1.4.3, yeah. Which is not Pi, unless Pi has changed, unless the rules of mathematics have changed in England, which I don't think they have. And Mrs. Soup in the chat room pointed out that actually if you round pi to four four decimal points, that's 3.1416 which is

again, in American nomenclature, that's today. It's ultimate pi day. Yeah, I guess. Except only when you do the funny ordering that we do here in America that Casey List doesn't like. I'm very used to it now, though.

Yeah, I know. Well, we've been saying it's a long-running gag that you're becoming increasingly American and all your visits to America and all your conversations with Americans don't help this point. Although I was struck by how, this is a little mini follow-out, I suppose. I was struck by how I feel like I listen to some relay shows now and am impressed that you've gotten some more European flavor on the network. Obviously, Canvas is very European. And Remaster, too. um and uh remaster too we have and remaster remaster because that's that's uh you and shahid are in uh england in the uk and then and then federico in italy so um i've listened to both of those and and been struck by by that which is kind of fun so it's not all just the americans taking over just mostly whilst we're doing this random follow-up there is a fun little

thing you can do it's a fun game you can play. Talking about my accent and the way it's changed. Uh-huh. The oldest thing that you can maybe find is episode one of The Pen Addict, recorded in 2012. Just, if you want to hear it, I'll put it in the show notes.

Yeah, because you took down all of the old episodes of, like, the original Command Space and stuff like that. Yeah, well, the show that came before it, like my original shows. Yeah, this is a lot of the old stuff. Basically, if it didn't move to 5x5 when we moved over there, it kind of doesn't exist anymore. Right. But The Pen Addict is the one show that's followed me for years.

It's, wow, 2012 we started. Yeah so so if you want to hear mike from from early 2012 yep we have a terrible microphone uh you you should go listen to that because it it really is kind of surprising uh i don't actually recognize my own voice from it it's very very peculiar but there you go you can go listen to that if you like something i want to get your take on. This happened a couple of weeks ago. Kind of out of the blue, this is on the 3rd of March, Apple created

a new Twitter account at Apple Support. It is a public Twitter support system. They have open hours from 5 to 8 Pacific every day. And it's like any corporate support that you have come

across before you know they say send us DMs and stuff like that they send out tips and all that kind of great stuff they have nearly 200,000 followers already why did they do this? this is very different

it's the thing to do Why did they do this? This is very different. It's the thing to do. I don't know. I think this is an example of somebody at Apple saying, why not try it? Right? Like, we don't normally do this. A lot of other companies do this. You see it from companies with large scale, with lots of customers, airlines, things like that.

The cable company does it. So why can't we do it? Why shouldn't we do it? Do we not have the resources to do this? Would it not be helpful to help our customers? I can, you know, I'm sort of doing it right here. I could work myself up into the person who make, you know, I can make that argument, right? I could say, why wouldn't we do this? Why aren't we doing this? Why didn't, are we not opening up to the public

more than we ever have before? Perhaps this would be a way for us to do that. And we could do it from a, you know, a brand account, just like the other big companies do. It wouldn't be like a person or something we would need to pay, you know, we would need a team. But perhaps this could save us in the long run in terms of reducing the time to get a genius bar appointment or anything like that. You know, maybe maybe it would help retail out and and phone support if we could do this Twitter support stuff as part of our support portfolio. And this is the kind of thing that nobody would have suggested, I think, or at least nobody high up would have thought politically acceptable to suggest to Apple before. But Apple has changed its communication strategy a lot, really since Katie Cotton left is the biggest change, I think. So yeah, so I think that's, I suspect that that's what happened is that somebody in the support area has been seeing what their peers in support

have done at other companies for a long time. And this is another tool for them. From my experience of working in a big company, some of this pressure actually comes from twitter as well like they lobby big companies to have these accounts so you know there's there's also that on the other side right they help them get them set up and they really try and push the message for why this type of thing should exist which is you know smart for them to do because it's it becomes another channel that people can talk to companies through it's just an interesting move because it doesn another channel that people can talk to companies through. It's just an interesting move because it doesn't really seem like it's come from anywhere specific, right? Like it's just appeared.

And I know that we've seen like some of the Apple gaming accounts and stuff like that, but previously support whilst good at Apple has been quite restricted to certain areas. You know, it's mainly flow through the genius, but through the stores. And I wonder how many people they must have taken care of an operation like this. I was wondering that too,

but I don't know, you know, somebody who might know, um, is our, uh, our, uh,

friend, Scott McNulty, um, who worked at Comcast for a while. He wasn't at Comcast Cares, but he knew the people who were. And he could probably tell us. I'd imagine that...

It depends on the volume. I mean, if you constrain the hours, you need customer service reps on this, although I don't know how many. Because I did have a thought, actually, when this account launched, that I guess Twitter jail isn't a thing anymore. Because the number of the avalanche of replies that come from this account, it was just amazing how many replies were coming out of it. Well, yeah, because they use services right so there are there are customer support services that are set up sure and i would assume that they have

kind of unrestricted access right and so my guess is there's a help desk app of some sort that takes that consumes yeah all of the um all of the tweets and then basically they're like tickets. And then people grab a ticket and say, I'll answer this one. This one's mine. And then they answer it, and then they mark it. And if there's a reply to that one, that they would get marked that there was a reply, and they would follow the chain so that they can split up the duty across multiple people. I do hope this is not one person sitting in TweetBot, hitting reply and looking things up

on a web browser, because that would be a really tough job. No, that's exactly how it works. So Apple are using a system called Sprinkler. You can see that from what they're replying to. But I have used, not have used, I have seen the use of tools like this.

There's a tool called radian six which is does this kind of thing it's exactly that it turns incoming tweets into support tickets um and then they're dealt with that way and also these services can kind of track keywords and stuff like that around the the brand to give a kind of an idea like a score of how these things are progressing and the kind of the way that people are interacting with you. It is valuable. It's very valuable. I think it is a good thing that Apple are doing this, trying to make the customer service

a little bit more accessible and open to people who maybe don't have Apple care, I think is a good thing. Yeah, yeah, I'm all for it. I think more the more things they do like this i mean you are going to end up in you know you are asking for people to yell at you when they're mad because their thing doesn't work just like the airlines are and just like comcast you know and all the other cable companies are you are you are going to get that but you can also do things like you know i know we make fun of people a lot for things like you could Google it.

Like I get emails and I don't make fun of them, but I roll my eyes sometimes when people are like, hey, what's that article you did about this? I get emails like that and tweets like that. And it's like literally if you type the thing that they asked me about into Google or maybe add site colon six colors dot com into Google, it's the first result. It's right there. It didn't take, but you know what? Some people don't think like that. They don't understand how that works. They don't, they, they just, that's not the way that they approach things. So yeah, if you can pop in there and be like, oh, it's here. Like we've, we've got the, they know where all the tech documentation resources are posted on Apple site. They can, they do a quick search. They find the, the, the tech note about it. They paste it back in, say, check this out. This answers your question.

That's nice, right? That's nice. It's not, they're not necessarily going to be able to do like massive troubleshooting, but they can do within the constraints of Twitter. They can do that. And if somebody is having a real problem, this happens with all of these customer service, Twitter accounts, they'll say, follow us and send dm yeah and we will and then basically they're putting it into email support they're putting it into a uh it's a path into their main support structure which is also i mean in the in the end yeah it's more work and more effort but um they're a big company with a lot of customers to support. So another channel into their support system, another customer who's not just frustrated

and doesn't know where to turn, that's all for the good, I would say. Yeah, I just thought it was an interesting thing because it's a market change, right? This is one of the things I think since Tim took over, we've been talking a lot about, is just the things that are changing in apple the things that are new which seem to come from his leadership and a man who talks about

customer satisfaction so often it is unsurprising that they have increased their support capabilities well as as brilliant as steve jobs was in a lot of ways, though, also, I would say I feel like Steve Jobs had a worldview and it benefited him and it benefited Apple. But I'm not sure how much room there was for certain stuff in Steve Jobs' worldview. And I think his worldview, who's to say if he had not lived, he would not have adapted to some of this stuff. think this is one of those areas where um it it took a change in leadership for at the ceo level at the head of corporate communications level for somebody to say let's re let's reevaluate where we are right now and you know i i'm not to say steve jobs would answer emails right but something like having a whole customer service thing on twitter you know apple apple was locked down the whole a lot of their strategy was, let's just control everything. And so to have anybody put themselves out there seemed like, you know, it's not impossible, but it would be a harder battle to fight. Because you'd have to convince some people who were entrenched, whether it got to Steve or whether it got to Katie or whether, I don't know who it would have had to get to in that era. But now I think everybody at Apple feels like there's a bigger spirit of, at IDG, we used

to call it, let's try this, which was one of the Pat McGovern corporate values. And I always liked it that that was something that he put in his company was, if you've got an idea about something that you think could be good for the company, let's give it a try. got an idea about something that you think could be good for the company. Let's give it a try. And Apple seems to be in a let's try this phase right now where they're where for a while they were like, look, we've got a we've got a thing that's working for us. This is the system we set up essentially when Steve came back to Apple. We set it up this way. This is working. We've got products to make. Let's go. And for the last couple of years, it seems like they've taken the time to say, let's revisit some of those things that we set up in 1997, you know, through 2000,

when we were getting started here. And the world has moved on a little bit. Maybe we can do things better. And I just, I love that Apple is showing that flexibility. I'm not saying that Apple support is like the greatest thing in the world that's going to solve a lot of problems. But I think it's a nice, don't you think? It's like a nice symptom of change at Apple, if nothing else. I do. I think it's, I mean, I know it seems strange, but it is an indication of the openness that they are displaying because they are openly allowing people to send all of their problems

out into the world and focus them towards an account. Like if you just go and look at the mentions you see hate right and things that are wrong and things that are going wrong for people. You can go and see all of that and that doesn't really feel like a traditional Apple way of wanting to do things right like to point focus at

the problems but this is something that should exist because in the long run it will actually help people and reduce the burden of people trying to maybe call or get a genius bar appointment this is this is this should be part of the overall support structure which it is which is which is good i'm glad that it exists well that that's there i think there are a lot of benefits i mean you you can also see them going out there and trying to help people, which I think is to their benefit.

Stonewalling and pretending that nobody has any problems and everything you do is fantastic is a locked down communication strategy. That is definitely the old way of doing things at Apple. But it's not realistic, right? I mean, people still talk about the frustrations that they've got. And finding ways to channel it and acknowledge it and make it better. I do think that goes back to Tim Cook talking about customer sat all the time. I think talking about the John Oliver show on HBO, they did a long piece last night about encryption.

And it's great. And I recommend that people watch it. I imagine that it's on YouTube now. If not, it will be soon because they tend to post their stuff there. But it was really good. But one of the points that they made toward the end that I thought was really effective is that Apple acts like all of its stuff is this magical thing and that they can do anything. And that's the mystique of Apple, which is great marketing, but it bites you when you talk about something like encryption, because you see all these people saying, essentially, these are computer geniuses who can do anything. Surely they can create a whole new form of encryption that is secureged sword here where apple has created a mystique about it

that in some cases is dangerous because it leads to backlash whether that backlash is people in congress thinking that apple can make a magical encryption form that doesn't exist or whether it's that customers get angry because they were told that this would be magical but they're having a problem with their hardware talking Talking about the encryption debate, so we have an event booked March 21st. It will be the Apple event for

new products. Before we talk about the new products and what we think could or couldn't be there, do you think they're going to address this in any way? My guess would be that the opening remarks from tim assuming there are some would touch on it but obliquely that would be my guess yeah that he'll say you know we remain committed to our customers privacy and security around the world and then just kind of like and people might applaud that but that that there won't be any more detail than that my feeling

is that is probably what's going to happen um i'm taking an outside bet on uh mention to making ios even more secure for ios 10 at this event could could be my guess is that i mean i i think it wouldn't be that specific i think it would be more like we're and we're working on ways to make it even more secure in the future but like that literally that would be it that that that's as much as i think it could go um if they're going to talk about anything they may you know he may just say something along those lines but i agree other than that it's kind of just like you know we have great stuff to do to talk about today but i just want to mention how we're committed to our customers blah blah blah let's talk about what we're expecting to see so just run for a little checklist of the things that

have been mentioned here so smaller iphone potentially named the iPhone SE, right? Yep, that's in the German report. So we're expecting that's going to be it. The Apple invitation, whilst that's always fun to look at, shows the four colors. So whatever devices that are going to be unveiled will probably have the four colors, the gray, the silver, silver the gold and the rose uh-huh in the in this household right here we are hoping that there is a smaller iphone released and it is a good product uh because that's something we're looking forward to getting for adina here because adina would prefer the smaller iphone she most definitely

would yeah and her phone currently is just based it may as well be falling to pieces um do we think we're going to see 10 inch ipad pro probably yes right it feels like it's ipad time all the rumors say say so say that that the what we've been talking about is the the ipad air 3 that now may be called an ipad a smaller ipad pro and this is with pencil support and the smart connector will happen. The naming, it'll be interesting to see the naming because naming is a little more flexible in some ways than the hardware. It's definitely more flexible. I don't know if you could change it at the last minute, but it's more flexible than hardware. And how they explain iPhone SE, how they explain iPad Pro. Always good to see the way Apple refers to these products

and explains how they fit, if they do. But I imagine we'll see that. New Apple Watch bands. Don't they always have new Apple Watch bands? Feels like it now. I mean, they're a seasonal thing, which makes perfect sense. It feels like this is going to be a thing. And, you know, again, referring to the original Goemon reports,

we're looking at potentially a NATO-style band. NATO bands are like these material woven bands. Yeah. And I really hope we do see some of those because I love that band. I had a Seiko watch which had one of those previously and was very happy with that so i would like to see that and also just some change in the apple watch band designs you know new designs is great rather than just new colors um to keep that product fresh i don't think we're

going to get anything more apple watch related outside of that i agree and that the question there is do they do like a little update and say, hey, Apple Watch, it's great. We're doing some new colors today, moving on. Or if that, or they just make new colors available. I think that's what we're going to see. If anything, I think it's going to be very,

I think it's going to be very quiet about the Apple Watch here, other than just new colors, because I just think they maybe won't want to put too much focus on it yet, because they don't have new hardware. And as we discussed in the past, the current hardware is getting a little long in the tooth now. Because what is it?

So two years old? It's been a year. Okay. Well, it's been a year since it shipped. Yeah, but I'm thinking since it shipped. Yeah. But I'm thinking like since we originally saw it, right? Like is that the whole story, right? Like you're thinking when you first saw the product and then it was...

Anyway. I was a Macworld employee when we first saw the Apple Watch. There you go. There you go. So there's your gauge of time. A year and a half. What about new Macs? What do you think here?

We're going to see anything Macintosh related? There definitely seem to be new Macs? What do you think here? We're going to see anything Macintosh related? There definitely seem to be new Macs coming. Definitely heard rumbles about possibly a new MacBook. Definitely heard the rumbles about new MacBook Pro models. I think it's an open question. I think

a week from today would be a perfect time to do it. I think it comes down to what of like what's the runtime of the event and what do they want to focus on? Because you could release Macs without an event. You really could. And they often do. But they might use the event just to give it a little extra push and release them.

So I don't know. I'm on the fence about that, about whether they're going to do that or not. Do they want to mix the Mac into their message about these other products? At the same time, this does seem like an odds and ends kind of event. Yes. With the small iPhone variation and the, you know, a new smaller iPad Pro and that does the things that the other iPad Pro does. And sure, so throw in some new Macs too.

So that, if I had to bet, I'd probably bet that they will because it adds a little more weight, a little more heft to the event, right? Not that it matters what I think to Apple, but if they were going to follow my advice, it would be to do it all at once because there's not going to be one singular product here, I believe, if what we're getting is what has been rumored. There's not one singular product here that is a real headline on its own. These are all small products that aren't in the top tier of Apple's products,

especially where the iPad, we've seen all of the features potentially already in the iPad Pro. So my feeling would be you bombard to get lots of headlines. So you just have lots of little stories as bombard to get lots of headlines. So you just have lots of little stories as opposed to the iPhone big story. Yeah, you make it up in volume. That's right. There's a lot here. It's not a lot.

It's new, but there's a lot of it. That would be my feeling is you just go for everything in the hopes that something will grab someone. I think that's the most likely. It kind of funny if if it really is i mean you could argue that the the new ipad is the biggest story because that 10 inch size is probably the sweet spot for the ipad uh in terms of sales certainly i would think so but but yeah it's it's a grab bag event. Yeah. So we will be recording after the event, as we usually do. So we will have an episode on Monday. Sometime on Monday the 21st, after the event, we will do a recording and catch up. And that'll be our first.

It's kind of a nice rhythm. That upgrade becomes like the first take right afterward, breaking breaking it down and talking about it and then you will go off and do some analysis with connected later in the week yeah and then we will come back with sort of our week-long reflection the on the on the actually are you even on the the one the week after or is that one of the the no so i will come back a week later with reflections with a special guest to be uh to be invited because i haven't invited anybody because you're out that week. But anyway, I like that kind of pattern that we're going to get the quick hit right after the event. So we will do that.

We don't know when, but sometime on Monday. Yes, I've blocked out my entire day for the event. Yeah, so it might be late for you, but stay up late. Yeah. If you want to listen live we'll be tweeting about it currently the schedule is just blocked off for the whole day so that's that i mean you know as is usual it's not not too much here but we like to kind of just do a little roundup of what we think is going to happen so we can reflect back on it i really do

think we're going to get an odds and ends event with a fbi statement basically at the beginning and a kind of look forward at the end towards WWDC we're getting quite close now it feels to me to WWDC so I think that we're going to see some of the groundwork being laid here we've obviously got 9.3 on the horizon so we can expect a demo

of 9.3 potentially with a feature or two that we don't know about yet to support something we don't yet know about, right? So, you know, the 10-inch iPad Pro might have a little thing, you know, maybe whatever it was they were doing with the Apple Pencil. We might see some kind of

signs of that kind of thing, but we'll at least get another demo of 9.3. Maybe something Mac-related. There's, you know, there's the rumblings of iTunesunes being worked on or apple music being split out which was kind of spoken about in that episode of the talk show but we haven't seen anything about that yet right i don't know i mean there's two ways to view this event too one is um that it's uh it's the uh beginning of 2016 yeah. And the other way to view it is

it's the end of the model year, the 2015 model year. And that, right? Because it's all this kind of incremental improvement. I mean, if they're new Macs, then it's sort of the beginning of the Mac year. But for this iOS stuff, it seems much more like it's the kind of

extras from last year's technology. And then a WWDC is where we kick off the next product cycle for Apple. You could view this event as either a beginning or as an ending. It certainly feels like a transition point. Because it's bringing everything up to speed

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whose name is escaping me. I think he was the guy who was on the time cover, right? Floating in the air with the beach behind him. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. Palmer Lucky. Palmer Lucky, that's it. What an interesting name that is.

I'd like to find out the etymology of that name. But anyway, basically he has been quoted to say that, effectively, Oculus will not support the Mac with their VR headset until Apple makes a good computer for gaming. Now, this is something that the kind of the underpinnings of the story I've been following for a little while. When the Kickstarter campaign came out and all of the dev kits, for a while there was Mac support built into the software.

And then at a certain point during the development of the Oculus, they stopped supporting the Mac. And at that time, they weren't very clear as to whether they were going to come back or not. It seemed like they'd run into some hurdles. And then eventually support for oculus on the mac stopped and they stopped developing anything and effectively you know they've kind of said here and there the reasons for this but it's they you know palmalucky has made it quite clear now that basically macs are not powerful enough as gaming machines to run the oculus rift and it

does take a lot you know there are a lot of pcs that won't run the o Rift. And it does take a lot. There are a lot of PCs that won't run the Oculus Rift either. So now basically it looks like if you are a Mac user, you will not be able to use this. And even doing something like Boot Camp probably won't help you because it's not a software issue they're

running into. Basically the argument here is that the graphics cards and all that kind of stuff will not meet their recommended spec i mean this is a quote um it's on a nine to five mac from palmer lucky uh he says you can buy a six thousand dollar mac pro with the top of the line amd fire pro d700 and it still doesn't meet our recommended specifications they prioritize higher end gpus like they used for a while back in the day i think we'd love to support the mac this is interesting to me jason so a lot

of this has to do with the fact that apple's um well there's two things going on here one is apple seems to be content using a lot of gpus that are not considered acceptable for pc gaming and uh why why do they do that i think the answer is because they don't care they don't care about games they don't they don't care even when you look at the mac pro their calculations about like gpus have to do with like using gpus for scientific applications and things like that, not for games. They just, and it's, we no longer live in a time when we have a modular Mac that you can plug, you know, a Mac version usually of a PC game card into, which, I mean, I did

that on my Power Mac G4. I put a new graphics card in it at one point. But those days are over. Essentially, there are no modular Macs anymore. So when Palmer Luckey says they won't support Mac until Apple makes a good computer, I mean, the guy's being a jerk because Apple makes lots of good computers. being a jerk because apple makes lots of good computers apple just doesn't doesn't bend over backward to engineer pc game rigs because they don't care and so i guess what i would say if if i were apple what i'd say to palmer lucky is probably something like um we don't care about what you're doing you what you do and you think is important we don't care about they do care about VR

Tim Cook has basically said as much do they care about VR games plugged into a headset that's attached to a Mac I don't think they do I think that Apple are working on VR because if they're not they're stupid

VR is the next thing it would appear it's the next thing it would appear, right? It is the next thing we can see for technology. It might not be the next iPhone. It probably won't be. But if we look at where technology is in 2016, virtual reality is the next revolution, right? Would you agree with that? It's like the thing on the horizon.

I would say it is going to be popular with um with gamers sure and that's the part that i'm certain of and the rest of it i'm a little i'm still a little skeptical of how long it's going to be i can't see applications outside of gaming right now either but well apple's not exactly a giant in gaming especially like the more advanced gamers who are going to be buying first and second generation VR equipment right yeah of course my concern though is that

Apple are definitely making something and my feeling is that it's going to be for iOS yeah yeah of course so I think they's going to be for iOS. Yeah, yeah, of course. So I think they're going to miss out on the OS X, and that's simply because they're just not concerned enough about games as a thing

that they would bother to put it on OS X as well, because they will put it on iOS because you can't escape it. Games are part of iOS. It's one of the biggest game platforms in on ios because you can't escape it games are part of ios it's one of the biggest platforms in the world so you can't ignore it but in that you're going to miss out on some of the really powerful experiences that the additional graphics capabilities can deliver um i mean this week as we record uh sony has their psvr event where we're expecting to get more details on a release date for the PlayStation headset which

I would take a bet is going to be the winner of the current generation of VR. It's cheaper, more people have a PlayStation than they have a PC that can run this stuff. So I think that is going to be a real key here but I think that it would be really nice

to see apple take advantage of the power that os 10 and these machines can deliver to put something here which would be really compelling but i just don't think we're going to see it i also don't think we're going to see anything vr from apple in 2016 um which is interesting because this is the year of vr and i wonder if we're gonna you know we've got one of two situations here either they're gonna be late and it won't be good enough or they're gonna be late and it'll be better than everybody else and that can be one of two things of Apple it can go either way I'll be interested to see where it goes because gaming is the main application

but gaming is not really something that they that the company as a whole seems to put a lot of effort into right so i'm very interested to see what apple envisions vr to be for them yeah also this is not you know it's not the year of vr it's the year where for the first commercial vr products will ship that's not the same That's not the same. That's not the same. And Apple is not going to participate in a first-generation device that's going to largely appeal to gamers. It's not going to happen.

So I don't think they're behind at all in not having a product this year. I think it's a question of what they're they're behind at all in not having a product this year i think it's a question of what they're targeting with this because if games really is the best application for vr and i think it is then uh it might be something that they need to worry about soon if there's any uptake on the, you know, Samsung and HTC sort of mobile VR stuff. But on the Mac, it doesn't seem to be, you know, I just I don't think people are going to be rushing out to buy gaming PCs with high end specs and Oculus Rifts to play games other than that hardcore gaming market that wouldn't really look twice at a Mac anyway. So it'll be interesting to see what they do with it.

But Apple's Mac priorities are different. And they have never been... As somebody who... At Macworld, we had to do this for years where we covered Mac games and we had Mac gaming column. And Peter Cohen wrote it for a while. And Roman Loyola wrote it for a while. And Chris Breen wrote it for a while. We had lots of people writing about Mac games,

trying very hard to write about Mac games. And Stephen Levy wrote it for a while, actually, back in the day. But Mac games are, you know, it's never really been a thing, because it's never been a priority. It's more like Apple makes hardware for other reasons, and then people are

like yeah i might be able to put a game on there though but it's never been you know really that apple has cared about gaming yeah that's never really been the case on on the mac and they care about it more on ios because they see that it's popular and still questionable though well you know when they talk about metal and stuff like that i mean they're they're making some decisions on ios that are meant to be for gaming also it shows off their chip making prowess and i think that's part of it too is uh if you're going to try to differentiate yourself by having really impressive hardware specs for your mobile devices one way to do that is by showing how great it runs games so i i think they go together and i think that sets them up to do vr in an interesting way using the stuff that we know of as the because

you know you also don't want a giant you don't want to have a headset connected to a giant box with fans blowing right ideally this should be a lightweight thing that you put on your head that does this and so mobile is going to be mobile tech is going to be the place where you're going to really differentiate i think and apple has that tech so i think they'll get there but you know not on the mac anybody i find it miraculous that oculus even considered building stuff that worked with Macs at any point. Well, you got to try. I played with Gear VR for the first time last week.

The Samsung one. Yeah. It's incredible. It really is. It's so much more simple. And I've played with um google cardboard and even that blows me away but this one is is really really great um you know it has like a touchpad on the side kind of like so you can move around and access different things uh but i was playing

this one kind of demo-y game thing and i was walking basically I started and I was in a museum like a gallery and I looked at a Van Gogh painting and then all of a sudden I'm inside and walking around inside of the painting and you know, I'm really taken aback by VR the couple of

experiences that I've had with it I thought were kind of incredible and I really love it as a platform because the kind of experiences that you get are very unlike anything else that I've experienced before because there is an element of like okay this kind of feels like it's really happening to me now and I'm excited to see what happens. And I really hope that Apple develops something like the Gear VR that integrates with the iPhone, because that is a fantastic pairing. And that Gear VR headset is simple, really. You know, it has a speaker in it, I think.

It has a little touchpad on the side. You just plug your phone into it and you're good to go. And that was developed in partnership with Oculus. And, you know, I really wish that Apple that was developed in partnership with Oculus. And I really wish that Apple was the company that partnered with Oculus to make that, to be honest. Because I think it's really cool. Really cool.

But it seems... It doesn't seem like them, does it? No. But I still want it. And I think we're going to get it. I think next year there will be an iPhone headset. I've heard good things about the HTC Vive, too, actually. Apparently.

I didn't know this, so we were talking about this on the last episode of Remaster. From a journalist and developer perspective, the Vive is said to be a better more engaging experience than the oculus but htc and steam's problem is that oculus is kind of the name it's the brand right but i i really do think that that playstation is the dark horse here because they have the systems in people millions and millions of people's homes already so i'm excited to see what they do that's exactly you say oculus is the brand but if you ask regular people nobody knows oculus well of course yeah we we they built up some mind

share in the people who are watching this space among tech people but yeah sony if sony rolls in, or Xbox, Microsoft and Xbox, or Nintendo, if a gaming platform, like Sony being perhaps the best position here, rolls in and says, VR games, here we are, PlayStation, boom, right? That carries so much more weight than Oculus. Even if Oculus has been a pioneer of this all along. than oculus even if oculus has been a pioneer of this all along and uh steam again carries weight with a certain um a certain audience and that makes the vive intriguing and i've heard good things about the hardware but it's all early days i mean that's the thing is this stuff is gonna this stuff is exciting because it's gonna finally ship in 2016 but it's all gonna be first generation uh early adopter let's figure out what works and what doesn't kind of stuff and it's exciting to be on that but yeah if you are interested at all by this discussion um i urge you to subscribe to

remaster um this week's episode this is actually what we're going to be focusing on playstation's announcement um our co-host shahid has actually decided he's going to go to San Francisco for the event and to be around and to see what's going on. And we're planning something pretty special, actually. So go and subscribe to Remaster, relay.fm slash remaster, and the episode that will drop in episode six later this week. I think it's going to be something pretty cool. So you should go and check that out whilst we're talking about games before we do our ask upgrades um firewatch now uh i have played firewatch you have played firewatch we

both discussed it in various places uh remaster number five includes the discussion of three of us talking about firewatch no spoilers here by the way yeah and you've spoken about it on the incomparable i played it on on playstation um which means i missed out on a couple of interesting features yes i played it on a fantastic piece of gaming hardware the uh 5k iMac the funny thing is anybody that i know that's played this game that wasn't on the 5K iMac, it's apparently been a bit of a dumpster fire. I know people that have been playing them on MacBook Pros, and their fans are screaming. Oh, yeah, sure. So I'm unsurprised.

The only time I have ever heard the fans on my iMac is when I was playing a Steam game. It's the only time I've ever heard it, because it's demanding. I really loved Firewatch. I think that it is a great story and a great experience that I think people should go for. It's kind of in the Monument Valley camp of games, where you understand you're paying for an experience

that will take you about four to five hours to complete. I think that that is a great type of video games like the game that i was talking about that i got today there's like hundreds of hours in there which i'll probably never finish but i want to experience it because it's meant to be quite good the games like firewatch that i really enjoy is i know i've got a contained thing that i can go out and do and it will be done but what I didn't expect from Firewatch was how much it was going to make me question my own morality so that is

one of the great things about this game and I think that it is a little marvel that people should go and check out and when they're done they can listen to Remaster and the Incomparable to see what we think about this there is actually a question i want to ask you about this game i will do it at the very end of the show okay so people get

spoiled it's it's a good game i i uh i'll say again what i said on the incomparable that i wish there were more games like this because i'm never going to be one of those people who invests not just like 100 hours but i'm never going to be one of those people who invests not just like 100 hours, but I'm never going to be one of those people who invest 20 hours in a game. It's never going to happen. I don't have that. My priorities in my life, even if I like playing games, I don't like playing games to the point of spending that amount of time on any game. It's just never going to happen.

So I buy games that are fun to play, and I play them for five hours, and then I stop. My son will play games forever, but I don't have that kind of time in my life. I do a lot of stuff. I do a lot of work. I do writing. I do podcasts. I read books. I watch movies and TV shows, I do lots of stuff in my entertainment life so having a game that lasts three or four hours and gives you an experience that is like a movie a little bit but also is

that fundamentally kind of immersive video game experience because you're making decisions I love those kinds of games and I wish there were more of them it was nice to have firewatch because it's one of those it's what um it's what john syracuse calls the the like artsy fartsy video games where it's not you know a big game platform you know 60 game it's not the kind of game that you order on amazon uh amazon uh now prime now right it's uh but uh but it's great great story like uh like paying

15 and having three or four hours of entertainment great deal for me so i'm glad that it exists it doesn't surprise me that panic helped make this happen because this game is kind of perfectly targeted at the panic software audience right like those two things go together really really nicely because you know it's lots of people that like they really like the value of certain things but maybe don't have the time and like something

that's really nicely designed and created with a nice thought and story behind it yeah it doesn't surprise me that this game has been quite popular with Apple bloggers it fits Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that this game has been quite popular with Apple bloggers. You know, it fits. It fits real nice.

Yeah, sure. It fits real nice. I love it, though. You should go play it. All right, let's do some Ask Upgrade. Jason, who is sponsoring Ask Upgrade this week? Ask Upgrade this week brought to you by our good friends at MailRoute. You know, in 2016, IT departments are, as always, expected to do more with less,

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off, not for one week, not for one month, not for one year, but a lifetime of their account. Or if you would prefer email, you can email sales at mailroute.net and they will help you out too. Just tell them Upgrade sent you. Mailroute protects email from spam and viruses. That's it. That's all they do. And they do it better. And they've been doing it longer than anyone else. MailRoute.net slash Upgrade. Thank you to MailRoute for supporting this show and ask Upgrade. Thank you to Mrs. Soup in the chat room for her suggestion for what I should do for mailbagging this week. She started and I was like, hmm, I sat looking around the room. What do I do? There's a bell over there. I did the bell recently, but I went with lasers. Our first

question this week comes from Rob. Rob would like to know, when we're not actually writing, how much do you use your iPad Pro in the smart keyboard case? My iPad Pro is always in the smart keyboard case. I use it as a stand when I'm watching TV in bed. And I use it always, these two things go together.

I've always felt that iPads go together with the smart cover in some way. And the smart cover that I use also has a keyboard attached to it. And Jason, you'll be happy to know that as of a couple of days ago, I have started putting stickers on the smart cover. Great.

What about you? How often do you keep it in? It those stickers aren't gonna last on there i am not putting them on the uh the parts where it bends just on the panels yeah all right well we'll see i know i'm not sure if it's gonna work but i'm doing it anyway all right uh i don't like the keyboard case okay And so I use the smart cover and I have an external keyboard. And if I want to write, I will, you know, put it in a stand and use the external keyboard. Otherwise I don't use the keyboard case at all. What don't you like? It's bulky. I think it makes a lousy cover because it's heavy and thick.

And so when I have it on there, every time I use my iPad, I pull the keyboard cover off. And normally when I use the smart cover, I leave it on because although it adds a little bit of bulk, it's fine. It's a little bit. It gives it some grip ability if you're in portrait orientation. But I don't. So I don't like those things about it. And at that point, if I'm going to use an external keyboard, the external keyboard is going to have more key travel and another row of keys at the top. So you can do things like adjust the brightness and the volume and play and pause your music when you're using the iPad.

And the keyboard case doesn't do that, which is frustrating. So I don't see the value in having it for the way I use my iPad Pro where I can just bring a keyboard with me and use that if I want to. And when I don't, I don't. I agree with you about the bulkiness. I got used to that pretty quick. I decided I was just going to leave it on and see if I would deal with it. And it doesn't feel bulky to me anymore. And the value of having the keyboard there always is great to me,

bearing in mind how much i use this device i i like to use the keyboard um it's you know it's it's like you know the hybrid between a laptop and an ipad for me all right in that regard rob uh had a second question do you know of a keyboard shortcut on the ipad pro keyboard to bring up the ios search screen yes it's command space so you just hit the command key in space bar it'll take you to the spotlight screen no matter where you are. And I just want to mention this because 9.3, which will be out probably in a week or two, brings the ability to use the arrow keys and the enter key to navigate that list, which is a fantastic addition that I love and use daily. If you're unasked, do you think it's a good idea to use

one's iCloud password for your Mac login password is one or the other more secure this is a difficult question I was a little bit I don't do this and honestly my reason is

I have a complicated password for iCloud. Me too. Because it's on the internet and you want to have a complicated password so that it doesn't get broken. I don't want to type that every time I need to validate anything on my Mac. Install something or, you know, anytime it wants my password. I don't want to type the iCloud password it's complicated i want something simpler if i was in an environment where i was

worried about people breaking into my mac maybe i would have a different opinion about it but i don't yeah so my mac sits at home um i have a simple password for my mac um and i have a very complicated password for my itunes password and all of my other stuff. If you got onto my Mac, the majority of damage that you could do, you would need another password for it. So I feel kind of okay with that. I don't feel that having those two passwords be the same is a good idea. If what you're looking for is security, have two strong passwords.

But I don't, I just feel that that is not good. I feel like your iCloud password should only be used in one place. iCloud. That's it. That's a really important password. I think mixing those up, putting them in other places, using them for other things is probably a bad idea.

Yeah, I don't know if it's a big deal either way but i i i don't do that i'm i'm i'm sure there's some reason why it makes sense that sort of sort of you can log in anywhere um but for me no i totally agree with uh w brendo in the chat room as well i cannot wait for something a mac Mac peripheral that has Touch ID. Touch ID, wouldn't that be nice? That would be lovely. My main thing is just typing in my one password password. I wish I didn't have to do that

because I'm used to not doing it anywhere else where I use my Touch ID on all my other devices. Right. Seth would like to know, when editing photos, do you mostly use photos.mac? You know, the Mac app or Photos iPad? I am way behind on family photos on one advice.

So what do you do when you're editing? Where do you like to edit your photos, Jason? On the Mac. I've got the giant, you know, 5K iMac. It is great for photos. And you're using just the Photos app? Do you use any kind of plugins? Not really. I mean, I use Tonality occasionally, which is a plugin that does nice,

basically black and white toned photos. But mostly I'm just using the standard stuff. I mean, the standard editing suite in Photos has levels and it's got a lot of different adjustment levels adjustment layers you can do most of what i would do to adjust a photo i can do inside of photos so i i generally do it there um if i'm on my ipad i will often end up in photos um editing like screenshots to crop them out and things like that but um but i't usually do any photo processing on the iPad. I use the Mac because it's fast and it has a huge screen. I don't really do any photo processing at all. I don't really take photos in that way yet.

I think for a lot of people, that type of processing occurs when they have a family. I think that, at least with all of my friends, it seems that they get a lot more serious unless they're already photos people. They get a lot more serious about photography when they have children. Right. Which I think makes perfect sense. So right now, you know, my photos are all taken on my iPhone and I put them on Instagram. You know, if I do any kind of editing, I just use Apple's built in tools to like rotate like rotate crop change brightness and stuff in the photos app they do like 95 percent of everything that I want to do with a photo they're very simple good

tools and they work fine for me but I can see that if I was doing a lot of it then I might look at a different solution maybe that would be something like Pixelmator um because you know that is kind of crazy powerful that app every time I use it I I'm like, oh my God, on iOS? I don't understand how it is as good as it is. It is a superb application. Even I was using it today. It even has split screen. It's like I just didn't expect that was going to be the case.

I say, oh, Pixelmator, you are wonderful. That is a great suggestion there for you. If you want to do something a little bit more, you can go and oh, Pixelmator, you are wonderful. That is a great suggestion there for you. If you want to do something a little bit more, you can go and try out Pixelmator. You're going to have to help me on this one, Jason. Gary asked, is Apple Talk something you need to still include on your resume? Will prospective employers be impressed or

just laugh? I would say take it off. I don't even know. Let's see if I know this. I probably don't. Apple Talk was like some sort of proprietary communication method between machines. It's a networking protocol. There we go. That's the term I was looking for. But that was what I thought it was. I've seen it in the network preferences. I've never used it.

Have you ever used it? What would you use it for? Well, you use it if you live in the 1990s for networking and printing but uh not so much anymore it's uh it's faded away now that we have uh uh bonjour bonjour and uh and just ethernet in general and everybody's on an internet network you don't need it anymore I guess like proprietary wifi networks and stuff like you can connect to printers via wifi now right?

yeah well it's AppleTalk was not it's not right to think of it as these were the protocols so they would go over others so you could do Apple Talk over Ethernet. And Apple Talk, and it let you find other devices. So that's why Bonjour sort of replaced that.

So you get a Bonjour, and you get everybody on an IP network, and you don't need it. It was there from the very beginning. Anyway, it was a great thing to have. apple was at the forefront of having networking baked into every computer um i set up many local talk networks which actually use telephone cables as uh as the networking cable instead of we have ethernet now which is like way more um wires in it than uh you know the little flimsy cable that you'd have a landline connected with. But back in the day,

we actually networked with those little flimsy telephone landline connectors. And used AppleTalk to transfer files and all of those things. But those days are long past, so yeah, I would take it off the resume, for sure. Alright, spoiler hole in time. those are days are long past so yeah i would take it off the resume for sure all right spoiler horn time firewatch stuff so yeah something i was very interested that you guys didn't really address

this on the incomparable um i was hoping that you would we we spoke about this on remaster and it was quite interesting it's finding out how people the path that they took towards the end of the game and what they did with Delilah so what was really interesting for me was me and Federico we both progressed our romantic relationship with Delilah and then at the end of the game we both asked her to move to boulder with us what did you do how would you define progressed your romantic relationship with delilah there is a okay so i don't know if everybody's seen this part but there is one moment where the conversation gets quite sexual and you can kind of invite that conversation to occur yeah i didn't do that okay did you even come across that no i have no recollection of that

at all so you know when uh you're looking at the fire you're standing in your tower and there's that big fire there's a conversation that occurs which begins of like i wouldn't you know it kind of seems to go along the lines of it would be nice if we could spend this time together and and it gets towards the role of looking like it's going to a certain place and then it fades to black so you can infer what has occurred afterwards and and then your relationship with Delilah after going through this is very intimate feeling, they feel very familiar with each other after this point

and you can and then the, you know, both me and Federico went down this path which is funny Shahid didn't and he's married me and Federico are both in very committed relationships but it was just funny to me that we both did this and i was interested to see how people went

not even necessarily going through that but what they did at the end so what did you do at the end so i so i feel like um uh it that scene that you're talking about uh if i remember it right um the i mean you definitely sense uh a closeness between the two of them i maybe i didn't take the same path that you did although it's definitely the case that after that fade out their their uh their relationship is tighter but i felt like they were getting closer all the time i felt like that was that was part of the kind of adventure that they had together was him opening up to her and talking about the problems that were happening in his life. And so, I mean, I read that into the relationship all along. And quite honestly, I got to the end and I thought I wanted to give this guy a shot at happiness. And so I absolutely asked Delilah to come to boulder absolutely okay so you

were doing it as like a disc yeah and i felt the same as playing the game like you know i got lost in the world and which is you know exactly what you would want right from a game like this and my kind of feeling was if I am this guy, I felt connected to Delilah. Which the game wants you to feel.

Yeah, and so my feeling was they should be together. The situation that he was in was not ideal. And there was no right or wrong, which is one of the great things about this game is there is no right or wrong it's all gray the decisions that you make and the paths that you take is all gray um and i i really think that whatever you choose whatever decision you choose at the end of the game is not the right one well i think that's true although i i found honestly at the end of the game i found myself

and listening to other people's take on the game afterward i feel like my read of the game was just at odds with how the game viewed itself because i i heard you guys talk about it and this feeling that uh and you get the sense of like this is about somebody who's running away and that he needs to go back and there are several points where there's sort of like this this i think the game makes you say uh am i running away from my responsibilities do i have a responsibility um to my wife who doesn't remember me and is going to die um and she's got family and she's going to go back to australia and they're going to take care of her and all those things right and my thought was i think this person's has a responsibility to find a way to make a new

life because his life that he had is over and shattered yeah and so for the people who are judging like he's running away and he needs to just be by his wife's side who can't remember him and all that it's like she's gone man i mean and not to be cold about it but she's gone she she's gone he he can feel bad about it but him being present for her to not remember him and go to the home and sit there that's him not moving on so for me i felt like everything I wanted this guy to do, I didn't read it as him running away. I read it as him trying to find a way to a new life from his old life that had been destroyed.

And so for me, I just, I can't read it the other way. I can only read it as he. So, so maybe nothing happens with Delilah or maybe it's something that i just wanted to give him a chance right give him a chance that this person he's connected with because his life is in is in a shambles yeah and his wife is gone and and he give give him give him a shot at it so that's

that is entirely how i interpreted it and i viewed her sort of um maybe i'll you know maybe i'll stop by on my way through sometime as a glimmer of hope and not a shutdown of like you know that's a little you know let's yeah let's let's get outside of the the the summer and the drama here um and see if there maybe there's something there and maybe there's not but that was definitely how i read it as as uh and not as any sort of rebuke that he was uh he needed to go back and and fulfill his his responsibilities to sit by the bedside of the of the person who's dying and doesn't remember him and that's that's how i read it yeah i i agree with many of those points like i felt the same as like his relationship with his wife is kind of over. Her family doesn't want him there.

Exactly. Feeling like they don't even want him there. They didn't trust him. And she, and she can't literally like, can't remember him. It's reached the point where he is no good to her anymore. He has no help anymore and he can feel guilty about it,

but it doesn't change the fact that he's no help anymore. And his life is with her is over and he needs to find a, he needs to make a new life. And my feeling was Delilah wasn't necessarily saying no to him. She was saying no for now. I think she was, my, my feeling was she was trying to assess the summer loving aspect of it. Yeah,

absolutely. I think. Absolutely. I was always nice to her though. I was, I was not mean to her. I was always nonjudgmental of her as Henry. I was always like, you though I was not mean to her I was always non-judgmental of her as Henry I was always like

there's nothing you could have done I feel really bad I tried to keep him nice to her so that worked I haven't played a video game in a long time that when I played it I just felt devastated and part of it because

was the idea of the rejection that you get at the end of the game like me as henry like we put ourselves out there and it was kind of like uh it was unexpected to me um i thought that it was going to be i thought that we were going to see delilah i thought that we were going there and she would be there yeah john syracuse of course on the incomparable was like no you'll never see her it's another character it's too expensive and he's right yeah he's right i did somebody said it might have been on your podcast that um that they went to the tram to try and go see her and it was like out turned off or out of service or something and i i had thought about doing that too about like why don't i just walk over there yeah but the game emergency only that you can use it for the game conspires against you at that point that it doesn't want you to take

that path but uh great acting too i wanted to say both the voice actors did such a great job that's why i mean that was the key of the game that's the whole game is it's basically right i mean it's like an audiobook it's a it's a it's a it's a dialogue and then you've also got this kind of walk through the woods it's forest simulator um yeah really good game i mean the fact that we can talk about it like this that's not only does that show i think why it's worth playing but i think the um something video games can do that a movie can't do is leave you with this ambiguity of your own actions and how they affect the game because a movie you you know you are completely just watching what the what the filmmaker is having

you do but here you're given choices and you get to uh everybody's experience gets to be at least a little bit different there's's a weird pairing recommendation, but I want to recommend a new Netflix show called Flaked. It is Will Arnett, and it's fantastic. It's very hipster. It's very music-focused, and it's very dark. It's kind of another thing where nobody's good. It's very real.

I liked it a lot. We watched it over the weekend, binged the whole thing. It's like eight episodes. Really good. Recommend it. For me, there's something about these two things that go together in a way in my mind that I don't know if they do for everybody else, but I really, really liked it.

So I think people should check it out. Good job. I didn't even know it existed until I saw it when I was watching House of Cards. The co-host of another podcast that I host't even know it existed until I saw it when I was watching House of Cards. The co-host of another podcast that I host did not like it. Yeah, I feel like this is a show that is really aimed at me, kind of from a tone perspective. Me and Adina loved it.

I don't know who that person was that didn't like it. I don't know if this is an age style kind of background thing as to why you might dislike or like this show but i feel like you have to be a certain type of person to really enjoy it so have you seen catastrophe no i don't even know what that is that a movie oh it's a amazon prime tv show okay you should check it out okay you think i'd like it based on that uh yes okay it's uh it's based on that uh based on the fact that it is um i guess it was on channel four too but here here here in the US, it's on Amazon Prime. It's an Amazon Prime original in the US.

And it's a US-UK thing, which I thought you might enjoy. Okay, I'll have to look that up. Was it you that said you enjoyed Nick and Laura's Infinite Playlist? No, it was not me. Okay, somebody that I knew recently liked that movie. If you like that movie, you will like Flaked. Okay. There you go.

That's my recommendation. I don't have anywhere else to recommend it. I enjoyed it. That was Mike and Jason go to the video games. Yeah. Yeah, we'd been threatening to do that, but we figured we were going to run out of time, so we just put it into this show.

Thank you for watching if you want to find our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm thanks again to our lovely sponsors ITProTV, Backblaze and MailRoute if you want to find Jason online head on over to sixcolors.com and he is at jsnll

on twitter I'm at imyke and we'll be back next week with coverage of the March 21st Apple event until then say goodbye Mr. Snell bye everybody