Upgrade - 85: Talk to this Cylinder

Episode Date: April 18, 2016

With Myke away, Scott McNulty and Dan Moren join Jason to talk about two different Amazon hardware products, Kindle and Echo.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 85 upgrade is brought to you by pdf pen pro from smile mail route and it pro tv i'm Jason Snell, and once again, my co-host Mike Hurley is on assignment. He went to the Atlanta Pen Show where they clicked pens. I don't understand how pens work. Anyway, so joining me, it takes two people to fill Mike's shoes. Each of you gets a shoe.

My guests this week are Scott McNulty. Hi, Scott. I'm the right shoe. And in the left shoe, it's Dan McNulty. Hi, Scott. I'm the right shoe. And in the left shoe, it's Dan Morin. Hi, left shoe. Hi, this is the worst version of Hollywood Squares ever. You guys are my special guest nemeses because you're often pitted against each other in games of chance or skill. I don't really know what that means.

Although the history of that is is lost into time i believe yeah the origin of our nemesis nemitude nemesis you've always just been at odds that's right that's just how it works as long as the universe has been around i have despised you moron uh so i you i invited you both for for particular reasons and also we we do talk a lot on uh the incomparable podcast which uh which I host every week as well. But I thought it would be fun for us to talk about computer things and technology things. So thank you for filling Mike's shoes left and right. Very comfortable, Mike.

Thank you. Here's how this show usually starts is we have some follow up. So I'm going to do some follow up now. Listener Jeremy wrote in. So I'm going to do some follow-up now. Listener Jeremy wrote in. We were talking about me recording last week from Arizona, where I was on assignment with my family. And he was asking if I could use in this two iOS device method that I used to record the podcast, where I was recording on my iPhone while talking on Skype and also looking at the show notes and things on my iPad.

And listener Jeremy said, couldn't you use a USB interface and a splitter to push audio between the devices for a fairly seamless recording? And I thought this was a good point. You could probably bodge something together that would allow the mic input from the iPad to be, or from Skype to split and go into a different mixer, and then have the, and this is my point, is you could probably figure it out, but I kind of don't want to do that. It worked fine. Anybody who's used like a Blue Snowball or something like that, it was the same experience. You can't hear, your own voice isn't kind of fed back to you, which is a more pleasant thing when you are podcasting. You can tell when you're too loud or too soft or your peas are popping or anything like that. But it was fine. And that's going to be my go to remote recording

thing now is to, you know, my iPhone and my iPad if I don't have a Mac around, because I usually if I don't have a Mac around, I've got both of those around. But it's not yet the dream, which is that I could like, Dan, you did our Star Wars Rogue One podcast for The Incomparable in a conference convention center. Yeah, that was a good experience. At the Seattle Comic Con. And it was one of those things where, you know, it turned out fine, but I had to kind of patch you in from my recording of your voice. kind of patch you in from my recording of your voice. And the dream would be in the future, maybe iOS 10, iOS 11, who knows when, but the dream would be that we would be able to do that. And, and you would still have like a local high quality audio file to send me when when you were done. But we just aren't there yet. And you weren't, you know, weren't juggling multiple

iOS devices while walking through a convention center. Yeah, I didn't have most of them on me. I mean, the problem with bringing an interface, too, is at that point, have you really saved anything over bringing a Mac? Yeah, well. Especially like an 11-inch Air or something, which I know you've had in the past. Yeah, that's not that much bigger, and in theory, then lets you do all those things. So if your goal is just to have you know less stuff to carry around i feel like adding an interface into the mix means like well should i do that or just throw a laptop in my bag i always bringing my little usb box with me but this would be a second one right it was like

yeah that's a lot of boxes that's probably it's probably too many but um but anyway the dream the dream is alive uh we'll keep watching it you know know we will. Another one, this is in the category of I love things that come in when Mike is not around that I get to talk about. Listener Reed sent in a link. There were a bunch of these going around. This was a link to a Verge article about some items that Apple has been dropping in frameworks and in documents on its website, referring to Mac OS instead of OS 10. And this was a Mac OS in a technical document with a capital M for Mac, but closed up. And there's much speculation that we've had, and I've been talking about it for like a year now. And Phil Schiller lent a lot of credence to it when he talked to John Gruber

and said that there was sort of a method to Apple's madness with iOS and tvOS and watchOS. So as listener Reed says, could it be that hashtag Jason was right about macOS changing? What do you guys think about having OS X and the big X kind of fade away and go back, actually, to calling it Mac OS. I think we can all agree Mike was wrong. Yes. Well, sure. We should do that because he can't defend himself. So, absolutely.

Although I do think the X, so the X stood for 10, right? Because OS 9 was before OS 10. People love Roman numerals. It's true. And it's been stuck at 10 for a long time. Yeah. So, I feel like there is a chance for Apple. If I were working in Apple marketing, I probably wouldn't be on this podcast.

But I would also be champing at the bit to have something new to brand around. Because OS X is kind of – it's getting a little long in the tooth from a branding perspective, I imagine. My daughter is a freshman in high school and uh the x predates her existence so it's been a long time now well in fact it's been almost as long i mean the original mac os so 1984 to 2001 when os 10 came out it depends on os 9 because there's the public beta and and os 9 was still there they had the funeral at what point like 2002 maybe yeah 2003, somewhere in there. And so, I mean, we're approaching that point. I mean, it's 15 years.

Yeah. So that was, what, 18 years, I guess? Yeah. And we're at 15 years with OS 10. That's pretty close at this point. X was a big thing, too. Like, just the iconography of an X. I feel like that was back when, like you know, when E the E prefix and the

I prefix that we have now used so often, it was like hip and extreme, you know, and now, yeah, and now it's been it's kind of old now. So and I think what's interesting to me about it is, you know, a lot of people were sort of saying, well, if they want to keep things consistent, we've got lowercase tvOS, lowercase iOS, lowercase watchOS, maybe it'll be lowercase macOS. And I was on that train too but when it seems like every time they put it in print it's with capital m which i think is probably because unlike tv watch and the letter i those are all generic whereas mac is actually like a trademark and like a specific thing so maybe that's the rationale for making that

capitalized is it's not generic like tv or watch and none of us think that they're gonna like turn all of the mac products into lowercase like get your imac and it's a lowercase i lowercase m and it's like that's not gonna happen it would be that's your gimmick yeah e cummings computer company but it's a computer that's true and wouldn't they be i'm not a a trademark lawyer uh i should point what you're fired again. Darn it. How did you get on this podcast? I just opened Skype, and here I am. It's a how-to.

But if they start referring to it as lowercase m, I feel like that then they could lose their trademark right, and it could become, like Kleenex has this problem where they are like, no, we're not a generic brand.

We are a brand, and it means a lot of stuff, and it's our, we own it, and Xerox famously also has this problem. So I'm sure Apple does not want to go down that route. We're not a generic brand. We are a brand, and it means a lot of stuff, and we own it. And Xerox famously also has this problem. So I'm sure Apple does not want to go down that route. The Mac is capital M, and they should stick with it.

Yeah, but that's good. People don't talk about it. Macintosh, as a word, was pushed out of the branding sphere, which is fine. But that was a part of the same Mac OS branding is that they finally were finally were like look we're not going to call it a power macintosh we're not referring to it as a macintosh computer with mac as the cute name mac is the name mac os is what it runs it all it's all like there for the taking and it gets the x out of the way so yeah iphones and ipads running ios makes sense tv apple tv is running tvs makes sense apple watches running watch os max running os 10 has always been a little bit of an out i mean it was it was a little

easier back in the day but now it seems like a total outlier i think i think it's a good thing if they're going to go back to mac os and hey i love the classic mac os i feel like it's a it's bringing a little bit of that back yeah yeah all right get rid of this multitasking that's right i want to set my memory partitions app by app Oh, RAM disks, everybody Here's how you do it You get info And then you edit the number in the bottom of the get info box

To how much memory you think the app will need And then you close the window And you open the app and hope that it's okay It was a better time Simpler In its complexity. How do you guys feel about managing startup items? Oh, that's the best.

Conflict catcher. Let's bring that back too. Okay. So basically what we're saying is if you don't remember any of that time, don't worry about it. Jason was right. Sorry, Mike, you're not here.

So next, I get to defend something Mike said. So that's fun. Somebody whose name I didn't put down oh well uh said did mike really say that there are more devices with forced with the force touch trackpad than with 3d touch because you can do the math of iphone sales versus mac sales and i can't while i can't speak for mike uh he's not here so i will speak for mike he uh i think he meant percentage of the install base so when we're talking about that i think that there are more macs with force touch uh percentage wise or capable especially since you can just buy an accessory and give yourself force touch then uh the percentage of existing uh iphones that are out there that jason have 3d touch That's not how the force touch works. Yeah, I knew it was happening.

That's a Star Trek reference, right, Dan? You can't just troll me because Scott is here. You can, actually. That's exactly why I can troll you. And one more bit of follow-up. Lister Morgan wrote in and said, we were complaining about so many iPad Pro apps in the App Store show iPhone preview screenshots, which is dumb. And we had no answer. It was a question that somebody asked. And we were like, boy, the answer is show iPhone preview screenshots, which is dumb. And we had no answer. It was a question that somebody asked, and we were like, boy, the answer is it's a bug,

and it's dumb. But Lister Morgan points out that Lister Morgan's app has Pro screenshots that you see. So it sounds like what's happening is if the developer doesn't submit iPad Pro screenshots, the App Store is showing iPhone screenshots, which is still a bug because if there are iPad screenshots to be had, even of the non-Pro version, the non-Big Pro version, that would probably be worth seeing. But it will display them apparently if they've been submitted by the developer. So says Listermore. Now I'm picturing, I'm picturing, remember when the iPad came out and it would run iPhone apps, but in like, either in 2X or like in native size, but really small. I'm picturing a native size iPhone app running on an iPad Pro.

It's like just giant black bezel everywhere. Pretty much. Or just run it in one-to-one, right? So it's just giant black and then you can't touch any of the little touch targets because they're way too small. black and then you can't touch any of the little touch targets because they're way too small i wonder if that's just uh you know the app store by default just shows iphone that's the most prevalent ios device so it's like well if you have to pick one iphone well probably and the logic was probably if i don't have the ipad screenshots the screenshots from this class of device i'm going to just default to iphone because there were only sort of two

two size classes of device i guess i don't know what the behavior is in terms of like, if you've got a, you know, the five, like a six, and are the screenshots for five size screens? And do they, is there like a cascade there that happens? I don't know. I'm sure developers know all about it. Because I imagine if you're an app developer, you're probably nodding along and saying, yes, I have to take screenshots on like five different devices and upload them. That's horrible. All right. That's the end of the follow-up. So we've got very exciting topics to talk about with our special guests, but I want to stop for a moment and tell you about one of our sponsors. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by PDF Pen Pro from Smile Software. Now, PDF Pen is the Swiss army knife for PDFs. In fact, PDF Pen Pro is like two Swiss army knives put together or something. It's got so many tools,

you could squeeze it in your pocket, but you got to have a big pocket. That's how much stuff is packed into PDF Pen Pro. It lets you add signatures, edit text and images, perform OCR on scanned documents, export to Microsoft Word, perform OCR on scanned documents, export to Microsoft Word format, because some people are like, PDF? I don't know what this thing is. Give it to me in Microsoft Word, because some people only understand Office file formats. I don't know why, but they're like that, and don't anchor them, or they'll cut you. Only with PDF Pen Pro can you create an interactive PDF form, build a table of contents,

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And I decided I wasn't going to send everybody a Microsoft Office document. I was going to send them a PDF. I hope none of them come to me and demand a Word file instead, because that would make me very sad. Anyway, you can try. There's a free demo, so you can try it today and see whether you're going to like it or not by visiting smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. That's smilesoftware.com slash upgrade for a free demo of PDF Pen Pro. It requires Yosemite or later, works great on El Capitan. So thank you so much to Smile for sponsoring this show and all of RelayFM. I don't know what those people, they just demand those office file formats. It's just the world we live in. Big size. So Scott, the impetus

for me inviting you on was because there is a new Kindle on the way. What? Have you not heard? I'm sure that you've already ordered it, even though you haven't heard of it. If they put up a button that was like, there's going to be a new Kind kindle we could tell you about it in a week or so but if you'd just like to order it now click this button you'd click the button right i would click the button i've often thought that amazon should just give me a subscription to whatever yeah comes out i'll just kindle prime or something and i'll just i'll sign up for it and they come and i won't question it that's actually kind of a great idea like like a phone contract kind of thing. Like every two years you get the new Kindle

or every year, whatever. One of the listeners has suggested an Amazon Dash button for Kindle in the chat room, which I think is... That's a niche product, but I think one that Scott will use. Yeah. It's true.

I don't have any of the Dash buttons. I've been tempted, but... I don't have any products. I don't buy any products. So for people who've been tempted. I don't have any products. I don't buy any products. For people who don't know, the dash button is this weird Amazon thing where you get a button that's got the name of a brand on it, like All Detergent or Tide or whatever else. And when you are out of that thing, you press the button and it automatically connects to your wi-fi and places an order for that thing at amazon so it's like literally just you stick it where you store your paper towels and when you run out of paper towels you press the button and paper towels appear in the next couple of days at your door um it's pretty weird i don't want to buy anything sold or processed or

process anything sold or bought or any of that. So I'm not a Dash Button guy. Unless it brings me burritos. All right. I'll refer everybody to our Say Anything episode of Mike at the Movies for that. Yeah. So the new Kindle, it's the Kindle Oasis. And it's interesting because it's like a $290 product.

It comes with a case. It is like the ultra-premium luxury Kindle, if there could be such a thing. With leather. With leather, of course, because that makes it ultra-premium. Rich Corinthian leather. Now, we should start by explaining our Kindle backgrounds here. I have bought, I think, essentially one model from every generation of Kindle. I haven't bought, like, when they upgraded the kind of base model of the Kindle and they already had the paper whiteout. I didn't go back and also buy the base model of the Kindle.

But I feel like in every generation, a Slayer is born. And also, I have bought a Kindle. So I returned the first generation one because I didn't think it was good enough. And the second one I kept and I gave that to my – I gave the second and third generation Kindles to my parents at one point. And then my mom gave them back to me when she switched to the iPad because she said she wasn't using her Kindle. And I gave them to my in-laws and they liked them so much that after about a year they went and bought paper whites. And Scott, my understanding is that you have literally bought like every e-reader ever released is that is that accurate that is inaccurate oh come on i'm sorry uh i have bought so my my kindle journey starts because i uh i saw a show that was talking about e-ink and i thought

oh my god that's crazy uh and then uh sony at that time was the only uh big player in e-ink and I thought, oh my God, that's crazy. And then Sony at that time was the only big player in e-book readers. So I bought one of Sony's e-readers, a PRS-505. Catchy. The Sony people. I know, Sony, they're so great with branding. The hardware, fantastic. It was nearly impossible to get a book onto this thing though, which made it a little less useful. And then about a week later, Amazon announced the Kindle at the time. I think they cost like $400 and the reader, the Sony reader also costs $400. So I bought the Kindle and it was vastly superior in that I could actually get a book onto it easily, which was mind-blowing.

That's what you'd sort of expect from a company that's trying to sell you books instead of the company, Sony, that's just trying to sell you the e-reader. That's right. Then walk away. That's what they did, and I was like, I can't use this thing. So the first Kindle had a weird design, which I kind of like, and the Oasis has some echoes of a weird design, which I kind of like. And the Oasis has some echoes of that same design, actually.

And then I've bought a bunch of Kindles since then. I wrote a book about the Kindle that was available only on the Kindle, which seemed like an error on my publisher's part, but they wanted to try it. So we did it. Nobody bought it. I wrote a follow-up book about the Kindle that actually came out in print that sold a little bit better. I have a Kobo. I have some Kobos. I have a couple of Nooks.

I like e-readers. Yes. So you don't necessarily have all of them. Did you ever – you bought a Kindle DX, didn't you? I have two Kindle DX. Someone tweeted me and said, hey, Scott, do you have a Kindle DX? And I said, no, I have two Kindle DXs because they came out with two versions. So much like you, Jason, I buy kind of the – whatever the newest Kindle is of the generation. So I don't have like the $50 or $40 entry-level Kindle or $80.

I don't even know how much it costs. But it's crap because I've used it. Don't buy it. So I have usually the top- the line one um i had the i had the first of those sort of keyboardless kindles that they made with the page turn buttons and that that's essentially i think what the what that that low-end kindle is now is is is that but it's not no i don't um lauren left it in the seat back pocket of an airplane once and i was like that's fine it's fine yeah but the the low-end kindle does not actually have buttons so not not anymore it's not anymore it's worse now it is worse they got rid of the buttons yeah

for a long time it's interesting because i was stacking up my kindles uh in preparation and looking at how they have evolved throughout time. And so the first Kindle had lots of buttons and it had this weird silver rolly thing and big flappy buttons, turn buttons. And then the next one had, you know, slightly fewer buttons. They just kept progressing to less and less buttons. And now the latest premium Kindle, the buttons are back. The buttons are back. It is. it's better than

better than none right um i think that it's the only kindle so the voyage has those page press things which are kind of like buttons but they're not really buttons uh which are an improvement i think but i think i'd like a button yeah actual physical button not not a an area on the screen where if you press hard enough it slightly vibrates and the page turns. It's not quite a button. They're like, what if we gave you something that wasn't a button but acted like a button? Nope, nope, that's not it. I can see what you're going for.

Dan, what's your history with Kindles? You just bought a Paperwhite. Is that your first Kindle? No, that's my second Kindle. You just bought a Paperwhite. Is that your first Kindle? No, that's my second Kindle. Up until that point, I've had for many years the... I don't know, remember what generation it is.

Maybe Scott will know. It's the one that has the little D-pad on the bottom. It was the low-end Kindle at one point. I think prior to this most recent incarnation, it has physical pastry and buttons. Does it have the keyboard? It doesn't have an actual keyboard. It has a virtual keyboard.

Is it the Kindle 4? Does it have the little D-pad and four buttons actual keyboard. It has a virtual keyboard. Is it the Kindle 4? Does it have the little keyspad and like four buttons on each side? Yeah, like a back button, a home button, a keyboard button. That's the one that Lauren left in the seatback pocket. Yeah. Were you on my flight, Dan? Did you get that from the seatback pocket? It was a free Kindle.

I don't know. I don't ask where it came from. No. I bought it a few years ago and just went at that point when I think it was so cheap. I was like, oh, you know what? I've kind of been interested in checking out a Kindle. I'll just buy this one because it's really very affordable. And I really liked it.

I've read many books on it. I have a nice case for it. And it served me pretty well. But I think the other day, a week or two ago, the Paperwhite and a bunch of the other Kindles were on sale right before they announced the Oasis for real. And I thought, well, you know, everybody raves about the Paperwhite. I know it's the Wirecutter's recommendation, and everybody seems to really like it. So it was like under $100. Yeah.

You know what? It's time to upgrade. It's time to upgrade. So I bought the Paperwhite. I really enjoyed it so far. I'm currently in the market for a case for it, but it's my second Kindle. I really appreciate it. I think the biggest thing for me is I really enjoy reading on the e-ink screen, as I think Scott was alluding to.

I find it more pleasurable than reading on the iPad, at least for books. And I think the big advantage of the Paperwhite for me is really that higher quality screen. the paperweight for me is that really that higher quality screen i don't know what the resolution of the older kindle is but it is clearly not as good uh as the 300 dpi screen on the paperweight so i've been very pleased with that because i find that text very sharp and very you know much more you know close to a printed book page so i've really been enjoying that i like how simple it is i mean i know there are some people go back and forth on whether they like the touchscreen versus the physical buttons, and I can see the appeal of the physical buttons, but the touchscreen on that is totally fine for me.

The software is miles better than on the fourth-generation Kindle. That's the one where they just recently, I think, said you have to upgrade to this version of the software, otherwise you'll never get upgrades anymore. Unless you die. Yeah. If you die in the Kindle, the kindle you die in real life um and that's so good so uh you know having the the latest version of the software is definitely a lot more modern hey look pictures of the books that i'm reading rather than just like a an itemized list of books on my kindle um but that old one i think is, is going to go to my mom, who has never really used a Kindle. She has an iPad, but she doesn't really read e-books at all. I mean, granted,

she's also a former librarian, so she tends to get a lot of stuff out of libraries, which you can do, obviously, with the Kindle, but they go to the library a lot. So I asked her if she wanted, and she kind of waffled about it. She said, yeah, I guess I should check it out. So I'm going to get her that one, and if she enjoys it and uses enough then we'll we'll bump her up to something nicer so let's so let's talk about the oasis uh it's it's a it's an interesting product it is the the paperwhite is remaining around the voyage which was the high-end model before uh which i've got here uh is uh and scott we talked about that the last time I think you were on upgrade. We talked about the voyage cause it had just come out. It's, it's, um, I, I, so I,

I have the paper white and, uh, and the voyage here. And I'm reminded that the voyage is nicer than the paper white. And I think the story is not that the voyage is, is, is, is bad in any way. It's just, uh, while it's nicer than the Paperwhite, it is hard for me to recommend it to people over the Paperwhite because the Paperwhite's a lot cheaper and it's, you know, you're paying, what are you paying for? Those funny, like, squeeze, the squeeze the bezel feature and the fact that it's, that the screen is a little bit recessed on the Paperwhite and it's totally flat on the Voyage. I mean, and the Voyage is a little smaller. There are things about it that are a little bit nicer, but I can never in good conscience recommend it over the Paperwhite for most people because it's just, you know, it's mostly the same.

And the refinements for most people, I doubt, are worth the extra money. But here comes the Oasis, which is doing it again, right? again right it's like even higher up there at 290 granted you get the case with it and the case has a battery in it so it can charge the you know charge the kindle and give it a very very long battery life and instead of having it be a separate purchase so the case price is kind of rolled into there but it's super thin it's got physical buttons the screen appears to be basically this 300 dpi screen that has not has not evolved in the last couple of years. They say the backlighting is better or the side lighting, whatever it is. It's different technology from a backlight because it's a reflective screen. So, you know, Scott, what do you think about the Oasis? Where does it fit and why does it exist?

Well, I saw you maybe in Slack or on Twitter talking about how you were disappointed that it's the same screen as the Voyage because you were hoping, I imagine, as everyone was hoping, that it would be higher resolution. But it's Kindle, Apple, Amazon uses – I just named a bunch of brands. Amazon uses the e-ink, which is the name of a company, displays, right? And so this is – I think it's the Pearl maybe. This is their highest end screen that they make. So it's not too surprising. Yeah, they haven't come out with a 600 dpi e-ink. Not yet.

And I imagine – I'm sure they're feverishly working on it. There are some people on the Kindle web, which I don't know if that's a thing or not, but now it is. on the Kindle web, which I don't know if that's a thing or not, but now it is. We're hoping that it would be a color screen because Amazon a couple years ago bought a company called Liqua Vista, which makes this color screen that is low power consumption. It's reflective. It uses a different technology than e-ink. It uses electro wetting, which sounds dirty, but it isn't. I've been to a few Electro Weddings.

They're usually quite fun affairs. It's true. Just bring your wetsuit. And so people were – there was a lot of – as with all these things, you know, Jeff Bezos tweeted this thing that said, hey, we're going to have a new Kindle next week. And everybody suddenly had their dream Kindle in their mind that they were hoping would come out. The biggest one I think is waterproof. Everybody wants a waterproof Kindle. Even Jeff Bezos famously reads his Kindle in his bathtub in a Ziploc bag, which seems weird.

But hey, it works. I've done it. It works. He's a supervillain, guys. It's okay. It's true. He is on a rocket as he's doing it. So I think that Amazon is just doing this thing where they create a high-end product that will then trickle down the technology into other lower-end products. And this is made for people who, like you and I, Jason, just buy whatever the latest Kindle is because we're excited about the technology and we really use our Kindles a lot. because we're excited about the technology and we really use our Kindles a lot.

And so any slight improvement is welcome because I use – probably of all my devices, I use my phone the most and then probably my Kindle second to most because I'm staring at it as I'm reading a book. And anything that makes it a more pleasant experience and basically makes the Kindle go away because you just want to be lost in a book is worth it in my opinion. But I am not a normal consumer. So much like you, Jason, I wouldn't recommend the Oasis to someone who's just kind of a casual e-book reader. It's for weirdos like us, basically.

It is for weirdos like us. And for a way for Amazon to fiddle around with stuff and see what is working and what isn't. It was interesting, they had this press event, and they kind of outlined what their goal was. And their goal with the Kindle is to create a piece of paper on which you can read any book ever written. And so if you're thinking in that term, then the OASIS makes a lot of sense, because they're just trying to get rid of everything other than the screen. And they also did some research about how long it takes to turn a page. And when you're moving your thumb, it takes a little longer than if it's just right by the page turn button. So they brought the buttons back to make it just kind of they want the device to disappear and you to just see the story and whatever you're reading.

And so I think that's what the Oasis is kind of a distillation of this philosophy of theirs. And they're charging a lot of money because I think weirdos like us are going to pay for it. Well, and there's a market. And I do think that tech nerds, also like us, often will roll their eyes at the Kindle. They're not listening now. They forwarded to the next chapter already. But because I'm editing this episode, there'll be chapter markers in it pro tip i i add chapters mike doesn't that's how you can tell who edited the episode of anything so um the right because it's a single use device

right and everyone's like yeah but i just use your ipad my ipad yeah or your iphone and and the answer is that the lcd lcd is even now um i took the new, you know, less reflect the iPad Pro 9.7 inch outside in the sunlight and, you know, even in like the shade of the tree in my backyard. And it's like, it's not as good because there's, it's a lot less contrast because it's having to shine a bright light through the screen in order to get the images to hit your eye. And it's different when it's the ambient light just reflecting off of essentially, you know, the equivalent of a piece of paper. And also, it doesn't send me push notifications about things that are going on. That's the thing. And it sounds crazy,

because we're all used to having devices that do all these things. But when I'm reading a book on my Kindle, I am not tempted to, oh, I should check Twitter or check my email. I feel like I do. It does let me zone into like what I am doing on the Kindle, which is reading a book, and I want to be immersed and engaged in that. And so I'm not jilted out every 30 seconds when a new tweet comes in or something like that. So I think there's a virtue to that. I mean, I think a lot of people pattern this thinking like,

well, the iPod was like a single-use device, and we all saw what ended up with the iPod. But I don't think the iPod, it's hard to argue that the iPod was like a single-use device, and we all saw what ended up with the iPod. But I don't think the iPod, it's hard to argue that the iPhone has not been, and smartphones in general, haven't been just innately superior in 99% of the ways to the iPod. There are some advantages to having a single-use music player, but they're pretty slim uh i think the ipad and and such have not reached the same level of uh super seating essentially with the with kindles and ebook readers they don't have all of the advantages or at least the things that they have as advantages you know they lack sort of those killer advantages like the ability to read in sunlight and super you know the screens the ink screen etc so yeah i i don't think this follows necessarily the pattern of the iPod,

but I can understand why a lot of people feel like, oh, it must be superior to have a multifunction device. But in this case, it might be more of a toaster fridge. Yeah, that's true. And I mean, I think Kindle is obviously for people who read pretty frequently, right? If you read a book or two a year and there's nothing wrong with that, but you shouldn't be wasting your money on a Kindle. Just buy those two books or go to the library and be done with it and be happy with your iPad or

read them on your iPad. That's fine. The Kindle isn't for you. Every product doesn't need to be for everybody. Right. And I do think that in the rubric of analysis of tech nerds, there is always the single-use devices are silly. And there's also, you know, there is always the single use devices are silly. And there's also this idea that, and it's a black and white device, like, why do we care? And I'm not sure a lot of those people are in the target demographic of something like a Kindle, which is, you know, when I've talked to people about Kindle use, the demographic is very different. This is a, you know, on some level, a cutting edge technology product that is, you know, used by way more women than than men, I believe.

And it's a much older skewing audience than especially your average like iPad or or or smartphone. And it's hitting the reader market, which is traditionally older and more female. the reader market, which is traditionally older and more female. And that market loves it, right? I mean, it's not a tech nerd product necessarily. It's a tech product. And so it's easy for tech nerds to disparage it and be like, whatever, it's a Kindle, it's irrelevant. It's really not. And every time I go on a trip somewhere, and I'm out by the pool or walking along a beach or something like that, there are Kindles everywhere. So it's one of these things that I think we get too deep down in tech talk and lose track of the fact that there are a lot of people

who are not in the tech conversation who love these products because they are avid readers and it's a product for avid readers. I still kind of would like to see a color ink this way. I mean, they've worked on those for years and they're very, they're very hard to do, but I don't want color on my, I mean, if it was, if it was literally perfect and, and no worse and ideally better in every other way, and it had color, I guess I'd be okay with it. But my concern is it's going to be a step back in order to give us color. And I don't need color in my plain text on a page, which is mostly what I'm reading on a Kindle. Sure. And if I were a betting man, I think we would see the color e-ink display on a Kindle Fire

like devices and they would keep the Kindle, the black and white e-ink for a while until it got to parody or better actually, right? Because to Jason's point, I think color needs to be better. And not only does it need to be better, I mean I don't think it would work very well even on the Fire because all the other stuff you want to do on that probably – it probably wouldn't be good enough to do say video, right? Certainly not. But it might be good enough to render say graphic novels. The Liquivista display is all about playing video.

That's what they designed it for. I mean, it's still not good enough to be in production, but that's what their goal is, to make it a perfect low-power consumption video playing screen. Strange. Technology is weird. So I also wanted to talk about, and this is for people who are still with us and want to hear us talk about Apple a little bit. I got a little, when Scott was describing the march of the buttons off of the Kindle, I had a Steve Jobs moment. Because famously, you know, this is why Steve Jobs wore pullovers, is he hates buttons. There was that iPod shuffle that had no buttons.

The war on buttons is real, people amazon was fighting it too they had the power button and then they they dropped all of the other buttons that used to be page turn buttons and a home button that were physical buttons and with the paper white there are no buttons so on dan's screen if dan wants to churn turn the page he needs to tap or swipe uh to that. And on the Voyage, you can, like I said, squeeze the bezel in the designated places to go forward or back. And it gives you a little haptic buzz and it turns the page. But with the Oasis, they are not only bringing back physical buttons, but they've expanded the bezel on one side. It's this kind of asymmetric thing where the bezel is wider on one side.

But I actually kind of love it in theory because I haven't actually played with it yet. with the way that the Voyage is set up is the bezel is so narrow that when you squeeze the little button, you risk tapping the touchscreen next to the little button, which I can't tell you how many times I've squeezed the page back button, but my thumb has grazed

and I've gone like two pages back or two pages forward or just by resting my thumb on the button, but not squeezing it yet my my thumb makes contact with the edge of the screen and it and it turns the page when i don't want to it's just there's a there's a hardware usability problem that it looks like they're recognizing when they make this uh when they made the expanded bezel on one side of the of the oasis so it feels like they're actually paying attention to how people use their product, which is good. And that they realize that physical buttons provide a level of feedback that no

little haptic embedded in the Kindle can do. I feel like they got so much grief for the original industrial design of the Kindle that they were like, fine, we're going to make it look better. Who cares how it works? It'll look like every other black slab in your life and you'll be happy. And then we realized, actually, for a Kindle, maybe it shouldn't be like every other black slab in your life and it should maybe have a weird shape because you're holding this thing in one hand generally. And having a larger bezel so that your thumb doesn't graze the screen that happens to me all the time as well jason is actually a good thing it may look kind of weird in product

shots yeah but that's why in almost every one of their product shots somebody's holding the darn thing because you want to they want you to see that yes it may look weird because it's got kind of this uh big bulbous battery thing in a thin uh thin on one side and thick on the other uh but that's because you're gonna hold this in your hand dummy uh and and that's the way you should use it yeah as if we haven't spent all these years trying to you know design books to be held and read right like you know yeah hey books turns out there's a spine on only one side weird like we should make it symmetrical the kindle the original kindle was just like that and people were like this is stupid and i hate it yeah there were baffling things

about the original kindle's line the one that always got me was that it was white um and when you're using early generations of e-ink where it essentially if you can think back to this scott and you've got one in front of you right now so i know you can't it was a sort of dark gray text on a medium gray background if the contrast of the screen was not great and then you have the bright white plastic bezel around it saying this is how white it should be but it's not and it was just i don't know why they did that and it took them so long to get to gray or black for the bezel where it uh it could show you it made your eye think that that gray background was actually white. So there were lots of weird things about it. But, yeah, I agree.

I think they pushed it too far. Maybe they felt shame that they weren't fancy like so many other tech products were. And, you know, I think the physical buttons should be on every Kindle, not just the highest of the high end ones. But yeah, what do you make of the of including the case with that? Is that just a way to force everybody to buy a case? Or is there more to that? And then the fact that it's got a second battery in it, so you have weeks and weeks of use? Well, I think this is another, you know – obviously, Amazon has a whole lot more data about how people use their Kindles than we do. So I can only talk about how I use my Kindle. But when I'm traveling, it is nice.

I love my Kindle for the fact that I don't have to charge it very often, right? I also hate my Kindle because I don't have to charge it very often because I never think about charging. When I'm in the middle of a book, it says, hey, you need to charge your Kindle or it's going to shut off. And I'm like, ah, where's the cable? I need to quickly do it. Scott, don't you just switch to another Kindle at that point? Well, I could do that as well.

Always have three Kindles at the ready first. So that's the grand. A bandolier. If you have one Kindle, you have no Kindles. If you have two Kindles, you have one Kindle. That's the rule. Exactly. So I love the fact that, so EG, super low power consumption, you never have to charge these things until you have one Kindle. That's the rule. Exactly. So I love the fact that, so EG,

super low power consumption, you never have to charge these things until you have to charge them. I guess which is true of everything that you have to charge. But it is. So the Kindle Oasis, right, changes this. The actual device itself has a couple of weeks charge, which is still a

long time, and long enough to forget to charge it. But when you have the case, which you have to buy, it has a battery in it, right? And so they say that it lasts for months, which is great because when you're traveling on your, you know, world, going around the world, because people still do that, right? For months on end. Or you're hiking in the back country where there's no power. Exactly. And so I think of it less as a cover because I think, and I haven't used one either, but I think what's going to happen is you'll have it in the cover as it's just kind of hanging out. And then you're going to take the cover off when you're going to read because it makes it heavier.

And it's easy to take the cover off because it's magnets, right? So how do they work? So you pull it apart. It's a light Kindle. You drop the cover off. And then when you're done, put the cover back on and it's magnets, right? And how do they work? So you pull it apart, it's like Kindle, you drop the cover off, and then when you're done, put the cover back on, and it's charging. That's, I imagine, how they envision people using it, and I think that's how I'll use it as well. So I think it's actually a really clever idea. I'm not sure there are some people who are like, oh, maybe there'll be a whole bunch of other accessories that'll use this,

because it has like a, much like the the smart whatever the heck Apple calls the – Smart connector. Smart connector. There you go. Thank you, Dan. It has the same kind of DLEO. So perhaps there will be more accessories for it. I don't know if that's true or not because Amazon changes the Kindle form factor radically every time.

So it seems like it is not long for the world. But maybe that will show up on the Fire and more stuff will be there for the Fire. I don't know. But I think it's a clever idea. The one thing I don't like about the cover I have for my Kindle Voyage, I have the origami cover, which I love, which turns the cover, it's a cover and a little stand, so I can just put it on a table or whatever. And they have a leather version of it.

And I was kind of hoping that the Kindle battery cover Oasis thing, whatever they call it, would have the origami feature, but it does not. So that was kind of a bummer. Scott, well, here's a question for you. Scott, since you have so many Kindles, what is your daily reader Kindle? Which one do you carry with you?

Which one do you travel with? Do you switch or do you have just one that's sort of like your default use? Well, I enjoy Kindles, but the previous generation Kindles have no worth for me. So it's a Kindle voyage or nothing, right? Because why would I want to use a crappier Kindle?

I like them as a historic oddity, but I'm never going to use my first generation Kindle to actually read anything. No, I don't advise it. I don't advise it. And that's what I do, too. Lauren's got the old paperweight, and I've got the voyage,'ve got the voyage and, and that's, that's absolutely what I, what I would use. You know, the thing that, that, uh, really bugs me is that they still do, even on this high end one, they still do the special offers thing. And then you have to pay like 20 bucks to remove the ads from the, from the, and sometimes the offers are good, but, but it's just like you turn off your Kindle and there's like an ad there. Um, but what really bugs me is even if

I pay, I don't get to, I don't get to choose the screensaver. I have to use Amazon stock images on the screen. I still am baffled about why they haven't made it so that you could put your own images on there or have it show the cover of the book that you're currently reading. The Kobo does that. Yeah. Well, there are hacks for the older models that will do that, too, although I'm not sure whether the jailbreak has brought it up to date with the Voyager. It probably has. They're always jailbreaking Kindles, believe it or not. And I had that for a while, and it was a lot of fun.

But it's annoying that not only does their base price include Kindle ads, Amazon ads, But when you pay to get it off, you still can't customize it and personalize it in the way that you probably should. But I don't know. And they're bundling a cover with it. So you're not going to see. I can understand the ads with other Kindles that don't come with covers

because it's the screen saver thing, right? So you're going to see the ad. But we have the cover. If a cover comes with the thing, the ad is going to be covered up most of the time. But but when you open it up instead of auto unlocking and taking you where you want to be it instead shows you the ad and you have to swipe which is terrible so um i wanted to mention my um my uh it's the worst thing in life it's the worst thing ever um my my kindle case has worked with all of my preceding kindle models because I don't have a case.

I have a slip cover. Like a fancy armchair. It's like a Kindle sock. And it works great. It's a neoprene case that I bought for, like, my Kindle 2, and I still use it because Kindles are all roughly the same shape and size. And it's worked so far. But I'm getting this new one, and it comes with a case. So i guess i'm using that now um you don't have to yeah just throw it away stupid battery case get out of my life i hate you and all you stand for i wanted to mention one other

thing which is a weird uh a weird thing that i did is i bought the um the this this crazy thing the pop slate 2 um, for your iPhone. Which I wanted to try, yeah, which is it's an e-ink screen in an iPhone case. And so you put it on the back, and it's also like a battery case too. But the idea is that your iPhone pairs with it and sends it data, and you have e-ink,

like always on e-ink display on the backside of your iPhone. And it's totally seems totally impractical. And it has no ebook solution, which basically means like, I think that I will need to, you know, convert ebook files and load them on there for it to possibly work. But I still think it's a cool. It's a it's a cool fun idea uh until we get to the point where phones uh you know can can be on all the time their screens and i know there's some some phones on android phones that will show you they'll show you like the clock all the time but uh aren't there some android phones that have the e-ink second screen too i feel like there's one had

one there there's i think there's one currently that that has a second screen on? I feel like Samsung had one. There's one. I think there's one currently that has a second screen on the back that is just e-ink. And I always thought that was very clever. So I decided that I would, for $89, I would try this ridiculous

e-ink display thing for my iPhone. So I'll report back to Upgrade about that at some point. But we should probably move on. Any final thoughts about Kindles

before we go to the next topic i love them so much i know i know i'll put a i'll put a picture i'll put scott's picture of his collection of kindles in the show notes from his upgrade prep and you can see the first generation kindle it's right there just look for the weird wedge shaped button and you will know there were there are many problems with the first generation kindle i don't want to i don't want to overstate how much uh uh it was how good it was but there were some good ideas there yeah yeah i mean seriously that's adopting again that's one of the very few products that i've ever bought and used for the whatever the 20 day the 30 day return policy in about 20

days and i'm like nope it's not it's got to go back i so wanted to keep it and i just couldn't um anyway so this episode of upgrade also brought to you by the good people at ITProTV. If you've got a career plan that you want to set in motion, if you're wanting to start a career in IT or already working in the field, Scott's an IT professional. Look at that. Maybe you could watch ITProTV. Certifications, credentials are often a key to getting a job or a promotion. Their mission is education through engagement. They have up-to-date, high-quality video content and provide you access to the most important tools you need for technology certification. They've got more than 1,000

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itpro.tv slash upgrade. Alright, our next topic and the reason that I invited Dan on the show today. See, I know we have to move on to Dan now. Nemesis! We're moving to the left. We're moving to the left shoe now.

Right? Left shoe? Wow. Yes. Looks like the shoes on the other host, McNulty. I don't understand what you're talking about. So Dan is famously a fan of the Amazon Echo. I once added marshmallows to a shopping list while he was listening to an episode of Upgrade. At least once. At least once.

I've turned off his light at one point with just remotely by a podcast. This is, this is like its own show, Jason. Yeah, I know. Um, so, uh, and I just bought an Amazon echo and I just thought, since we're talking about Amazon, uh, Amazon Kindles and things like that, we should also probably talk about another, you know, we, we give Amazon, uh, a lot of grief for the fire phone, which was a complete flop. Scott wrote a book about the fire phone too, by the way. I have, I have one of them on my desk right now look at that how do you feel about the fire phone i think that it was not as bad as people said it was although it is a perplexing product yeah fair enough i mean just because people didn't buy it doesn't mean innately that

it was bad it was it was i think there are lots of reasons people didn't buy it, but. Lots of reason it's bad. Yeah. But they're not necessarily all the same. It's the, but it has some interesting ideas, but we, we give them a hard time

for products like that. But, you know, we've just been talking about Kindles and then the Amazon Echo has, was greeted or initially

with raised eyebrows, I think by people, but has really gained a lot of momentum in people who are talking about it and a lot of tech people who pooh-poohed it originally have heard their friends who've had it, have loved it, and they've come around. And that's really what happened with me, where Dan kept praising it. And I finally just kind of gave in and I got one. Just give in.

I just do what Dan says. That's basically it. I should point out, I also have an Amazon Echo. I was going to ask. You've got two. I do. I think Dan also has two. I also have two. I'm behind the curve.

You are. As soon as it came out, I ordered it. And then it came and my wife was like, what have you done? Why do we need this? Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the question we all asked, right? What have we done? Why do we need this? Yeah, well, I mean, that's the question we all asked, right? What have we done? Why do we need this?

Do we need this? Where am I? Why am I in the sandbasket? So why is the Echo so appealing when it seemed like it was potentially pointless early on? Well, I think that part of it is that it did seem pointless early on because it seemed like, okay, this is a thing that we can already do with our phones and our iPads. We've got Siri on all those, voice-activated assistants on the newer iPhones. You can even summon it without having to use the buttons. And I think, well, why would you need a thing that's stationary and lives in one room?

And the answer is in part, A, because Amazon's implementation was very good, especially on the hardware side where even though though and I live in a small apartment, but you know, as Jason just sort of intimated by the fact that he mentioned he can add stuff to my shopping list when I was listening to this podcast with my speakers on the Echo is very good at hearing things even multiple rooms away. And that's because of its microphone setup. Amazon's done a really good job making a device that's that lives up to its sort of usefulness, right?

We could all have imagined there was a device, this sort that just didn't work very well, but their execution was excellent. And I think, you know, comparative especially to, you know, if you spent some time using Siri, especially on the Apple Watch, it sometimes feels like the implementation there is less than excellent. And I think it is. So, yeah, I think part of it was that amazon did the did a really good job with this product uh and that it ended up being more useful and more to the point

they've ended up continually building in more and more new functionality along the way so i think that they it's weird because it doesn't fit into any convenient category, right? Like we all saw this device and we're like, what is this? It's like a standalone Siri and a Bluetooth speaker. That sounds insane. And it turns out that this is a product category that we didn't know that we wanted or needed. And I think more of the, you know, the sort of big factor here is that it feels very much like a computer that is sort of in the air around you at all times. And there are times where that's exceptionally useful to have.

You know, we, I, Scott over there, a big Star Trek fan. We are all used to the computer activated voice interface, you know, computer from Star Trek. computer from Star Trek. And something about that sort of translates, I think, to the Echo, which is kind of neat, which is the idea that if my hands are full or I'm not near my phone or whatever, I can ask for some information and I can have it delivered to me and usually pretty accurately. And so that combined with some of the functionality Amazon's built in, the fact that they let you hook into outside third-party services has made it surprisingly compelling. And I found mine really useful. That's why I went out and bought a second one to play around with. My girlfriend, when she was here, actually got really used to having it and playing

the radio stations on that when we were cooking. And so she bought one for her own apartment. So there's something very compelling about it. And as Jason said, many of the people that we know in different tech circles have sort of bought into it. And I think I've heard from very few of them who haven't really enjoyed it in some way. It doesn't seem like a lot of people have been like, oh, I bought this thing and it was totally useless. A lot of them are like, yeah, kind of coming around on this being a really useful product. So I think voice is a very natural way to interact with technology. And we're only going to see more of that. Yeah.

Scott, what about you? Have you been happy with your Echo? I have been very happy with my Echo, happier than I thought I would be. I bought it mostly because I buy gadgets. Yeah. And it was there, and I was like, it's kind of a cool idea. I don't know why I would need it, but I'll buy it. And so I did. And Amazon, you know, they send you these things and they're like, ooh, you're a special person here. You get early access to pre-ordering the Echo. And I'm

like, I don't even know what an Echo is, but I'll order it. So I ordered it and it showed up. And for a while, it wasn't really doing much for me. It was just kind of sitting there. But then I got to Dan's point about one of the things that I think is great about it is that it just, you know, suddenly it knows how to do more stuff, which is kind of frightening when you think about it, but very cool in practice. And so before that, the other purchase that I had made was I decided that we needed Wi-Fi light bulbs in my house without asking my wife. So I got a whole bunch of Wi-Fi light bulbs. And my wife was like – and I said, okay, Marisa, when you want to turn on the light, you can't use the switch anymore.

You have to get your phone out and use this app and be on Wi-Fi. And it's super cool. And she looked at me like I was crazy. And she almost made me return them. Because they're also slightly dimmer than our other lights, which she didn't like. But anyway. But long story short, the Echo learned how to turn on our lights. And this has been like a wonderful thing in our life.

And now Marisa will talk to me again because she really likes that we can say, Alexa, turn on the living room and the lights come on. And it's pretty cool. Also, one of the things that I like to do with the Alexa is, and if people who have one, I'm going to ask about how the weather is in your area. So Alexa, what's the temperature today? And then Alexa tells you what the temperature is and what the little forecast is. It's very helpful. You can also ask her how old celebrities are that's just one of my favorite things to do yeah i i actually really enjoy that it hooks in with uh tune in which is a service that essentially streams radio stations um so i frequently will be washing the dishes or cooking something and i can just tell it to start playing our local npr station and it will just do that

without any questions whereas um it's a little trickier in Siri and it doesn't work as well. I also like, and I've mentioned this before in several places, the Echo has one of the best Bluetooth implementations because once you've sort of paired your device and set it up, you can just say, connect my phone and it will connect your phone. And for anybody who's like turned devices on and off and worried about pairing Bluetooth devices, it's so much easier to just be able to say, do this, and it's done, at which point you can start playing your podcast or whatever. I also like the hook-in with Prime Music,

which may not have quite the breadth of catalog that, say, Apple Music does, but for something that I got basically for free for already being a Prime subscriber, it's pretty darn good. And we have pretty good luck with saying, you know, play this song or play this artist, and sure enough, there goes goes off playing some you know johnny cash or what have you uh and so i think all of that is it's super cool to not have to like navigate through multiple layers of like an interface to be like all right i'm gonna open apple music i'm gonna search for johnny cash i'll find the album i want i guess i'll shuffle everything like you know as easy

as that all is it's funny that we're making fun of a snore phone interface for being super complex because the answer is well that's super advanced technology that actually makes things much easier than they used to be but what's easier still is just telling your voice activated robot to do this thing and i have a bunch of sonos speakers in my house which i I love. I love Sonos. It's fantastic. It works very well. Easy to set up, easy to use. It is not as easy as saying to your Echo, play NPR. And so when I came in to my house and Marisa was listening to NPR, she was in the kitchen.

Our Echo is in the living room and we have a Sonos in the kitchen, but she was listening to NPR on the Echo because it's just so much easier to say, play NPR, then open the Sonos app and then click, you know. I actually wish that- Even Sonos sounds much better. I wrote a piece about this. I want Sonos, and they had a perplexing press release where they sort of said that they realized that sort of voice and streaming are where things are going, that I want Sonos to make a deal with Amazon so that if I've got Sonos speakers in my house, that I can tell them what to play from the Echo. Like, just have the Echo and Sonos kind of all work together.

And the Sonos speakers are vastly superior to the Echo speakers. Even the Play 1, the little one that's roughly the same size as the Echo, is so much better as a speaker. And, you know, you've got the one Echo, it would make sense for them to do some integration there. And Sonos has sort of Apple Music support. There are ways that this could really work well together. And right now, you know, you can attach an Echo, the little Echo, the Echo Dot to a Sonos speaker that like the Play 5 that's got the audio in. But in the end, you know, you now have a better speaker, but you're not using any of a Sonos speaker that like the play five, that's got the audio in, but in the end, you know, you're, you now have a better speaker, but you're not using any of the Sonos features

anymore. You've just turned your expensive Sonos speaker into a dumb speaker, which is kind of not the point. So it's like, and this, I mean, I think, I think this is the problem with a lot of this home tech, because I also love those features and just having um having uh that um echo in the in just the in the air of your house that any from anywhere you can just say a thing and it knows what you're doing and it and it has to be good at at telling you in words because uh unlike siri which often punts to the screen it's like i i look this up for you and like i don't want to see that right now alexa can't do that alexa has to tell you an answer and sometimes it fails because this is still really early days of this stuff but um but the the the frustration with a lot of this stuff is the lack of connectivity now i've noticed

amazon is making a real effort to add more stuff to echo all the time and the uh they add there's this whole trigger system where you basically people third parties can write their own things and they're not deeply integrated you have to say hey lady in the box uh trigger this thing but uh but that means that amazon doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting that's their third party app platform basically and uh on dan's advice i got a logitech harmony hub which um which talks via one of these triggers through if this then that to the echo so now i can like turn on my tv on and off and control other devices using that which is pretty awesome um yeah but as to your point the problem then is like once you've started using

that and you've gotten used to that it's super confusing to now think oh man you know what's cool is that you know my fire tv or siri on my apple tv lets me search for things by voice why can't i do that with my echo or why can't i give those like set top boxes more specific commands um because it's kind of limited and i think that's the most damning thing is like once you started using this and sort of dipped your toe in the water and you realize where the limitations are, you're like, oh, there is so much more room

to do super cool stuff here. I wish they would integrate, to your point, I wish they would integrate better. And there's also the problem that we're retrofitting. This is so early days that we're retrofitting our homes and our lives to this stuff. And Scott's example is the one that I use a lot, too, which is we, too, have a light switch that must remain permanently on. Unless one of the last night, one of our bulbs dropped off the Wi-Fi network, I think, because I rebooted my router.

What a weird world we live in. It's strange. You haven't lived until you've updated your lightbulb's firmware, let me tell you. And so I used it for that. But other than that, it just stays on. And of course, logically, if you've got smart bulbs, what you want is a light switch that's a smart switch that is always feeding them energy, but is just sending essentially a Wi-Fi command to them when you flip it off to turn them off. But they're not really off in the old school version of off.

But that requires different wiring and replacing your switches. And if you're renting, you can't do that. But that's because it is dumb. You can like, yay, I put all new bulbs in everywhere and they're all smart. Now, never touch the light switches, not even by accident. And if you want to turn a light off, we've got this handy switch here. You can't touch it. You have to find your phone and unlock it and launch this app and then press the button to turn the light switch off.

Or tell the lady who's listening all the time, perhaps. But it's not quite there, but it's close. I just had that same moment that I need to replace the rocker switch that I've got that controls my outside lights. Ideally, I would replace that with something that was smart and acted like the current switch, but wasn't actually cutting the power. It was just talking to it over Wi-Fi. And we're just not there yet. So once again, we can have the technological innovation of being able to turn a light on or off from a switch in a wall not directly connected to it.

Via the internet. It's amazing. Well, the Hue, Philips Hue, those are the bulbs I got. They have a little switch that you can buy. I don't know what's the light switch. It's a button, I think, that you can. Yeah. Because it is confusing when I have guests, mostly.

It's confusing because they're like, how do I turn the lights on? I'm like, well, you have to talk to the cylinder or you can use your phone. And it's very confusing to people yeah i yeah exactly i have not gone down fully down that road yet i have a switch uh i have a wemo belkin wemo smart switch which is connected to a standing lamp um therefore you know it doesn't require a switch in the wall but that lamp basically is on all you know time, and then the switch turns it on and off specific times of day. But I can also override that using either the Echo or a Wi-Fi app. I remember showing that to my girlfriend very early on. She was like, oh, I pulled out the phone, turned off the light using the phone.

And just to your point, exactly where you were, Scott, basically like, uh-huh, that's great. What if I just want to turn the light on and I don't have your phone? Don't do that. Go into another room, maybe. That's right. Here's a flashlight. One step forward, two steps back. Well, that's why I was complaining about tech nerds poo-pooing the Kindle earlier. But I'll say this is why tech nerds exist exist is for us to try this stuff out and step in

all of these holes and uh point out that all of these things are bad and by the time regular people get to them hopefully some of these holes will be filled in um but we get to have the be on the cutting edge where we where we can't touch any of our light switches maybe this is a product idea like little tape that you can put over your light switch is saying do not touch smart these are these have been smartened don't touch them anymore that's right they will be angry if you touch them yeah i do love my wi-fi light bulbs i will say though because uh i like the fact that they will just turn on around sunset yes to do anything it just happens it's fantastic so my outdoor my outdoor lights are like that where they they are they come on in the morning and in the evening and uh uh they come on around sunset

in the evening and then and then stay on until like 11 30 or 11 and in the morning it's the same thing they come on at like six and then go off at sunrise and uh that as the as the seasons change it just takes care of itself it's pretty great yep i have the same thing with my wemo switch and i'm thinking about expanding that because it's a little more versatile than the light bulb situation for me um just in terms of like if i burn out a light bulb i can still you know replace that light bulb yes yeah all right well uh i'm gonna move on to ask upgrade i think uh this has been a good conversation. Let's thank one more sponsor. It's the good people at MailRoute. They're sponsoring Upgrade again. Thanks to MailRoute. You know, all the time, IT department, Scott knows this. I'm bringing Scott in on all the ads this week. It's fun. IT department, Scott, they're always being asked to do more with less, aren't they?

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and thank you to MailRoute for once again supporting upgrade. All right, you guys ready to do some ask upgrade? I am ready. All right, you guys ready to do some Ask Upgrade? I am ready. All right. Some of these questions might be for you, you see. Listener David wants to know, why does everybody want to kill the MacBook Air now? We were talking about this last week. It's cheaper and faster than MacBooks.

It's more ports than MacBooks. And it's cheaper and lighter than the MacBook Pro. I think the answer is nobody wants to kill the MacBook Air except Apple. David, the MacBook Air knows what it did. That's right. Ever since it went on that murderous rampage, I feel like it should die. So you're for the death. Days are numbered.

You're for the laptop death penalty is what you people are saying. You are monsters. But so is the MacBook Air apparently. No, seriously, I love the MacBook Air. I think a lot of people would really like the MacBook Air to be updated with new processors and a Retina display, but it's very clear that the MacBook is the MacBook Air successor. Apple has made it that way. So we're not trying to kill it.

I think we're trying to acknowledge the fact that it's over because Apple would have probably called it the MacBook Air if they had wanted to keep that name around. It seems like the Air name is being phased out. I think the iPad Airs will be renamed at some point to probably just iPad since there's iPad Pro and the MacBook Air. Likewise, the MacBook is the MacBook Air successor. So I will, I plan on running my 11 inch MacBook Air like into the ground, basically, until the MacBook One is, you know, sufficiently improved to replace it. It's gonna be a few years before it's even as fast as my MacBook Air, right? So, you know, maybe the MacBook Pros will be as thin and light as a MacBook Air by then, and that will be the difference. I don't know.

And that's, that's the, the Air signifies, right, that it's lighter and thinner. And I feel like that's just what they're going for across their product line anyway. So why have a special, uh, model that is all about that when they just want it for all of their laptops and iPads to be light and thin. Yeah. They're, uh, they're, they're over it now. And the MacBook is gonna, is gonna do that from now on anyway. That's the, that's your fewer ports, cheaper, faster faster lighter thing in the long run as the macbook air is allowed to sort of age away i i doubt it will ever be updated i think it's just going to fade away it would be nice if they gave it another update but uh probably just price drops it exists it exists to be a sub-thousand uh apple laptop right now that's that's the reason

that it's still around something else will fill that slot eventually. So that was listener David. This is a different listener, David, but I assure you the name is David, but it's not the same one. I just bought a new Mac Mini for my 16-year-old and was very surprised

it's a November 2014 build. When will Apple update them next? Wow, the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini knows what it did. Again. Dev. It went on that murderous matter they should really there are some there are some kinks to work out uh it's they the apple goes

usually pretty long without updating the mac mini i feel like that is a every once in a while when they think of it they're like oh yeah yeah we uh we added this thing the mac mini here's a press release about it we don't talk about it otherwise bye-bye so this is 2014 to it's only early early 2016 yeah it does not surprise me at all priorities get updated last year it's a low priority this you know there'll be uh at some point a chip generation change that apple will be like yeah okay we could that'll fit in there and they'll and they'll uh do an update the disappointing thing of the 2014 models is that the chips that they use didn't support um the the like four core model so it's all just like two core models they were there used to be a mac mini that was sold that was actually faster than the fastest of the next generation mac mini because it had the multi

and more cores and um i don't know whether that'll change or what it's a low priority for apple so i'm sure they'll update them my guess would be you know, I'd say end of this year because I feel like a two-year cycle is fair, but it could not be depending on what else they got going on. I either think probably a WWDC or this fall. Yeah. One of those. Yeah. Lister Chris asks,

Do you guys think Apple Watch 2 will offer a configuration to buy just the watch and skip the band at a lower price this is the opposite of what amazon did with the kindle i don't know what's happening i don't think so no no first first off a bandless watch is not a good look and and you're basically saying um we we uh we're gonna go buy some band from someone else that is an apple no apple's gonna make you have a band. Essentially, with the new nylon straps, you have an option of a nylon band or a sport band at the lowest price of the Apple Watch Sport,

which I think is a good... Mike noticed that and mentioned it to me, and I was struck by that. It's like, yeah, basically now you've got a different option for the default, but you need to pick a band, and that's going to be baked into the price. Pick side people yep it's just going to happen that way uh listen listener john wrote in to say and this is a this is a great one barnes and noble lost the ebook war i want to switch to the amazon ecosystem while i can do to better e-readers and more books i

listen to the six colors podcast dan and i do a secret podcast for six color subscribers by the way and i'd like to buy the other secret podcast which you do not know about yes and i'd like to buy a kindle paperwhite are there uh are there any easy ways to transfer books from the nook to the kindle um easy yes legal question mark i think you must find a barnes and noble representative and sacrifice them during a full moon boy you guys are killing everybody in this ask upgrade this is dangerous well barnes and nobles knows what it did yeah that's that's true um i think ethically yes legally questionable but if you i'll put a link in the show notes. Although if you Google search remove DRM from Nook, you will probably find this link. It's a link to the digital reader that links to a couple of things.

Basically, I wrote about this on Six Colors, too. There's a tool called Caliber that is an e-book conversion utility. And one of the things that they offer is a plugin architecture. And then somebody has written a plugin that will remove various kinds of ebook DRM from books. It doesn't work with Apple's iBooks because that uses the Fairplay DRM. You need a different DRM stripper to do that. But for Kindle and Nook, I believe it will work. So what you do is the digital reader article that we'll link in the show notes says, you basically have to download the Nook app on your computer and you download your books and then you open them in Caliber and you've installed this DDRM plugin and you can basically convert

them and take the DRM off of them. And then if you want, you can convert them to a format that the Kindle will play and then you can put them on your Kindle. You can like copy them onto your Kindle and that will work. I realize it's sort of a gray area, but I also feel like at this point, if that platform is abandoned, you should not feel bad about this. I agree.

Otherwise that's just like, that's just extortion. I think, I don't think you should feel bad about it. Even if it were, if you just wanted to switch from the Nook to the Kindle, you shouldn't feel bad about it either. Yeah.

Although, I mean, you should not buy a Nook if you're listening now because barnes and noble doesn't care about it all that much but yeah uh and you can also i mean one of the other things i really like about the kindle is amazon makes it easy to put stuff onto it and they have a variety of what you can email to a special address you can download a little little app. You can load a Kindle printer onto your computer so you can print to your Kindle.

You can plug it in in drag and drop too, right? Yeah, you can do that as well if you're a caveman. And I am. And Dan is, yes. Yes. Lady in the cylinder,

turn off the lights in the cave. I'm on headphones. Listen lucas wrote in to say is there any way to make a screenshot on the new apple tv that does not require xcode and i answered him yes and i disappointed him yeah you could take a picture of your tv set great uh you can use a capture box which is what i have yes you can use something like uh i think mine is an elgato um you can box you can even do better than that my understanding is if you have a usb uh c to usb cable uh and you attach it to your mac to a mac you can do the quick time screen capture oh like on uh like doing that with your phone as with a phone or an ipad um and then so you could do that and then and then just take a frame and you would have a screenshot.

But there's no way to like reverse airplay, which is I kind of think what he's looking for. Yeah, and I don't think you can. So basically you're going to need that special cable or just a dark room and a very steady hand and take a picture of your TV set, which is not the best. But we used to have to do that at Macworld for a while. best but we used to have to do that at macworld for a while yeah lister benjamin wrote in saying sweatshirts and t-shirts are nice but what you what you really need is baseball caps next time for upgrade i will take that under advisement mike may not know what a baseball cap is because they don't have baseball in england but it's like a cricket cap yeah that's exactly it's a crumpet cap but we'll have a yeah is it a muffin english muffin cap or a crumpet cap. But we'll have a, yeah, is it a muffin, English muffin cap or a crumpet cap? I saw crumpets in the supermarket the other day.

Crumpets are excellent. I highly recommend. Yeah. Go eat a crumpet. We'll put a big piece of tasty cake crumpet. We'll have an orange brain baseball hat at some point maybe. That would be fun. And finally, listener Paul wrote in and said,

If given the opportunity, which episode of Star Trek would Scott forcibly subject Dan to? Wait a second. I want to object to the premise of this question. You need to forcibly subject me to a Star Trek episode as though I have not seen most Star Trek episodes. Everybody knows that you're a Star Wars fan and that you can't like two things with stars in the title. fan and that you can't you can't like two things with stars in the title it's clear well actually i have forced dan to watch an episode of star trek for my podcast random trek uh dan was my second guest jason was my first guest this is like a random trek reunion oh we all watched the same random episode of trek for today right we did yeah. No. And it was the episode I forced Ed to watch was By Any Other Name, an original series

episode that includes some people being turned into dice, which was exciting. Well, they're like styrofoam dice, large styrofoam dice. They get crushed. But I don't- Scotty gets an alien drunk in that one. That's my favorite part of that episode. That's true. He does. But I reject the premise Scotty gets an alien drunk in that one. That's my favorite part of that episode. That's true. He does.

But I reject the premise of the question as well. I don't think that anyone should be forced to watch Star Trek. If you like Star Trek, watch it. If you don't, don't. I happen to know Dan likes Star Trek. So if I had to – if there was some weird situation in which I had to force Dan to watch an episode of Star Trek or else bad things would happen. I would force him to watch In the Pale Moonlight, a Deep Space Nine episode that I know he likes. Great choice.

Well, thanks to both of you for being on Upgrade and filling in Mike's shoes, one shoe each, which means you've got also a bare foot there, a sock, or something. One shoe only. Yeah, something like that. It was great having you both on. Scott, it's great to have you back on Upgrade, and Dan, I believe this was your first time on this side of the microphone, right?

So nice to be here. Is there another side to the microphone? Yeah, the side where I put marshmallows in your to-do list. This is a better side than that. To-do marshmallows. Yeah, that's right. What do you do with those marshmallows, Dan? I did all the marshmallows. Dan can that's right. What do you do with those marshmallows, Dan? I did all the marshmallows.

Dan can decide what he does with them. Thank you to our sponsors, Smile, MailRoute, and ITProTV. And thanks to Mike, wherever he is. He'll be back next week from his assignment in Atlanta clicking pens. And here's where you can find us. Of course, show notes are in your podcast app of choice, or you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 85. And you can find Scott on Twitter at Blank Baby, and he is the host of the Random Trek podcast on The Incomparable. You can find Dan at DMoran. He is the host and co-host of

so many podcasts, including Clockwise on this very network. And of course, The Rebound, which he hosts with John Maltz and Lex Friedman. That's a tech podcast you should check out. Thanks to you both. Thanks to you, Jason. And thanks everybody out there for listening. We'll be back next week. See you then.