Upgrade - 9: A Brain and a Drill

Episode Date: November 10, 2014

This time Jason and Myke discuss their current working environments and how they feel about the suggestion that we're in a new 'podcasting revolution'.

Hello and welcome back to Upgrade on RelayFM. This is episode 9. Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Igloo, an intranet you'll actually like, and The Converted by Idiom, a unique converter for iOS. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by the man of this hour, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, I'm happy to be your co-host for this one hour, before we all move along with our lives and go to other places and other podcasts. So if this episode goes over an hour, which the listeners will know now, I don't know what happens in the second hour. It's going to be a short show. I don't know who the man of the second hour is now i've cursed well you you will

be the man of the all remaining hours of this podcast okay i will cede control of being the man of the hour to you at the at the one hour mark that's where the wheels really come off yes yeah that's a bonanzastyle insanity that happens then. So you want to keep it to around an hour if you can help it. Short show. So, hey, Mike, there's some follow-up. Oh, everybody's favorite. I know. I take too much glee in having follow-up.

But I'm very excited that I have follow-up, but I'm just, I'm very excited that I have follow-up. First off, we talked a few weeks ago about the fact that I am kind of unnerved by streaming services because I wrote that article about how Battlestar Galactica was being taken off of Netflix and how streaming services are really convenient, but you were kind of at the whims of the catalogs. And you really see that in video streaming services, but you also can see that in audio a little bit. And I said, mostly the music stuff is just, is fine. And we had that one piece of feedback from somebody who said that the most successful German rapper, I think, pulled all his stuff off of a streaming service and people were upset

about that. And I just wanted to follow up with some real world follow up, which is Taylor Swift pulled all her albums off of Spotify. Not only has she withheld her new album from streaming services, but I believe all of her albums were removed, her whole catalog from Spotify. And this is one of those things that I was talking about. This may be an outlier or this may be a sign of things to come that subscribing to a music service is really awesome because you can do a lot of discovery and there's just access to so much music. But you do risk having stuff up and vanish on you.

And that's not cool. That's not fun. So if you enjoy Taylor Swift and you built a Taylor Swift playlist on Spotify, it's now gone. So this is the challenge with all of these streaming services is the intellectual property libraries and the licensing agreements. And if you bought her albums, you have them still. And if you just listened on Spotify, now they're gone. Is she given much of a reason for why? I've seen some headlines which kind of just say, you know, I'm not committing my life's work to a fad and things like that.

Have you read anything that suggests more? No, and it's on other services. It's not entirely gone from all the services, I think. But I don't know. I mean, I don't know what her deal is with her record label. And if there are specific things that she can say, take it off the streaming services. And I don't know what their deals are. I don't know.

I mean, I think what's really interesting is that you've got a big star with a big hit album. I don't know. I mean, I think what's really interesting is that you've got a big star with a big hit album, and everybody who's expected that they could just listen to it on the streaming service the day that it came out have been sadly mistaken because her album 1989 is not available for streaming. You need to buy it. And that's interesting. And I think we're going to see more of that. I think you're going to end up seeing something more like a video release window where it's in the theaters and then it's on for purchase or for rental and eventually it ends up on TV. I think you might see that with music services where they're more about the catalog and maybe less about new stuff, especially from big names. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes. But the larger point was just that this is the downside of those services. You get a lot of convenience and a lot of value out of them. But one of the really consumer unfriendly things is this, that her albums are just gone from Spotify. They just have vanished.

And it's funny that we mentioned that and we didn't have a real high profile example. A German rapper, I'm sorry, not quite high profile as Taylor Swift. This is about as high profile as it gets. Yeah. I have found a Rolling Stone article. And basically the gist of it is, is it kind of summed up in this one quote from her. I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free. And the title of the article is about a super fan who wants to invest.

So she's kind of basically saying, if people want to give you money, you're kind of not allowing them to do that because the perception is all music is free on Spotify. And that kind of like you pay a company, not the artist. I think that's kind of her concern, which, you know, there's definitely some merit in in that you know the idea of being like oh music is free it has no value um you know the people that made it don't deserve to be paid directly for it i get that um but it feels like a it feels like this is only will only last for so long um because this is where the kids are. So, you know, eventually, well, she can choose, I mean,

but eventually she may decide that she doesn't, that she will want to change that decision. Who knows? Yeah, but it could also push the tech people who are behind these services to change too. I mean, that's part of the argument here is this has been a very simple, these services are conceived fairly simply by people who are not in the music business these are mostly technical people and then they

get lawyers involved and they manage you know they work with the music industry to make deals and things like that um and and i've not heard any artists say that that streaming services are good for them um and i get that they're good for consumers but there are markets where there's such an imbalance between good for consumers but bad for the creators or producers of the material that something has to give because that's not something that's sustainable otherwise and so for an example like a Blockbuster

like I said yeah maybe it's a windowing system where the new stuff doesn't appear maybe it is a premium subscription that gives you access to new releases for more money, or you can get the cheaper free subscription for older stuff. I don't know how it's going to play out, but it's interesting that somebody who's got clout because she's popular is using that to talk about the issues involved and to bring attention to it. It may have no bearing. It may not change a thing, but I think it's an interesting is using that to talk about the issues involved and to bring attention to it. It may have no bearing.

It may not change a thing, but I think it's an interesting approach because I don't think that the current streaming service system is sustainable for artists. And yeah, the record companies are in the middle too, and those guys probably, ideally you'd come up with a system that eliminated the middlemen and just benefited the artists directly. Because the music industry is legendary for how these big music record companies exploit the artists.

But still, I think there are challenges with this where artists don't like the existence of these uh these services and how much of that is just feeling like it devalues their work and how much of it is literally it devalues their work because they don't they don't get paid i think we're still uh too early to know what what are the halo effects of streaming streaming music like what does it over time drive up uh concert ticket sales which is where these artists make the majority of their money probably not in taylor swift's case because i'm sure she has a very lucrative uh record recording contract now because she has the ability to to demand such a thing um but i just wonder like if you know five years time we realized that oh there wasn't going to be any more money

because you know we spoke about how do you remember I mentioned about the Platinum album yeah right in America well Taylor Swift's the only person now to have done that this year the only individual so she is an outlier you know and it may be that music

would have stopped being sold irrespective of Spotify or something. It's simply because people would have moved to piracy, which they were anyway. So, you know, I think it's too soon to tell. And we'll see if Taylor Swift ends up like Led Zeppelin in a couple of years' time or not. But it wouldn't surprise me if these streaming services end up being like Netflix, which is not everything and not the newest things, but a nice selection if you want to dip into the catalog, but maybe not the new stuff.

And they do that specifically to try and drive sales of the new stuff. And you're right, maybe that doesn't work. Maybe people just pirate it. But I don't know, it'll be interesting to watch. Brian Hamilton in the chat room pointed out that she wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. We'll put the link in the show notes. In fact, I already have. But the real way to read that article is to Google, for Taylor Swift, The Future of Music is a Love Story, and then click on the search results because the Wall Street Journal will let you read it then and otherwise they won't give it a shot just google that uh anyway that was good that was good uh good real world follow-up for a topic from a previous show i wanted to mention the true sign that um

that we have made it as a podcast mike is there are now two uh i'm not sure i'd call them parody accounts there are two uh twitter accounts paying homage to this podcast it's true this this is a monumental day truly we live in interesting times so um at ahoy underscore telephone is out there occasionally barking commands to its telephone and i love this underscore manchego fm is now out there for all of your uh manchego cheese needs so if that's a tasty cheese of which there are many of which yeah and i think they're gonna have some sort of sort of fundraiser to get you some manchego. I don't think we have any because we didn't need to cover it, but we had quite a bit of manchego cheese-related follow-up. Yes, yes.

I didn't put that in the show notes. Suffice it to say, many people are trying uh get mike some manchego from spain which isn't it's just nearby you don't have to go far at all to get there no not at all to spain um probably jump on a train sure and then maybe another train yeah you'd probably have to change trains and then another train after go yeah'd get there. You could get there eventually. Take a bike. Ride your bike through the countryside. I have a really nice bit of Kindle follow-up from a listener who is, I've actually been on a podcast with this gentleman.

It's Andrzej Tomic. He's from, okay, he's not from Croatia. He's from Slovenia. He's slovenia but he vacations in croatia a lot and he said when the first kindle 3g was made available um they weren't in the eu and that meant insane roaming charges so he actually used his 3g kindle to browse and write email in gmail on the experimental browser it slow and awkward, but nothing compared to the roaming charges. So he says it's not a common use case, but it was a way for him to get on the internet internationally without paying an arm and a leg. And he still uses this. Croatia's in the EU,

so it's not so bad. But in Serbia, the same applies. So when he goes to Serbia, he can use that until they eventually enter the EU. So I thought that was really great from Andrzej, who does a great podcast called Storming Mortal in English. And then he's also got a podcast, I believe, in Slovenian. But that's a very limited audience because there's only like 4 million people who speak it, I think. That's a very limited audience because there's only like 4 million people who speak it, I think. The funny thing is, we've had shows like when Bionic was on 5x5. It was number one in Slovenia, like overall, because Anse spoke about it. Yeah, that was Anse's own. Yeah, that's exactly it.

Well, he has that power. He controls. He's like the godfather of iTunes in Slovenia. Anyway, thank you to him for that. Also some Kindle follow-up from listener Brian, who we talked about auto-loading books onto all your Kindles. And he pointed out a good reason why you wouldn't want to do that, which is your entire family has Kindles and you buy a book and you don't want to force that book onto everybody's Kindle. I suppose that's fair.

But he points out something that is actually, as somebody who just got a Kindle, is a gripe that I have too, which is when you upgrade to a new Kindle, you can't just point it at the library of the old Kindle in the cloud and say, just give me all of the things that were on that other. There's no migration to a new Kindle. You have to either copy the files off via USB and put them back, or you have to just sort of manually go through and download them again. And he's right. That's silly. In the grand scheme of things, it's not the worst thing because it only happens when you buy a new Kindle, but it's dumb and Amazon should probably do better. Have you been enjoying a new Kindle?

I have been. I've been reading. I finished a book. I started another book. You published a review as well? I did, Six Colors. My review is up now. It was gestating. I think I had written it last week when we talked, but hadn't added some things to it. And Scott read it after he was on the show. And he said, I can't believe you even considered sending it back.

And I said, well, I didn't strongly consider it. But I did consider it because it was not as big a change as as i as i expected but it's nice i like it and uh yeah i continue to read it but as was established last week scott is the he's the wrong person to to talk to about such things because no he buys them all they could do nothing they can we just changed the name i'll take it i'll buy it yeah it's it's his uh he collects kindles it says it's a hobby that he has um also we were talking about different tools like there's a tool that lets you convert epubs to it does a lot of things but one of the things it does is it'll convert epubs into mobi files that the kindle can read so if you've got an epub you can put it on a kindle

even though it doesn't read that format you can just convert it. And this is a tool that for years and years and years, I called Calibre because it's spelled Calibre, C-A-L-I-B-R-E. And in the last year, I keep hearing people calling it Calibre. And I thought, wow, that is terrible that I've been mispronouncing that name all these years. And so last week, I referred to it as Calibre. And listener Jeff points out that in the Calibre documentation, it makes it clear that it's pronounced Calibre and not Calibre. So don't do that. And listener Jeff also says, hashtag, how should I pronounce this? Hashtag GIF is still GIF.

Or is it hashtag GIF is still GIF? I don't know. Anyway, it's one of those. I did hear you say it and thought that's definitely caliber. Caliber, yeah. But I gave it to you. I thought other people knew better than me after all that time. It's like, well, they must know.

Why would you ever choose to pronounce it that way if that wasn't the name? And it turns out, I'm not going to name names of who I heard, but some fairly knowledgeable people about e-books refer to it that way if that wasn't the name. And it turns out, I'm not going to name names of who I heard, but some fairly knowledgeable people about eBooks referred to it that way. And I was like, well, that sounds, it certainly sounds fancier than Calibre. So let's go with, let's go with Calibre. Nope, it's not, it's just Calibre. It's fine. It's a cool, cool little utility. It's a UI is pretty atrociously ugly, but you know, it works really well. So, you know, for converting eBooks and stuff, I definitely say, uh, check it out. There's even a plugin that'll let you take your Kindle books and convert

them to other formats, which is technically illegal because it's subverting the DRM, but you can do it. It's a pretty high Calibre product. It is. It is. I've rarely seen a product of its Calibre. It is. I've rarely seen a product of its Calibre. So two more tweets and then we're done with follow-up. Listener Rick wrote in just to point out, and we heard a few of these. I just want to say it again. PowerMax is a great company. I've been buying and trading in my Macs with them for years.

I got a few people, somebody said, I can't believe Jason has never heard of Power Macs or doesn't know what they are. I actually have heard of Power Macs, but this is one of those funny things about being on a podcast, which is I'm hesitant in the moment to just endorse something if we're talking about, what I didn't want to have happen is that I misremembered

and the company that I thought I was talking about was not the company. I thought I was talking about was not the company. And we ended up recommending some shady fly-by-night company for buying, you know, remaindered old Macs on the podcast. And so a lot of times when information like that comes up and I'm not a hundred percent on it while we're recording a podcast, I will kind of demur. I will back up a little bit and be like, you know, well, maybe, I don't know, rather than just agreeing. Because there is a risk that if you say it and you're totally wrong, that, you know, bad things could happen. So sometimes that happens. And that's just the

thing about podcasts being kind of a first draft of your thoughts and different than when you're writing something down and you spend time checking, you know, we're just talking and recording this and then we'll post, and people will listen to it. So I actually, when I looked at the site a little bit more, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember these guys. But at the time, it was happening fast enough that I didn't want to give an endorsement and then have it be totally wrong for something that involved buying hardware because I'd like to have some idea of who the people are before i say yes give them thousands of dollars so so i may not need power max anymore oh yeah let's let's

take this as this now we're in the mike's computer vertical of the show so tell me what's uh what's going on with you so our good friend our mutual friend Mr. Marco Arment, has recently been testing various different microphones and USB interfaces. And he's going to write it up for his site, I believe, so I'm not going to spoil it. But we've been talking because I have a vested interest in these things as well. And he has suggested to me to get a different interface than the one I currently have, which is a USB interface, because he has tried it out with my microphone and the microphone that he uses, and he suggests it. And therefore, I may be changing to a USB interface, which means I will no longer be restricted by the audio in, audio out, because I won't have the option.

But the USB interface looks like it would do a much better job at a mere fraction of the size of the one that I currently have. So I may change to that, or I'm at least going to get one to try it out, because it's not that expensive, really. And then I may go in a completely different direction. I may even go with a Retina iMac who knows

but it will open up a little bit more to what I'll be able to buy and I won't be restricted to just getting a now old Mac Mini. You could use your Retina MacBook Pro. Yeah, I still don't want to do that. But yeah, I could do that if I wanted to.

In a pinch, I could. But I'd still want a separate machine. I like the idea of having a separate machine. All right. I thought you were going to say that Marco's Mac Pro is on the market. Oh, yeah. I think it is. But yeah, I don't know if I want it.

Because I thought about it because I'd seen him or I'm sure I'd seen him somewhere say about how much he was selling it for, and it looked like an okay enough deal, but then I'd have to get it here, and that's where I would lose all of the money and then could just buy a new one if I really wanted it. So, yeah, basically I'm not going to buy anything yet because I don't know what decisions I'll be making soon. Okay, so we'll come back to this. What you're saying is that you should stay tuned for the next episode of what Mike's computer choice is, vertical. Yeah, it's the computer choice vertical.

Okay, good. All right, we'll keep an eye. At Macworld, we had a Firewire mixer for a long time, and then we went to a USB mixer. That was fine. That was fine. The audio stuff is like a hole that you can go down and never get back out. You could literally go down in that hole forever about different processors and different microphones and different interfaces. about like different processors and different microphones and different interfaces and and i'm sure there are i mean musicians do that but i'm sure the podcasters there's some podcasters down in that hole too so i i see that i'm you know i i actually had this this is not this is not follow

up but i had this happen uh i've been trying for a long time now to figure out the best workflow to make sound effects in a podcast that's happening on Skype. Now, you have a podcast that has sound effects, don't you? Yeah. So how do you do that? Are you doing that analog? Are you mixing that in? I am.

I am. Yeah. So I figured it out, and it involves a piece of unreleased software. I think it's announced but not yet released. So I don't know if I should even talk about it. Well, anyway, so there's a piece of unannounced software, or unreleased, already announced software, and a piece of software called SoundSiphon. And if I use those together with the Soundboard app, I can get it to work.

So I'm excited about that, that I can actually do an all software sound effects over Skype thing. So I'll mention that some more, I think, when that product is finally released. It's been sort of touted for about a year now as coming out, and it is going to come out at some point, but it's not out yet. So I should probably wait and not get into the details. But I did figure that out, and that was exciting. So that was my big step up is doing it all in software because the Mac's software sound stuff is not great. I'm very interested in that because the setup that I have would not work if I changed interface because I kind of have this really weird way of taking the audio this

is one of the reasons i want audio in audio out i can i take the audio from the mac pass it into the mixer and then back in again that's what we did that's what we did in mac world we had the the the microphone or the headphone jack going into the board yep that's what i have that's how i do it yeah yeah so you're just capturing your system audio yep and uh yeah yeah that's what I have. That's how I do it. Yeah. So you're just capturing your system audio. Yep. And yeah, yeah, that's what we did too. But it can be done. So we'll follow up on that one in a future show too because I would like to talk about some podcasting stuff.

But I want to wait for that app that isn't out yet to be out so that I can recommend it and endorse it and all of that. Is it definitely coming out? Yeah. Oh, it's I'll just, I'll just say it's there's a new version of audio hijack coming out and Rogue Amoeba has talked about it and they've shown some glimpses of the

interface and I've been using it for a while and it's fantastic and I can't wait for them to ship it. And when that happens, we'll talk about other ways of, of using it. Cause it's, it's great. But it's not out yet. So there's no point other

than me going in and I've got the new audio hijack. It doesn't do any good for anybody, but they're working on it. It looks great. It's going to come out and then we can talk about it some more. Really quick follow-up from listener Brad, which is just, we were talking about Test Flight the other week. And he asked if we could talk a little bit about having a beta app from TestFlight and how it interacts with the released version. My understanding is that it just overwrites it. It knows the app ID. And unless the developer is running the beta on a different ID, I think it just overwrites it and and so like when i upgraded my twitterific to the the beta and test flight uh it was still in my dock where i where i leave it yeah it's it's still

there with a little circle the little orange or whatever it is circle next to it that says it's a beta so it's just it just does it boom just uh you know it just pops it right in there it knows it knows it's the same app, even though it's a beta. There is an interesting thing I've noticed that there's like a ticking clock on all of them. It has like 30 days. Oh, yeah, 30 days. You can't just have an endless beta, which is probably good. I've run betas accidentally for a long time after.

That's not good. So I think that's kind of cool that you can either be on the beta train and getting the new betas or the beta will expire and you need to go back to the App Store version. And then there was just one last piece of follow-up, which is an interesting one, because this is from S. Williams, Scott Williams. And he mentioned about how it took 24 hours from uploading a build to passing it for review for a test flight beta. But his opinion that's too long and that's interesting because i hadn't thought of it that way like we've been previously saying oh how great you know 24 hours is perfectly fine but maybe you just want to get it out like immediately which is what you're used to so 24 hours is 24 hours longer than 10 seconds. You know? And I just thought it was a really interesting way of looking at it.

Like, yes, yes, it is only 24 hours. However, 24 hours is, you know, that's a day longer than you would have had to wait before. You get all of the extra features of that. And, you know, Hockey app is still out there. So people can still use Hockey if they want the completely third party approach there. The idea of Apple's test flight is that it's, um, it's got all these other, other advantages going for it, including the linking it to an ID instead of a, instead of a device ID. Um, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it goes and if it, if it settles down over time and if the stories we've heard about it, the first, you know, the first approval taking, uh, a few hours or a day and then future approvals being almost instantaneous

anyway i do think though my experience remains like that it is it's it is superior i think in in some ways it's just easier it's so much easier and i feel like the apps that i'm currently testing on they're they're you know they're issuing new builds as quick as you know as as frequently as as when i've been on hockey or on the previous test flight um and there are a lot of simple things that i quite like so all right so that's half an hour of follow-up half of my hour of being the man of the hour is now gone but i think in order uh to before we move on to a topic i mike i would like to hear from a friend i need to hear from a friend right

now the the actual people behind this app are are a friend me and jason had eaten breakfast at all with hans who is from idean now idean are the makers of an app called The Converted, which is a fantastic name for an application. And this episode of Upgrade is brought to you by their app. The Converted is a unique unit converter for iOS. This app is the best way to convert numbers since the measuring cup, as it's based on that very thing. The measuring cup in your cupboard with markings for ounces, liters, tablespoons, etc. or the thermometer on your wall both represent information in a scale, right? So they have this scale that you can look up and you convert the unit conversions by looking at the

scale. They give a very clear and highly visual representation of how units relate and developer Ilyan realized that this might work for other types of units too so they made the converted the converted is perfect for getting a quick conversion of units when you're abroad working with people overseas or you just want some sort of quick unit conversion you get a real easy sense of how currency can be related between you know us dollars and euros for example but also for things in the metric or imperial system too, there's a total of 481 units that you can use, including all currencies and hundreds of others across 21 different categories like power, energy, fuel

consumption, and more. This is all done without the need of a keypad. It's a real great interface, which is clearly designed for iOS that features swiping and zooming and loads of pinch navigation gestures. You basically open the app and you can set the category you want, like you can pinch apart to select the categories, and then you're shown, I'll use the easy one, so US dollars to Great British Pounds. So if US dollars on one side, Great British Pounds on the other side. And you see on like a scale, how they relate to each other. So like 400 US dollars is 200 pounds, for example, you kind of see them next to each other. And you can zoom in. And as you zoom in, like the gaps between the numbers get smaller and smaller. So instead of it being like gaps of hundreds, it's gaps of 10s, all the way to one. And you just scroll up and down and you can very easily and visually

just see how the two things compare. You don't need to enter in a keyboard or anything like that. It's really a great way to just jump in and get a quick sort of comparison between two different units. It also cleverly uses location awareness, and this helps you find the currency you're looking for when you're abroad. When you're in Spain finding some manchego cheese, you can very easily find out what the euro is to the dollar. So you can buy your manchego cheese

at a good price. And The Converted has recently been updated with a Today View extension. It shows the most current conversion that's in the app. So it's just a quick way of getting that. And then you're right there in your Today View and you can jump right into the app by just a tap. The Converted is available in the App store right now as a universal app and you should go check it out by going to the converted.co thank you so much to the converted by idian for supporting this show and relay fm so there we go thank you so much they are a friend they're a new friend yes they are a new upgrade friend okay well mike how would you like to spend the next half hour however you want sir um i i thought i thought we would talk so okay i i got my retina imac

last week while i was in arizona and it sat in a box in my office for four days. And I told people this and they didn't realize that I wasn't at home. And they're like, I'm amazed by your self-restraint that you haven't taken another box already. It's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. I'm hundreds of miles away from it. And sure enough, when I got home within five minutes, that box was open. It's not self-restraint, it's location restraint. It was, that's right. I was, this is, this is one of the great ways's not self-restraint, it's location restraint. That's right. This is one of the great ways to practice self-restraint is drive yourself or fly yourself somewhere far away and then you've got the restraint. It's like not buying stuff that's bad for you at the store.

And this is true for me. If it's in the house, if it's in the cupboards, the refrigerator, I'm in deep, deep trouble. But I have no problem just not buying it at the store. I have good, I have good supermarket willpower, but bad refrigerator willpower. So this is a little bit like that with me and electronics. Like if there's a gadget in the house, in a box, I have to, I just have to open it. I can't, I have to open it right then. So I did when I got back on Thursday and set it up. And I, you know, I'm now speaking to you. I'm sitting at my desk and I've got this, uh, I've got the iMac, uh, sitting here and it's all hooked up and, uh, and going great.

So I took a picture because what's interesting about it is after using the review unit from Apple, which was just a standard stock configuration iMac, um, I went back, I, I put that, uh, I moved that to the, the, uh, table behind me and put my laptop setup back up, which is a 24-inch Dell monitor on an arm and my MacBook Air in a 12 South book arc. And I hooked it all back up. And I had that moment of, whoa, this isn't Retina. But also I had that moment of, hey, my desk is back. Because the iMac with its foot sitting

on the desk, and you usually have it fairly close to the front of your desk, or at least I do, I have this whole nice desk behind it that is completely invisible when I'm sitting at my desk because the iMac is just dominating and it's like a wall. And there's a little bit of space underneath, but you can't really see it. And I had that moment where I realized, you know, I'm really liking having my monitor on an arm, which I've had since I set up this desk. I've had this 24-inch Dell monitor floating on an arm. And I really like that. So I bought the iMac with the VESA mount on the back instead of the foot. And my thought process there was pretty simple. We talked about

the idea of could you convert an iMac into a VESA mountable thing? And there are adapters for that, but the foot just kind of floats in the air because you can't take it off. It just kind of is floating there. And I thought that was kind of dumb. And I realized that if at the end of the day, this iMac goes somewhere and needs to have a stand and sit on a stand, they make VESA mountable stands. You just put on, you know, it's a stand that attaches to the VESA mounts and then you've got a stand for the computer. So that probably is its fate one day.

But for now, I've got it on this arm, the same arm that I got when I got the desk and attached the Dell monitor to, took four screws, screwed, you screws, unscrewed the one monitor and screwed on the iMac. And I had to increase the tension on the arm a little bit because the iMac is definitely heavier than the Dell monitor was. So after that and talking about putting the iMac on an arm versus not, I thought I would take a picture. So I took a picture and put it on Twitter and just said, I'm Mac on an arm. And proceeded into something that only Twitter can do, which is the Zapruder film-like analysis of every object. I knew it was going to happen, but of every single object that is in that picture. Well, I'm going to do that to you now. So people can get the audio version

of such a thing. I had a couple of questions. The main question I had is, is the iMac not too close to your face? Well, when I took that picture, it was not in a real working setup. Like my old laptop is still there because I'm attached. You can actually see the white Thunderbolt cable coming out of the laptop and going into the iMac because I was doing my migration. And I literally had nothing else to do because, you know, I was migrating and my old system and my new system were both inaccessible. So I tweeted pictures instead. So normally I think it would be, I'm still trying to work out exactly what the right position is, but yeah, it's partly,

I think that picture is not accurate about the geometry there. And partly I think that the, that it's a little too close, that that was not, not an actual workspace. At some point, I should probably take a picture when I, when I get this all settled of my actual workspace as I use it every day. But that wasn't what this was meant to reflect. So, yeah, I think it's probably a little bit too close. It's much further away from me right now as I record this than it is in that picture. And so now you're using the Retina iMac, right right so you've been using it for a few days so you maybe don't have a sense for this yet but obviously when you were using the MacBook Air

plugged in the MacBook Air was driving everything so that's where everything was so when you now are away from the desk and you're working, so maybe you're on holiday or something like that, are you not concerned that those two machines will now be kind of out of sync of each other? Yeah, I have not really used the MacBook Air since I migrated. And so I think that's the question. My plan is that it's for travel. And also, like, if I want to do something, I'm hoping that this will let me do a little bit more of the I'm closing the door, I'm not in the office. And then if I want to do something laptop-y, like write a work on my novel or something like that, that I could do that on the air and also travel with it. So I haven't worked through all the changes, but I'm going to use Dropbox because that's mostly what I use anyway.

And I'll put key files in Dropbox. And it is essentially an out-of-date clone of my iMac now because that's where it migrated from. So it's got all the stuff. And, yeah, that'll drift a little bit over time. And I'll probably delete some stuff over on the MacBook Air because there's no point in having it there. But I already use Dropbox for a lot of stuff and put most of my key stuff in Dropbox. So like most of the stories I write, I save them into Dropbox while I'm working on them. So if I went and opened up that laptop, Dropbox would sync and I would have that story on

Dropbox too. And actually my BBEdit application support folder is in Dropbox because that's supported by BBEdit. So even the like BBEdit preferences and clippings and things like that's supported by BBEdit. So even the BBEdit preferences and clippings and things like that stay in sync across the machines. I used to do that. I used to have an iMac at work and I had my MacBook at home. And so I used to be in a scenario like this where I used Dropbox a lot for things like stories I was working on and stuff like that. Is that an Apple remote on the desk?

Yeah. Somebody, who was, I think Dave Zatz, Zatz not funny, noticed that. Yeah. Yeah, that's the white Apple. I do have some of the silver Apple remotes, but this is just, I have like 10 of these little white Apple remotes. So that's what that is. And there's a reason that's there, Mike. If you look sort of in the far corner of the desk,

you may see an interesting object. An iPod Hi-Fi. It is an iPod Hi-Fi. I just thought it was a box. No, that's an iPod Hi-Fi. As I think I mentioned on the show before. You did, I remember. I have an iPod Hi-Fi with the aux.

It has an aux in plug on the back. So even though the dock connector uses the old FireWire charging method, and so even if you the back so even though the dock connector uses the old firewire charging method and so even if you've got a thing with a with a dock connector it won't actually charge it unless you use another adapter which is not i mean it just forget it but there's an aux port on the back so i just have a plug plugged into the the ipod hi-fi and then i actually for the for the macbook air i had this Belkin Thunderbolt dock. And I'm still using it because I bought it for the MacBook Air because it gave me gigabit ethernet

and video out and USB ports and audio out and all this stuff where I could just plug all of the cables into the Thunderbolt dock. And only all, I only had to plug one thing. I plug power and the Thunderbolt cable into my MacBook air. And then that was it. The monitor turned on all the USB lit up. The audio out was, was set. It was, was great. Um, and it's plugged in the audio out on the, on the Thunderbolt dock is plugged into the ipod hi-fi so that's what i uh use to play music and stuff while i work and sometimes when i'm editing podcasts too um i'll rather than putting on headphones i'll just i'll just have the audio going and and do that and i'm actually still using that with the imac um mostly out of uh

clutter i'm going to try to reduce my cable clutter, which is another thing people noticed in this picture. And then the cool thing, since I have the Thunderbolt dock, is it's the same thing. I have one black Thunderbolt cable running to the iMac instead of multiple USBs and an audio plug and an ethernet plug. And I'm actually thinking I'm going to put,

I'm going to tuck that Thunderbolt dock like under the desk the desk like attach it like stick it under the desk or something so that i i don't even see it and it's just yeah it's just velcroed underneath um i would never recommend that somebody buy a 200 thunderbolt dock or whatever it is as a as a cord control mechanism but since i have it um it, I may stick with it. We'll see. If people want to see these images, by the way, they're in our show notes, which are relay.fm slash upgrade slash nine.

I really like that there is both a brain and a drill next to each other in the corner. Yeah, so that's a screwdriver. It's a cordless screwdriver. It's not a drill. It's not that powerful. It's just a screwdriver. It's what I use to. It's not a drill. It's not that powerful. It's just a screwdriver. It's what I use to mount the iMac on the VESA screws.

And then next to it, yes, as mentioned in previous podcasts, the Nerf Brain Ball. One of my collection of Nerf Brain Balls is on the desk. It's in my hands right now. Several Upgrade listeners noticed that. I'm not lying although this gives it scale because you can see it compared to the macbook air and realize that this is not a small like foam brain ball this is a this is a a large one i can yeah it's it's it's big it's you know it's like the size of a human brain or even bigger i don't i'd first at first imagined like a stress toy type science you know like a one-handed and then you send the pictures of the big brain and I was like, wow, okay.

That wasn't what I expected. Yeah. I had a foam little stress toy brain, but that's like a quarter of the size of the brain. But the brain ball literally, it's basically the size of my hand. If I put my palm out flat, the brain ball is the size of the, and this is the, we're in the brain ball is the size of the and this is the we're in the brain ball vertical now mike and i and i must i must say that your uh your keyboard doesn't look very clacky uh no i so a bunch of people asked about my keyboard uh a lot of comments about the fact

that it had black keys it's the logitech um bluetooth easy switch keyboard. And I like it. It's a nice keyboard. It has the same feel as the Apple keyboards. It's got three different Bluetooth modes, so I can switch it around to use multiple, to be a device attached to multiple devices. So I move into another room and press another button and then it's my iPad keyboard if I wanted to. So I could take it with me and do it that way. I'm just used to writing on the – I'm not a clacky keyboard guy. I'm used to writing on a laptop keyboard. And so having some continuity with the laptop keyboard is valuable to me.

And I like it better, I think, than the Apple keyboards. I do have the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, but I think I like this one better. So do you actually use that feature much the like to switch between i think i use it i think i do it more accidentally than not but i have a mac mini attached to the tv in my living room and it's nice to be able to just walk in there and press the button and have it work instead of having to pair it or you know or find a usb keyboard and attach it work instead of having to pair it or, you know, or find a USB keyboard and attach it or anything like that. So that part is nice, but it's not really necessary. I mostly have it because it's rechargeable and the keys are pretty nice. I mean, that's really, really it. I do have,

I have had clacky keyboards in the past. I actually have an Apple extended keyboard and a USB ADB converter here somewhere, but I'm mostly used to typing. I can type like 110 words per minute on this thing, so I'm okay. Is there anything- And a trackpad, Magic Trackpad too. Yeah, why do you use the Magic Trackpad on a mouse? I know this is like a-

I know there's a whole show there, isn't there? I really, well, part of it is is continuity as somebody who uh has used a laptop a lot and throughout my house that macbook air has been my main system i mean i've had a macbook air as my main system for three or four years now so i do all my all my editing all my all of my muscle memory is trackpad and laptop keyboard based. And so I was always like a trackball guy, not a mouse guy anyway. And so the movements are similar. And really it's that continuity that when I sit down at my desk, I'm using the same kind of muscle memory that I would use if I was editing a podcast on a plane.

If I'm editing a podcast on a plane or editing it at this desk, I'm still doing all of the, and it's great for stuff like that because the pinch and zoom for moving around in and out on a timeline in Logic or something like that is actually pretty great. So I've gotten used to it. I think that's really the bottom line is I know that's what Apple says, but I think it's true that I've gotten so used to using a trackpad now that I might as well just use it all the time. So do you have anything else that you would like to note and or defend about your setup? Let's see. What else did people notice? I want to defend about people are complaining about the the uh cable clutter and and there there are a lot of cords here this is not this is a migration

scenario so one is there's more cords there than normal because i had to pull a bunch of things out and plug a bunch of new things in um and and uh also part of that is the uh whenever you get a new computer the the last thing you do is tie all the cables down, um, right away because you don't know how you're going to use it. And, you know, I was just migrating. It was literally the beginning of the process. So I have hopes to make the cable clutter, um, reduce somewhat and we'll get there. never been a totally like uh crazy like john syracusa sees my workspaces and just shakes his head sadly and walks on because it's just it's a you know he's a very a very diligent kind of guy and i've never been that diligent that that all said i would like um to to reduce the clutter in my office as much as i can and i'd really been waiting for the iMac to come and get it set up and then do some new work to reduce the number of cables that are floating around. I mean, it is still an unfinished garage in some ways. And so I've got like concrete and other things that are not ideal. But in a lot

of ways, it's pretty close to being just a solid regular old office now. So it's time for me to get some little Velcro ties and maybe some double-sided Velcro tape and other things and some other cord control stuff to reduce that. Also, it's a sit-stand desk. So all of the cord stuff that I have, I have to have enough slack in the cords that it works when the desk is up.

So you need to have enough length in the cords for when it's in the high position. And then when it's down in the low position, there is extra cable just kind of floating around and that's just how it is. So that's life. So yes, it will be less awful than it looks here, but I can't guarantee that it will be super pristine Johnny Ive approved desk material. There's a coaster on the desk. That's very exciting. There's a coaster on the desk that's very exciting. There's a thermometer on the desk so I can see how cold it is and turn on my little space heater when I need to.

And then... I think you're using a Uniball Sino 207. I don't know what you're even talking about now. Is that a pen? Did you just call out my pen? It's not a call out. I just think that's what you're using. Okay, Mike, first off, here's the pen.

It's in that photo. Does that excite you to hear pens? Sure. Am I right? Are you the pen addict or is somebody else the pen addict? I'm not the pen addict. Brad is the pen addict. Brad is the pen addict.

The title character in the podcast of the same name. Okay. It's a Pilot G2. Oh, terrible. Terrible. This is why I'm not the pen addict. No, no, no. I'm terrible.

Oh, okay. For getting it wrong. You're identifying them. I named it incorrectly but knew what one it was because that was the pen that I used to use. It's the G2. I like it. I love the G2. The G2 is a great pen.

I hope you use a.7 pen vertical this is the pen addict vertical I don't know I like those gel pens I'm not a pen nerd either I'm not a pen nerd but when I saw all the pen nerds talking about gel pens

I got some gel pens and I thought oh yeah okay you made the right choice I used to have those pens that were they had the reservoir that you could actually see the ink reservoir and then they had the little metal the little metal tip at the

front and they weren't clicky they had a cap I forget they were very popular for a long time I still have some around and I used those and I liked those but you know they also smeared the ink smeared when you started writing all that and the gel pens are pretty awesome so that's that's that's my that's my pen addict vertical right there brad's gonna be so upset at me when he hears this so you notice the pen that's good that you're being well trained i often have dungeons and

dragons dice on it on there from when we play dnd on Total Party Kill podcast, but they weren't on there for this. I got a couple San Francisco Giants pennants in the background, including the one I got when I was like seven years old, which shows an actual giant swinging a bat at Candlestick Park. I see him. There he is. See? He's a giant. People say they don't have a really tall guy as their mascot, but in this pennant, they've got a giant guy. If everyone was that big, it would be really unfair.

I've got my Heil PL2T boom with a blue Yeti microphone that I'm speaking into right now and a little pop filter on it. You can see it over there on the left. And then that's about it. On the walls there's a corner of a movie poster

that's the Real Genius movie poster. And on the right people asked about this. That's a corner of a movie poster that's the real genius uh movie poster and on the right uh people asked about this that's a framed copy of the first cover of macworld and the 20th anniversary cover of macworld uh that the company that owns brown print it's brown printing the printing press for macworld for that entire time and for its entire print run um sent that to the president of the company for 20 years of working with macworld and uh i thought that was that was nice they the president of the company gave it to me and i took it with me when i left so it's on it's on my wall and that is the zapruder like analysis

of a picture of my desk well we can do it to mine because i've i've put a picture in the show my desk. All right. So let's talk. So the premise here is not just to do this Zapruder-esque analysis of images, but to, for people who don't know, the Zapruder film is that film of the Kennedy assassination that everybody looks at frame by frame. That's where that comes from. Right. It's that I am now, this is now my new workspace that I'm building.

And you now have, are not in a workspace at your office because you have left your employment. And we are both gentlemen of leisure now. I like to call it fun employment. Yeah, sure. That's right. That's right. And so I think it's interesting how we now no longer have the warm embrace of an employer to tell us where to sit and what to use and all that and we we have to set our own workspaces up so i thought this would be i know this is a little

mac mac power users and a and a little uh i don't know what a little a little merlin man we should have had merlin man on to consult about this but um i've got your picture open now so i'm i'm i'm i'm analyzing it there's a beverage there is'm going to give you some time to analyze it. Okay. Are you going to tell me about a friend? I'm going to tell you about our friends at Igloo. Igloo make an intranet you'll actually like. Igloo, do this.

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And you can also manage your projects all in one place, so you can actually get some work done as well, not just talk about what's happening in the conference room or the break room. When somebody changes an item, so they change a document in Igloo, notifications are sent, or maybe they update a task and notifications are sent out. And this is all done in the way that you choose. So you can say, I want to be notified here and here. I don't want to be notified about this. And you have granular access to make sure you can go in and just get the notifications that you want. And when people are making changes to a document, a complete version history is maintained. This

keeps everyone in sync and make sure that Crazy Bob doesn't accidentally delete that GIF from the presentation you've been working on, because you can go in and restore it because Bob doesn't like GIFs because he likes them to be called GIFs. But this way, you can make sure that Bob won't win. Also recently, Gartner released their famed Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace report and Igloo appears on this report for the sixth consecutive year alongside Microsoft, IBM, Google, and SAP. This is an excerpt from Gartner's profile.

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If it doesn't excite you, let me tell you about some other things. So all of Igloo is built with responsive web design in mind. So anything that you can do on any machine, you can do on all machines. So if you've ever used some sort of intranet software, or maybe you've been using SharePoint for a while, you know how amazing this is, that you'll actually be able to get some real work done and access your full corporate intranet from your phone.

And I say corporate intranet, you can put anything in there, and people do. I've seen examples of different igloos that the guys at igloo have shown me where people are able to share just what they're up to on a daily basis as well as actually get their work done you can create little communities within your igloo and and have certain functionalities it's that's these ones and certain functionalities and other ones depending on what's needed you have full control over it it's really awesome and you should be trying it out and you should definitely be trying it out because it's for free for up to 10 people and you can sign up right now at igloosoftware. it out because it's for free for up to 10 people.

And you can sign up right now at igloosoftware.com slash upgrade. So it's free for up to 10 people. Thank you so much to Igloo for their support of Upgrade and all of RelayFM. And thank you for being such a good friend. On the Clockwise podcast last week, I think it was last week, we had Igloo as a sponsor and my sponsor, Reid, got away from me a little bit and i

started talking about how it was magic and i had to explain that it wasn't black magic it was more like good harry potter kind of magic it was very it was very confusing and then um and then marco from igloo saw our show notes which just said brought to you by igloo you know and the normal thing and then it said it's like magic but not the the bad kind. And he said, oh, that's really funny. I said, have you listened to the spot yet? He said, no. Let's see if you change your mind. Yeah, I think he thought it was funny, but that was a funny moment of me. Like, yeah, you're doing an ad read, and you're like, well, what is happening to this as you're talking?

So anyway. I like it when you get a little bit, a little bit crazy. I think that, I think the podcast ads are more fun when, when, when, when everybody's having fun with it. And I said it was good magic.

I didn't say it was black magic. If they get very angry and they're like, no, no, we're evil magic, then they should let us know. Yeah, I haven't received that feedback yet,

but if I do, I'll let you know. Then they can become an enemy sponsor instead. Ooh. Enemy of the podcast. Yeah. We are looking for an enemy sponsor instead. Enemy of the podcast, yeah. We are looking for an enemy sponsor, by the way. It's available.

Somebody offered to pay $20 if we said a nice thing about Windows Vista. A few people were trying to club together today to buy a sponsorship and be an enemy, but I don't think it panned out. That's another failed attempt to take over the world by the villains. They didn't make it.

Only our friends made it. Keep trying, enemies. One day you'll make it. We are actually about three minutes away from where I become the man of the hour. So it's probably about the right time to talk about my workspace. I think it is. So here it is. So I'll give a brief overview of what you can see here so i have a retina macbook pro

there as you as you notice uh that is open um i did a key and below it is a microsoft uh keyboard yeah it's one of the ergonomic keyboards the microsoft natural natural keyboard that's it microsoft natural keyboard it's i don't know if if keyboards naturally grow like that um and that's why they call it the natural keyboard yeah it's not organic it was it was it was raised with um some additives but the organic keyboards are are a little bit more expensive but they're they're totally like only raised on organic oh no that is the sculpt oh not the natural the sculpt is the one that has the hole in the middle which is what mine has oh i see i see yeah well you know what what uh what michelangelo said is that every great keyboard starts as a a block of granite but the the great artist sees the keyboard within it

i'm sure he did say that the sculpt i tried anyway yeah so you've got multiple keyboards you've got it you've got a you've got a little apple wireless keyboard and you've got a microsoft keyboard and then you've got your laptop on a stand with a keyboard yep so i don't really i try to not use the one on the stand um and i have all of this so i also have uh my macbook on a like a little stand i can't remember the sound i just found on amazon i just just grabbed any stand that looked sturdy enough um and i have a magic mouse there as well because i started to get some wrist pain um and i spoke again to michael arman he's he's like the advisor of this week's episode um and because i know he used this this crazy keyboard and i asked him if he had

had some wrist pain and he said that he was moving towards that um and then completely changed everything so that's when i elevated the the macbook and got all this stuff and it has been a lot better actually since i started using this stuff um but yeah i have another keyboard that other keyboard is is for the mac mini which you can kind of see underneath two different external hard drives. Oh, yeah. So that Mac Mini there. And then I have the Logitech mouse and a Magic Trackpad. Now, when I edit, I use both.

Yeah. You blew my mind. So when I'm in Logic, I am two-handed editing in logic now that's crazy because the the mouse provides me with finer grain control to just click and select things plus it's also better again for the wrist but then i use the pinch and zoom gestures in the Magic Trackpad. I don't even... Wow. I've heard people say that they use the Magic Trackpad just for pinch and zoom, and then they use a mouse for everything else.

I guess you're people. I wouldn't be using it if there was a way to get the pinch and zoom gesture into the mouse. There is not. Like, you can do it by like holding down some key commands and then using like control wheel or something yeah but it doesn't work very well it's not as it's not as uh as well tuned as the and also the gestures you know like the trackpad gestures yeah you can't you can't get them as easy with the mice even with the magic mouse you can't get all of them now apple sent

when they had the the review unit they sent me of the retina iMac it came with a magic mouse and I thought oh I'll try this out and within like five minutes I was like I hate this thing I hate trying to access mission control because you have to double tap on the mouse but I never seem to do it in the right place and it never it just it takes me multiple times to get it to work so you've got, I mean, I'm really witnessing this system that you've got where you've got your laptop that you use as a laptop just for, even though it's got an external keyboard, it's for your notes and the web and things like that. And then you've got the Mac Mini with a monitor and a keyboard

and a mouse and a trackpad and below it a mixer. And that's your podcasting setup and then you've got a you've got your microphone on the on the boom arm with the pop filter so the it's two two two computers on one desk what's in the what's in the cup what's that beverage that is dr pepper zero okay and they're field notes behind it too like People who are not looking at the show notes are really missing out. There are field notes everywhere. There's a pile of field notes and then there's one tucked underneath the computer and then that big one is a big field note.

That big field note is what I actually use to take notes as we record. So I take timestamps. For example, at minutes 12 and 14 and 39 and 23 seconds respectively there were some fireworks in the background here so i need to go into the file to cut them out oh interesting so there's a couple of other things so that that monitor is actually a television yeah i was going to say it looks it looks like a tv yeah so the mac mini goes into there it's not the best but i don't really use it for too much, so I can live with it. But also, I have underneath a HDMI

switcher. That's what a little blue light is on that box. And into that HDMI switcher are going the Mac Mini, an Xbox, and a PlayStation. So they all go into there, and then they go into the TV, right? So I can use it for gaming too. What else do I

have? So you use the TV on your I can use it for gaming too what else do I have so you use the TV on your desk to play games yes interesting that's I mean that makes perfect sense I'm just thinking of like thinking of it as a workspace and then having it also be

a game space just it's kind of funny that you got all your business there and then when it's time for Mike to play some games and leave the business world behind he doesn't really go anywhere just turns i turn slightly turns the angle you move from a business angle to a gaming angle yeah let's see how that plans out in the long run all right because previously it hasn't really been too much of a problem but maybe it will become a problem now that this is now that this is your your business yep so so so do you edit on the mac mini or just record no i edit on the mac mini so you're editing podcasts on a tv yeah huh yeah yeah i need it's on it's on my ever-growing

list of things to get a proper monitor but it's it was merely been a financial constraint and so the the constraints of the screen resolution are not high enough that uh the financial for the financial constraint to to be okay i just don't understand why you're gonna have to explain this to me again i don't understand why you wouldn't use your powerful and beautiful screen retina macbook pro to edit the to edit your podcast because i have to transfer the files onto onto it and i know that sounds like such a silly thing but it's all just there and then i have ethernet plugged into there so the upload speeds are quicker because i have a horrible internet remember um so basically the difference in speed

between my what my macbook can achieve and what the the mac mini can achieve is like double in some instances so like the upload speeds are a lot quicker um so ethernet hub yeah but then i need to have another cable into the yeah i know i know that there are things there are many because you. Because you've got this very powerful computer with a very beautiful monitor, and you're editing on a TV. Yeah. By choice. By choice. Because you could use the other one.

So I guess editing on TV is not as inconvenient as transferring a file a couple of times. Yeah. I guess. I guess. I've never really... I'm not judging you, Mike. I'm fascinated by that. I'm not judging you, Mike. I'm fascinated by that. I am judging you a little bit, but I'm fascinated by that decision that obviously the convenience of it means more to you than having the probably slower and worse display of the thing that's sitting six inches away.

Well, you see, the thing is, Jason, I'd never considered it, and now I'm horrified because now I'll never forget it. So I may have to change the way that things work here because now I will remember how much easier it will be to just edit on this machine. Well, if you got a... You could get a dock or something

and, I don't know, and then plug in and use that i don't i don't know you just think about it as you're thinking about your audio workflow perhaps that changes your your device workflow too i like i get i totally get especially with apple audio issues in the os i think having a second system for recording is pretty smart. Also, it allows you to have all your Skype business and all that up on the TV. And then your laptop is fully dedicated to everything else. Whereas I've got Windows tiled and Skype hiding behind things and all of that. So I see the appeal of it.

I do. It's interesting given how powerful the laptop is. And if you're changing so you may not need the audio in anymore, maybe that's the thing that makes you re-evaluate the whole thing. I don't know. Yeah, I think part of it is I've been doing this for longer than I've had a more powerful laptop. So it's just like the power of the laptop has not really been in question

before because it's like, okay, so, oh yeah, you know, this would be easier, but I've never really considered it, you know, cause it's just kind of just been like, I have always done it this way. Right. And it's not, it's not, you're using your old, you brought this new piece of hardware into this old, in the system that works just fine. So why would you change it? Because there is still a feeling to me of keeping it all in one place that I quite like. These are decisions that IT departments make too. So Mike, you're basically acting as your own IT department here.

Saying, look, this works. This is a perfectly solid setup. And is it using current operating system or is that also sort of slow to update? The Mac Mini. The Mac Mini, yeah. Yeah, it's currently running... current operating system or is that also sort of slow to update the mac mini the mac mini yeah yeah it's currently running what is it i think we looked at this before and i keep forgetting it's running 10.8 which is lion that's mountain lion mountain lion mountain lion yep so you are you really are your own it department here where you've got mike's own

personal fancy fun macbook pro retina and then you've got the it department's audio setup which is two versions of os 10 behind and running off of a tv set and but it's like it works it's rock solid don't change it there's something to be said for that i mean we make fun of of it people a lot i was complaining the other the other week about trying to buy an audio plug-in, and they said, well, no, no, no. You can't use Yosemite. No, no. We'll support Yosemite later, maybe months later, because it's scary. It's new, and we've got to qualify everything.

But that's, you know, you've got a tool that works, and it's this Mac Mini setup, even though it could be upgraded and changed. Ooh, upgraded. Somebody should call a podcast upgrade. It's interesting. It'll be interesting to see how it changes, especially if your workflow needs change in terms of the audio stuff if you go to a USB interface. But this is the challenge. We're all our own IT people now, right? You and I. the challenge we're all our own it people now we're our right you and i we we make these decisions ourselves with budget constraints and prioritizing what needs are most important to be met all of

that yeah i mean is the it department analogy whilst humorous is an interesting one because it is very much like i can sympathize with it because it's simply the case of if this breaks, it's a lot to fix. If anything on this Mac Mini breaks, that is a problem. And that's time and money that needs to go into making it better. So that's why I try not to mess with it too much, at least the operating system upgrades and stuff. But yeah, I hadn't considered transferring the files between the machines before. Because I could just simply do that by a Thunderbolt cable.

Sure. If they're not too big, but they're audio files, they probably are. You could probably use AirDrop, but of course your system, that Mac Mini, doesn't run an OS that has AirDrop. Anyway, yeah, a Thunderbolt cable would work. Yeah, well, I mean, the CorelCore files that I use

or the AFF files that I swap them into, they can be multiple gigabytes. Yes. It's true. It could be done. It could be done. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't want to ruin your perfect workflow because it's gotten you where you are today. Aside from making me call into question everything that I do, do you have any other questions about what you see in and around my desk? Well, Dr. Pepper, zero. No, I have no further questions. I think it looks lovely. What's the microphone that you use? We should ask. Oh, yes. It's a good question to ask. It's a Heil PR-40.

Very popular. Yeah, I do not recommend it as your first microphone if you are looking at such things not finicky not not so much just because it's xlr or anything like that or it needs additional equipment it requires it like a you know not fancy mic technique but it requires a just a different way because like for example if i just talk just slightly away from the microphone oh yeah so you have to you have where'd he go yeah exactly where where's he gone like my i have to talk directly into it yeah so you kind of have to to get used to that and like with with the yeti that you have um which i used that was my microphone before this one, you can set it so you could be on the other side of the room

and it will do a decent job of picking you up. That is my, I think for like 90% of people, I would still recommend the Yeti as a USB microphone. I know that many people go with the Rode Podcaster. And I actually do think sometimes in some instances an audio quality is a step up. However, the Yeti has a lot more flexibility, including a hardwired mute switch.

Yeah, the Rode Podcaster is not bad, although I wonder if they have some variability in batching and building them or if they had at one time because some people i talked to really love them and other people say that they're very quiet they're it's hard to really drive the game um and that was my experience is that i i didn't think it sounded that great i think the yet i think if you set the settings right the yeti sounds uh great and that's my stock like if you want to do podcasting uh you can get a snowball for like 50

dollars oftentimes but don't it it's fine but if you can afford 100 100 110 whatever it is you can usually find a yeti somewhere for about that it's a better microphone because it's got the hardware mute switch it's got the uh the headphone jack and it sounds really good plus it's got the headphone jack, and it sounds really good. Plus, it's got the different mic modes. So like Philip Michaels and Lisa Schmeiser, who often will podcast with me on The Incomparable, they're married. So they live in the same house, and they sometimes want to be on the podcast together. So they got the Yeti, which has the two-across mode, where it's directional on the front and back of the microphone. So they can actually sit across from each other with the microphone and do a podcast together that way. And that works pretty well too.

So I think that's my go-to choice for simple. And yes, and then there's that pit that all the audio pros and podcasters are down in, that hole that you can go down and get some stuff that sounds better, but the money starts increasing. And I could argue that beyond a certain point, most listeners are never going to tell the difference, but podcasters will. Yeah, the Yeti is great. It really is great. And I agree with the road. I've had some issues of gain on that thing, and I can't really work out where they're coming from.

Yeah. Because I've had some people have issues some weeks and not others. We're in the podcasting vertical now. Yeah. Hi, everybody. Hi. So I think that's probably it for our workstations. Now, there are some other things in this document. Would you like to talk about them? I mean, we could at least talk about the podcast.

You're the man of the hour. You tell me. Well, because we've just spoken about podcasting. Yeah, we should finish on that. Let's just talk. I mean, we've been going for more than an hour now, but we should talk a little bit about this just because uh we were talking about podcasting anyway i've been listening like everybody else to the serial podcast which is this podcast from a reporter at npr uh it's

the people who do this american life and it's a weekly podcast telling this story about a murder from 1999 as the reporter investigates it and talks to everybody involved. And it's really a great example of storytelling. It is one of the best podcasts that I've ever heard. It is simply incredible just because of, for nothing more, it's the idea and the execution.

I think sometimes some of the choices that they make with audio leave a little bit to be desired um but the the idea and the way that the story is told is it's like nothing i've ever heard before i mean it's it's i've heard things like this in radio documentaries and things but to do it in a podcast and to have it be the reason i wanted to bring it up i mean yeah it's good serial podcast s-e-R-I-A-L podcast.org. It's not about like breakfast cereal. It's, you should listen to it.

It's interesting. What it does is it gets me excited about this medium, about podcasting. That you start with people like this show talking to each other because that is something that's fairly easy to do. You get a couple of people with microphones. They talk to each other because that is something that's fairly easy to do. You get a couple people with microphones, they talk to each other for a while, you produce it and you're done. Something like Serial is much more edited like a movie or like a documentary. There's a huge amount of effort that goes into it. But I do believe fundamentally that this is a medium that has a lot of different things that it can produce and right now we're not

necessarily tapping into all of those things that things that radio does and also things that just sort of never got a chance to be um on radio because you know radio is corporate and and has to be broadcast and and reach a very broad audience so So I listened to Serial and I started to think, wow, what could I do? Not that was just Serial. I think we'll probably get a lot of things that are knockoffs of Serial. But could I do a podcast that breaks format somehow and is different, a very different kind of podcast? What would that be like? What are the kind of options there? And you're, as somebody who's embarking on a podcasting career yourself, I'm sure that you've been thinking about this too. Oh yes, I most definitely have. These tried and true podcast formats like this one, those are, if podcasts can have a classic

format, being such a young medium, I think this is it. And, and this is good, but, um, generally not this one necessarily, but generally this is good. Uh, but there's more, right. There's more to be done. And that's, that's, I, I serial, uh, not only is it a good podcast, but it, it, it got me thinking of that, of like, don't just accept that the kind of podcasts we listen to now are all there can be because it's not true. And always sort of keep thinking about what are other things we could do to take advantage of this medium. Because at the end of the day, this medium is just audio files being delivered. And those audio files could contain anything. Yep.

And Startup. Startup is another great example. Yeah yeah these two both kind of came around at the same time and and i read a statistic somebody sent it to me via twitter i can't remember where it's where it came from now but i've seen it in a couple different places that the month of uh october was the largest amount of single podcast downloads in history. And it's probably because of these two shows. But that's fantastic. I mean, you know, of course, Real AFM, of course.

Of course. Of course, we're helping. But I think that it's incredible to see that. Especially, you know, when I've just decided to make this my living, you know, it's good to see that statistic popping up. Yeah, it's, there was the New York Magazine article. about this. The media coverage of this is funny because I think a lot of it is people in the media who know people at NPR or other media outlets, and then they do a podcast and suddenly it's legitimate because somebody from a major media outlet has doing a podcast. Now it's real, which is stupid, but it does suggest a trend. And I, I can't remember what, whether it was on this podcast or another podcast,

but I remember talking to somebody about the fact that it was some study that said like what less than 3% of people listen to podcasts. It's like, that's, that's a sign of, of growth potential. I, and I do believe that that there will be lots of growth in this medium, but part of that will also be interesting kinds of programs that drive people forward. And you will have a breakout hit at some point, and maybe it's not Night Vale quite, and maybe it's not Serial even quite, but at some point, something is going to be such a breakout hit that it's going to bring millions of new people into the medium because they've heard people talking about that. Maybe

serial is it, but if not, there will be one at some point, I really believe. I had a really nice, I had a lunch when I was in Arizona with Aileen, who does the Less Than or Equal podcast, and her husband, and Aileen, Aileen, I think I overpronounced it. Anyway, and we talked about podcasting. That was like an unrecorded podcast about podcasting, and it was a lot of fun, but we were all enthusiastic for those same reasons, that it's going to be, we believe, and I know you and I believe,

I think it's going to be big, but it's just not quite over the threshold yet. So it's going to get there, and having NPR people and other people like that embrace it so that the media notices and says it's a thing, in the end, it's good for the medium, even if those of us who've been doing it for a while kind of roll our eyes. It's like, oh, yes, well, once somebody from The New York Times has a podcast, then it's a real medium. It doesn't bother me. I know it bothers many people and they're like, oh, and they didn't mention 5x5 or Twit or, you know, etc, etc. But it doesn't bother me because it's just irrelevant to mention Twit and 5x5 in this context. But the other thing is, all of this stuff, all of this press coverage and that, it's just good for the industry. And what's good for the industry is good for us.

It's the rising tide lifting all the boats. And all of the people that care that Twit and 5x5 were mentioned in this article are already listening. So it's totally fine. And at the end of the day i i completely agree right someone at npr is doing it so people know the piece of people at npr are doing the pieces on it but what it's doing is exactly what we need and it's it's putting this stuff in front of the mass market because i'm not saying that the millions and millions of people out there are going to listen to Upgrade. But what it will do is of those millions and millions, the 1%, 2%, 3% of those people that are interested in technology

may then come across this show. And then they're going to download it. And that's really good. And that's kind of all I care about. I don't care if we get mentioned or don't get mentioned in a New York Magazine article. It doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that it's in the New York Magazine at all. That's what I'm excited about.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's – so you can roll your eyes a little if you want about like, oh, well, this has been happening for a while and they've only now discussed it. But bottom line is it's good – for people who love this medium and believe in it, it's good that people are noticing it again. And I do feel like in some ways it's validation of what's been happening the last few years where it had its moment to thrive and it didn't thrive in 2005 or whenever that was. When you were syncing things from iTunes and Apple embraced it and gave it, we're putting it in GarageBand and we're putting it in iTunes.

And then it just kind of fizzled because it was too fiddly and it was too geeky. And it just, it wasn't time. It's since grown naturally and been better and better over time. And sometimes you don't get a second chance. Sometimes people would just say, oh, podcasting, that was a thing that was a fad in the mid-2000s, and now nobody cares. And so I like the fact that people are talking about, in the terms of the New York Magazine article, podcast renaissance. They have to cast it that way. It's like, I know we told you about podcasting and nobody listened, but now they're

listening. Now it's a real thing. Because that's the redemption of that concept. And we all believe in it. but to talk to a broader audience and say, no, this is really a thing now. You can get it on your phone with an app and just listen to it anywhere. That is great for the medium. So in the end, I think it's a good thing. And having podcasts that push the boundaries is a great thing like like serial and um you know i know that i i i've got a lot of projects that are podcasts like this and then a few that are different it certainly emboldens me for things like uh the incomparable radio theater of the air which we want to do a new season of probably early next year um that you know that's a totally

different thing that's radio old-time radio drama, comedy, whatever. And it excites me to listen to something like Serial, even though they're seemingly completely different, because what they do is say, this is a medium that can hold all of these different things. And it's not all just a roundtable discussion for an hour and a half about computers, which is what this is.

Yeah, one of my things that I'm going to start thinking about now is what is the what is that kind of show that we that i can make or a show that we can make on relay fm that and i'm not interested in like a technology show for the masses like i that's not what i want to do i want to make something that's maybe more a little bit more general interest that fits with what we're trying to do, but I don't know what it's about. I know nothing more about it than that.

That's kind of something I'm just starting to think about is what is a more general interest show with an interesting format that lends itself to the sort of stuff that we do? What does that look like? That's as far as I have on that. But I'm pleased that there's something out there that even is just getting my creative juices flowing again over something completely new, which excites me.

It's a good time for your creative juices to be flowing now that you are full-time doing this. It's a perfect time. Perfect time. Perfect time. I agree. All right, so that's about it, I think, for this week's episode of Upgrade.

I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we have enjoyed making it for you. If you'd like to find the links to today's episode, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash nine. If you'd like to check out our sponsors, we would like that very much, and we are very, very happy to be sponsored by our friends at The Converted App and also Igloo today. They are our friends. They are our friends, and they use only good magic, not black magic. Our friends using good magic. If you'd like to follow your friend, Mr. Jason Snell, he is at Jason Snell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L.

And he writes over at sixcolors.com. And I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. And I am now a professional podcaster. Finally. Finally you're a professional. No longer amateurish. I'm no longer a pro-am. I am now a professional.

And I create shows at relay.fm. We'll be back next week for episode number 10 of Upgrade. And we will be recording live at a new time. If you are a live listener, we will now be recording from next week at 11am

Pacific time at relay.fm slash live. You can check the schedule at relay.fm slash schedule if you'd like to see when all of our shows record live. We have that there. Until next time, it's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from me too.