H.I. No. 21: Cave Troll in Your Pocket

"H.I. #21: Cave Troll in Your Pocket" is the 21st episode of Hello Internet, released on September 20, 2014. It is the first episode of the podcast's third season.
==Official Description==
The triumphant return of Hello Internet is 100% topical. Grey and Brady discuss the results of the Scottish Independence referendum, and three new things: new kindles, new iPhones, and new Apple Watches.
==Show Notes==
*Get a Hello Internet T-Shirt to support the show
*Discuss this Episode
*Lulu and Audrey
*False Friends
*Mama, die, die, die
*Overcast
*Grey's recommended podcast apps
*Brady: Nottingham Chemistry Department Fire
*Scottish independence referendum, 2014
*Royal Barge Procession
*Devolution in the United Kingdom
*Downstate New York
*Grey: The United Kingdom Explained
*SaveTheUnionJack.com
*Grey: History of the Union Jack
*Australian republic referendum, 1999
*United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, 2011
*Grey: Can Texas Secede from the Union
*Grey: How Many Countries Are There in the World
*Amazon Kindle Voyage
*There is coffee in that nebula
*Left-justified text example
*Grey's review / complains of the original paperwhite
*iPhone 6 and 6+
*iPhone 6 line outside the Regent Street Apple Store
*iPhone 4
*iPhone 5
*Brady's lightsaber
*Accidental Tech Podcast
*The Talk Show
*Apple Watch
*Tim Cook at D11
*Speedmaster Professional
*JayBird BlueBuds X
*FitBit One
*OmniFocus
*Moto 360
*Remember the Milk
*Daring Fireball: Apple Watch Initial Thoughts and Observations
==Other==
Uh, yeah, give me, uh, give me claps. How many would you like? I would like three claps. Three? No, you're so predictable. You're so predictable. Okay, no, I would like 11 claps. 11 claps is how many I want. Here they come. You're so compliant. Hey, guess what, by the way? What, what? Listen, I've got something here for you. Yeah. Oh, have you finally decided to have some sort of liquid refreshment in front of you while we are recording? Not just one. I have the Diet Coke, I just opened a third of a Diet Coke, a third of a bottle of water, a very old Diet Coke with a very small amount left in it, and a bottle of very weird licorice and chili-flavored Danish liqueur that I was kindly given on a recent trip to Copenhagen, but won't possibly drink because I cannot stay on the taste of licorice, but they were very kind to give it to me. So excluding the alcoholic drink, you really have one and two thirds of a drink in front of you. That's about right. I know you're trying to make it sound impressive to make up for your lack of sustenance last time, but it's just- I also have a bag of puppy traits and a candle. The puppy treats are there for an emergency. Yeah, that would be quite an emergency. How is Audrey? Is she all right? She is excellent. She is downstairs today. I've graduated to leaving her and Lulu downstairs together. They seem to be getting along well. Audrey sometimes snuggles up and goes to sleep on Lulu, which is exceptionally cute. See, you have already answered the question that I was going to have for you, which is that I had feedback from several people who wanted to know how the two dogs were getting together, but you have already answered this. Which sounds like they're getting along quite well. So what you're getting messages, CGP Gray, asking how Brady Herons two dogs are getting along? Basically, that was from my parents. They could not believe that on the last episode that you did not specify how the dogs were getting along. They were very concerned about how Lulu was handling the whole situation. So I was asking for them. Lulu's handling it very well. She- Your parents, by the way, could just email me if they want to know anything. I'll tell them that. I will answer their emails. I'll send them pictures. I'll do all that stuff. You know, I will too. I know you will. So they might take you up on that. They're getting along really well. Lulu, obviously, being a big gray hound, looks ridiculous next to tiny little Audrey, the Chihuahua, but Lulu's normally indifferent. But they seem to be getting closer over time. You know, if Lulu lies down, Audrey will now sometimes snuggle up and go to sleep against her. It's too cute for words. Good. Good. We'll expect pictures. Careful what you wish for. But I follow up from the extravaganza finale to series two. Yes. Yes. We talked about many things on that episode. But the one thing I just wanted to bring up was some people on the Reddit came up with the term for what we were talking about, which was last time when we were discussing auto as a potential word to describe self-driving cars. But that I kept saying it has a linguistic conflict with German and, as I have also heard since then, Dutch and a few other languages use auto as their word for car. And the term for this or for words that sound the same but have different meanings in different languages is false friends. So that is the term for what we were describing. And as always, there is a Wikipedia page which lists a bunch of false friends. But the example that I particularly like is from a Dutch advertisement that they have on the page which reads, it's a picture of this little girl who's standing in a field and next to her are the words, mama, die, die, die. And in Dutch, that translates as, mom, I want, I want, I want. It is a yogurt commercial. So the child is actually requesting yogurt, not the death of her mother. But die is what is an example of false friends there for those two words. Before I bring up the pronunciation of yogurt to versus yogurt, can I just ask? Yeah. Because it's not immediately jumping into my mind. Why is it called false friends? That's that, that term doesn't immediately make sense to me as why, does it, is it obvious to you? I think the friends is supposed to be, the friends is supposed to be like a homonym. Their friends because these words sound the same. So you would assume that they mean the same thing. Okay. So they're false friends. That's the way I interpret it. No, yeah, yeah, okay. That maybe that was really obvious to everyone, but it wasn't, it wasn't to me. Well, I think it sounds better than false hominins. That's just not as fun to say as false friends. I just don't think, I just don't think that's a good term for at all. I feel like we have a consistent theme on the show of being displeased with the words for something and then trying to come up with our own words. So do you have it? I'll turn them suggestions. Maybe you and I should bring it up. We're both friends. That could be like a thing we do one day, like our own dictionary. Because that's what we're working towards ultimately, here, isn't it? Basically, yeah. If we keep this up long enough, there will be a large enough vocabulary of hello internet specific words. On the topic of autos, of all of your firmly held positions on this podcast, that seems to be the one that so far has brought the most disagreement even from your fans. If I can use that term, has your position wavered at all on the debate? Your insistence that self-driving cars should be called autos. That's the most appropriate name for them. If a name must be coined. Well, again, it is not my insistence that everybody uses this word. This is my bet or this is my push, I should say, for the word in English to describe self-driving cars. And yes, I read through all the Reddit comments and I can see if this does drive people kind of crazy. But just like on our podcast, in the Reddit, I was also asking, can people give me specific reasons why they don't think this is a good idea? And every example that I saw just seemed incredibly contrived of where this could possibly cause any kind of conflict. So I remain in that position. I don't like your position on this. Because your position is it's only a problem if it's going to cause some fundamental mistake, like going to the parking lot and driving away in the wrong car or ordering the wrong car. Confusion can be more subtle than these sort of black and white mistakes of wrong and right. So in the end, we're talking about the idea of a kind of vagueness. Even that confusion should be avoided. Well, I guess we need to change the Dutch word for I want then because there's a lot of confusion there over whether or not Dutch people are requesting things or instructing death to their conversational. Do you know what? I bet you, if the term I want had never been thought of before in Dutch and they were coming up with a new word, they probably would avoid the word die. Yes, I bet they would because this is this is much more severe. This is going back to you. We're just going to be looping back to the same argument we had last time. All right. I remain unconvinced. Okay. And you are a better person because you are more concerned. That I most certainly am not. You said yogurt. I know you said yogurt. Yogurt. Right. I was brought up saying yogurt too in Australia, but I've gradually had that slapped out of me by the Brits to the point where I think I now am more likely to say yogurt. You obviously have not had that slapped out of you. I don't think this has just come up very much. I don't think I do eat a lot of yogurt. Yeah, there probably is a bit of yogurt consumption in this house. My wife likes it. So this is not this is not come up, but I would stick with yogurt. It sounds ridiculous to me. I think you have to be very posh to pull that off. Now speaking of things that are ridiculous, you did what could only be described as a ridiculous job in trying to market our t-shirts in the last podcast. Yes. Yes. Not only was it at the end of the podcast, but you put some crazy amount of blank space before we discussed it just to make sure no one heard it. So you'll probably edit this out knowing you said, let's just forget about it. No, it is true. Here at the start of season three, it might be a good time to inform people that we have very excellent Hello Internet t-shirts that you can now purchase to help support at the show. But yes, I saved this for the end of the previous podcast. And then I mean, honestly, just through my own mistake accidentally had this enormous amount of blank space at the end of the podcast before we actually talked about that section. And so I do not know how many people actually got there. I will say we still sold a bunch of t-shirts, but I'm betting that there are a lot of people who just who missed that part of it. So I do apologize for my terrible editing skills, though I do have one tiny thing to say in my defense, which is that. I have been trying out overcast lately as my main podcast client. I have a, in case people don't know, I did write a little article on my own blog of recommending people use particular podcast clients because I see all the time people in the Reddit saying how they listen on the website or they download the MP3 files. And this is just the worst possible experience you could ever have listening to a podcast. You should totally get a podcast client if you aren't listening to the sound of my voice on one right now. It's such a better experience. And there are three that I recommend depending on your needs in that article. But anyway, I am temporarily trying out overcast as my main podcast client. And I do the final listen of the show in overcast. But overcast has a feature which cuts out the majority of all of the silent spaces to kind of make the podcast listening go faster. So I'm going to partly blame overcast because it would make it harder to notice that there was a big gap of silent space at the end because overcast would cut out a bunch of that. But overcast doesn't cut out all of that. So I do have to acknowledge that it was also a large part just my own stupid fault. So I apologize for my terrible editing skills. We'd like to thank Harry's for their support of this podcast. Now, you've heard me talk about Harry's before. I use their raises myself. They're making great shaving products and using the web to provide them in a way that's more affordable. Now, their whole business was born from the frustration of buying shaving blades at local shops where they not only cost a fortune, but are locked behind security barriers like they're the crown jewels or something. With Harry's, it's all easier, cheaper and the product really is brilliant. As usual, they have their handles and blades and stuff I've talked about before. But now they've also got a foaming shave gel and an aftershave moisturizer which I'm always being told to use. Apparently, moisturizing is very important. Now, I've actually not had a chance to try the gel and moisturizer yet because they've only just been launched. But you can find all the details on the Harry's website, which, by the way, is also a really cool website. The site is harries.com. And if you use the code H-I when you check out, that's H-I's in Hello Internet, you'll get a $5 discount on an already really great price. And the Internet Wizards will know that you're listening to this podcast and apparently that's good for everyone. One last thing, if you've already got a razor and not looking to change, I'd still recommend having a look at the Harry's site and especially some of their kits because they make really nice gifts. They do a really good job with the packaging and boxes and things. So if you've got someone you want to buy a present for, it's worth a look. harries.com offer code H-I and thanks to them for supporting our show. We have blown through the follow up at an incredible pace. There's been a lot of news happening in the last couple of weeks. Actually, can I drop in a piece of news that that wasn't on our list? It is quite new. It even made national news. No, it made international news. And some people have been asking me about it and asked if I would mention it on the podcast. So I will. There was a huge fire at the University of Nottingham. Oh yeah, yeah. So people know I work with the University of Nottingham Chemistry Department on periodic videos. They are building a new chemistry building, really expensive state of the art, posh building. And a few days ago now, it caught fire and burned to the ground. It was about 70% complete. It wasn't yet open. There was no one in it. The fire happened at night. No one was hurt. But this building that they've been really proud of and we're really looking forward to opening early next year. Burn to the ground. It was such a spectacular fire that it was on the news and people around the world were emailing and tweeting and messaging about it. They all thought it was the actual proper chemistry building where we do all our filming and where chemistry is done. But just so people know, it wasn't that building. It's business as usual for the chemistry in Nottingham, but their new building. They are going to rebuild it, but it's going to be a bit of a weight now. No one was hurt, but the future of science has been set back through this much. Hopefully not too much. Several years. How long did it take to get to where it was and how long is it going to take to rebuild it? Starting for over a year now, I don't think it will take us long second time around. I guess because certain foundations are in place and presumably they are affected. But they still don't know how the fire started, what caused it, whether design changes need to be made or it was just bad luck or bad people or what. So it is too early to say, but they're already coming out very strongly saying it's all going to happen again. They've just got to start again. I've just posted a video today which Gray may link to with the professor talking all about it. So if people want to find out more and see some pictures and footage of the fire, they can have a look at that. But just for people who have asked and people who might know about it and know that I have a loose association there, that's what happened. It wasn't the main chemistry building as the main message. It was a new building. All right. I'll put that in the show notes for people to see the fire. The really big story is where recording now and something we discussed in the last episode is the Scottish Independence Referendum. Yes. So we are recording this on the morning of the 19th, which is when the results are in for the Scottish Independence Referendum and on the off chance that you haven't already seen this on the news, which seems probably unlikely. The vote has come in as a no. I think last time I saw it's about 55% no to 45% yes on independence. So Scotland has chosen to remain a part of the United Kingdom. How do you feel about that? As we discussed last time, this kind of issue is a funny issue to talk about if you yourself are not Scottish. It's sort of not my business which way Scotland goes. I don't have a vote. I don't think I should have a vote. And it is a decision that the Scottish people are to make and I shouldn't really have any input in that. But it was funny because last night I happened to wake up at about three in the morning and just couldn't get back to sleep. I know it's happened sometimes now that I'm an old man. I was a white then too, Gray. We should have done the podcast then. We should have. That would have been great. I'm sure my wife and neighbors would have loved me talking really loudly in the main room of our flat at three in the morning. Maybe not. Maybe not so much. But so we were up at the same time. Well, anyway, so when I was awake, I happened to then remember, oh right, the Scottish independence referendum, I wonder if the results are in. So I went online to check. And basically at the point that I checked, it was initially, no was in the lead. But as the results were coming in, it was swinging closer and closer to yes. And at that moment, I found myself thinking like, boy, I really, really know right now how much I don't want this to happen. It's always different when things are real. Like it's easier to be neutral when you're further away from the event. But when it is 3.30 in the morning and as we said last time, even though we don't live in Scotland, this would still affect us quite a lot. I was getting a little nervous that maybe this would actually tip over into a yes vote. Again, if that's what Scotland wanted, that would have been totally fine. But it reminded me of, I don't know if you know this trick, but there is a trick sometimes if you are deciding between two options, where tell me if you've heard this before. But let's say, oh, you're trying to figure out what you want for dinner. And you say, oh, we're going to go get Italian or are we going to go get Indian? You can't decide. The trick is to flip a coin. And as soon as the coin is in the air, you kind of instantly know which of the two you actually wanted to be. I don't know if you've ever tried this. Does it sound familiar to you? I've not heard, yeah, it sort of sounds familiar. I've not heard it, but I can imagine that being the case. Yeah. And I have definitely done this and I'm always surprised that it works because it's still on this watching sport too, if there's two teams playing and I don't have a sort of pre-ordained allegiance to one of them, people who are saying, who are you going to be going for in the big game? I never really know. And as soon as the game starts, within the first second of the game, I know. I just know who I want to win. Not because of anything that's happened. It's just it just crystallizes in my head. So. Yeah, I think that is the exact same thing. It seems like there's some funny architecture in the brain that refuses to consider things until they are actually real and then suddenly says, oh, we're going to make a decision on this and boom, here's our decision. I definitely felt that way when the results were actually coming in, it was crystallized that I was very strong. If I can control the way the universe works, I would want this vote to turn out to be no. I have to say, when I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was check the news and see what the situation was. And I was relieved that the vote came in as no. I'm glad that Scotland has chosen to stay. Just a funny thing. When we spoke about it last time, I felt like we probably both had that ever so slight bias, even though we're, even though as we both say, it's not really a business. I almost went a little bit the other way. I really wanted it to stay. And for people who didn't follow up particularly closely, the polls for a quite a long time were making it look like it was going to be a no. Scotland was going to stay part of the union. And then about a week before the referendum happened, the polls started to close and then started to let maybe the yes vote was going to get there and they were going to break away. And people started seriously considering, hang on, this might happen. So I started thinking about it a bit more seriously and thinking through the repercussions and how I felt about it. And I think I can manage to convince myself that it wouldn't be as bad as I thought. And I actually started to see, you know, I started looking for positives to it. Some of them were very selfish positives. But other ones were just more general. And by the time the vote was happening yesterday, I was actually thinking actually it will be a really good thing if they do it. It's not as bad as everyone says. It's not as big a catastrophe and there are actually a lot of good things about it. And when the result did come through, you know, it was a, it wasn't no Scotland is staying. Padamie was relieved, I guess like that coin toss. Padamie thought, okay, I'm glad. But another Padamie thought, this is a missed opportunity. Thoughts are saying, may you live in interesting times? I think there's something to be said for, for being around. And I think it would be really exciting to be living in the United Kingdom at a time that part of it was being cleaved off. I remember a friend of mine many years ago happened to be in Berlin when the Berlin wall came down and always talked about how exciting it was to be there and be part of history. And I'm not comparing this to the Berlin wall coming down. But, you know, there's something to be said for being around and experiencing interesting times. And instead, you know, they don't say, may you experience status quo, but that's what we're going to experience. Well, maybe let's circle back to status quo. I'm curious before we move on too far, what were your selfish reasons for wanting a yes vote? Because I'm on the opposite side. I have selfish reasons for wanting a no vote. But I'm curious what your selfish reasons are for wanting a yes vote. I was coming up with all sorts of tenuous things. I mean, give me a couple. I'm curious. Well, I wouldn't mind the pound weakening just at the moment. Oh, yes. Because I've got a little bit of income coming from the US. And I'm taking an absolute hammering on that. That's a very short term kind of issue. You know, you know, there are many things other than the division of nations, which can affect currencies. I dropped a US check at the bank today on the day that the pound strengthened by 4%. I don't know. I think a lot of the things that I, it's more a case of a lot. I was clenching at straws, all right? I think it's exciting for Scotland to be a separate country, you know, visiting it would be a slightly different experience. And I go to Scotland a reasonable amount and think it would add a degree of excitement to think of it. Because initially I was thinking, oh, I like that I live in the same country as Edinburgh and Loch Ness and the Highlands. But then I thought, well, that's stupid because I love Paris too. And it doesn't matter that Paris isn't part of the country I live in. I can still go there and affect it's more exciting to go there when it's a different country. So I don't know. I think the main thing is I just think it would have been an interesting thing to live through. I like living through interesting times. I let, can I tell a really tangential story here? Is it? Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll tell you a story. This is a good life lesson. Before I do, let me open my drink properly. I open the drink to give you the sound effect and then I didn't open it properly so I still have to do another crack. There we go. And let me have a sip. Here is Brady's story. It's just that people love drinking sounds on podcasts. And it's lovely. I hope you cut that out. Spare my blushes. Nope. Thank you. Hang on, I'll give you a really good one then. Many, many. Are you still there? Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. I'm silently drinking my coffee just to show up. I do drink silently. I have been drinking during this podcast already. Many years ago, I was in Bangkok and I was there with, I was travelling with an ex-girlfriend at the, well, she was my current girlfriend at the time. She's now an ex-girlfriend. And we read something in the paper or we saw somewhere that there was going to be some boats or something happening on the river. And we thought, oh, should we go and have a look at that? And we'd already been travelling around and going to the temples and doing all the tourist things that you do in Bangkok. And we thought, I don't think I can handle another day walking around in the crazy city. Let's just go to an air-condition shopping centre and buy some t-shirts. And that's what we did. The next day, we looked at the paper. And it turns out these boats on the water thing was this special thing that only happens like once every 10 years or something where there's all these special barges and gold and boats and things like that, that like belong to the king. And they get them all out in this huge flotilla and the king himself gets on his grand barge that only comes out once in a blue moon. And all of the people of the city come and cheer and it's like this incredible once in a lifetime thing that people travel the world to go and see because it's so incredible. And it happened to be on while we were in Bangkok and we didn't go and see it. And ever since then, I have often thought like, don't miss out on interesting things because you're lazy or because you want to maintain the status quo or have the easy path. And maybe it's that way with Scotland. Like it seems like, oh, if Scotland is shone off, it could be bad for us and bad things could happen. But maybe it'll be awesome and a really interesting thing and something you tell your grandkids about, oh, I remember when Scotland broke off, I was there. I was living in England at the time and all of this happened and etc, etc. And I know I suddenly thought Scotland leaving might just be an exciting thing like the boats on the river and it would be a shame to miss it because I won't happen now. It won't happen in our lifetime now. Is that crazy? You're being very quiet. I just, I'm just so angry at me about the drinking thing. Oh, no, no. Sometimes I don't understand your stories. Oh, thank goodness I thought it was just me. I feel like, wait, wait. So you didn't see a thing in Bangkok which could have been interesting. So Scotland should be independent. But I also know that you're vacations now. You don't go see anything but isn't that same logic? I don't bring in previous conversations. That's just kind of interesting things. Oh, I didn't mean to. Yeah. So I guess I was just trying to follow the metaphorical thread. I don't know. It just made me think of it. Maybe it was a bad link. But I can sort of see in my head like really often, you know, a lot of people don't do things or don't want things to happen because they don't like change or they don't want to disrupt their plans. They already have or they don't want to disrupt their life. And I think nine times out of 10 when you just, when something does happen or you do something or change happens, it's for the best. You know, you and I could both be living in the cities we were born in right now. If we didn't, if we didn't at some point show a bit of gumption and say, no, that's change. Let's change our surroundings and do something different. And you could easily just stay where you are and think, what life is okay here? And I could move to England or move somewhere else and it could all go wrong. But we did it. And I think it's turned out, right? In fact, I think it's turned out for the best. It has turned out for the best. I just, it just suddenly occurred to me. I think it could be just even just as a spectator, it could be exciting of Scotland left. And I shouldn't worry so much about it. Anyway, it's not happening now. It doesn't matter. No, it's not happening now. But talking about, talking about change does bring us back to one of the points, which is that I don't necessarily think that this means that the status quo is going to be the case. And. Now, of course, well, that's because the Westminster politicians got so scared that Scotland were going to leave. They promised them a whole bunch of powers and extra devolution anyway. Yeah. There's this is this sort of gets into the weeds of British politics, which are very strange, especially if you're an American, the way this whole system is set up. But yes, Scotland was promised a bunch of, like you use the word devolution, right? Which is, which is a constant topic of conversation in UK politics, because unlike a country like America, where the founders got together and they wrote out a document and they said, OK, well, here are the rules. And this is the way this is going to work. And here's how much power the states have. And here's how much power the federal government has. We've written it all down. And when at least when we change rules or we have amendments, it happens everywhere all at once. A parliamentary government like the UK is nothing like that. You have this, this just stack of papers that goes back a thousand years. And each piece of paper is some new rule or some exception to a previous rule. Or it's there because of a particular circumstance that happened at the time. And then you can't eight or well not on a Thursday and things like that. Yeah. And you also end up with, I mean, some of the things that I've ended up researching is like these rules that happened because Scotland was independent for a while, but then it came back. And what are the circumstances under which it comes back? And like with the thing that people get mad about in my videos, sometimes I don't show whales on the map. But when I show the UK and that's because for a while, whales was just subsumed into England. And then it reappeared years later. Like you have all of this crazy stuff that has happened over history. And because of that, you have this weird collection of what are the rules in these particular places. And devolution now is used to talk about what local powers do the various four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland of the UK actually have. And it sounds crazy to an American, but they have different levels of power. Yeah. So for example, like Scotland controls its own education system, whereas the whales education system is controlled from England and is sort of married in with the English one. Right. Right. Which is weird. Like when I got qualified to teach in England, I was automatically qualified to teach in Wales, but not Scotland. If I wanted to teach in Scotland, I would have to go through another process to get approved. And also Scotland, Scotland has their own, like the NHS works in the National Health Service works differently in Scotland. And the, what is it? The National Trust, like the, the historic, there's all of these things which you think are UK-wide, but actually Scotland has their own version. So in this, in the devolution actually, Scotland has the most amount of power. Wales and Northern Ireland have some power, but not as much of Scotland. And the thing that seems almost crazy when you try to explain to people is that England has no power in the devolution. It's like, wait, don't most people live in England? Is in England the most powerful one being gracious? Like it doesn't make any sense at all when you explain it, but you have to remember these are all particular circumstances. And so there's a lot of talk now about, well, if we're giving Scotland more power in terms of devolution in terms of what can they control that the UK National Parliament can't override? Maybe it's time to, to basically start over and write a new act of union and say, look, let's, let's make this consistent between the four countries of the UK and how much power are they going to have? And what is a Nash, what should be handled at the national level and what should be handled at, again, I keep saying the country level because that's the right term, but if you're an American, the equivalent of the state level. And I'm very interested in this. I might, this is the topic I have thought about very often of doing a video on because there are just, there are lots of weird quirks about how the system works, but it seems like it is definitely overdue for some kind of change with how, how the power is distributed on the digitalizing it, don't I? Yeah, that's, that's usually the, the term that is used is, is making it into a, a formal federalized system, which as a general principle, I would, I would be behind that. The, you know, the notion is that the, the UK National Parliament would be limited to things that concern all four countries. So maintaining the military, maintaining the currency, but it would not be responsible for things like the education system, you know, how the health system is handled in each of the countries and that that would be up to them as individual pieces. So I don't necessarily think that, that we are headed into uninteresting times. I, I think there's a lot that could be improved and, and may very well be improved, if we are going, going forward and, and as, as totally should happen, give Scotland the additional devolution powers that they were promised during the referendum. Oh, come, surely like Scotland, like repelling and leaving the union is more interesting than, hmm, maybe there's going to be a whole bunch of laws and federalization things passed. That sounds, yeah, it'll be uninteresting. I guess if you're not interested in that kind of stuff, it sounds uninteresting, but I, I agree, yes. Of course, Scotland leaving is, is much more dramatic, but I don't, I don't think that this is necessarily the status quo. I'm, I was listening to the radio and the other thing that's been discussed, obviously, is if this happens and they start going down this kind of federalization route, there are other things to be considered as well. For example, the north of England, which also feels quite, sort of separate from the, the London Westminster bubble, this talk about will, will power some powers be devolved to, like, regions of England as well. So I guess there's a bit of banwagon jumping going on at this point and all these sort of interest groups in parts of England are all sort of crying out now as well saying, well, if we're going to start doling out powers to people, can we have a bit more control over our destiny too and not just be controlled by London? This is an age old thing, isn't it? Oh, I mean, this, this is, you know, a lot of, I get, when I look at political stories, I often think that it's much, it's often much less about a particular left, right divide as it is often a major metropolitan areas versus non-major metropolitan areas divide. Yeah. Like, that is often the, the problems that people actually care about and maybe that gets tangled up in this other notion of, of left versus right, but there's no way to deny it that, that handling say transportation in the north of England is an entirely different question than how do you handle transportation in zone one of London, the absolute center of the city? Like, you, you cannot possibly have a, a, a, the same solution for both of those areas. And yeah, depending on, on how the, the federalization would work out, I think it would totally make sense to say the north of England has devolved powers to handle certain things that makes sense for that region to handle and that it doesn't make sense for all of England to vote as a single block. Like, one of the things is that the, the UK is actually quite lopsided with London because if you, you know, there's roughly 60 million people in the UK and again, ballparking it, you can say there's about 10 million people who live in the London metropolitan area. And so you, you have a country with like one sixth of the population broadly speaking, lives in the capital city. Like, that, that gets to a very strange system when you're trying to work out. Well, what's, what's going to happen when you're voting on particular issues? So yeah, I could definitely, I could see a very reasoned argument for those places having, having more power. But, but this is always the problem, you know, no matter, no matter where you are. Like, you know, I grew up in New York and, and New York state politics was always the same problem, right? It was the downstate area, which is Long Island and New York City versus everybody else, which is upstate, you know, just this rural wasteland of cows and occasional farmers, you know, eking out a living among the rocks. And, you know, like, you, like, and, but this is just the, this is just the, the, the problem that you have. You said that, um, you were relieved that Scotland voted. No. Uh, why were you relieved? Why are you glad, Scotland, staying part of the union? Okay. Okay. The most selfish reason is it feels like I got out of a homework assignment, which was having to redo my UK explain video. Oh, and you thought my currency raising was stupid. No, no, no, but you see that, that currency reason might only, you know, that, that situation can change over the course of months, but I will never be out from under the shadow of my UK explain video. That thing will always be my most popular, most looming video. And so the thought of having to redo that was not a pleasant thought. Like, you could finally fixed all the mistakes in it that nor away. The, the mistakes do not weigh at me, but I also, uh, the thought of trying to redo that, again, was very unpleasant. It's a bit like, it's a bit like remaking Star Wars. And, you know, like, what am I going to do? I'm going to go back and, well, you know, I really wanted Northern Ireland to shoot first. And, you know, that was the way it was always supposed to be. And, and it'll never be as, as the same kind of thing that the original was. So I just, I was not looking forward to doing that. So, episode 21 will be the episode in which Gray compared his UK explained video to Star Wars. That's, but so, so that is one of my selfish reasons. Was it thought, oh man, whoo. It did occur to me. I'll give you that. Yeah. This is like a, like a school snow day. Like, man, I just got out of a whole bunch of work. I didn't have, I want to do it. If they'd voted, yes. How soon would you have started work on the new video? I would have had to wait until I knew what the situation was going to be. Again, because of my production cycle, I cannot really make timely video. So I would probably wait until it was really sorted out. What is the relationship between these places going to be? I could answer a bunch of the questions that I would want to answer in the video. I wouldn't want to do anything that was somewhat speculative. Had Westminster officials not given you sort of off the record briefings and anticipation of you having to remake that video? No, unfortunately, unfortunately not. Although I did have, I did have a plan, which I've had ever since I even heard about the Scottish Independence referendum, which was now, of course, it won't happen so I can talk about it on the show. I owned SaveTheUnionJack.com for, I don't know, two years or three years. If the Independence referendum had gone yes, I was going to go all in on a campaign to preserve the design of the Union Jack and to not remove the blue elements from it. I was going to make a video promoting this. I was going to have a website. I was going to try to arrange right to your local minister campaign. Because I thought if this does happen, if there is independence, I am very strongly behind the notion that the flag should remain the same. That does not occur, so I don't have to do that. So there's another bit of work that I got out of. Was that like a business decision? Or was this just your passion for flags? No, that's just sad. No, that's sad. This is just my passion for flag. I can't imagine that would be a wildly popular video. Oh, I can. Well, I mean, this is the weird scale of things. I did mention before. I think sometimes about doing videos on English politics and compared to many of the other things on my list, that is not going to be as popular as other stuff can possibly be. I like to make the videos that interest me. That one would definitely be a passion project. I would really want to keep things the way they were with the flag. I felt really strongly about that. Did you cut from the last episode? Because I know you cut my really boring stories. The stuff about the Australian referendum. You know, honestly, I don't remember if I cut that or not. It sounds like something I would cut because it didn't go anywhere. Yeah, well, most of my stuff doesn't go anywhere, but you keep some of it. Sometimes I do, yes. Yeah. I did. I did have a fascinating story about that. Or now I looked at more about. I looked at it on a vacation once and then it was just like the time Australia should have voted for independence. Look, you're being a little bit main now. I'm sorry, really. In 1999, there was the Australia had the referendum about becoming a republic, you know, ditching the Queen. And I don't want to be controversial, but I think it's pretty fair to say that the majority of Australians wanted to become a republic. But the referendum failed. Australia did not become a republic. Most people think there could be an argument made here, but a lot of people certainly think the reason it failed was because the pro-Republican movement had their votes split. Because when it was put to a vote, the only option Australians were given was to have a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of the parliament. The elected representative. So it wouldn't be a popularly elected president. It would be an appointment by the politicians. Right. Similar to a Prime Minister. Different to a Prime Minister, actually. Many countries have, again, mind blowing through Americans, this kind of president role, which is very separate from a Prime Minister role. One is the head of state and one of the head of government. Yes. Anyway, this was a little bit different to that. I don't think this Australian president would have... We still would have had a Prime Minister who was more powerful than the president. Anyway, a lot of the pro-Republican movement didn't want that. They wanted a popularly elected president, you know, the American model. And because of this split, those people didn't vote for the Republic because it wasn't the Republic they wanted. And I think the anti-Republic people were quite clever and engineered to happen that way. They split the vote. They won the day and there hasn't been another vote since. I'm wondering whether or not there's any element of sort of sabotage of the Scotland vote went on. You sort of had a nice conspiracy theories in the last episode. But it doesn't seem to... It doesn't seem quite that way to me. It seems like this is more of an accurate reflection of what the people of Scotland wanted. There was a bit of a scare mongering towards them with saying, I've Scotland, if you leave, your economy is going to collapse and all the businesses are going to leave. And you'll have to pay more for a loaf of bread and things like that. Yeah, there's always that kind of scare mongering. When I thought about doing a Scottish independence video, the one fact that I always thought was pertinent to this discussion, which I actually forgot to bring up when we were talking about last time before the vote, the push for Scottish independence was always partly hinging on this notion of immediate acceptance into the European Union. This is what Scotland was sold. Is that basically we are going to leave the United Kingdom and then there's a special velvet ropes off section for Scotland to enter immediately into the European Union. And the European Union parliament was really clear that this was not the case. That Scotland would have to go through the regular process just like everybody else. And that was one fact that I always felt was a bit played down by the yes to independence movement. Is, oh, don't worry, Scotland is not going to be by herself on the world stage. Scotland is going to be part of this massive European Union. And the European Union was, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We have a lot of problems already with small countries that have joined. And maybe we're going to want to test you just like all the others to see if this brand new zero-year-old country can handle itself before we actually want to let it into the European Union. So I always thought that was not a scaremongering fact, but I think that is a very relevant fact that would change people's votes. Yes, if the European Union was, oh, don't worry, we have open arms, Scotland, come right on in. That totally changes the situation of how do you actually want to vote. That makes a yes vote much more likely. But as many people pointed out in the Reddit discussion, which I just want to highlight, what I was saying last time about how, oh, there are no details and this making me wonder if the people in favor of it were trying to scuttle it. Many people rightly pointed out that not having details for your plan is also just the correct debating tactic if you are kind of on the opposing side. For example, if you are the minority party, you say, oh, we want to improve the healthcare situation in our country, but you don't give details on it because you want people to go along with, well, of course, I'm for improving the healthcare system and I think the current system is rubbish. So let's vote for the guys who are in favor of improving it. And you don't say what the specifics are because you don't want your opponent to be able to shoot down why your reasons won't work. I might keep your surface smoked target. Yes, that's exactly. It's like decreasing the surface area of exposure by not mentioning specific. So I am with you from everything that I can tell unlike what it sounds like happened with the Australian vote or unlike what happened with the UK vote on the voting system itself. This seems like it's a pretty genuine reflection of what the people wanted. And so I feel very, very comfortable in saying like Scotland has chosen to stay and that this seems an accurate representation of the will of the majority of Scottish people. Where is the line drawn for groups of people that can just decide to leave a country? I know you've got a very famous video about Texas seceding from the Union. And I'm not for a second suggesting that Scotland doesn't have the right to have this vote. They're a pretty clearly delineated group part of the United Kingdom. But like, you know, what's to stop, you know, me having a vote and saying, okay, Brady and my house here is, you know, leaving the United Kingdom there. Where is this line drawn? This is just like, it's sort of like my how many countries are there video. It is very hard to know precisely where these lines are drawn. And there is no way to clearly define this. I have to say independence movements are kind of, they're sort of a hobby of mine. I'm always very interested in groups trying to break off from their main countries. And one of the things that I find endlessly fascinating is speculating on independence movements that failed in the United States. There are numerous times that various parts of the United States or various groups in the United States tried to break away from that country as a whole and were unsuccessful. And if you look at the North American continent, it has the lowest countries per continent ratio of anybody of course, you're counting Australia, which I think doesn't exactly count. I do just find that very interesting of what is what is this group. But I think it really just comes down to a question of, is your group large enough that it is able to exert its will on the international stage either through military means or just through cultural means? Yeah. Like that is the bottom line, is your group able to do this? And some groups are and some groups aren't. I don't think I'm there yet. I don't think you're there yet either. Sorry, Brady. We'd like to thank the people at audible.com for again supporting Hello Internet. Now most of you listening, no, I have a new puppy called Audrey, but what I've not yet admitted is that one of my nicknames for her is audible.com. I'm honestly not joking. My wife and I will even ask, have you taken audible.com out for a wee yet? But anyway, enough of that. Besides providing a nickname for my dog, audible.com is the leading supplier of audiobooks and other audio entertainment on the web. If there's something you'd like to listen to, they will almost certainly have it. Now a book I've been dying to recommend, but Gray's been hogging all the audible ads, is one called The Humans by Matt Hague. I'm reluctant to say too much about it because it's a book that really is best just to jump into blind, but I guess I need to say a little bit. Basically, it's about an aliens experience of earth trying to understand why we do the things we do. It's very funny. It's occasionally heartwarming, but it's also super, super clever. Anyone familiar with my number file videos will especially see why I like certain parts of it, but I can assure you it's not a mathematical book. This really is a book for everyone. I can't recommend it highly enough. In fact, I liked it so much. I've been in touch with the author about appearing in one of my own videos at some stage and he says he might do it, so that'd be really cool. Now if you go to audible.com, you can of course download The Humans and start listening to it straight away for free as part of a 30-day trial membership. Go to audible.com slash Hello Internet to show you a listener to this podcast and check out the selection of books and I really urge you to try The Humans by Matt Haye. It's really well read and you could just put in your headphones and walk around the city and observe the humans yourself as you listen to how an alien perceives humans walking around the city. That's audible.com slash Hello Internet and thank you to them for supporting our podcast. There's been a lot of technology news and I know you and I love technology podcasts, although we don't consider this to be a technology podcast, but it's going to have to be a little bit today because it's all been happening. Yeah, so this episode is basically 100% topical, I think, because a bunch of stuff has just happened either exactly today or in the past couple of days and we want to talk about all of it. So the Scottish referendum was the first on that list and then we have a few technology things that we'd like to talk about. The Kindle. Yes, the Kindle. I feel like I feel like I should have a Kindle corner on this show. Kindle corner. I can fling about it all the time. What's today's episode of Kindle Corner? Yeah, so Amazon has announced a new Kindle, which I was wondering if they were going to come out with a new one because they're kind of slow with the releases on those, which makes sense. They're very different products, but what's the code? Is it got cool, right? Okay, so the official name is, I have to look at it, is Kindle Voyage is the name of the new one. But I am just going to call it the Voyager because I know that is exactly what I'm going to call it every time anyway. So let's just cut to the chase where I don't try to struggle with this every time. Voyager. Yeah, it's the Kindle Voyager. Does Voyager straight away conjure up Star Trek to you or the NASA probes? Yeah, honestly, when I think Kindle Voyager, I think Janeway is what I think. I don't think the probes. If I hear Voyager, I think there's coffee in that nebula. That's what I think. Yes, Amazon announces. I think just yesterday, I think. I know nothing about it. I'm not saying it. I did not know what had happened until you told me, what does it look different? Okay, so I can't remember. Last time, I just realized, I don't know why I should ask you because you won't know either. But I think we decided that you have the Kindle Paper White last time. Yes, I had the same one you have. Yes, okay. Okay. So the Kindle Voyager is basically the improved version of the Paper White. If you look at it, it is the same size. It has roughly the same bezel around the edge, but they have made it a little bit lighter and they have improved some of the complaints about the Kindle Paper White. Come on, stop being a tease. Let's get straight to what you want to talk about. Let's get to justification of text. Come on. Let's get to talk about the rest of it. All right, all right. No, let's just get to the chase and then you can talk about this. That's all anyone wants to hear. Don't be a tease. Okay. So I hear, oh, there's a new Kindle. How exciting. This is what I originally thought in my heart of hearts thought their phone announcement was. Everybody's looking at that video. I'm going, oh boy, a new Kindle, right? Because that's what I wanted to see. Now, here's the real deal. Now, if you watch some of their promo videos, they have very carefully selected big bold images that show left justified text. Wow. And they show it because it looks good left justified text. But here's the catch and people have sent sent me screenshots all the time. So I might as well say this now. Stop sending me screenshots of left justified text on your Kindle because when when a publisher puts their book on Amazon service, when they format the book, they have the option to force left justify the text. So it is not an option on the Kindle. They can just specify this text needs to be left justified. And all reasonable book publishers do that, which unfortunately is not very many. But but some like every once in a while, I get a book and it is left justified. And I just want to kiss the author for having that. That'd be the case. And so I look at like their promo video. It's like, huh, wasn't that interesting. You seem to be showing off your left justified text. But in every one of the hands-on videos, and if you look closely at a bunch of the screenshots, you can totally see that it is the full justified text abomination on every Kindle that has come before. With all those things. With those silly spaces. Yes. Or shapes. Yes. With with if you if you read a book that has big words in it, you're going to have big spaces on your lines. And it just looks the thing that I always have in mind when I'm reading a book on the Kindle is when you get to a line that has a whole bunch of spaces on it or the spaces are just much bigger. It's like the narrator in my head has to slow down to read that part. That's partly wise. It's so terribly distracting. And on top of that, Amazon doesn't recognize M-dashes as proper punctuation. So if you have a word, dash, you know, a clause, dash, go on to the next sentence. Amazon thinks that whole section is just one gigantic word. And so like you'll end up with some stupid, stupid line that has half of it is blank space. So for anyway, for thing I'm not clear about great, are you saying that this is new to the Voyager that the publishers can do this left justify? No, no, this has always been the case. So he was, even on my paper white, every once in a while I get a book that is left just did you not know this before? Like is this new information to you? Because you never brought this up before. I never brought it up because it is it wasn't worth bringing up because a trivial number of books that do it. Which is why it's like Christmas morning when I get a book that is left justified. Okay. It's just, it's so, it's so rare that it's not worth mentioning. Okay. So is there a change with the Voyager? Okay. So, so I'm looking at this. And then I now I have to dig through every screenshot and every video of this thing anywhere on the internet. And eventually I find through some of the hands-on videos, the great disappointment that I am expecting, which is an image of the setting screen. And sure enough, there is no option for the justification at all. It's the same crummy setting screen on the current one. There isn't a way to turn on left justification. And I am, I am terribly sad about this. Now, the thing that I have to say though is that I am also not terribly surprised by this because and now I'm going to have to get a little bit vague here. But let's just say I have been contacted since our first complaining about the Kindle show by people who are within the Amazon universe. Wow. And I have had a couple conversations with people in different areas of that universe. And would they like in a car park, like meeting in the middle of the night and stuff like that? That's that's that's basically it. Yes, with the headlights on so I can't see them. Awesome. Like you need to know something. Awesome. And the, again, I'm going to be a bit vague here. But the information that was conveyed to me is that basically one of two states is the case. The Amazon, the people in charge of the Amazon Kindle software are either unaware of left justification, which is horrifying to me as a possibility. Or the other thing that was conveyed to me is that they are indifferent to this as an issue in general, which is even worse. Right. Because if someone is unaware, you have the hope of changing their mind. If they are indifferent, there is absolutely nothing that you can do. So I was, since these people contacted me and then since the the Voyager came out, I was hoping that maybe something had changed, which is why I was looking for all the settings screens and trying to find everything that I could. But I was not surprised when I discovered that no full justification is still the abomination that we all have to live with. That's your, that's your big confidential exclusive that that the people in charge either don't know about it or don't care about it. Well, no, here's the thing. What else could it have been? It could have been some technical reason, but It could have been some technical reason, which is, which is totally understandable. But what you're saying is the new information, the big exclusive that you've been told in the car park here is there's not a technical or a commercial reason. That is correct. But I think this is interesting to me because it is, it is confirmation that like I said before, you have to try to speculate about what is going on inside another entity. What are their reasons for doing something? And this is confirmation to me about a certain aspect of that. Yeah, there aren't forces at play here. Right. There aren't forces at play. There is just indifference. Okay. I'm with you. I take it like that is that is interesting information. And so what I'm going to say now, what was also conveyed to me. Oh, this more. No, was this at a second meeting in the car park or the same meeting. Yeah. Well, what I was I was planning on doing more with this at some point in the future, but I will just mention it now is that Amazon, like there can be faults with them as a company, but one thing that they are quite good at is being relatively sensitive to their customer service. Like it is, it is pretty good compared to most other companies. And that is, that is always kind of Jeff Bezos make the customer happy rallying cry. Yeah. Okay. I just read that his not his autobiography, but the biography that was just written about him, the everything story, which is interesting. But anyway, it was conveyed to me that basically the customer service people will report feature requests when people call in to complain about stuff on their various kindles. So I am going to put some contact information in the show notes of this episode. And if you are in America so that you can call the Amazon Kindle customer support, please call them if you are on my side and let them know that you are dissatisfied with the horrific typography of the Amazon Kindle and that you would love it if they would consider adding left alignment as one of the options to the text. So I'm going to put that information in the show notes. If you are on board with me on this one, I would absolutely love it if you called and made that request. So that is something else that I would just like to put out there in the universe. I on the other hand would prefer you to support a t-shirt. Yes, you not survive t-shirt. Can I ask you a question just to make sure I understand something properly? Yes. Coming back to this small number of publishers who left justify the text, the good citizens who you want to kiss. I think I said publishers but I should have said book authors I think is really the case. I think it's whoever is type setting that particular book has manually said it to be left justified. Is it one or the other or is this something you can toggle between? That's what I'm not understanding. You have no choice over how the text is displayed either way. You can't say, okay, this is left justified but if I press this button here, the whole book will become. There is no way to unleft justify it if that's not what you want. For some reason, you are desirous of a vastly inferior reading experience and you have received this beautifully type set book. You can't press a button to turn it back into the horrible normal way. Maybe you want that and I think there should be an option to do that. So yes, anyway, that is the main thing about the Kindle that I wanted to say is that I was hopeful and then expectantly disappointed about the main feature that I wanted. But like a total idiot, I preordered it anyway because I do like my Kindle. I mean, I was on the people to be lobbying about this. It sounds to me like the typesetters and the publishers and the authors of the ones that we should be lobbying. Well, I don't know if that would be more effective because that is just so distributed and also the thing that I want is to be able to change the alignment in my books. But like it, but like if as you say the decisions being made by the publishers and some of them are saying, I'm going to left justify it because I think that looks better, it sounds unfair to be blaming Amazon. Amazon are giving these publishers both abilities and the publishers are choosing the ugly block. No, no, that sounds true, but here is the way that it technically works is that if you do not manually specify an alignment, it defaults to fully justify. Okay, so ugly block is default. Ugly block is default and specifying alignment is without a doubt more of a pain in the butt because you have to be mindful of the chapter headers or different sections of the book that you might want to be differently aligned. It is a much easier job to just say. Define, oh, yeah. Here are the chapters. Here's everything that's not a chapter, just make it look good. Amazon. It is an uphill battle if you want to make it look good. So that's why it is not quite the right way to look at it. You can't think of a book that was left justified for a shout out. Somebody showed me that some of them screenshot, the one that I remember was Malcolm Gladwell Outliers was left justified. I don't remember off the top of my head the books that I have seen because again, it is just so rare. But before I get too far off the topic, just I do want to remember, dear listeners, I normally don't ask for you to send me things, but I would like for people to send me either via email or by Twitter examples of hideous, hideous full justification on your Kindle devices. Sometimes you will come across a passage that is just comically awful. And if you either say it on your paper white or on your phone or on any of the Kindle devices that you use, I would like you to send me screenshots of horrific examples of what happens when you fully justify the text. And I have a little project for that at some point. So that is a request from me to you, dear internet. Rest in pace, rise in box. I know I almost don't want to, but there's no way that I could do this on my own. So I would need help from the internet for what I have in mind. Do you want to talk about any of the other features of the new Kindle or is that really where it's at? That's really where it's at. The only thing I will mention just very briefly and one of the reasons why I did pre-order it is that it has added not exactly buttons, but pressure sensors on the side of the screen to make the page turning more easy. And that was one of my big complaints with the paper white was that they took away the buttons on either side of the bezel to turn the page. And instead you have to tap the page like it's an iPad. So that's one of the reasons why I thought, oh, I'm going to get this. I'm a little bit doubtful because of this weird pressure thing. Like, why don't you just make it a button, but I'm willing to give it a try and see how that works. Let's talk Apple, man. That's where it's at. There's been a bit of Apple news. There's been a lot of Apple stuff going on. What do you want to talk about first? Let's start with the new iPhones. So we've got two new phones. We got that. We got the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus. Yes. Those are the two new ones from Apple. They're both bigger than the 5. They're both bigger than the 5. Yeah, we are not a tech podcast. This is not us professionally talking about stuff. It's just like, we are people who use Apple products and I guess are interested in what is coming out, what the new things are. Probably more so than you. I'm pretty interested. I'm pretty surrounded by Apple stuff. Yeah. The interesting thing about these, of course, is that there's been speculation for a long time about Apple making bigger phones and they finally are here. There was expected that this would be quite popular, that the demand for these would be quite high. You saw it, but this morning I happened for various boring paper work-eat-tax reasons. Happened to be around the region street Apple Store here in London, which is a huge Apple Store. According at least to some of the employees I've spoken to there, it is either the most or one of the most profitable Apple stores in the world, which I can believe. It's right in the center of the main shopping district. Anyway, I happened to be in the area and the line was incredibly long. I actually went and filmed it from start to finish. It took me about, I think for the video, it's three minutes long to walk from the beginning to the end of the line, which doesn't sound too bad, but there is this whole section where they thread the line through a park and you can't even get into the park unless you have one of these little tickets from the Apple people there. The video makes the line look incredibly long, but it is easily twice as long as it looks because of all of these people packed into this big spiral line in the center of the park. What did everyone think when you were walking past with your GoPro in their face filming? Oh, man. I was not the only person. These are media circuses. News, people everywhere and professional camera people. You can't be on this line and not expect that you are part of a media event. Yeah. So the six is bigger and the six plus is bigger again. So they've gone up as I was and then gone up as I was. I can't remember what the numbers are. 4.7 and something. I can never remember the size of the screens. The only thing you need to know is sort of like each is, you know, I don't know, roughly an inch bigger than the one before. As a you have the old Apple phone, which is the four and then you have the five and the six and the six plus and each is kind of like an inch bigger on the diagonal. But I can never remember the exact specifications. Have you gone and had a look at them all? The Registry store, there is this huge line, but they handle it very well because they filter all the people into one side for the people who are buying the phone. But if you just want to go look, the whole rest of the store is still available to you like normal. So I have pre-ordered an iPhone and because no one's seen these sizes before, I had to guess about which size do I think is the size that I'm going to want to use. I thought, well, I'm here. The Apple store is open. Let me go inside and actually handle the physical phones and see if my guess about what I would want was right. You don't really pre-ordered that. You were committed. Yeah. Well, you can cancel it. It hasn't shipped yet. But I just want to see, do I need to cancel my order and change my mind? Maybe I'll be, I'll be wild. The convinced otherwise. So I went in. I took a look around. It's interesting because I was holding back a thought that I had until I saw the phones in person. But unfortunately, this guess was correct, which is that putting the size aside for a second, these iPhones are the ugliest iPhones Apple has ever made. Really? They are hideous looking in person. I was reserving judgment until I saw them in person. But all of the photos I saw online, I thought, these things look terrible. Let me hold back until I see it though. I'm going to reserve judgment. But man, when I saw them in the store, I thought, nope, this is just as ugly as I thought it was. What if they, is it just because of the dimensions? I mean, they haven't changed the look of them much, have they? You know what they look like? You've seen pictures of them, right? Yeah, but I can't remember. I just thought they were the same as the other ones, but just different dimensions. Okay, you're in front of a computer right now. You go to Apple.com and pull a picture of what they look like. So you know what we're talking about? Yeah, okay. I don't want to paint a word picture for you. I'll put a link in the show notes to some images of them. Hang on, I'm just hunting and picking. There we go. You're Brady typing. You're not hunting back. Yeah, see, I've got them. They look a bit different. Actually, yeah, they're a bit more sort of roundy like a, yeah, they're different. You're right, they are different. Okay, so the first iPhone I ever owned was the iPhone 4, which in my mind is still the iconic, most beautifully designed iPhone that they've ever made. I really liked that one. It was, it was smaller. It had the glass front and the glass back, which were shatter and fantastic, but looked great. But it was like, I kept mine in a case the whole time and I definitely remember around London seeing lots of people who had this gorgeous spider web pattern across the back of their phone because they dropped it. So, you know, that needed to change, but just from a purely aesthetic point, I thought that was the best looking one. And then the iPhone 5 was a refinement of that. Not my favorite, but I still thought it looked quite good. So my problems with the six, I think the curved edge looks terrible. Yeah, I bet we'll get used to it, but that's always, but yeah, they look like, you know, like a Samsung phone or something to me. We'll hear in that direction now. My reaction seeing it in person was it just looks cheap. It's something about that round edge, I think, just makes it look kind of junky. I don't know a better way to describe it. I'm not familiar enough with Samsung phones to say it looks like a Samsung phone. I just think the round edge looks terrible. I always like the really sharp edges of the four much better than the rounded edges of the three. It's almost like they're also that are making it like more like a toy, like making it childproof. Yeah, and holding it in your hand, it does have that same kind of feeling. Like, oh, you don't think I'm grown up enough for this chamfered edge. You have to round out the edges so that I don't hurt myself with my brand new phone. And something about it being rounded and bigger, I don't know, it just makes the phone look dumber in this way. It's hard to hard to specify. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it looks even dumber on the bigger one. Like, it looks not great on the phone. Yeah, it's like a big child's toy. It's like, yeah, yeah. I've not seen it in person, of course. So I'm just I'm just going on pictures. Yeah, I mean, I get just speaking. This is a topical show. We are recording this on the afternoon of the first day that they have ever been available. So it's yeah, and I wouldn't have seen them if I didn't happen to be in the area. So the second thing was when I touched it, the, I don't know what it is, but they something about the back material also feels worse. I mean, it's supposed to still be aluminum, just like the regular phones are, but it feels more plasticky. I mean, I know they're always messing around with what do you call it? The materials they make it from. Yeah. I'm forgetting the word alloys. You know, like they're always mixing it with different materials to get different properties. Yeah, yeah. But something about the back of it just felt terrible. When I touched it, I could immediately feel, oh, the specific heat capacity of whatever alloy they have chosen is different, which basically means like when I when I would pick up the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 5, it's cold to the touch. Yeah. It feels like metal. And if you are, if you're around, if you're in a castle made of stone, you touch the wall. The walls are cold. But if you are in a modern house where the walls are made of basically plastic or styrofoam board, you touch the walls and they are kind of room temperature. And I was aware of that when I touched the phone is the same thing is like, oh, it's not cold when I touch it. It's kind of not exactly warm, but it's way closer to room temperature. It's like, okay, this combined with the round or corners makes it feel even cheaper. But the thing that to me drags it from not great design into what I would say is fugly territory is the antenna bands around the top and the bottom. Oh, yeah. I can't say that. I was looking at them on the picture and it was the same thing. I thought, I'm going to wait until I see this in person. And when I saw it in person, it was worse than I would have ever imagined. It is so hideous to look at. And the thing that I could not believe actually handling the phone is everyone was complaining that the camera lens is separate is a little bit elevated from the back. It's not flush like it has been on the video. Yeah, it is a bit bulbous or something. Yeah, I'm not saying that. Yeah, the camera lens sticks out a couple millimeters. Honestly, there's no big deal at all. That is the one thing on the phone where everybody was worried about that. And I look at that and think it doesn't matter at all. This doesn't make any sense. I'm looking for more pictures of it. Yeah, Apple tries to hide that bulge on their their promo page, which I think is not entirely an honest way to represent it. But the camera bulge, if you are listening to this podcast and you are worried about the camera bulge, don't worry about it at all. It is very slight in person and doesn't matter at all. Whereas I thought, oh, this is going to be ugly. It doesn't make a difference. The thing that I could not believe is that those antenna spaces, so those lines on the top and bottom, if you run your finger over it, you can clearly feel the seam between the the back and that antenna space. And it is slightly elevated from the rest of the back. And it is clearly plastic. So already the back feels cheaper with and and then you run your finger across the top of it and you can very clearly feel those antenna bands as distinct from the rest of the phone. And so I thought, man, Apple thumbs down on the hardware design of this phone. I never thought I'd have to say that. But I was like, man, I just I think they are they are hideous hideous iPhones. I mean, their physical look. So I was pretty disappointed in that. I mean, I don't I use Apple stuff all the time. But this is I think this design look is not good, not good at all. Did you, which did you order and did you change your order? Do you have a guess about which one I ordered? I think I know. I was just doing it for the fans. What do you think? Didn't you order the six? Yes, I did order the six. I ordered the smaller one. Tell and are you glad you did like how do you feel having seen them both now? My guess was that the six plus would be way too big for me. And that was just confirmed in the store. Handling the six is just comically large. And you know, I'm not a short person, but my you know, my thumb was inadequate for this phone. And they're they're little trick of a double tapping the home button to make the icon slide down so you can reach them all. I don't need to add two extra taps to every step for everything that I want to do. So that was my prediction. I use my phone one handed a lot. So that was just a complete deal breaker. The big iPhone does have a lot of cool features like it does rotate sideways in a way that the regular one doesn't. There's like there's things that are attractive about the big one, but its size is just a total deal breaker for me. So I went with the six as the one that I have ordered. And I did at the time order a case for it. And I'm glad that I did because I feel like all of my previous iPhones I have reluctantly used a case. And I've always thought, oh, this iPhone is too beautiful to be in this case, but I'm still going to use it for various reasons. And the iPhone 6, I feel like, oh, this thing is too hideous to not cover up with a case. I have an iPhone 5. And I'm feeling I'll come about you for a new phone. Will you think less of me if I go for a 5s? Like, would that be stupid? I know it's not as good performance, but I just I like a small phone. I like the sort of the in-abtrusiveness of a small phone in my pocket. So I would not think less of you at all. So I am getting the six partly because my wife has great designs on my 5s. She gets the old phone. And so she for a long time has looked with envy on the fingerprint scanner, the touch ID that the 5s has. She really wants that. And so I am getting a new phone because she is getting a new phone. So this is why I am getting the the six. You could get a 5s, of course, and you could do both of five s's. Okay, well, let me work towards this, right? So I have, but the thing is, ever since I got the 5, I have actually never really liked the size of the 5 as it is. I always thought it was a little bit awkward because that's exactly it is it is bigger, but it was only bigger in one dimension. It was just taller. And for some things that's great, but for lots of things, I just found it awkward. And it was a weird in-betweeny device for me. And so I am hoping that I mean, like why am I buying the six if I think it is so hideous? Like why don't I just buy my wife a 5s? I am hoping that I find the slightly bigger size more convenient for a bunch of stuff that I do. You talking about work things here? Work things that I do. So very often I find myself out and about in the city, I always have my phone on me. And sometimes I do want to do some work on the phone. And there's lots of stuff that I can do. I mean, this is a whole other topic, but iOS is basically my primary computing life. I do most of my work on my iPads, but that also means a ton of that stuff I can do on my iPhones. So there is much for me to do. But if Apple, and I know they won't, but if Apple had in addition released a new phone that was the same size as the old iPhone 4, I would have bought that. Because I would prefer a smaller phone. And so I feel like I'm in a weird space where it's like the iPhone 5 is just big enough to be a little bit weird, but not big enough to feel like I can be really productive on it. So that's why I am interested in trying the slightly larger size. But I would totally go back to the iPhone 4 size phone if that was an option. I wouldn't even hesitate about that if they came out with a new one in that size. So I wouldn't think any less of you if you went and bought the 5s. If you know, if you felt like the phone needs to be updated or you want touch ID, which I do have to say is a feature that really changes how you interact with the phone. It makes it much, much more convenient to use in a lot of ways. So I don't think that is crazy or unreasonable. Is that what you're going to do? Are you going to get a 5s? I think after, I mean, I'll go and have a look in the shop, but I just like a small and sleek, you know, I like, you know, I want to be like a lightsaber. I don't want it to be like a huge big, you know. Wait, what lightsabers weren't small and sleek? They're pretty good. Yeah, they were. You're saying lightsabers aren't sleek. I mean, they are bigger than iPhones, yes. Are we comparing it to a sword? I guess it's small and sleek compared to a non-collapsible sword. Is that the comparison? Yeah, I don't know. I just think of lightsabers are like sleek things. They're cool. They're very cool. But if you actually look at a lightsaber close up, they're kind of clunkily designed. Don't you start telling me to look at a lightsaber close up. Let me tell you a story. I feel like I always wander into these Brady stories where I make you angry like last time with the monkeys. Okay, what's your lightsaber story? When I got my first job as like a newspaper cadet, there was this comic book store used to go to all the time. The head like all Star Wars, memorabilia and stuff like that. And there was some guy in Adelaide who used a lathe to make replica lightsaber handles. Oh, cool. And he made a huge metal weighty replica of Luke Skywalker's return of the Jedi lightsaber, the remade one after he loses his first one. And I used to look at it and just cover it something terribly. And I went home and I told my dad, oh, I love it. I love it so much. And he said, why don't you buy it? It was like a hundred bucks or two hundred bucks or something, which is like, you know, not an incredible amount of money now. But also, it wasn't an incredible amount of money then considering I now had like a full-time proper job. But I didn't, I still hadn't psychologically realized that I had a full-time proper job. I hadn't realized I had money now. Yeah, yeah. And so it was the first time I spent like a couple of hundred dollars on something just like to indulge myself. And I went and I bought it. And I felt guilty buying it like I feel like everyone in the world was watching me. And I was wasting money and it was this terrible thing. But then I came home with it, getting a bus home from town with a lightsaber in your pocket. It's a funny thing too. But anyway, so I'm very aware of sort of the weight and size of a lightsaber because this was an exact replica that gosh, I loved it. I still have it. I still have it somewhere. It's like I didn't even need to ask if you still have it. I wonder if I have it here in England. I think I might. If I do, I will send you a picture of me with it. Oh, please do. Please do. If I can find it. So I'm well aware of the dimensions of a lightsaber. Okay. And I'm sorry for suggesting otherwise. But I don't know. Like, and I phone far, I've wowed nothing like a lightsaber. Somehow reminds me of it. It's a kind of cool sleek thing in my pocket, whereas these new, the six looks like a big like Fisher Price toy. Like it just seems the shape of it and the feel of it doesn't quite seem right to me. Yeah, I wish I could be more articulate about this. But I just keep coming back to the word dumb. Like the phone looks, I don't mean that the design is dumb, but it looks like the phone is somehow stupider. It's the I dumb. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but it's the rounded corners. It's that hideous antenna. It's the material. It's everything about it is, is just awful. So I know I now will be on a quest to find the perfect case for this thing. But in the meantime, I'll be covering it up with the apple case. Some kind of shame diverse. I do find it hard. Like I obviously, I listen to some of these podcasts that you do like accidental tech podcast and John Grewb's podcast. And I often marvel with their ability to talk about like the button on the side of an iPhone for like two hours. Yeah, sometimes laugh at the end of it. I can't believe those guys just spent all that time talking about that. I now realize how that happens because we're doing the exact same. Well, no, we are barely, we are barely, we are barely scratching the surface of this. I feel like we are just, we are just total average dudes talking about, oh, what are you thinking about the new iPhone? Whereas you go back in the archives of their work and you can listen to the great mute switch debate of 2012, which spread across four or five episodes on many different shows about, let's discuss the true nature of the mute switch. Like that is pro level apple analysis. And we will never reach that kind of. But did they have a compare to a lightsaber? I probably not. 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We did catch up during the week where I happened to be in London and we went to dinner, which was lovely. Yes. And I asked you what you thought of the, we didn't talk iPhones at all, but I did ask you what you thought of the new Apple Watch and you refused to talk about it with me. No, that is not a correct representation. Well, okay, you didn't like, well, okay, I said, what do you think of the Apple Watch? You tell me what happened. I said we should probably talk about that on the show and then immediately what proceeded to happen was you talked to my wife about the phone for the whole time and never asked me another question about it again. About the watch about the watch. That's what happened. Well, I thought you made your position pretty clear. I felt ignored at the dinner. That's what it was. You know, you never never came back never, you know, just that was that no push. Well, I talked to you all the time. You're far more interesting. Fair enough. Now you have my undivided attention and I honestly, honestly, am dying to know what are you really, are you being so casted now because we've been talking about Apple for like an hour. No, no, no, no, I seriously, this is like best for last because I'm really, really curious about what you think about the Apple Watch and I have no idea about your position yet. Did you watch the announcement? Yeah, so I did, I did watch the announcement live, which I try to do. I don't always catch it alive, but if I can, I'm happy too because it's interesting to see what's going on. Apple makes some kind of fun events and since I've been following it for years, I know the cast of characters who come up on stage. So if I can watch it live, I always will. So it was it was interesting. It was interesting to see. Were you tweeting live? I can't. I didn't say your usual. I have a lot of tweets you do when an Apple event happens. Well, this is part of my, as I mentioned last last episode, part of my failed project to stay off of Twitter and the internet. You were on that noticeably less. I'm definitely on on less, but like I said, the Twitter habit is hard to break and I was determined to get through the Apple keynote without tweeting and without looking at Twitter. I thought, no, no, you know what? I'm going to do this. This is part of my resolution. I'm going to stick to it. But then of course, if anyone who watched live already knows what happens, which is that during the first 30 minutes of their presentation, they were Apple was having horrific technical problems. The stream kept dropping out. Lairiously, it was dubbed in Mandarin for a good long time and I don't know what was going on there, but it was it was awful. But of course, then I'm thinking, well, I'm having a hard time watching this live, but I want to know what's going on. And I follow people on Twitter who are almost certainly in the room in California where this is happening. Maybe I should. And then of course, this is like a drug addict. Maybe I'll just take one hit of heroin. I mean, just open and then it was just over. But I was restraining myself. I was trying not to comment on everything like I normally do, but I was still, I was still on there. Okay. So at some point in the presentation, they unveiled the wearable weed all been waiting for. Yes, that's right. The Apple Watch, not the I watch. Yes, the Apple Watch, which is going to be hard to say. I will try. What was your immediate impression before we get into the nuts and bolts of your deeper analysis? Okay. So my very first thought was I was honestly disappointed it was a watch. And this is partly because of a, I don't know if I'll be able to find it for the show notes, but there was a Tim Cook interview at all things D, I think maybe a year ago or so, where they were talking about wearable technology. And Tim Cook was clearly refused to talk about watches in particular and instead was talking about sensor technology in general. He was saying there's a lot of things that are going on in the world of sensors. And this is entirely true. Like if you follow technology, there's a bunch of stuff that's happening right now with making sensors much more ubiquitous and much more cheap. And this is why there's this big push about recording health statistics and recording all kinds of stuff because it's getting really cheap to put sensors everywhere. And so I was kind of hoping that Apple would have a different, something different than a watch, kind of based on his reaction or his description of things in that particular interview. So when it was revealed as a watch, my initial reaction was, oh, I was kind of hoping, I don't know what they would have, but some sort of, band with a bunch of sensors built in or who knows what they're going to do. So that was my initial reaction was a bit like an original. I wouldn't say that, but if you were asking for my initial thought, it was a little bit of disappointment because I was thinking maybe it's something I haven't thought of. And then it's a watch. But that was, that was very fleeting. Like that was just my initial reaction. And then it's like, okay, well, Apple, now show me, show me in your Apple-y way this thing that you have made. Did you watch it live, or did you see that? I did not watch it live. And I've seen the video. No, I haven't. I haven't. You haven't even watched the video? I've not watched the video. I've not seen any moving imagery of this watch at all. Have you seen the least pictures of the watch? I have seen pictures of it. I have looked at pictures of it. And I looked on the Apple site and saw all the different colors and different bands and things like that. Okay. So that's my level of a. Do you have any reaction to the Apple watch? Completely underwhelmed. Completely underwhelmed? Yeah. And I've not seen it in real life. And I've not seen it on a hand. I don't think anybody's seen it in real or the people who were there have seen it in real life. But it's not in, it's not in the stores. I've also, because I haven't watched the video, I've not yet seen it on a hand. But I imagine it looks a bit boxy. And that's not what I think watches should look like. And I, although I don't wear, I watch these days. I have a great interest in love of watches. And this is not something I would imagine enjoying seeing on my hand. So you look at that boxy design and you think that's not something that you would wear? Yes. I am intrigued by the digital crown. I think that was enough. From what I can tell, that looks like a nice touch. And a nice little bit of innovation. But I am not a fan yet. But I'm also very, very ill-informed and open-minded. But also, as you know, there is a particular watch that I do want that I've been coveting for 10, 15 years now. Whenever I think of watches, that's all I can think about. And nothing goes compared. So go on. Tell us what it is. You know you want to. I, I don't think a time, I don't think I ever go to an airport without drooling over the Amiga Speedmaster professional. There are very few kinds of that. And I have very particular kind of like because not only is it just, you know, a very nice looking watch, it is also the watch that was worn by the Apollo astronauts when they walked on the moon. And we've never really talked about it much on the podcast, I don't think. And I'm sure we will sometime in the future at length if I can persuade you. But I am very, very passionate about the Apollo program and the moon landings. It's sort of my greatest interest in hobby. And I'm a great collector of things Apollo related. So I've always really fancied having one of those watches. But they are very expensive. And we also touched on the fact I don't take very good care of things. Right. And I have not been able to take that leak that, that small step for man, but giant leap for Brady to buy to buy one of them yet. So if I'm going to spend a large quantity of money on a watch, it will be one of those eventually. And I will do it. In fact, the Apple, if anything, the best thing about the release of the Apple watch, it has really motivated me to perhaps buy one of those watches. And I've been spending a lot of time online looking at them the last few days, much more time than I have been looking at the Apple watch. But I still look at the price and think that's how to justify. Because I also really like Cassio calculator watches and things like that. Yeah, the thing, I mean, there is, it's super clear. These watches, they're in the what? The 2000 to 3000, 4000 pound range. That's kind of what we're talking about. This is a mega. Yeah. The Amiga watches. Yes. Yes. Which is no doubt about it. Very expensive for a watch. Yes. But as we may come back to later, I only want to mention the price because when you say very expensive, people can think Rolex, which is $30,000, $40,000 for a watch. I mean, I spend as much, I spend as much, I spend more on hard drives than I do than I could on that watch. And I could wear the watch every day and get great pleasure from it as opposed to my hard drives that crash and lose me in my day. It's bringing you nothing but misery. Yes. Spend more money on that. Yeah. Another reason I should get it. I will eventually get it. But anyway, that's not, we're not here to talk about Amiga speedmasters. But if anyone from Amiga is listening and they wanted to get some, they want to do an ad on the show, cash would not be required. I'm regret. We're both earning money from this thing. They do need to pay. We can't just have Brady's Amiga speed master corner. Amiga, what have they sent to? Well, I already have a watch. And you do have a great watch. Amiga, you can get in touch for a sponsorship and Brady will give you the best sponsorship you've ever heard in your life. I think that probably would just have a free. I think you could talk about it forever. Let's talk about your opinion on the Apple Watch. We left it with your first impression being slightly underwhelmed but only fleetingly and then giving them a chance to make their case to move what happened next. So here, as we've just touched upon, I think the Apple Watch, I am very interested in the Apple Watch. But they have a very difficult case to sell this to me. And step one is, as we just mentioned, I already wear a watch. So right out of the gate, Apple is not competing for unused space on my wrist. Apple is competing to replace a thing that already exists on my wrist. So we have a technical or we have a higher activation energy to get over for this process to start. So I was watching the whole presentation kind of with that in mind. Is Apple going to be able to convince me to swap my current watch for the Apple Watch? So as I'm watching it, Apple was to be clear, they have very early announced this. They have said it is available for sale early 2015, which knowing Apple they'll push back until summer 2015. And they'll say, oh, we meant the first half of the summer. So it can be quite a long time before this thing actually comes out, which resulted in some parts of the presentation being a bit vague. And so one of the key ones, which I couldn't resist from mentioning on Twitter, was like, Apple, the longer you don't tell me about the battery life, the shorter I'm going to assume this battery life is. And I made that as kind of a joke, but then I was pretty surprised when they ended, they finished talking about the watch, and they never mentioned the battery life once. Yeah. There's something like, does this last 45 minutes? How long does this watch do I have to just have it plugged in all the time? This is not a good sign. Is it possible they don't know yet? Is it possible they're trying to invent some new battery in the next six months? Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things unfortunately, when we're recording this now, we mentioned before the usual Apple podcast crew, you know, Gruber and ATP. I don't, I haven't listened to any of their shows that are out. So this might, the section on the watch might be horrifically uninformed because I don't know what if they've found out any of the details. I have listened to ATBs first, one on the watch, nothing about battery came up that I can remember, but I haven't listened to their latest. Yeah, I think they just came out with one this morning. So there may be more details now, but I don't know. And my guess is it is very possible, given how early they're announcing this, that Apple doesn't actually have a realistic, doesn't have a realistic idea of what the battery life actually will be. Yeah. But they hinted very strongly in the presentation that it will need to be, it will need to be charged every night. And they have, they have a very nicely designed charger for it, but this is, this is a strike one because I already have so many devices that I need to charge every night. And I have many checklists. And on my checklist is a couple of things that I want to make sure are plugged in at night so that when I, when I start the next day, everything is fresh and going. You know, I'm, I'm starting to even fall out of love with my electric toothbrush because of that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is what we talked about is the, the frustration of that. And that thing is maybe, you know, once a week or so. But I mean, devices that I have to charge every night and I need to make sure are charging is one, obviously, the phone. Yeah. Two, I use my iPad as my primary computer. And so I have to make sure that my iPad is charged in because often I just grab it in the morning and then I go out and I'm working wherever in the day. And maybe I have access to electric socket. Maybe I don't. So I need to make sure that that thing is charged. And then secondly, I have this pair of Bluetooth headphones that I adore that I totally love these Jaybird X Bluetooth headphones. They are amazing. They're the best Bluetooth headphones I've ever used. Jaybird. Feel free to get in touch. They don't need to if you keep, we keep plugging everyone. Yeah. But, but, but they have to be charged every night. Yeah. So there are three things that at minimum have to be charged every night. And then in addition to that, I have my Fitbit and my Kindle which need to be basically charged on a weekly basis. And I have a reminder for that as well. And it's like, this is getting to be a bunch of things. And as dumb as it sounds, adding one more, it's, it's like the difficulty of this is exponential. It doesn't seem like adding one more is, is a pain, but it's much more trouble than you would expect because there's also the cable management. So this is one more cable that I'd have to pack with if I was traveling. So I already have three cables. Totally. Totally. Yeah. I have the Fitbit cable. I have the Lightning cable and then I have a micro USB. And I'll tell you, I keep getting terrified that one of my devices is going to be out of sync with that micro USB Kindle Voyager. I'm looking at you, right? I was trying to find on the web page. They said, oh, it charges by USB. Yes. What USB Kindle? I don't want to end up having to have two USB cables. So this is, this is immediately a kind of strike against the watch. It's like, you are going to be a hassle with this with this continuous charge. So battery power electricity issue one. Right. But the thing with technology is the real question is what benefit does it provide? Because I'm willing to charge charge up all the things that I currently have, because the benefit they provide me outweighs the hassle of the charging. This is like this is how the universe works. And so now the sale for the watch. I don't know if that's one of the fundamental laws of the universe. I believe it's, yeah, you have the four fundamental forces. And then after that, there is technology growth is exponential. And then immediately after that, if the benefit of device provides you is greater than the hassle of charging it, you'll use it. It's governed by grace constant. That's exactly it. So now the watch is trying to sell me on its utility. So I'm watching this presentation with this in mind. Now another strike against the watch for me in particular is I'm looking at it and think, okay, what does it do? And at least as they present it right now, it does some interesting fitness tracking stuff, which is great. But I already use my Fitbit for that. And my Fitbit is going to outcompete the watch because my Fitbit also does silent alarms, which I use in the morning to sometimes wake up without disturbing my wife. So I can clip the Fitbit to my pajamas and wake up. And like, well, the watch can't do that because the watch is going to have to be charging overnight. So you have in one on fitness tracking here. And then the rest of or a large portion of the things that the watch can do, I would say are related to communication and notifications. So the watch has to be connected to your phone for most things. And it will display notifications from your phone on the watch face. Would you have the hassle of taking your embarrassing ugly iPhone? Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that was a big deal until I saw how hideous the iPhone 6 was. And maybe that's Apple's plan, right? Oh, we're going to make this iPhone so ugly. Everybody wants an eyewatch or an Apple watch in order to hide it. So it doesn't have to see the light of day. And it's some kind of cave troll in your pocket that is doing all this grunt work. And the beautiful eyewatch can actually be the presentable face of your communication system. That's exactly it. So as you have been frustrated with sometimes, the number of notifications I receive on my phone to begin with is almost zero. I actually looked through my phone the other day because it's kind of curious to see how many things have I actually allowed access to notification. And it is basically three or four apps at most. Messages can make my phone beep. Omni focus can make my phone beep. If the navigation is on, that can make my phone beep, which I almost never use. And that has to easily, easily be 95% of the notifications I ever receive on my phone. To top it off, to make it worse, I use the Do Not Disturb feature to even disallow those notifications every day starting at 9 p.m. at night and continuing to 1 p.m. the following day. So there's only even an eight hour window in which my phone can theoretically beep to begin with. So notifications for me with this watch also is not like I am not sold on this because it is not something that I use. If I have a photo and a ravine and get stuck on a ledge, you're the last person I'm going to call for. I should you should know by now that I am not the person to call. If you need help with things, I will help you, but it has to be asynchronous. The demand cannot be immediate. You're my asynchronous hero. I agree. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You let me know a month in advance about something I might possibly be there. But if you need something at 730 in the morning, you better be calling somebody else. Yeah, or have access to your Fitbit. All right. So the watch is all about notifications and you feel like you don't need a whole lot of notifying basically. I have almost no use for notifications as it is. So the watch doesn't sell me on that feature either. Now I don't think it is fair to say that the watch is all about notifications because it was again Apple was a little bit unclear and exactly what the capabilities are again because maybe they don't know precisely themselves. But there were definitely some cool things with regards to ways to communicate with other people who have Apple watches. There's a way to tap the screen of the Apple watch to make somebody else's Apple watch vibrate very slightly. I thought, oh, this is an interesting different form of communication. And one thing that I did think was very cool was doing walking navigations with the watch. So if you set a destination, I want to walk from here to the Royal Albert Hall. The watch will do that navigation, but by using a vibration feedback on your wrist, so you don't need to look at it. I don't know exactly what the mechanism is, but they said it's different vibrations for whether or not you're supposed to turn left or right or go straight at an intersection. And I thought that is great and that is a feature that I can totally see using. Because sometimes when my wife and I are walking around like we were in York, I do want to keep track and make sure that we're going towards a particular place. But I don't want to have my headphones in for the Bluetooth navigation while in a while we're just relaxing or something. And so I thought, huh, I could easily see on a vacation doing something like setting the walking directions to the hotel. And then I would just always have a sense of am I walking towards or away from the hotel, like a kind of ambient awareness of where is the hotel in relation to me? I'm not totally, that sounds a bit weird to me. I'd still, if my watch vibrated to still be to turn left, I'd still want a visual map like for reassure and so I'm not sure I'm going to just, I find that. I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's too new for me. I'm just, I'm just trying to like run through as I'm watching this presentation. What might I possibly do? And that was one thing that jumped into mind immediately is I use walking directions to either my wife and I are going someplace and I want to make sure that we're headed in the right direction. And we're just walking around. We're not in the car. Or this kind of, I want to pin a location to be ambiently aware of when I'm just exploring. Those kinds of things I was thinking of. But that's not a feature that that sells me on this. So I think it's coming pretty clear to the conclusion that the Apple Watch did not in that presentation have anything that would make me think, oh, I have to go out and buy this. I can't wait to get it. What do you think of what it looks like? You sort of hinted at it being the presentable face of the, the iPhone, but I think it suffers from that same rounded child like goofiness that the iPhone 6 is suffering from. I don't, I don't actually like how it looks that much. I think it is, it reaches the heights of okay. I think it looks okay. It doesn't look great. It doesn't look awful. It looks like a sleek smartwatch, but it's thickness still gives it away as you are wearing a tiny computer on your wrist. And you are a nerd. They have a lot of the different bands which do look like they put a lot of time in and they look great. And they do have different faces that you know, they do have the gold watches which I want to get back to as option. So I think they have done their best with the current level of technology. But it doesn't strike me as looking really great. I can't remember which one it is. I mean, it hasn't gotten great reviews, but maybe it's Motorola. I think it's Motorola 360. Yeah, that's slightly better looking watch that Moto 360. It's a bit fat I think, but it's still fat, but I think circular makes it look much nicer. I mean, I've never liked square watches just to begin with. Yeah, I've always preferred circular watches. And people make fun of the Moto 360 because there's a little bit of blackness at the bottom where the image can't go all the way around because the way the screen is designed. But it seems relatively trivial. But the face of the Moto 360, I think looks nicer than the Apple watch. Here's what I want to come back to you about the kind of summing up thoughts of on the watch is this. I'm watching this presentation and it's becoming clear to me as it goes on that this is not a product for me. And that's totally fine. I suspect Apple will be very successful with it anyway. You know, not everything has to be custom made for me, although it would be nice if it was. But watching this, I had a similar feeling to when I watched the first iPhone keynote, which was the same. I have no use for this product right now. This is undeniably something cool. And I also don't doubt that lots of people will find it very useful. But the first iPhone was the same thing. It didn't tick the boxes that I needed it to tick in order to feel like I can justify this purchase. But the key thing about both the iPhone and the Apple watch is that they are not regular devices. They are tiny computers. And so what really defines these devices is the software that runs on them. And so when I got my first iPhone, it's really my first iPod touch. But just let's keep it simple and say my first iPhone, right? The reason that I bought it was entirely because of a single piece of software, which was the to-do list manager I used at the time was called Remember the Milk. And they came out with an app for iOS that allowed you to have all of your to-dos in your pocket. And then you could update it. And it would synchronize back. And you know, everything would just work on your computer and in your pocket. And the instant that came out, this equation shifted from that was your killer app. Yeah. Suddenly the calculus is, I am going to get an enormous amount of value out of this device. And everything else about it, it's a phone, it's an instant messenger. It can do none of that is relevant. I would have bought it if it was just a dedicated remember the milk device and it did nothing else because that was the valuable thing. Yeah. And so I look at the watch and I feel like, well, well, watch you and I have a date at some point in the future. Yeah. I don't know when that's going to be. But sooner or later, when Apple opens this up to third party developers, someone is going to come up with a piece of software that working with the limitations of the watch is incredibly valuable in a way that I I am not thinking of currently. And then I will buy it. And I don't know when that is going to happen. But I feel it is even though I absolutely love the watch that I wear on my wrist now. It is inevitable because of the very nature and utility of software. That at some point, it will out compete my current watch for this space on my wrist because software gets better and more useful over time. And the utility function of my current watch is a horizontal line that never improves. It's high. It is really high compared to the Apple watch, but it does not grow. Oh no, the Apple watch. No, it's the Apple watch can tell you the time too. Although it hasn't got the battery problem. It has a battery problem. It also has the problem that I can't wear it in the shower. I can't take it to the gym. I mean, sometimes I was thinking of sometimes my gym routine is go to the gym shower. And then immediately from the shower go into a sauna, right? It is a incredibly steamy hot environment. And then from the sauna go into an icy shower or the pool. I just imagine the Apple watch exploding under those environmental constraints. I kind of imagine what you think about me wanting to get a watch that requires winding up then. A manual watch. No, I'm okay with that. You're okay with that. Watches are male jewelry in some ways. And the jewelry falls into a category of a thing that does not, its utility is not measured entirely based on what it does. Its utility is also partly this intangible function of how do you feel about it? How do you like it? How do you like the way it looks? And the routine of winding a mechanical watch, I think that can be part of the enjoyment of the watch. Yeah, the ritual. Yeah. There's one thing you said, you compared the release of the Apple watch to the release of the iPhone. I think there are differences and there are obvious similarities. But just to talk about some of the differences, the watch is more out there. It's more of a fashion thing. Like what it looks like matters more. And I think in terms of something that looks nice on your wrist as hard as they've tried, in my opinion, in my taste, this is a real retrograde step for watches. It's like this would be a step backwards for anyone who has a watch. Right. This they would be having something that looks less nice on their wrist, in my opinion. The iPhone didn't feel like that. The iPhone didn't feel like an abomination against all the telephones that were out at the time. If it felt, if anything, it was maybe nicer looking than some of them. No, I agree there. Yeah. And the other thing is, yeah, I mean, that's the main thing. And the other thing is, yeah, the iPhone felt like an improvement on phones. The Apple Watch almost feels like an unimprovement, you know, a bad step backwards, even though it's a computer and does all these things. I feel like they've got a tougher job. They've got a tougher job. And I don't think it's very good looking. Yeah. Your criticism is valid. I think if anybody has a watch that costs more than $100 on their wrist, the Apple Watch almost certainly looks worse aesthetically than the watch they're wearing. Yeah. And but that like when I talk about software improves, hardware improves as well. And I saw a few people on Twitter actually made a comment. We want to skip to the iPhone 4 version of this watch. Yeah. Yeah. That we it needs to grow into its looks. Yeah. It needs to grow into its looks. And also, you know, as time goes on, they will be able to reduce the thickness. They'll be able to change various features about it. And so that that kind of stuff will start, I think, allowing the watch to chip away at the aesthetics that it is losing out on. And, you know, who knows how long it will take. But I think we can say pretty confidently given that computers keep miniaturizing and battery technology is getting better, although very slowly. At some point, they'll be able to fit the electronics of an Apple Watch in the same casing and design size of any other watch on the market today. You know, who knows how long that will take, but we'll get there at some point. And then it's a much more on an aesthetic level, even playing field. And then it is really about the utility of the software. And what value do you get out of that? That's a thing, you see, because usually when Apple releases a new product, I know there's personal taste in some people hate Apple, but usually when Apple releases a product, it looks so cool that it looks like it's fashionable right now or it even looks like it's tomorrow's cool thing. Like an iPad or MacBook or even most of the IMX and things like that. You look at it and iPhone 6-to-base side, the iPhone, you look at it and you think, man, that's just so cool. It looks like it was designed by someone from five years in the future and we're lucky they've come back and given it to us. But it all fell out of the 2001 spaceship and has landed on it. But the watch, the Apple Watch feels a bit like it was designed by someone in the 1980s imagining what they think the future would be like. And it's a bit embarrassing. It's a bit like, no, that's not what that's not what the cool watch everyone's going to be wearing looks like. That's what you imagined it might look like if you were back then. But things are changed. That's a good comparison. It is almost the history of the future of what people thought it was going to look like. Yeah. So I'm disappointed in that respect. You know, I'm not disappointed at so watch. As I said, I really like watches and I think they're cool things. And I'm happy for them to do it. And I like Apple and I think they do cool things. But they haven't made something that looks cool. No matter what it does and maybe I'll buy one because it will do something I can't resist. But no matter what happens at the moment I look at that and I think I don't want that on my wrist. I don't cover that. You know, I cover iPhone 5, I cover a MacBook. I cover the Amiga Speedmaster Professional. But I don't cover this watch. You know, and that's probably good because you should cover things. Yeah. But if you are a company, it is your job to design the covetable. Yes. And yes, I think that they have failed in some respect on this one. There's only one other other thing that I just wanted to mention. The price, which had some for some reason had never really crossed my mind. Apple said something something like Apple Watch starts at $350 and maybe it was $400. I don't remember exactly. And they do that with every product. They say, oh, it starts at whatever. And sometimes they tell you what it goes up to and sometimes they don't. But it's it seems like it. So when they said that in my mind, I felt like all of the other products where they say, oh, iPad starts at $5.99 and maybe the most expensive one then mentally you think of is, oh, I could double that price gets me to the most expensive. Yeah. Yeah. At most, get you all the better memory and everything. Or with the computers, like the iMacs you feel like, okay, I could probably go three times whatever the base price is. And with their crazy ones, the Mac Pros, which I do cover at their beautiful little cylinder computers, which I don't have, but definitely would love to have those ones. It's like, okay, this can go up to maybe 10 times the base price. That's kind of the mental range that I was thinking of. And I'm looking at those watches and I was thinking, okay, let's say it's 350 and my mental my mental projection was, this is like a Mac Pro product. So maybe the most expensive version of this that a person can possibly get is three and a half thousand dollars for the high end watch. What for the best band? Yeah, for the same. Yeah. Like, okay, I'm going to go all out. I want the gold one and I want the fanciest band that they have. And like, how much is that going to run me? And I was just mentally projecting, I probably like three and a half, four thousand dollars, something like that. And I hadn't just never really thought about it at all, but Gruber wrote this piece where he's trying to speculate about what is the upper price that the Apple Watch can possibly be. And he found out that one, those gold watches are not gold plated. They are solid gold all the way through. Which puts the resource cost of them at something like $10,000 at a minimum. And then he starts going through and comparing it to the price of Rolexes and other high end luxury watches, sort of like we were talking about at the beginning. How much does it cost to get a really expensive watch? And then he has this line, which I copy pasted because I just loved, I think it's great. I think Apple Watch prices are going to be shockingly high. Gasp inducingly get me to the fainting couch high. And he gives a number. He throws that number there saying he wouldn't be surprised if the top price was $35,000 for the gold watch with the best band. Which when I read it, I swear I gasp out loud and I felt like I need to sit down. Never even crossed my mind that it would be possibly that expensive. Mrs. Gray has got a long white before she gets that hand me down. No kidding. She actually, she is much more interested in the Apple Watch than I am. She watched the presentation. I thought, oh, I could definitely get one of those. Yeah, we'll probably be starting with that sports band one at, you know, at 350. One day, not today, because we've talked too long, we have one to discuss a little bit about the Mac versus PC or Mac versus Android world, which is an interesting thing that is just unavoidable online. Yeah. And there are a lot of people who really dislike Apple very viscerally. And I cannot imagine the freak out that is going to happen if Apple does announce the price and they say, oh, it's $20,000, $40,000 for our high-end watch. Yeah. I think people really will just lose their minds over that price. It'll be interesting to see what happens with this. And I feel like that is now actually one of the things I want to know the most about the watch. It adds to the cache of it though. Like part of the thing I love so much about that Amiga watch is that it's expensive. It's the thing that stops me owning it. But it also is the thing that it's one of the it's one of the things I like about it. Like it makes it say it's more exclusive, you know, and well, this is how pricing works. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, there's, I mentioned a lot on the podcast, but I love economics. It is always a subject that has been close to my heart. And there are many things that you can describe with just straight up supply and demand. And it answers a lot of questions about the pricing of various things. But supply and demand gets really weird when you start talking about luxury goods that are not necessarily supply constrained. And then the very price of the good is part of the attraction of it. Yeah. And it seems like it is crazy. But there are points on that pricing curve if you're a company where you can say, we are going to triple the price of this item like this luxury watch. Knowing full well that we have just cut our audience in half who can possibly buy it. Yeah. But we're still coming out ahead because we have we've sold it to these very, this very small group of people who can pay a lot of money. Apple doesn't need to sell a lot of $30,000 watches to make a huge amount of money on those things. I mean, you think how, how many phones does Apple need to sell to make $15,000 in profit? Or how many $1 apps does Apple need to sell to make $15,000 versus of pure profit? Versus selling one gold phone. You know, if they make the margin that high. Yeah. So anyway, can I just say, because I know this is going to happen. So I want to nip it in the bird to those people who are going to write on either the red or send me a message saying, Hey, Brody, you're not going to believe this. But my dad bought Neil Armstrong's Omega SpeedBast 1972 from a secondhand shop in Ohio and he gave it to me and now it sits on a shelf in my bathroom. Can I just say to those people, I'd rather not know. Don't feel the need to tell me. Wait, how many, there can only be one of those people, right? Yeah, well, I mean, Neil Armstrong's in the Smithsonian anyway. Do you know, interesting fact? Interesting fact. Yeah. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 both had Omega Speedmaster professionals. But the little clock in the lunar module was malfunctioning for timing how long they were doing things. So because that wasn't working, Neil Armstrong left his watch in the module as almost like the official clock of the craft and didn't wear his on the surface of the moon. Buzz Aldrin did wear his on the surface of the moon. So it was Buzz Aldrin's watch. That was the first watch on the moon, not Neil Armstrong's. Well, I guess that's the one to cover.
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