Ep. 215: "Occasional Live Keyboardist"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you going?
Good.
Thanks for starting late today.
Well, I understand that you had a big Apple event, and something about a new iPhone came out that had some things that you needed to know about.
Yeah, as they're being announced, I needed to know about them.
Yeah, so I understood totally that you would need to postpone our regular...
are already once postponed podcasts in order to go to what?
I presume the television or did you go to a library or something to watch the big reveal where someone in a black turtleneck walks around with a digital pointer?
How did it go?
Is this an actual question?
Well, yeah, I'm not sure.
I've never watched.
You could have just said you're welcome.
But, you know, no, no, it's the black turtleneck was a Steve thing.
Now it's mostly guys in their 60s in untucked blue shirts.
Oh, this untucked shirt thing.
Mm hmm.
What does that mean to communicate?
I don't know.
There seems like a very... You know how it is?
It's like business casual in the 90s, where it isn't what it sounds like.
I think there's a pretty well-described or understood dress code for these kinds of things, which is you wear some kind of a slack.
You wear a slack, a trouser.
You wear a chicken slack?
Jimmy's chicken slack.
Yeah.
You wear a trouser that's not too formal, but not exactly jeans.
You might wear some kind of like a skateboard shoe.
And usually you have a blue casual-ish shirt untucked.
You could also do, sometimes you'll do the long sleeve blue shirt in a shade that I've heard called new media blue.
New media.
New media blue.
You wear that with a collar and with the sleeves down.
So but these people aren't like hired spokespeople.
These are millionaire people, multimillionaire people who are doing this talk.
I think they're probably pretty comfortable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you get the you get the CEO.
You get the you get this guy over here.
The CTO, the CFO, the CEO.
Well, no.
So here's what this is fascinating background for you.
At Apple, there's a CEO and then there's mostly you get the vice president.
So you get like a senior senior executive vice president.
Oh, well, see, I approve of vice presidents.
You like a vice president?
I do.
I don't like a lot of people up at the sea level.
I think that too many seas spoils the soup.
How the sea is salt.
Remember that one?
The old man in the sea.
The old man in the sea salt.
Yep, yep, yep.
I agree with you.
It's weird, though, how you, like, vice presidents in some companies, director in some companies, it's your lieutenant colonel problem, right?
You get a lot of, what do you call them, the Iraqi colonels?
Yeah, yeah, Iraqi colonels.
There are a lot of them.
Right, you just got a goodwill, get yourself in a Iraqi colonel outfit, and you're good to go.
Now tell me this.
So here it is.
It's a big day.
Big day.
Huge day.
Yeah.
I presume a lot of our mutual friends, a lot of the people that are going to be at the XOXO Festival are like, Barbara, clear my schedule.
Yeah.
I'm going to sit in front of my laptop or my transistor radio.
Yeah.
I'm going to listen to this.
Let's listen.
Tune in on the iRadio.
Wow.
It's nerd Christmas.
People make a point of watching this.
It's a tradition.
This is just iPhone specific.
There's no new iMac or Mac Paint.
It's not a new version.
You never know.
Just one more thing.
We have a new Mac Paint for the Macintosh.
Uh-huh.
It could be a new Mac Paint.
It could be a new, let's see, I'm going to scroll down the sidebar, a new Finder.
Oh, people would love a new Finder.
A new Launchpad.
Launchpad, sure.
System Preferences.
A new Preferences, a new version of FaceTime or Pages.
Sleep, Restart, Shutdown, Logout.
Some of these are very popular programs.
Photo Booth.
Oh, sure, Photo Booth.
Photo Booth, a thing I have used to take selfies on my laptop.
I thought it was just a Death Cab song.
It's a Death Cab song that was on an EP.
Yes.
But it's confusing.
There was a photo album is different than Photo Booth.
Totally different.
But Photo Booth was everybody.
Everybody at Barsouk understood that Photo Booth was a hit.
Yeah.
Hit written all over it.
But it only came out on an EP.
And in that sense, I hear about it all the time because it's the Commander Thinks Aloud problem.
It was a good song that was only on an EP.
So the power of the good song failed to move units of the album.
Because people don't buy EPs the way they buy an album, at least back in the day.
So that at Barsouk, I think, is called the photo booth problem.
And within The Long Winter's Camp, obviously, it's called The Commander Thinks A Lot.
Do you think that's your best known song?
I think so.
I think, well, because it's been popularized by, you know, it has multiple sources of dissemination.
Right?
It's the Song Exploder one.
That was a good one.
That was a really good one.
But also Adam Savage learned to play it and plays it at his shows.
And, you know, it's like, yeah.
Are there any ukulele covers of it, John?
Absolutely.
Anyway, so here we are.
We're listening on our thing, on our radios.
Apple's having an event that almost certainly means that I'm going to have to sign or click accept on a new set of terms and conditions to use iTunes.
Right?
I think as we're all watching this, we're all thinking, how is this going to affect John?
Well, because every time I turn on my computer, somehow I have to accept a new set of terms and conditions.
Isn't that a thing, huh?
And it's just like, yes.
Yes, I do.
I do not want to be held here at the customs building at the border of Slovakia and Ukraine.
Yeah, because you never clicked to accept.
Because I didn't click accept.
You clicked the first one, but then when it popped up to say, are you sure, you accidentally hit cancel.
And now you're being held at the border.
That's right.
Do you have any liquids or gels?
No.
You didn't check the box.
You say no, but you didn't.
Scroll back up.
Say the number.
Anyway, so here you are.
Yeah.
And this is an event where the untucked shirts are just talking iPhones.
Not exactly.
They have an event in June at the Developers Conference where they talk mostly about software because that affects the developers.
And this is their big event where usually in September they announce the new iPhone because there's a new iPhone every year.
And then there's other things.
And there's been many, many question marks because this is kind of a weird time for Apple.
They have not updated...
computers in a very long time.
They're still selling some very old things.
And then there's this particular model of iPhone.
People have had a lot of questions.
Now, let me ask you this.
Do you still have an iPhone that you use?
I'm afraid so.
Do you ever use it to listen to audio, like to music?
Mm-hmm.
Not a lot.
You're in good luck because there's not a headphone jack anymore.
So this is the big headphone jack controversy.
This is the headphone jack controversy.
Which only was revealed very recently.
Yes.
And everyone said this is the final sign that a Steve Jobless Apple has lost its path.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Right?
Or do they say that every year or every six months?
Oh, you know, there's a lot of talk about that kind of thing.
So does that mean that they're pushing everybody into a Bluetooth-only music listening?
Not exactly.
The new iPhones that don't have a headphone jack come with headphones, earphones, that will work with the existing lightning adapter.
They also have new wireless ones that are Bluetooth-like but are kind of innovative and neat.
I'm sure they will not fit my tiny ears, but that's beside the point.
Uh, yeah, they're trying to, they're trying to move away.
It's also, uh, the new phone is water resistant, which would have been great, uh, three days ago when my daughter poured an entire bottle of water into my wife's purse.
Yeah.
And ruined her phone.
Oh yeah.
And everything else in her purse.
Sure.
Her money's wet.
Oh, wet money.
I get wet money a lot because I'm a purse buyer.
Do you stick it in your sock?
No, I'm not afraid of being jacked.
Although, you know, the story in my family is that my grandfather, when he split town, when he went out for cigarettes and didn't come back, he hopped a freight as part of his hoboing because this would have been 1936.
Oh, that's the height of hobo times.
He apparently did keep his money in his bottom.
It's very hobo.
Hobo.
It's very hobo, right?
Wait a minute.
You mean in his... I can't confirm it or not.
You mean in his prison drawer?
Yeah, but so... So if I have my eye... In the big rock candy mountains... Oh, shit.
You went out a minute.
Are you back?
Not in my sock.
Okay, you're back now.
I'll find my sock.
In the big rock candy mountains.
Yeah, I'm here.
Are you there?
Yeah, you went out for a minute.
Are you somewhere different?
He didn't keep it in his sock.
He kept it somewhere else.
In the big rock candy mountains.
I know there's no point in asking this.
Are you on wireless or Ethernet?
Never mind.
Don't answer.
Please don't answer.
In the big rock candy mountains.
So grandpa goes out for cigarettes and he's got money in his bottom.
He's got it in his hobo bottom?
Apparently, but now that I'm thinking about it, there was never a situation where some hobo colonel came back and said, your father kept this watch in his bottom.
Right.
Right.
That's not the kind of thing that gets written down in the in the family Bible.
No.
So I don't even know where I heard that.
And I don't know.
I can't confirm that.
You know what I mean?
That that's that's even less.
That sounds like a record.
That sounds like a speculation.
Yeah, that's even that's right.
A speculation.
There's there's no way anybody could have known that because it's not the type of thing he would have said.
So let's just scratch.
Let's strike that from the record.
But he might have had like a $100 bill with him.
I think so.
Or a gold coin, because that was the era of gold coins.
Right?
You wouldn't put a $100 bill in a glass vial and put it up there.
That could end badly.
No, I think it was probably a gold coin that you had to do your tickles.
Okay, so I'm not reading into this something that's not actually there.
You're saying he had butt money, maybe.
Well, I've heard that, but again, I'm going to check with my mom and see if that's a story that – because on the one hand, it's not a thing I can picture him saying.
But on the other hand, it might also be something that he brought up at the dinner table.
Well, did he ever come back?
Oh, yeah, he came back.
I mean my great-grandfather – Did he have cigarettes?
He did.
My great-grandfather at a certain point looked down at the five-year-old and three-year-old that he was raising –
And said, this is bullshit.
And he threw them in the back of his 1934 Chevy and drove from Ohio to California in, what would that be, 36, 38?
Drove across the country on Route 66 with these kids.
And according to my mom, they spent the whole drive sitting up on the package shelf of the back of the Chevy.
Drove them all the way out there.
Drove around California asking people, have you seen this guy?
Found him.
and said, get your ass back to Ohio and raise your goddamn kids.
Damn.
Wow, that's family.
Yeah, my great-grandfather was nobody to mess around with.
He's the one that was putting a new roof on his own barn at the age of 92.
Jesus.
Old stock, pioneer stock.
Yeah.
Now, let's get back to the question at hand.
Yeah.
If I have my iPhone plugged into my lightning adapter.
I think your topic is so much more interesting than mine.
I cannot listen to it on my headphones now.
If it's being charged, it used to be a kind of human centipede, right?
You can have it plugged in.
Kind of daisy chaining, huh?
Yeah, you can have it plugged into the adapter and the sound is coming out the other end into your headphones.
Yeah.
Then what you do with that sound is up to you.
You're talking about if you go out and buy one of these new ones.
Yeah.
If you go out and buy one of the new ones and the battery is low, which it inevitably will be, and then you plug it into the lightning adapter, that is also where you are expected to plug your headphones.
Yeah.
It comes with an adapter, which I think was actually strangely brave of them.
Ordinarily, Apple would go like, we got rid of this thing because you never actually needed it.
But this time they're including an adapter that changes from your lightning dingus to your headphones dingus.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Because, you know, every headphone in the world uses the same little mini jack.
3.5 millimeters.
It's been around for 100 years.
Every single one.
Yeah.
And, um, huh.
Okay, so the tech nerds are up in arms?
Well, it took them an hour to get to that.
First day to get through the watch and talking about the news.
There's a new watch, Series 2 watch.
By the way, this is our extensive coverage of the September Apple event.
Thank you for tuning in.
I figure this is the only podcast you do that isn't a tech podcast, and little by little.
I don't really do any tech podcasts, but that's okay.
Then...
Oh, wait, I have a mute button.
Oh, jeez.
Hope he comes back.
That was the mute button.
Oh, that was tremendous.
Wow.
Right as I was about to do a terrible, terrible sounding cough.
No, I heard the roll.
You had a little roll going in there.
It's one of the advantages of this location.
of my podcasting my now growing podcasting web oh because here i have a i have a mute button oh that's nice um so uh god i'm so disoriented yeah so they had to get through the watch part they had oh they're bringing mario mario is coming uh to to the uh to the iphone uh the little guy who runs around and eats coins
What's he going to do there?
Oh, they brought out the guy who invented Mario.
Yeah.
A Japanese fella came out.
Yeah.
And he talked about bringing Mario.
This is a big deal because the Mario people have never made games for the iPhone.
So that's a big deal.
So is Mario going to be like the paperclip guy?
Like...
I see you're writing a text.
That's a good idea.
You should capture that.
No, he's going to run around and eat coins, and I guess he's going to date mushrooms or whatever he does.
And then they're also bringing the Pokemon Go to the watch.
So that was the first hour.
What?
Pokemon Go.
I'm looking at the watch.
You've got to get a watch so you've got to catch them all.
You can hatch them, hatch the trainers.
And then what else?
Oh, and then they had a guy from Nike come out and talk about the new co-branded Apple Watch they're doing with Nike.
You think you want to get that?
That's a big deal.
The Nike co-brand.
Sure, it's got a sporty band on it.
This is very exciting.
This all sounds like exactly what Steve Jobs would do.
A little bit of co-branding, a little bit of partnering.
He's famous for partnering.
Yeah.
You know, when you think of Steve Jobs' legacy, it's largely based on partnering, right?
Oh, sure.
Yeah, with other established brands.
Yeah, but then one time he partnered, he said it wasn't his daughter.
So, you know, yeah, so it was weird.
It was a weird event.
It was very weird.
It was good.
I had a good time.
I got a couple good jokes in.
I got a couple good Mr. Show jokes in.
Wait a minute.
Were you there?
No.
Gosh, no.
I don't go to things.
I see.
I won't even go to drinks tonight.
Tonight we got the potluck at the after school program, so I got to go to that.
But this was like a message board event.
We're bringing sandwiches.
No, I assume that the potluck, the PTA potluck is a person thing.
You're required to be there.
Oh, yeah.
We're bringing lots of sandwiches.
But the Apple event, you were like commenting on somebody's news feed.
Sure.
It's the same thing you've got, which is called Twitter.
And there's Twitter for these things.
I was off Twitter this morning.
Good for you.
Good for you.
That's healthy.
And I was watching it on my Apple TV.
And that's where I watched it.
And I made some jokes.
Were you like one of those guys in an early 90s internet movie where you had like six different digital devices all going at once?
I'm in.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't click on that little pie icon.
It's loading.
It's loading.
They're almost here.
I love stuff like that.
Almost loaded.
I thought you the other night because we watched Apollo 13 as a family, and that was really fun.
That is fun.
Yeah, she was really, we got to the last, you know, well into the end of the second act, and she was like, I know this turns out okay, but that's a really good movie.
Space Race was very, whew.
It was never clear that it was going to work out.
Well, you know, and you got to go make the filter from the limb, fit the filter from the returnee thing, you know?
Did you see that just recently someone who found... So a guy found the computers...
The Apollo computers on a junk heap.
He bought them at a scrap auction.
What?
And he was like, those look interesting.
I think this happened a long time ago.
Oh my gosh.
What the hell are those?
This is like the BBC erasing Doctor Who.
That's so weird.
Why would they not have this in a museum or something?
It's like the whole first half of the Carson show was all taped over to make like Metamucil ads.
Right.
Like Sanford Sun commercials.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You knew that, right?
From the earliest days of the Carson show until he realized it.
Oh, he just assumed they were taking care of that and it turned out they weren't?
One day he was like, hey, let's call up the reels from that show from 1970 or something.
And they were like, call up the reels?
Yeah.
We reused those reels because... BBC was the worst about this.
It wasn't just Doctor Who, but they did it with tons of stuff.
And what's funny is I think, I don't know a lot about this, but I think in some ways there's a better archive based on kinescopes.
Is that what they're called?
Where you basically shoot a movie camera at a screen.
At a TV, yeah.
Yeah, the original pirating.
And I think there's more stuff of the I Love Lucy Honeymooners era than of some stuff from the late 60s.
That's bananas.
Yeah.
And that that's when Carson said, all right, I am taking over everything in my show.
All of you fuckers take a big step back and we're going to put every single tape that of all these shows in a salt mine somewhere in Utah.
Right.
He took complete control at that point because he had the power to.
He's such an interesting guy.
Everybody out of my office is basically.
So, back to this fascinating event.
Oh, no, wait.
The Apollo computers.
Oh, yeah, right.
Oh, the computers.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, so Guy buys them at an auction.
Just like, you know, what am I bid?
$20.
Do I have $22?
Sold.
And he keeps them around because he knows they're a thing.
And then just recently, some hacker bro...
dug around, found this guy, found the computers, powered them back up and downloaded the software and is now capable.
And he says this whole business about they sent a man to the moon on a computer that has the computing power of a digital, you know, like a LED watch.
Yeah, like most thermostats probably are more sophisticated.
He said, that is wrong and dumb.
These are actually really powerful computers.
Oh, that's interesting.
And he said, these things are geniuses.
It's built genius style and they're awesome.
And this is just recently, he's like running this machine or at least he pulled the software out of it and can see it and use it and...
And that's, yeah.
I want to learn more about that.
That's super interesting.
Well, I think it's on the internet.
I'll look it up.
I'm looking at the Apollo guidance computer right now.
Apollo guidance computer.
There it is.
You couldn't make that stuff up.
Too crazy.
Too crazy, right?
What else is out there?
What other Dead Sea Scrolls are out there?
Right.
Right.
Somebody's going to find and use as Firestarter until someone else says, hey, what are those?
Firestarter.
Yeah.
I ain't no fire starter.
That still comes up in our house.
We'll just jump in front of each other in the kitchen and go, fire starter.
that guy was silly was that prodigy what was the name of that band and the you know the guy the singer guy with the five mohawks he didn't even write that song oh really it was the other guy oh carol bear singer yeah the other guy was one of those like billy corgan grouches oh interesting super mad
That the song that he was the genius of that band.
And then Mr. Crazy Kevin Roland or whatever.
Five Mohawks.
That's Dixie's Midnight Runners.
Seven Nose Springs.
Yeah, he's like international superstar.
Right.
He's basically a backup dancer.
That the genius guy said, you know, yeah, dance around, say Firestarter.
And then he's a megastar.
And genius dude is like cut out of the star.
Oh, no.
That's such a 70s movie.
That's terrible.
And so then he gets mad.
Prodigy genius, whatever his name is, gets mad.
And he's already mad.
In all the photographs you see, he's very mad.
Um, and the thing is, he's not very interesting looking.
He's not nearly as interesting looking as, uh, as, you know, as the titular fire starter as the fire starter guy.
Right.
Yeah.
As Johnny rotten.
I could not tell you what this guy's name is.
I remember he seemed pretty silly.
And then I guess either, either, uh, angry guy decided, you know, he pushed everybody to the side and was like, I'm the lead singer from now on.
And then nobody wanted any more prodigy or,
or something else i stopped reading q magazine right around that same time so i i didn't okay sure i thought i i thought i knew stuff about oh is it i think his name it looks like his name might be keith flint ah keith that's right keith he's a he's a dancer and vocalist in the band
He's the dancer and the what?
So according to this, the members were originally Liam Howlett, keyboardist and composer.
I think he's probably the smart guy, right?
He's the smart guy.
He's the sad Corgan.
In fact, in any British pop act, Liam is the one that's doing the majority.
Oh, is that a mnemonic, John?
Yeah, that's right.
In any British pop act.
Right.
Leave it alone, mate.
So here's Liam.
It's a backronym.
Yeah.
So what did Keith, what was Keith's job description?
Okay, so you got Liam Howlett.
This is from Wikipedia, which is never wrong.
Liam Howlett was the keyboardist and composer.
Keith Flint is a dancer and vocalist.
Someone called Maxim was an MC and vocalist.
And then Leroy, with two E's, Thornhill, was a dancer and occasional live keyboardist.
They also had a female dancer and vocalist called Sharky.
Sharky.
However, both Leroy and Sharky left the band for different reasons.
As you run down the list of their jobs, you know in any situation where a person is described as vocalist in a band, they have no contribution to the writing.
Isn't that kind of a damning with faint praise type situation?
You're definitely not the lead singer.
You're not even really a singer.
You're a vocalist.
Vocalist.
I mean, Linda McCartney was a vocalist, right?
So these guys are dancers and vocalists.
Oh, boy.
And then occasional sometime part-time live keyboard player.
Sure.
And specifying that he's the live keyboard player, just in case anybody thought for a second that he played a single note on the record.
It's such a fuck you.
It's like, oh, you're talking about, oh, Leroy.
Oh, you mean Leroy?
You mean the guy who is the occasional live keyboardist?
Every once in a while, yeah.
He would walk past a keyboard and play one, like he was surprised to hit one button, which had probably been painted a different color, so he couldn't mistake.
Like, hit the green key, right?
Part-time sequencer triggerist.
Dance, dance, dance.
Dance, dance, dance.
Yeah, you know, this is the British glass system.
This is what we're seeing right here.
They're from Braintree, Essex.
That's a much cooler name than Prodigy, Braintree, Essex.
I've been to Braintree and I hated the name Braintree.
I still do.
There's one in Massachusetts.
I don't like that one either.
Braintree.
The thing that I remember about Braintree, two things.
One, the river that runs through Braintree is full of shopping carts.
They call them lorries.
They're torches.
No, trolleys.
They call them trolleys.
That's it.
Shopping trolleys.
Trolley trams.
And the second thing I remember is that I bought a flat of strawberries on the high street for two pounds.
And then went around the corner.
That's the most British thing you've ever said.
I bought a flat of strawberries on the high street for two pounds.
I went around the corner.
There was an identical flat of strawberries for one pound.
One block off the high street.
And I said, you know what?
Fuck Braintree.
Fuck this high street.
Fuck these particular strawberries.
Yeah.
Fuck that shopping cart river.
Keep it on.
How do you get a name like Braintree?
We've had a sponsor on this show.
I don't know if they've been on here, but yeah, sure, we've had Braintree on here.
What does Braintree mean in Essex?
Here it means easy payment integration.
Ding!
I don't have a bell.
I do.
I have two bells.
My family got me a bell.
They're a third apart.
There's a bar here in Seattle called The Two Bells.
Oh, that's nice.
Not to be confused with the 13 coins.
Nope, nope.
There's only two bells, but there are 13 coins.
And there are four lights.
The Two Bells was where my former roommate, who was doing work release at the time, worked as a short order cook.
He would go home at night to the jail...
Or he slept.
This was great for me because he was no longer living in our house.
Was he still paying rent?
He was still paying.
Fuck yes he was.
He was paying rent.
His stuff was all there.
That sucks.
But he wasn't around because he was spending the night in jail.
And then they let him out to go to work and then he'd come back.
It was, you know, it just was one less guy.
But also, the bad side was one less guy I could steal pot from.
One less roommate that had pot in his dresser drawer that I could take.
For some reason, I don't know, this reminds me of a time in the 90s.
We dropped off the Volvo wagon to be repaired.
And there's a place we always dropped it off.
This guy was, you know, good guy, good mechanic.
And we dropped the car off.
And usually you hear back, you know, that day with the estimate, you hear back.
Days go by, we're calling, nothing's going on, nothing's going on.
Finally, we go there and we're like, hey, you know, what's going on?
You know, where's Jerry or whatever?
and uh where's jerry you're not the first people to ask that yeah right no one ever asked howlswaldo um the um still a new yorker cartoon but uh yeah we go in there like uh yeah like where's jerry and they're like um jerry is currently incarcerated
For some reason, I love that phrase.
I'm currently incarcerated.
Well, you know, you think about... Now, do you say... You just said Volvo.
Do you say Volvo or Volvo?
I say Volvo.
Volvo.
Is it Mulva?
No, Mulva is the assistant vice principal of my former high school.
Mulva?
No, that was Frank Kufo we've talked about.
Oh, of course Frank Kufo with the cricket bat.
Kufo with a cricket bat?
Yeah, it was a cricket bat.
But you say Volvo.
And the thing about a Volvo...
is you think this is a classy car this is you know in the english class system of scandinavian cars this is this car went to oxford
Or Cambridge.
Or Cambridge, right?
Oxbridge?
Yeah.
Baintree.
So whenever I see, this has happened several times, when a Volvo mechanic gets sent to jail, it always strikes me as stranger than if a Chevy or Toyota mechanic.
Oh, this is one of those Freakonomics type things.
Yes.
Right?
I hear you.
You don't think a Volvo mechanic is going to jail.
No.
Those guys are probably sitting at home making furniture.
The BMW guys that run in the jail.
That's right.
We're not in the jail.
They got slicked back hair.
They're wearing gel in their hair.
And in prison, they have to make homemade gel.
They call it dust boot.
But in fact, I mean, one time many, many years ago, I was walking down the street in Portland, Oregon, and I came upon a Volvo, which had been... Volvo mean a Volvo coming through the rye.
I came upon a Volvo, which had been low-rided.
A low rider Volvo.
And it was like that scene in Bachelor Party, the movie, where they low ride.
As opposed to the Broadway play.
Oh, my goodness.
There's a man in a vest knocking on the front door here.
Oh, no, that's not good.
Let's see.
Let's see what this is.
Is it the guy from Houston from Mission Control?
He's gently knocking.
Might be Gene.
I'm going to go to the door opening it.
Hey, how are you?
I'm well.
How are you?
Yes, sir.
Of course.
To the barn.
Yeah.
I appreciate it.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Have a good day.
Cheers.
He works for the gas company.
I don't know how much of that.
Oh, I heard it all.
You should get on next door and report that.
Well, no, he seems very official.
He sounded suave.
Well, he's very suave.
I get the impression that he is Nigerian.
Yeah, he had an awesome accent.
Yes, he did.
And he now is, he was carrying a wand, which I am presuming was a gas detection wand.
He's going to be out by the barn.
He's going to be out by the barn checking the gas to make sure that it's not, there's no slow leak.
You blew a great Cinemax opportunity there, by the way.
What was it?
Nigerian with a wand shows up at your door and you say, just be on your way.
Listen, when the Nigerian with the wand shows up at my door, I do not expect him to be wearing a reflective vest.
Like the one that I'm really waiting for.
He's a prince.
He's a prince.
He's wearing a robe, a velvet robe.
Greetings.
I am from the future.
You must come with me now.
Hitting himself with a little brush to knock the flies away.
And there are three ladies behind him throwing rose petals everywhere he walks.
Guy comes in dressed like a priest.
You cannot marry this girl.
Dan Aykroyd's a Rastafarian.
With a smoked salmon tucked into his Santa suit.
Ah!
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So, new iPhones, Volvo mechanics.
Did they give you any compelling reason to buy an Apple Watch?
Do you have one already?
A watch or a phone?
A watch.
I got them both.
I got to watch a phone, an iPad, and an iMac.
So is there any better reason?
Let me change that around.
Is there any better reason for me to have an iWatch?
No.
No.
I mean, no.
No.
You don't.
I mean, you move in a grand mall fashion, but I don't know if you do enough atomic movement to really make it worth your while.
I move in mysterious ways.
That's true.
You're a lot like a U2 hit.
And you go right through security.
That's good.
The new iPhone is amazing.
It's going to be great.
The new iPhone is going to be bananas.
So now, let me ask you this.
Yeah, you there.
You there in the turban.
You there in the velvet robe.
So I have – I think I recounted on this podcast that I was carrying around a broken iPhone 5S and one time I came to San Francisco.
I could not arrange a meeting.
You didn't have any opportunity for me to get an audience with you.
And so I had a tweet up.
That's right.
You did.
I had a tweet up and a young man came to the tweet up and everyone at the table remarked on my screwed up phone.
And how embarrassing it was because I do a tech podcast with Merlin Mann and I should have a good iPhone.
Literally state of the art.
I'm like a tech.
I'm kind of a tech guy, right?
Like a tech celeb.
Yeah, you're like an occasional live keyboardist of tech.
That's right.
I'm a vocalist.
A dancer.
Vocalist and dancer.
I'm a dancer, not a whore.
I'm a dancer.
I only want to be a dancer.
I, uh, and I'm sitting there at the table and he's like, oh, and he leans over to his wife or fiance and he says, honey, give him that iPhone.
And his wife says, what?
I use that as my camera.
And he says, she's an Android developer.
And she just took my old iPhone because wink, wink, it's a better camera or something like that.
No, no.
When he said, no, I'm misunderstanding.
You know, English is a complicated language.
He was saying literally give John your iPhone.
And she digs in her purse, pulls out this iPhone and he says, it's my iPhone.
I gave it to you.
And she says, yeah, but I'm using it as a camera.
And he says, dude.
You're a dick.
He said, well, no.
He was being very generous because he keeps saying, we're developers.
The one time you meet this guy, he makes his fiance give you something he gave to her.
I bet he does that five times a day.
But his point was, I think, I think when I was reading Between the Lines,
She's an Android developer.
She shouldn't even have an iPhone.
Oh, sure.
This is church and state.
This was a violation of some... She's on her Android all day.
Casting pearls before swine.
Exactly.
Pearl, beep, beep, beep, beep, on your blop, you're binging stuff over here.
And yet, you want my iPhone because it's a better media device?
You want my iPhone?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he was like, fork it over.
And I'm like, hey, look, this is, you know, my name's Paul and this is between y'all.
Right?
Like, I don't want to, I didn't ask for, I didn't ask to be part of this drama.
And he's like, no, no, no.
I want you to have this.
It's, you know, it's my, it's my gift to you.
And we'll work this out.
This is pillow talk between us.
Right?
We're web developers.
You have no idea what it's like.
It's like two lead vocalists, or it's two vocalists and dancers married.
Like, who's writing the tune?
Tune the occasional live keyboard.
It's not enough composers.
So he's a Mac developer.
She's an Android developer.
He's like, we're going to work this out.
Don't you worry about it.
And he slides this iPhone over to me.
And I'm like, and everybody at the table is like, this is a big move.
And he's like, I got 20 of these.
I'm like, yeah, this is a baller move.
He's a player.
Well, it took me two and a half weeks to figure out how to unlock the goddamn thing.
I had to go down to the Apple store.
Fortunately, I have a friend there because I'm kind of a tech... I'm kind of a wheel.
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Anyway, so now I have an iPhone 6.
It's not an iPhone 6S.
That's a good phone.
iPhone 6.
Except for how slippery it is.
Well, but I put a little case on it, and the case says...
Junior firefighter, Burien Normandy Park Fire Department.
And it's not very slippery now.
So now, let's say I'm a person who wants to pay $900 for a new phone because AT&T no longer offers the old deals.
sell me on the iphone 7 elevator um battery will be a lot better okay the thing is if you if you go to a store here's the thing if you if you're all batteries die uh if you have a battery in your that's a two-year-old phone all men must die yes yes nor am i out of it and if you go in and got the exact self-same phone exactly that's brand new the batteries can be so much better there's that plus i'm about the six
Well, yeah, yeah, but all I'm trying to say is the first thing that you'll notice, which is just a natural consequence of physics in life, is that the battery will be better.
It's butt, butt, butt tons faster, like crazy faster.
It's got an insane camera on it.
It is waterproof or water-resistant, too many meters.
Also, you don't have an iPad, to my knowledge, do you?
So my iPad was stolen in the great caper.
Oh, the caper.
And then it was returned by the Renton Police Department.
Dr. Yamaguchi.
Mm-hmm.
Now I have it, but somehow my tenuous connection to it as a media device in the first place, which was always like, I'm watching something on my phone, and I'm essentially keeping – my coffee is sitting on my iPad.
Yeah.
And I'm watching this thing.
I'm watching a film on my phone.
And I go, don't I have another way to watch?
Oh, I do.
That's a good sign the iPad may not be for you.
If you find yourself having to go.
This is not tech talk.
It's not tech talk.
But I will say that if you find yourself saying, groan, I should go use that thing I've got.
That may not be a good.
This is why I say it.
Now, I'll say this.
If you were to come into some money, God love you.
Yeah.
I'd spend it anyway.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah.
That's a German.
A lot of Germans do that.
Come into money.
Um, they call it that.
That's money.
Uh, if you came into some money, uh, I'd say it's good.
And I'll tell you why.
Like, like my lady friend, uh, her phone then until two days ago, she loved very much.
Uh, the bigger iPhone is for somebody like you is not an iPad user.
You might really like it.
Also you're a big man, big pockets.
You can handle it.
Yeah.
But here's the thing with that.
Yeah.
You know, my lady friend, um,
Yeah, it works in the tech industry.
Yeah.
Also.
It's true.
It's true.
She's also a millennium.
She's always wanted to Snapchat you.
Well, yeah, I get Snapchats all the time now, but I don't know what to do with them.
Smiley face.
I have a little folder on my laptop desk called Snapchats.
You print them out.
I print them out and put them on.
Slowly lower your glasses onto the end of your nose.
It seems like she's having some kind of a breakfast here.
That's terrific.
Oh, wait, I want to watch that again.
Oh, I can't.
I'm going to give that gal a call.
Oh, it's lost forever.
So she said to me,
And this is right circa when I got the iPhone 6 from the very nice man at the tweet up.
Right before that, I was thinking, okay, the new world order is that apparently now you pay $900 for an iPhone.
And listen, if you are listening to this program and you are thinking about tweeting or emailing me all the multifarious different contracts I could have signed.
Yeah.
In order to get a $900 iPhone for $900.
Some other way.
Some other way of calling $900 $900.
Is there a place where you'd particularly like people to send that?
I would.
I would like you to send it to info at... Info at example.com.roderick.com.
dot com any town usa one two three four five and and so i was saying i'm a big guy i got big pockets strong like bull i want the big iphone i'm gonna hold that in my hand i see i look around i see people with them all over the place oh yeah sure sure and she said don't you dare get the big iphone and i said what do you mean she said you might as well
you might as well be wearing a track suit.
Like the big iPhone is for squares.
Like no one within the cool kid tech zone.
You want the smallest iPhone you can.
You don't want some big...
TV.
And I said, listen, I'm not some millennium.
I'm going to get the iPhone that suits me.
I'm going to get the iPhone that I like best.
And maybe it's going to be one that is bigger than the initial television sets of 1948.
I want one that I can watch an entire film.
I want one where I'm going to look at other people's Instagrams and be able to see what the picture is about.
That's right.
Don't discount the eye thing.
And she said,
If you get the big iPhone, I will not be seen with you in public.
Oh, dear.
She really, really dropped the gauntlet.
Wow.
And so then I was in a position where I was like, hmm, which is more important to me?
That I'd be seen in public with my girlfriend.
Okay.
Or that I'd be able to see people's Instagram.
Do you value the private or the public aspect more?
That's right.
Five breakups only a millennium can understand.
That's right.
And who did you friend last?
Who did the person you friended last friend last?
What's in your clipboard?
That's what I want to know.
So I thought about it and I was in the middle of thinking about it when I went to this tweet up.
And I say I went to the tweet up, but it was I who called the tweet up.
I think you hosted it.
I hosted a tweet up.
And then this iPhone 6 came out of a nice woman's purse and went sliding – a nice Android developer's purse and went sliding across the table to me.
And I was suddenly – the problem – I didn't have to think about it anymore.
Nice.
I didn't have to choose the big iPhone because an iPhone chose me.
Oh, that's nice.
It's like a wand.
That's nice.
But now looking into my future, I think –
iPhone 7.
Well, I mean, I just submit this without comment.
It's going to be very costly.
But I'm going to get one.
And, you know, the thing is, you're going to use it for a while.
So you might as well get one.
This one you can drop in the bathtub and you're good to go.
That's nice.
Yeah.
So it's more than $900?
Well, it depends.
If you buy it outright and you buy one that's worth getting and having for a while, yeah, it's going to be around $1,000.
Cool.
Or, you know, you could go get a plan with a place and wireless plan and share data, caps, blah.
No thanks.
Pass.
Passolo.
Passolo.
You go into a store, you go into an overlit store where someone in a branded polo shirt gloms onto you like a fucking suckless.
They might as well just be swinging eels like Calamity Jane.
Hey, come on in.
How many eels can we stick to you today?
You want the insurance?
That's right.
Of course I want the insurance.
I'm not an animal.
24 years old.
I'm between you.
I am the gatekeeper between you and other people's Instagrams.
Well, I would say – see, I missed the end.
I was getting really bored.
I figured I'd come in and start recording with you early.
I would go when they're available in a store, which I imagine will be soon.
I don't know.
I would go in and look at it, see what the hand feel is like.
Hand feel is a big part of it.
The thing is –
Apple has done the thing, and we all know this, and they've done it now for more than a decade.
A decade and a half, let's call it.
Is this going to be about the cords again?
No.
I will talk about the cords.
They provided this cable with the phone, and now they expect you to buy all new cables.
Yeah.
Yeah, but anyway, I'm not going to talk about that.
At least in the iPhone 7, they're still using the last iteration of the cable.
Although they have now eliminated the one thing that you could connect to their devices with from the analog world.
But in any case, which as I say it, I realize is one of my catchphrases.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, stop talking, Merlin.
Apple for 15 years has been making things that you cannot not get.
Yeah, it starts to feel that way, yeah.
I tied myself to them.
I, you know, I buckled myself around the neck to Apple.
Back in 2000, let's call it.
I think it was probably about 2004 when we went to the UCSF computer store from which our show's image is derived.
What was that, 2004, 2005?
2004.
You bought yourself one of those white iBooks.
I got a white iBook.
Not the toilet seat one, the other one, the square one.
It was pretty.
It was a pretty computer.
It was a beautiful computer, and I lost that computer in Chile.
Ugh.
It was shoplifted out of my bag, and I wasn't even in a shop.
It was cafe-lifted out of my bag.
Oh, that's not cricket.
No, in a town in northern Chile, and I'm still mad about it.
I wish pox upon the house of the person.
Hope they choke on it.
Yeah, because it was a nice computer, and I assumed that it would still be running iOS 6, and I would still be using it.
but it's easily been four years since i stopped caring whether you're actually kidding and i i just i just ride the wave now i enjoy it yeah but but even before the white laptop i had and i was invested in a in a one of the towers a blue tower oh did you have the what really the blue and white one the blue and white tower are you kidding me john roderick i had that same computer wasn't that a nice that was the yosemite g3
Yeah, the G3, that's right.
And I had a G4.
That was running like iOS 2.
Oh, my God.
That was running.
It was a thing where I went and bought some recording software.
And the recording software required that I have a board put into the tower.
Oh, you got to make a board?
That's what you buy a tower because you can put boards in it.
That's right.
And so I opened up the tower myself and put the board in.
for my recording software in there.
Jiminy Christmas.
This was a big time.
Then the thing, it's not a thing that you can just sell because it's got your own, you personalized it with your own.
It's still got your board in it too.
That board now is worth zero dollars.
It's worth less than zero dollars.
Well,
Yeah.
So I was attached to these guys.
Now you say to me, oh, go into the store and see if you like the feel of it.
Well, of course I'm going to like the feel of it.
Go into the store and see if this thing is usable.
Of course it's usable.
I know.
I try to be rational about this and go, I don't know.
Maybe I'll just derp-de-derp.
No, I want it.
And every once in a while somebody on the internet will say, Samsung.
And I just stop listening because I'm a member of this religion.
Well, you're also a member from a practical basis.
I mean, that's funny and true, but you're also part of that ecosystem.
It's like that stuff kind of makes sense to you.
And the ecosystem such as it is, it's as much as it's like, what is it?
Whoever, Mark Twain and democracy, you know, it's like all the other ones are shittier.
Yeah, that was Abraham Lincoln.
But yes, all the other ones are shittier.
Are you sure about that?
All the other ones are shittier.
Abraham Lincoln.
Upton Sinclair.
I felt like, yeah, rabbit at rest.
Yes.
Sure, sure, sure.
I felt like when I went into the store the last time that I was so eeled to this universe, this ecosystem, if you will.
I was like one of those New Yorker cartoons where two guys are hanging by shackles with long beards.
Look at this asshole.
In a dungeon.
And one of them said, there are 50,000 bricks in my cell and I've counted them all.
And the other one said, have you named them yet?
I was like, yeah, that's my life.
Yeah.
Right there.
Apple.
And they can do whatever they want with me.
They take away the black turtlenecks.
They put people in Kinko's shirts.
And they're telling me they're partnering with Yosemite Sand.
They partner with Pokemon.
They partner with Mario.
Partner with Mario.
Nike partner.
And like Filson sent me an email the other day.
Hey, Smokey the Bear Watch.
And I was like, what?
I don't usually open their emails, but I open this one.
Say who?
And there was a watch.
It's a Filson watch made by the Shinola company.
And Shinola is a brand from the olden times.
They literally bought the name of the shoe polish company and then made watches.
Yeah.
They bought the name.
Some hipsters, a 50-year-old hipster.
But I mean, this happened, like, I think this probably happened during your daughter's lifetime.
This is not an old brand.
In the last five years.
Yeah.
It's a bunch of Macklemore's.
It says Shinola circa 1912.
Sure.
There's Macklemore's making watches.
And then the watch costs $1,000.
But now in a triple brand, in the hat trick of branding.
It's got a Smokey the Bear?
Shinola has put a Smokey the Bear face on the Filson watch to commemorate the National Park System.
Oh, that's a nice gesture.
So this is a watch for $1,000.
Are you giving those to schools, probably?
I don't think they're giving them away.
Okay.
I looked at it, and gosh darn it, if that little Smokey the Bearface wasn't somewhat enticing to me.
He's a big part of our childhood.
A watch with Smokey on it?
Please, only you?
Only you.
Only you.
But then I realized that I was being manipulated.
Yeah.
And, you know, they might as well have put a Mr. Yuck face on it.
If they'd put a Mr. Yuck on there, maybe I would have been upstairs in my shoebox counting out my silver dollar.
Only you.
Only you.
Only you, Merlin.
Only you can prevent Yuck face.
Ha ha ha ha.