By Dan Moren

February 28, 2017 4:40 PM PT

The Back Page: Welcome to Apple Park, where there is absolutely nothing sinister going on

Hello, and welcome to Apple Park. Situated on 175 acres of beautiful, rolling greenery, our new campus is a marvel of modern engineering that seamlessly blends with the existing environment. Our goal is to live in harmony with the land, and to benefit from its natural resources—wind, sunshine, trees—to not only provide safe and renewable energy and climate control for our campus, but also to foster a deeper connection with the earth, though suggestions that the location was picked because of a deep confluence of eldritch energies is, frankly, ridiculous.

We’d like to draw particular attention to the considerations we’ve made for the health and well-being of our employees. You can easily lose yourself on the two miles of walking and running paths that run through the campus, though reports that there have been a startling number of disappearances are overblown. A 100,000-square-foot fitness center provides around-the-clock facilities for keeping employees healthy and productive and ensures that they don’t need to set foot out of the building, especially at night.

Turning to the building itself, which is constructed from the largest panes of curved glass. Though the technology to construct these materials is new, we have tested it thoroughly to make sure that none of the panes have flaws that could lead to them being structurally unsound, even though we must repeat that there is no indication that the souls of the damned are trapped within any of them.

Thanks to state-of-the-art natural ventilation system, the Apple Campus will require neither heating nor air conditioning for three quarters of the year, which will not only save money and energy but also keep employees comfortable and not disturb any of the indigenous wildlife, though there are absolutely no signs of any large creatures stalking and prowling the surrounding areas, nor have we seen a marked increase in mangled squirrel corpses.

One of the most exciting elements of Apple Park is the 1000-seat auditorium named after our late co-founder. Located on one of the highest points of the campus, the Steve Jobs Theater overlooks the rest of the grounds; its entryway is comprised of a 20-foot high glass cylinder that features a metallic carbon-fiber roof. The main theater is buried underground, and is soundproof, capable of being hermetically sealed, and features a state of the art drainage system.

In conclusion, we are overjoyed to soon transition to our new campus, which we believe will foster a positive and healthy working environment for our more than 12,000 employees, allowing them to come together and work in single-minded devotion towards not only our company’s mission of creating products that surprise and delight our users, but also, we believe, for the betterment of all humanity—regardless of race, gender, orientation, or creed—through the summoning of the dread god Glog-Raggopth from the abyss beyond the endless void. We particularly look forward to welcoming the public to our visitor center, which includes a café and Apple Store!

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Jason Snell

February 28, 2017 4:32 PM PT

What I Use: Getting Organized

I was inspired by Dan’s By Request column to write a similar article about the tools I use to organize and prepare for podcasts.

My approach in preparing for podcasts is similar to Dan’s, though I don’t fret so much about finishing a required work right before an episode of The Incomparable—I can hold that stuff in memory well enough, though I do try to take notes when I’m watching a movie or TV show that I’m about to podcast about.

I use Apple’s Notes app for all of my Incomparable note-taking, usually in the form of typing into my iPad while I’m watching a movie or TV show on my TV. However, sometimes I go all-iPad for the endeavor, as I did with a recent episode about a terrible movie from the 1960s called “The Wizard of Mars.” I watched that movie while in transit home from Los Angeles, so I played the film back in a Picture in Picture window on my iPad while I had Notes open. I positioned the PiP window at just the right size and location so that it didn’t overlap my typing area. It worked surprisingly well—and I definitely didn’t miss any extra visual nuances by having the low-budget film in such a small window. (I do wonder sometimes about what the filmmakers would think of their work, which they envisioned being enjoyed on a big screen in a packed movie house, being consumed in a postage-stamp-sized window at an airport gate. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t approve.)

For Upgrade, Liftoff, and Free Agents, my co-hosts and I share Google Docs with notes for the upcoming episode or episodes. Usually on Sunday afternoons I’ll drop in to the Upgrade document to see if Myke’s put anything in yet, and will sometimes suggest some topics. Monday morning, usually while I’m drinking tea in bed, I will open up Google Docs on my iPad and see what Myke has worked on while I slept. I’ll pop in other topics and links and make changes then, a few hours before our usual recording time. For Liftoff, Stephen and I trade off on a show outline. For Free Agents, David and I agree on topics and then David takes the lead in outlining the episodes, since I do all the post-production. I pop in before we record the shows and make any additions or changes so that my takes on the topic are also addressed.

I should specify, we don’t actually write out a script for any of these podcasts—the most you’ll see are bulleted phrases and links to web articles. Not only would fully scripting a podcast be incredibly time intensive, but it would sound scripted. These sorts of podcasts are conversations, not pre-written dialogues.

For Clockwise and The Incomparable, I rely on Google Sheets. Clockwise’s sheet features a tab for every episode, with a list of the week’s topics. I share a link to that tab with our guests each week, usually on Tuesday morning, and ask them to fill out a topic by the end of the day. I add my topic last, usually Wednesday morning, so that my panelists get first crack at the topics. I’ll also sometimes use my topic pick to balance out the show, if—for example—most of the topics are very Apple centric.

The Incomparable’s Google Sheet is where I plot out future topics and recording dates. There are a lot of moving parts in planning a podcast with varied panels and topics, and we don’t record on a particular day of the week. I have to give panelists enough time to read the book or watch the movie in question, and of course we have to find common times for our recording session—for which I use Doodle. Future weeks are constantly in flux, as I come up with ideas for topics I want to cover. I generally list the schedule for the rest of the calendar, until very late in the year when I’ll add the first few months of the following year to give me a head start. When a show has been posted, I cut and paste it and it lives forever on a different tab.

Listeners to Upgrade will not be surprised to discover that calendars are an important part of my organizational system, too. My regular podcasts are recurring events on my personal schedule, which gives my week a nice shape: it all starts on Monday morning with Upgrade and ends on Friday afternoon with TV Talk Machine. (Though, to be fair, I usually edit The Incomparable on Saturday morning.) I also drop in recurring events for when I need to post my fortnightly podcasts, such as Free Agents, so I know that I need to make some time to edit those episodes.

Beyond podcasts, I have a special “routines” calendar that I use to block out time for specific, regular work: for Six Colors, for my weekly Macworld column, and for podcast editing. As for story ideas, I actually use a Reminders list called Story List to collect every story idea I think of, no matter where I am, on any one of my devices. Some of those stories pop up in Six Colors, others in Macworld. There are also a surprising number of stories that I added a long time ago and never got to. One of these days, for instance, I want to research how much it would cost to equip yourself for a trip to the past, because you’d need to acquire vintage money (or items that could easily be sold for local currency). Maybe someday.

By Dan Moren

February 28, 2017 4:22 PM PT

By Request: Preparing for Podcasts

Between us, Jason and I do a lot of podcasts, and reader John asks:

I’d like to hear either from Jason or Dan on what you do to prepare for each of your many podcasts. Research, remember what the hell you said last time, etc.

I suspect that our methodology varies greatly, not only between shows, but also just in the way that we approach them. Here’s a breakdown of how I prepare for the various shows that I participate in:

The Incomparable: Prepping for The Incomparable depends largely on what the topic is. Since it changes from week to week, each episode requires something slightly different in preparation. For example, if we’re reading a book or watching a movie, I’ll generally try to consume that media as close to recording as possible. (As Jason and other panelists will tell you, I am somewhat notorious for finishing up a movie or book minutes before the show starts.) That’s the best chance I have of it staying fresh in my mind. For more complicated formats like drafts or (dear god) the superhero bracket we did a while back, I will make notes—these days in Apple’s Notes app—for my picks, and sometimes flesh them out with specific ideas, though most of the time I rely on a few ideas in my head and then things that get triggered by discussion with my fellow panelists.

Clockwise: With a 30-minute show, time is of the essence. We have a spreadsheet where the week’s guests can enter their topics alongside our own. Coming up with a topic is, for me, just a function of what’s being talked about in the news or on social media that week. I generally don’t prepare much for the other topics—if it’s something I’m not familiar with, I will look it up (sometimes our guests provide links), but most of the time it’s an off-the-top-of-the-head affair. Fun fact: Coming up with bonus topics and the intro line on the weeks where I’m the lead host generally takes more time than coming up with an actual topic.

The Rebound: Saying there’s very little preparation for this show is probably overstating it. I can’t speak for my co-hosts, but for me it’s an entirely fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants experience. Since I’m keeping tabs on what’s going on in a given week, I usually have things that I want to talk to Lex and John about, in the same way that you probably have things that you want to talk to your friends about. They bring their own topics, and between the three of us, we usually find enough for a show. More than anything, though, it’s an opportunity for the three of us—who rarely get to see each other in person—to catch up and shoot the breeze.

Speedy Arrowcast: Obviously, recapping Arrow each week (when it’s on air) involves watching the episode in question. I’ve started becoming more diligent about taking notes while the show is on, though that sometimes lessens my enjoyment of the show, since I often pause to write something down, so I don’t miss what comes next. The detail of the notes depends on whether or not I’m going to do the recap during the episode that week, as we rotate between the three of us. I use the Notes app on my iPad, which has a keyboard case, to write things down, and then I refer to the Notes app on my iMac when we’re recording.

Inconceivable!: This is far and away the show that requires the most preparation for me, since I not only have to line up six guests and schedule the show, but also write the entire thing from start to finish. I have a specially formatted Google Spreadsheet that I use to prep for the show, which includes meta sheets on panelists and game ideas, as well as two sheets for each episode: one for the questions, and another for the scorekeeping. Writing the show is often a time-consuming process, but it varies tremendously: sometimes I’ll spend weeks agonizing over ideas, only to have them all spit out over the course of a day or two. But I also then run ideas by my girlfriend and/or other trusted friends to make sure that the games and questions work. Some of the questions are also submitted by listeners or by my fellow Incomparable panelists, and I do some tweaks on those to make them fit in.

Total Party Kill: My prep for TPK depends entirely on what my role is in the episode in question. Obviously, preparing as a player is far less time-consuming: I often need to refresh my memories about my character sheet, and sometimes look back at the last episode to see where we left off. As a Dungeon Master, it’s much more involved: you need to familiarize yourself with the adventure and plan for what the players might do; create any maps, tokens, and other digital resources that you might need in Roll 20 (the digital game table site we use); schedule the show with your players, and so on. But no matter how much you prepare as a player or a DM, a huge part of D&D is improvisation, so you can never plan for every contingency.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Stephen Hackett

February 28, 2017 4:09 PM PT

The Hackett File: iCloud Pro

I recently spent some time thinking through and outlining the services I use for my data.

As a self-employed free agent, I have control of what services I use for my data. When we set up Relay FM, I knew we needed an email service that would allow us to use our own domain name, set up groups and provide contacts and calendars. We looked at three services:

• Google Apps (now named G Suite, for some reason I cannot comprehend)
• FastMail
• Office 365

We went with Google Suite because it was easier to set up than FastMail and the admin tools were more powerful than what I saw at Office 365. The biggest reason for choosing G Suite was Google Drive. Myke and I would have ended up using it anyways, so having it within our business accounts was just a plus.

Of course, there are some people who will read this and have concerns about Google’s privacy policy. Some of those concerns are real, and some are FUD, but I know many nerdy folks who choose iCloud over Google for their personal data. As a business, I didn’t have that option.

iCloud is just not suited for professional accounts for several reasons.

The biggest is the lack of support for using your own domain. Sending emails to sponsors from an @icloud.com email address simply looks unprofessional. My company may only be comprised of two people, but I want every single aspect of it to be polished and professional.

Secondly, iCloud email isn’t as powerful as what Google offers. Apple does offer some server-side email filtering, but it is nowhere near as flexible as Google’s. I have nearly a dozen rules set up to send certain types of messages (such as show feedback) to certain folders so I can see it all in one place.

As a G Suite administrator, I have full control of the user accounts under my domain. If we had an employee who we needed to let go, I could change their password or revoke access to services quickly. If I need to set up a new group for something, it’s trivial to do so. iCloud lacks all of these tools. You can manage your own account, but even with a Family Sharing plan, the tools Google offers are far more relevant to dealing with corporate information.

As far as sharing information between accounts, things are a bit more murky. iCloud calendar sharing is far easier to understand and use than what Google offers, but contact sharing is easier with Google. Google Drive is much more powerful than iCloud Drive, which has no concept of sharing files whatsoever. There’s iWork.com, but I’ll be kind and just say that Google Docs wipes the floor with it when it comes to stability and usability.

I don’t blame Apple for making iCloud so consumer-focused. While it has changed names a couple of times since iTools, Apple’s online service has always been built for the individual who uses multiple Apple products. They’ve never seen the need to expand it to business users the way Google took Gmail and Google Calendar and added a bunch of stuff on top to make Google Apps.

However, I wish Apple would look at this. I’m not sure I would have chosen it over G Suite (again, Google Drive is a huge deal for Relay FM) but I think a lot of people would.

[Stephen Hackett is the author of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay FM.]

By Jason Snell

February 28, 2017 4:04 PM PT

The best tool for the job

This month’s Six Colors Magazine is, strangely enough, not brought to you by Google’s collection of productivity apps, but most of the articles here discuss Google stuff, entirely coincidentally.

A lot of people who don’t know me well assume that because I write about Apple products and use Macs and iOS devices exclusively, I’m all in on Apple’s cloud ecosystem, too. But that’s just not true. When I discovered, sadly, that the excellent iOS app FlightTrack was being discontinued, a friend suggested that I try Google Trips, but was concerned that it might not work for me.

I’m not sure Google Trips is quite what I’m looking for, but it worked well when I tried it, because Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive are major parts of my current workspace. I’m glad that Google has (generally) taken care to bring its services to iOS, because I’m a user of both. I’m not interested in switching to Android, but I’m not really interested in moving all my documents to Pages, either.

This is hardly the first time that I’ve embraced software that was not what I was supposed to embrace as a Mac user. My first magazine cover story was a shootout between Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, for MacUser. (Yes, kids, Netscape was a web browser and Internet Explorer used to run on the Mac.) At the time, Netscape was the incumbent and IE was part of an evil strategy by Microsoft to prevent the emergence of the Web from weakening its stranglehold on the computing market.

But thing this was, IE for Mac was superior to Netscape in every way. Netscape was bogged down by slow cross-platform code, while IE for Mac was—strangely enough—written directly for the Mac and faster and more Mac-like in every way. (This was the beginning of a revised Microsoft strategy that would eventually embrace the Mac in the aftermath of the debacle of Word 6.)

It might have been heresy to use Microsoft Word 5, but it was the best word processor the Mac had ever seen, and might still be so. I’m a firm believer in using the right tool for the job, not using a bad tool because it’s made by a company you want to support. I know that can sound harsh, and there are sometimes extenuating circumstances, but I’m not interested in harming my own working environment out of some sort of feeling of charity. I might buy an app from an up-and-coming company in the hope that it improves, but if it doesn’t work for me, I won’t keep using it!

These days, I do use Numbers to generate all the charts that appear on Six Colors when Apple releases financial results, and I’ve even used iCloud Sharing to share that file with Dan Moren. I never use Pages, preferring to write in BBEdit or Scrivener or, yes, Google Docs. But if I’m making a slide presentation, I am all over Keynote, and would accept no substitutes.

Also, even though I have a lot of storage available on both iCloud and Google Drive, I use Dropbox for most of my file sharing. It’s served me well and has the features I want, so I’m going to use it.

As someone who has written about Apple and the Apple community for two decades, I’m sometimes troubled by various factions of tribalism that insist that if you’re a true Apple product user you’ll only patronize product X or service Y. But while I’m trouble by it, I’m not surprised—because I learned my lesson in 1995 when I wrote about web browsers at the height of Microsoft’s assault on Apple—and picked the Microsoft product as the winner. It might not have been the most politic decision I could’ve made, but it was the right one, because it was the better product.