
105: ‘George Lucas Called’ With Guest Jason Snell
The Talk Show With John Gruber
12/30/14
•137m
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Special guest Jason Snell joins the show for a year-end extravaganza. Topics include Jason’s first three months writing (and podcasting) as an indie at his new Six Colors; a look back at his 20-year career at MacUser and soon thereafter Macworld; tricky edge cases when booking sponsorships, and the whole situation with separating advertising sales from editorial integrity when you’re running a one-person publication; the Sony/North Korea hacking and The Interview, and iTunes’s slightly belated release thereof; and we pour one out for good old Movable Type.
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Links:
- McSweeney’s: “Email Addresses It Would Be Really Hard to Give Out Over the Phone” (a classic).
- Jason Snell at Six Colors: “No Other Gatekeeper But Me”
- Power Computing, the leading Mac clone maker.
- Mac clones.
- The 1997 merger of MacUser and Macworld.
- Chandler reading Macworld on Friends
- Daring Fireball piece on software bundles back in 2006: “The Iniquities of the Selfish”.
- Wilfredo Sanchez’s crackerjack whitepaper from 2000: “The Challenges of Integrating the Unix and Mac OS Environments”.
- Lycos, not dead yet.
- John Gruber, Dan Moren, and Jason Snell talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark on episode 8 of The Incomparable back in 2010.
Previous Episode

104: ‘2014 Year in Review’ With Guest Rene Ritchie
December 26, 2014
•138m
Special guest Rene Ritchie returns to the show for a special Apple 2014 year-in-review episode. Just a few of the many topics covered: Apple’s Beats acquisition; WWDC 2014 in hindsight; an aside speculating on the alternate universe where Google acquired WebOS instead of Android; the similarities between the “projected UI” nature of AirPlay, CarPlay, and WatchKit; UI fonts (Helvetica Neue in Yosemite, Apple Sans, and the Watch’s San Francisco (a.k.a. “DINvetica”)); Apple’s growing ability to design and bring to market its own hardware internals and components; recent controversies and confusing rejections at the App Store (and the need for a public-facing App Store ombudsman); and what we’re looking forward to in 2015.
Sponsored by:
- Backblaze: Unlimited, unthrottled, online backup for Mac.
- Hover: The world’s best domain registrar. Use coupon code “scotch” and save 10 percent on any order.
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Next Episode

106: ‘Star Wars Holiday Spectacular’ With Guests John Siracusa and Guy English
December 31, 2014
•224m
A brief chat about the Star Wars movies, with special guests John Siracusa and Guy English.
Update, Monday 5 January 2015: Updated with a new Special Edition edit, including a new introduction, a new editing gag around the 2:20:00 mark, new poster art, and some subtle re-syncing of the audio tracks. No extra Banthas were added, and Siracusa still shoots first.
Sponsored by:
- Casper: Premium mattresses at great prices.
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- Backblaze: Unlimited, unthrottled, online back up for Mac.
Links:
- Michael Heilemann’s Kitbashed (highly recommended).
- “Plinkett” reviews The Phantom Menace (sort of kind of not really recommended).
- Original poster for Star Wars.
- Leigh Brackett’s script for The Empire Strikes Back.
- “Star Wars” Episodes of The Incomparable.
- Yes, that was young Greedo in The Phantom Menace.
- The complete Star Wars: Clone Wars cel-animated series from 2003 — pretty fun, worth watching.
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