MacBreak Weekly 1002: I'm With Bieber

Summary

MacBreak Weekly 1002: “I’m With Bieber”

Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Panel: Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell

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Episode Overview

This episode of MacBreak Weekly dives into recent high-profile executive departures at Apple—and what they mean for the company's future. The team also discusses brain drain to rivals like Meta and OpenAI, the complicated state of making bootable disks for Apple Silicon Macs, controversial age-verification laws for social media in Australia, the perennial frustrations with messaging app UI (including a Justin Bieber outburst), and Apple TV’s Golden Globe nominations. The conversation is rich with inside perspectives, memorable analogies, and classic MacBreak camaraderie.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Apple Leadership Departures & Internal Turmoil

[03:26–14:00]

• Alan Dye leaves Apple for Meta: Apple’s longtime design chief’s exit has sparked debate—does it signal crisis, stagnation, or healthy change? Dye’s move is compared to “leaving Tiffany’s to go to Target.”
  • Quote [03:26, Leo]: “[Alan Dye] leaving Apple to go to Meta, which is kind of like... leaving Tiffany to go to Target.”
• Internal friction with Apple’s design direction: Many at Apple felt frustrated by Dye’s choices. The consensus among panelists is that change was overdue, and new leader Stephen Lemay (with a user experience background) is seen positively within the ranks.
  • Quote [05:13, Jason]: “People I've heard from really love the new guy who's in charge, who comes more clearly from a user experience design background.”
• On executive timing: Departures clustered around annual bonus vesting, with many leaders simply at retirement age. The next level below finally sees upward mobility.
  • Quote [11:44, Jason]: “Andy is going to love me making a Babylon 5 reference here, but: The avalanche has already begun. It’s too late for the pebbles to vote.”

[17:24, Leo]: The pace is normal for December; “this is when these things happen... end of year is the Friday afternoon of the year" (corporate timing for quiet exits).

2. Is There a Brain Drain at Apple?

[27:49–30:48]

• Not just senior leaders: Dozens of engineers and designers have left for OpenAI and Meta, especially in AI, audio, and robotics.

  • Quote [28:43, Jason]: “It feels to me like Gurman has a mole in Meta and that Meta is feeding him information.”

• The draw for hardware expertise is illustrated with parallels to Tesla poaching by competitors.

3. Chips, Power Struggles, and Apple's “Succession Planning”

[17:39–23:24]

• Rumors about Apple chip head Johny Srouji considering leaving led to brief stock and morale panic.

  • Ultimately, a rapid internal memo confirmed he’d stay.
    • Quote [18:50, Jason]: “I think Gurman got some information about that... and they had already gone through that process and come to some agreement.”

• Apple’s stability is a double-edged sword: it creates internal ceilings and pushes ambitious staff to depart for upward mobility.

4. Is This Trouble for Cupertino?

[17:03–26:52]

• Consensus: No, Apple isn’t in trouble. This is normal for a company where senior leadership stayed the same for over a decade, and many are reaching retirement age.
• The real risk: A static org structure that stifles mid-tier talent and encourages them to leave.

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5. Australia’s Age Verification Law on Social Media

[36:05–47:33]

• Starting Dec 10, under-16s in Australia are banned from Facebook, Instagram, and X.

• Panel deeply skeptical: Not technically enforceable and potentially harmful.

  • Quote [37:31, Leo]: “To make this work, every adult using those platforms has to verify their age.”
  • Quote [42:28, Jason]: “This isn’t the government’s business, bottom line... If you think there are ill effects, the solution isn’t to just make a blanket law that has all these problems.”

• Children at risk or needing surrogate communities online (e.g., LGBTQ+) will be harmed. Privacy/ID risks and lack of parental granularity cited.

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6. User Interface Outrages: Justin Bieber vs. Apple's Messages App

[47:53–53:20]

• Justin Bieber’s viral complaint about the iOS Messages microphone/send button being too easy to hit and triggering voice memos—something the hosts relate to.

  • Quote [48:30, Jason]: “I’m with Bieber on this.”
  • Quote [48:39, Leo]: “Once you lose Bieber, it's over.”

• Group laments accidental voice memos, confusing share sheets, and Apple’s inclination to prioritize rarely-used features.

• Wishes expressed for smarter, AI-driven customization of interfaces (but mostly they’d settle for visible settings).

7. AI Assistants—A Glimmer of Hope

[54:42–58:23]

• Leo’s early hands-on with Google Gemini voice assistant is promising: better conversational answers, more capability than previous Google/Apple voice assistants.
  • Hopes for similar improvement with Siri 3.
  • The dream: a voice assistant that “just gets it,” understanding personalized requests and context.
  • Quote [61:39, Andy]: “AI is on the precipice of understanding: when he said ‘play this song’, I know what he means.”

8. Making Bootable External Drives on Silicon Macs

[81:24–97:35]

• Ongoing challenge: Apple’s security choices make creating external boot disks difficult and often impossible—partly to prevent hacking.

• Old-schoolers (like Leo) miss “SuperDuper” clones; panelists say that with iCloud and recovery partition, most users won’t need external boot drives anymore.

  • Quote [85:29, Jason]: “Most people don’t need to do it. I think we all kind of got out of the habit.”

• Homebrew package manager recommended for recreating setups; full clones less critical, unless you have extreme uptime needs.

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9. Gaming and App Store Subscriptions

[71:12–78:48]

• Nostalgia for the days of premium paid iPhone games (“$4.99 and it’s yours!”) as opposed to modern subscription/freemium models, which have dulled panelists' enthusiasm for exploring new apps.

10. Apple TV's F1 Coverage, Golden Globe Nominations & Apple Stores

[117:10–124:54, 128:35–130:03]

• Apple TV takes over U.S. F1 streaming; existing F1TV app will be bundled for subscribers. Panel hopes Apple will deliver rich, interactive viewing (multiview, driver cams, etc.).
• Apple TV+ racks up multiple Golden Globe nominations—F1, Severance, Slow Horses, and more.
• Quick praise for Apple Stores as retail success stories—unique, busy, and staffed by savvy employees.

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11. Vision Pro Corner

[114:00–116:59]

• Black Vision Pro prototype parts shown online, but otherwise a slow news week.
• Google’s 2026 AR/VR roadmap includes high-end headsets down to simple smart glasses—illustrating a broader mixed reality push across the industry.

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Notable Quotes & Highlights

• [03:26, Leo]: “Leaving Tiffany to go to Target.”
• [11:44, Jason]: “Babylon 5 reference: The avalanche has already begun. It’s too late for the pebbles to vote.”
• [48:30, Jason]: “I’m with Bieber on this.”
• [37:31, Leo]: “To make this work, every adult using those platforms has to verify their age.”
• [42:28, Jason]: “This isn’t the government’s business, bottom line...”
• [61:39, Andy]: “AI is on the precipice of understanding: when he said ‘play this song’, I know what he means.”
• [85:29, Jason]: “Most people don’t need to do it. I think we all kind of got out of the habit.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:26–14:00] — Apple leadership departures (Alan Dye, Stephen Lemay, C-suite churn)
• [17:24–23:24] — Succession planning, static org charts, brain drain
• [27:49–30:48] — Rank-and-file departures and AI “brain drain”
• [36:05–47:33] — Australia's social media age verification law, privacy debate
• [47:53–53:20] — Justin Bieber’s iMessage rant and UI frustration
• [54:42–58:23] — AI assistants: Google Gemini, Siri 3 hopes
• [81:24–97:35] — Booting Macs from external drives, modern backup strategy
• [71:12–78:48] — Game models, App Store subscriptions
• [117:10–124:54] — F1 coverage on Apple TV, broadcast innovations
• [128:35–130:03] — Apple TV+ Golden Globe nominations

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MBW Picks of the Week ([133:54–142:34])

• Jason Snell: mbwpicks.com – “A meta-pick!” A crowd-compiled reference of all MBW picks (Amazon affiliate site, but super helpful for listeners and panelists).
• Andy Ihnatko: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (Apple TV) – Streaming free for the weekend; remastered beautifully, a holiday classic.
• Alex Lindsay: GenR8 – HDMI/USB-C test pattern generator for iPad/iPhone, invaluable for production professionals needing to validate video signals quickly.

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Tone & Style

Relaxed, candid, at times irreverently funny—true to the show’s tradition of delivering sharp industry insight with a healthy dose of geeky banter. The panel balances deep technical knowledge, business analysis, and genuine enthusiasm (and frustration) for Apple’s shifting landscape.

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Useful for Non-Listeners

Even those who missed the show will leave with:

• A clear understanding of why so many Apple execs are departing now, and why it’s (mostly) normal.
• A sense of ongoing engineering “brain drain”—and why it’s a bigger deal further down the org chart.
• Insight into the complexities of Apple Silicon, backup approaches, and the changing culture at tech giants.
• A snapshot of contemporary tech pop culture: from regulatory debates in Australia to Justin Bieber’s viral iPhone UX complaints.
• Practical picks for techies, and a reminder to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.

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For deep Apple analysis, generational tech debate, and the occasional Justin Bieber wrestling reference, this episode delivers classic MacBreak Weekly fare.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Alex and Jason are here. We've got a great show planned for you, including a look at all of the departures from Apple. Does it mean it's over for Cupertino, or is it just beginning? We'll also talk about how you can create a bootable external disk for your Silicon Mac, but why you may not want to. And some Golden Globe nominations, the most prestigious award in Hollywood for Apple TV. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT.

This is Mac Break Weekly. Episode 1002, recorded Tuesday, December 9th, 2025. I'm with Bieber. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Hello, everybody. Good to see you. As the holiday season kicks in, let's say hello to our holiday.

Fun makers, Mr. Alex Lindsay from Office Hours Global. Hello. Hello. I like your. Your crazy Christmas sweater. I did.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You know, it's just a sweater.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't get. You know, it's my season now. I've got lots of sweaters.

[Leo Laporte]

Crazy Navy. Crazy Navy.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's a. Yeah, it's a nice warm sweater.

[Leo Laporte]

It's chilly.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's chilly today.

[Leo Laporte]

I should be wearing a warm sweater. I should. I should. Instead, I'm wearing some sort of crazy Hawaiian shirt.

[Alex Lindsay]

I have to admit, I really like layers, so I don't like having the house be really hot. Like, I feel like I have to deal with that for a while. And now it's nice and chilly. So I like it to be in the mid-60s and then just have, like some layers on, strip it down, put.

[Leo Laporte]

It on, take it off. Like, kind of like my house.

That is Mr. Jason Snell of Six Colors.

[Jason Snell]

Dr. Oh, hello there.

[Leo Laporte]

Hello.

[Alex Lindsay]

Hello.

[Leo Laporte]

How are you?

[Jason Snell]

Oh, I didn't see you there. Hello.

[Leo Laporte]

Congratulations. What's happening now on the big Cal upset this weekend, Am I right?

[Jason Snell]

Did that.

[Leo Laporte]

Didn't Cal beat USC or something? Something happened.

[Jason Snell]

No, that was a couple weeks ago and it was SMU and. But thank you. It's great. We have a new coach.

[Leo Laporte]

I was reading old news. I'm reading old news, that's all. I'm just trying to find something to, you know, to.

[Jason Snell]

That's right. Go Bears. Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Make a connection with you.

[Jason Snell]

Yes. I appreciate it.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. Jason and Andy and atko. Hello, Andrew. How are you today?

[Alex Lindsay]

Good.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Hello, hello, hello. Yes.

I second the layer concept. I've got my really nice. This is when it's weird. The warmest and most Cozy articles of clothing in my wardrobe are almost exclusively logoed merchandise that I was given because of a speaking gig or because of something else. The twit hoodie that you guys sent me 10 years ago is one of my go tos.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's nice.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So it's like yesterday was so it was like 12 or 18 degrees. And because I'm in New England and I have electric heat, there's the monthly choice of do you want to just layer up inside the house or do you want to spend another $800 a month this month? And so I was wearing my John Hopkins.

Fleece plus my Macworld Expo 2003 Fleece in two layers and I thought, whoa. Oh, those were nice gigs. Oh, wasn't it nice to speak to those people?

[Leo Laporte]

It was the day after last week's Mac Break weekly during Windows Weekly when the news came kind of a shocker that Apple design chief Alan Dye was leaving Apple to go to Meta, which is kind of like, I don't know, I said it on Sunday, leaving Tiffany to go to Target.

[Jason Snell]

Well, you know, when there's a vacuum, something has to fill it. So the lack of design at Meta just.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So you're basically saying that Meta sucks Apple talent into the company and that.

[Leo Laporte]

Liquid Glass couldn't have a better new family.

I loved, I don't know, John Gruber's piece. When I first read it, I thought, well, this is a big deal. But he wrote bad Dye job pun on Alan Dye's name. Obviously.

He wrote it sounds like Dye chose to jump ship and wasn't squeezed out. Gurman is spinning it like a coup for Meta, but I think this is Jon Gruber again. This is the best personnel news at Apple in decades. Were there cheers being heard at Apple or is it just those of us who are not Liquid Glass fans?

[Jason Snell]

I think this is a complicated issue, obviously, and Liquid Glass is not the be all, end, all of the work that obviously that Alan Dye and his software design group have done. But I can tell you that, yeah, inside Apple, I think that a lot of the people down in the low levels, the programmers, the developers, the software people, were frustrated by a lot of the design decisions that were being made by people up top. Now this is an opportunity for change. And the people I've heard from really love the new guy who's in charge, who comes more clearly from a user experience design background.

[Leo Laporte]

Stephen lemay, who is also a longtime Apple guy.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And so he gets a chance to step up and the people who know him Think he's great. So I think that's good. It doesn't sound like necessarily the people at the highest levels at Apple.

I mean, they were taken aback by this. So there may be a little disconnect between, like, the people in the trenches and the. And the executives who ran him out in their, you know, liquid glass rollout video. But it's a. It's a complicated situation. I would. I would also say that I find Mark Gurman's framing a bit curious. He just assumes that if one person is going from A to B, that it's a coup. But I will just point out that people leave usually for reasons. And in this case, if Apple didn't like when he. Apparently he notified them and. And that was it. There was no, like, frantic attempt to keep him that suggests that he was leaving because probably something didn't happen. Right. He didn't get a title he wanted or didn't like who he was going to report to next. And there are so many other. We'll get to it. Executive changes going on at Apple right now and probably in the near future. You know, my. My read on it on the day was this sounds like an incompatibility where somebody's view of their own worth is not the same as their employer's view of their worth. And when that happens and there's that imbalance, that's when people leave for greener pastures.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Not because he was squeezed out or fired or anything like that. Not because Mark Zuckerberg just appeared at his door, but because he was feeling kind of down on Apple, because he maybe wanted more power, better title, whatever it was. And Apple was like, well, you're great, but we're not going to make you chief design officer or whatever. That's my gut read is having been through this in business before, it feels to me like it's somebody who was appreciated, but not as much as he felt he deserved. And so Mark Zuckerberg shows up and he says, I love you. I'll put you in charge. Here's a truck full of money.

It's hard to say no.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's. Yeah. And also in personnel changes, there's often. God, we humans, we love a narrative. Like, it's not. The Beatles broke up. Not because of. Look, they've been together for. They've been their entire adult lives. They've been together as a group and they were just sick of being the Beatles and it was time to do other things. People love a narrative of no, no, no, no. John was trying to be the heart and soul of the group. And Paul was trying to boss people around, but then Yoko came in. It's like, no, sometimes things just end. And so this is what we've been seeing like for the past week. Everyone trying to build like a really, really huge narrative over why this and other moves are all happening at the same time. It can be just as simple as, like Jason said, enough of the situation. Micro situations changed inside of Apple. Move to meta. Very, very attractive.

For him as opposed to, no, he's been shown the door and he decided to take the door rather than being booted out of it. Or that, oh well, there was about to be a palace coup about design because his design changes were unpopular. Again, that's kind of narrative building. And I'd also have to say that.

Gurman has earned the respect that he has been given and Gruber has earned the respect that he has been given. I'm saying that as a baseline, whenever there is like a news, an attention grabbing change at a company and suddenly somebody has a lot of sources of people trying to say, oh, yes, well, here's why this happened. We always have to add to the mix of our perceptions how much of this is agendas inside a company and outside a company wanting to put a certain narrative out there to say that, no, it wasn't that. No, this wasn't a big, big. We were just this part of the transitions inside Apple, which is, and I want to say reiterate for the second time that I'm not saying that anybody is getting played here, but I'm saying that as part of the things that you examine when you examine all of the stories being told here is that how much of this is. Yeah, you know what, we don't like it when our employees talk to the press, but we are suggesting that if someone reaches out to you and asks for your opinion on this and you are willing to say this, that and the other, we're probably not going to try to track you down as a leaker on this sort of thing. So that's part of the, part of the environment that we're in right now.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, I think that as far as the timing for a lot of the executives, you know, I think someone pointed out on Twitter that the, the Apple bonuses are in October.

[Jason Snell]

I saw that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So.

[Jason Snell]

So once you're vested, you can leave.

[Alex Lindsay]

So, you know, and so there's, well, there's vesting, I think, with a lot of these companies. And your bonus is layered and all over the place. But the yearly bonus, I think someone pointed out on Twitter was. Was in October. So that's a time that there's a timing thing. You would probably want to wait for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

And then fiscal makes sense. Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

And then the other thing is if you're leaving. Well, the best time to leave is between the two best quarters of the year. So if you're going to do, you know, like leaving when things are hard but you're, you know, is the, what do they say money is the great, the great soother. A lot of things can go wrong. You can make. So the thing is, is that if you're going to leave, leaving after we, after Apple had an incredible quarter and then they're gonna have another incredible quarter, you know, most people are gonna forget it. You know, as they go through it. I think that Dai. I think it did feel like a lot of people. I feel like he might have just had a lot of pressure like not. Or a lot of times executive like reads, they don't get pressure, but they read the writing on the wall. Like people aren't gonna keep going this direction because everyone's complaining and they're like, okay, this is the time for me to. This is the highest my stock is going to be.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

You know, personal stock. You know, like, this is the highest my personal stock is going to be. It's time in on it. And I think that he was at the, at the highest he was going to be at Apple as far as how people see him. Right. As he makes that, as he makes that jump. So I think that probably made sense for the other ones. I don't, I think there was a little worry about chip design, but that seems to be not, not as big of a deal. But the.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, but everybody else.

[Jason Snell]

The rest of it too.

[Alex Lindsay]

But yeah, all the other executives were kind of, I mean they're not going to make any. I don't think any of them are going to make any significant change in the direction of, of Apple.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So yeah, I mean there's a, there's a. There are two things that I think that are constant to most of these changes. Personnel changes that were being reported over the past couple weeks. One is that it seems like a lot of high level executives are simply aging out of the system. And secondly, it is a seller's market for AI talent and industrial design talent. And so like you said, Alex, when you're, when you have something that, whose value has never been higher, it is a good time to see what you can get for it on the open market.

[Jason Snell]

Andy is going to love me making a Babylon 5 reference here, but the avalanche has already begun. It's too late for the pebbles to vote is the line. And I think that I feel a little bit like the pebbles are all starting to slide down the hill here because Alex makes a great point, by the way, when Apple stock is basically at its all time high and Apple's hat is about to have probably its best quarter ever, ever, ever, by a long shot. And the stories are out there, you know, a CEO transition is coming soon, which means they're going to be new people in charge and there's be a new reporting structure. And it's already starting because Jeff Williams, the old coo, already left. Luca Maestri, the old CFO left when that's all starting to move. And you've got a whole bunch of people who are in their 60s who have made enormous amounts of money and basically don't have to work again if they don't want to. And, and you can, you know, and then now you're going to get a new boss who's 15 years younger than you and you're going to have a different reporting structure and maybe you're going to have to pick up somebody else's group and run it even though you don't want to. When changes are happening like that, it's not a bad time to step off. And conversely, if you're somebody at Apple, imagine sitting there waiting for 10 years and you think, I'd really like to take a step forward and be more responsible. But the people above me have been here for 15, 20 years and they're just never going to leave. That's actually one of the things that I think is a positive about Alan Dye leaving. And one of the reasons I think it's a good thing leaving the personalities out of it, leaving liquid glass, actually even out of it for a moment, is Apple has been so static in so many ways for so long that the idea that this guy who's actually been there for 25 years, but he is not now he gets his chance to step up in a new role and presumably other people get to come up and fill new roles and there's a little bit of a fresh perspective on everything and I think that's super healthy, especially in something that we criticize a lot, which is Apple's approach to software design. But across the company, I, I feel like that's happening at the high level now where not everybody's gonna leave. But again, if you've got all the money and you're basically at retirement age and you can leave if you want to. Declaring victory, going out on an all time high before you have to report to that kid who used to be. He used to report to you and now you're gonna report to him. I see it, I get it.

[Leo Laporte]

There are gonna be a lot of new faces around the table come January in the Senior Leadership Council because Lisa Jackson, who we know well from her appearances along with Mother Nature and Apple videos, is also retired. She's retiring. Apple's general counsel, Kate Adams is also retiring. Both on the senior leadership team. Jennifer Newsted, Meta's chief legal officer, is crossing the street.

[Jason Snell]

Hired from Meta. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

New general counsel and Jackson will. Jackson's government affairs staff will report to her starting late next year. Jackson was a Biden appointee.

[Jason Snell]

So Obama, Obama administration.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry, Obama so in fact took a kind of a back seat with this administration negotiating for Apple. So maybe that's part of it too.

[Jason Snell]

I think that's, I think that's a.

[Leo Laporte]

Big part of it. It is, it does feel like boom, boom, boom. It's, you know, a lot of departures all at once. I asked Amy Webb on Sunday on Twitt, who has a lot more experience with corporate affairs than I do. She, that's what her, you know, she advises corporations on strategy set. It's kind of a nothing burger. This is when these things happen. December in December.

[Jason Snell]

December is the equivalent for those who know about the, the Friday afternoon news drop. Right. You don't, you dump the bad news on Friday afternoon because nobody's going to, nobody's going to listen to the news on the weekend and then it's Monday and it's old news. And so it's a good time to kind of like keep things under the radar. Well, the holidays, the end of the year are, are the Friday afternoon of the year. Right. Like, it is a good time. Plus people want to, I mean, I've been in that position when I was giving notice at my, at my last corporate job, I kind of like thought end of the year was a good time to do it. And you just kind of like turn the page. That, that made perfect sense to me. I think, you know, everything we've outlined here, there are a bunch of changes coming. The stock is really high. If you've got a lot of options and things like that or you're cashing out stock, it's a great time to do that and get money out.

[Leo Laporte]

If you want to get out of.

[Jason Snell]

The, like, there's, there's so much here. And Apple, I would say, I'M going to say Apple has done a tremendous job, especially since Steve Jobs died, in making everybody see Apple as having enormous continuity and a great team that's been there a long time. And a lot of them work with Steve and they know the corporate culture. And in the early days after Steve died, it was super important. But I think what's happened is you've seen, because Apple is so different from other companies because it's been so successful, there hasn't been a moment where they've had to be like, oh, no, it's a disaster. Let's get rid of people. You've, you know, that maintenance of stability is now kind of like the. What is it? The chickens are home to roost? Or whatever you want to use the metaphor is they've been so stable for so long, but now you've got a lot of people who've been tenured a very long time, all of whom are basically in their 60s and are going to retire soon. And, you know, I don't know Tim Cook's going to do what he's going to do, but if Tim's going to make a move and you're on the senior leadership team, I just feel like, you know, we're getting payback for the last 15 years of stability right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. In fact, it makes perfect sense. All these people are retirement age. This is exactly when it's so many of them. And again, I think CNN article from Lisa at Achicchio, who we know well, what the heck is going on at Apple? As I said, Amy Webb said nothing. This is normal, nothing to see here. And you guys agree, is this, is this a sign of trouble?

[Alex Lindsay]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

In Cupertino?

[Alex Lindsay]

Not really. Again, I think that there's. Most of the executives are not going to make any significant change in the technology that Apple's sitting on top of. I think that there was a rumor for a moment that Surgi was going to move on and the chip chip.

[Jason Snell]

Czar, Johnny Shrugie, Mark Gurman reported over the weekend had been.

[Alex Lindsay]

That was a quick turn. He's thinking of leaving. Oh, no, he's not.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that he was thinking of leaving and he was, he was. He wanted a better title and he wanted more money and that Tim Cook was negotiating with him. And then he put out a memo that was to his staff, but like it's an email memo, it's to be leaked to Mark Gurman and the rest of the world saying, no, I love it here and I'm staying and I have no plans to leave. That one was A big one when that report came out. Right. Because that's. That's a person who is appreciably responsible for one of Apple's most important things, which is Apple. He's Apple Silicon, basically.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

But. And we can talk. There's journalism inside baseball there. Because I actually do believe that Mark Gurman sources. I mean, I. Mark Gurman doesn't make things up. I'm sure somebody who has knowledge of the situation knows that at some point recently, Johnny Sruji was negotiating with Tim Cook about what his role was going to be. Again, a part of this whole thing, like a bunch of stuff is changing. What, do I have a new role? What responsibilities do I want to take on, or do I want to try something else? I think Gurman got some information about that. And then with Sruji's quick answer, my guess is the information Mark Gurman had got was a little bit older.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And they had already gone through that process and come to some agreement. And so it's kind of a nothing now. But that. So it's a nothing. That would have been a something, but it turns out it's a nothing.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's exactly what I. That's exactly what I thought, too, because Gurman does not say anything that he can't substantiate, particularly because he's not just. He's not just some dude with a blog or YouTube channel that needs content. He has the. He has the. The legal repercussions of. Of an attack on Bloomberg like to. At stake every time he decides to report on something. And the fact that Apple. Excuse me. That. No. Wasn't an official release, as Jason said.

[Leo Laporte]

But.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, but the fact that they wanted scramble indicates exactly how powerful. When he says when. When Gurman says something, how it can move the needle on the stock market, on morale, on everything. That's exactly. That's exactly what I thought. That at some point there was a conversation between these two buddies, like, behind, around the fire pit at somebody's house saying that, yeah, well, while we all know that, like, the next couple of years is gonna be some changes, like, what's my role going to be? And that there was some discussions that it's some. And that at some point in my timeline, he was satisfied that, yeah, he has a future at Apple for all the. For all the definitions of the word future that you want to think about. And at some point in the middle, that's when that information got out about. Yeah, we're talking around the fire pit about what do I do next?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, different People, it's like the speed of light or the speed of sound or whatever. Like different people learn things at different rates. Information moves through organizations at different rates. And so if you're a Mark Gurman source and you're two steps away and you heard something two weeks ago and you're bringing it to Mark Gurman, he's going to report it as new information. Right. But there can be a lag and I suspect that's what went on here. I also kind of suspect that that's what went on with the Financial Times saying Tim Cook was planning to leave and Mark Gurman saying no way. I think they made that up. But all he could really say in I've been hearing the last few weeks something very different and I thought that last few weeks phrase was really telling because I, it doesn't sound like Mark Gurman sources could come back on the day and say I know as of today that this isn't true. He just hadn't heard that over the last few weeks. And it's not bad reporting. This is the classic thing where you report about rumors and then somebody does some claim chowder on you in a year and says oh, that product never happened. It's like, well at the time they were planning on doing the product and then they changed. That doesn't mean the report was wrong. It just means that Apple changed after the fact. So I think Gurman sources, I mean very clearly the story in the end seems to be Johnny Sruji had those questions, what's his role? And then they apparently got resolved to his satisfaction, which is a big win for Apple at a time when you know, some other losses are being portrayed as losses for them. The Sruji leaving would have been a, that would have been sound the alarms I think.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Right. That would have moved on the stock.

[Leo Laporte]

Gurman's follow up reporting said that Surrugi had told Chief Executive officer Tim Cook he is seriously considering a departure in the near future. According to people with knowledge of the matter, Cook has been working aggressively to retain Suriji. The people said the campaign included offering a substantial pay package and the potential more responsibility down the row, down the road. Surruji told his team in this leaked email, I love my team and I love my job at Apple and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon. Although I would have liked it better if he'd left out the anytime soon. That feels a little bit.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's, I mean it's a, it's, it's a non. You could read it however you want.

[Leo Laporte]

But they want to plan on leaving, period. That has more impact than any time soon. Sounds like.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, I want, I want to, I want to make you. I want to rest. Rest assured. I just bought a 12 pack of red Bull and put it in my, in my, my, my office fridge. So there's no way soon I want.

[Jason Snell]

To finish the 12 pack.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Anyway, let's hope he's not leaving, because he is. And it's funny when I remember a couple of WWDCs ago, we were all watching and Surugi comes out for the first time. It was the first time he'd been on and everybody was like, so excited. Johnny's talking. This is a big deal. He is highly respected and has done a lot for Apple.

[Alex Lindsay]

And I do think, I mean, we had time to think about it for a little while before the news came out that he said that he wasn't leaving. And I think that we also have to remember that the chips, you know, this, that would affect somewhere in 2028-2029.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Alex Lindsay]

If he wasn't around, like, it's not like something, Everything would change. Right now the chips are pretty, you know, like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff that, that's already happening. So we'd be Talking about the M10 or M9 chip, most likely that would be affected.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. So we can all just settle down, class, nothing, relax a little. Nothing's going on.

[Jason Snell]

Well, something, I mean, that's the thing is something is going on. Change is happening in the, in the top level ranks at Apple. And it's change that's probably overdue. But like I said, I think they overcompensated after Steve left of like, stable, stable. Everybody stable positions. Brace. Right. And now it's, you know, now, now they have to, they can't stay forever. They can't stay stable forever. And in fact, I would argue that, that we talk about brain drain at Apple being a big issue. And I think it is an issue, but I think the biggest issue is not brain drain of senior executives leaving. I actually think the biggest issue is people hitting the ceiling where people who've been there 20 years and they never leave. And so if you want to further your career, you got to go somewhere else. And what you want is a kind of a natural flow where people kind of come to the top and then other people come in and get new responsibilities down low. And Apple was a little static. Like, the design group is a great example. I, I can't say for sure whether this new Design group. In fact, I can say for sure that all the dreams everybody has placed on Alan Dye leaving that it's going to fix their pet issue with Apple, software design, whatever it might be. That's not going to happen. Right? Like that's not going to happen. But change will happen. And a new leader will have different priorities. He'll still have the same pressures put on him as the last leader. And that's something you can't forget. Like, Alan Dye didn't do what he did in a vacuum. He did it because of Apple's priorities and because of his own agenda. Now there'll be a new agenda. Apple's priorities haven't really changed, but the fact that it's a new voice and that those people underneath him will now have more elevated responsibilities and presumably down at the bottom they'll bring in some new people. Like that feels real healthy just to let the sunlight in, just to have a little fresh air. And I think that will happen in other parts of Apple too. But certainly I think it's software design.

[Leo Laporte]

You have a good piece in six colors, Jason, about all this in a major coup or someone Apple die leaves Apple. And you make a really good point, which is you can't lay all of Apple's design flaws if you see them as flaws at Alan Dye's feet. There's a whole bunch of people involved.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And I heard from a lot of. There are a lot of Mac users who are really grumpy about how Mac OS design has kind of. And usability has kind of fallen by the wayside in the last few years. And I don't disagree. But I will say that the iPhone being the priority for Apple is not something that's going to change based on who the designer is. Right. Like, that's the thing is Alan Dye might have some predispositions that, that you disagree with. He does. Look, senior people always do bring their history with them. Tim Cook's operations background influences what decisions he makes as CEO. He's not just an ops guy, but it influences him. Alan Dye was a visual designer, he was a print designer, he's a packaging designer, not a software designer. And so he came with that as his bias. Maybe it made a difference. But you know, the truth is, and the new guy is a software designer, so maybe that will make a difference in terms of leadership. But like, at the end of the day, if they only have so much time to emphasize Mac UX because more than half the company is iPhone, what do you think is going to happen? I mean, that priority doesn't change just because the leader changed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Will we see changes though at Apple? I mean, I mean, or is it going to be still everything's the same because it was the same team?

[Jason Snell]

I think if you change leaders, like I said, I think, I think the company is the same, but I think if you change leaders, there is an opportunity to change. And also I think I mentioned this maybe even last week, but like anytime there's a leadership change, even if the people are very similar, there's an opportunity for change just because it's very hard for a person X to go back on a decision they made. But if person Y comes in, they can go back on that decision and it's pretty easy to do so. Like when Tim came in, he brought employee donation matching back, which Steve just didn't like. Like for whatever weird reason that is. And Tim's like, well that's dumb, I'm bringing it back. And that was just an arbitrary kind of thing. But he was free to do that because now he was the CEO. And I think all the people who are filling these new roles, even though the company's the same and it takes a long time to, to turn the ship. Right. They're all still going to bring their own individual perceptions and, and have the opportunity for it to be different.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, the big channel does report that.

Remind us that, you know, we focus on the high up, higher ups leaving. But further down the org chart, the Journal writes dozens of Apple employees have defected OpenAI and Meta in recent months. Part of a long term brain drain I'm reading that has robbed the company of innovators and seeded rivals with expertise they hope to use to dethrone the digital device king. I mean we don't. That's not headline making when and others in the lower down leave. But it is a big deal if you know Zuckerberg, besides hiring Alan Dye has hired away a handful of Apple's key AI staffers. As we know, that's one thing Gurman does like to report on.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I mean it feels to me like Gurman has a mole in Meta and that Meta is feeding him information and Meta likes it. And I think you could argue that there's something always considering not just Meta.

[Leo Laporte]

This watch the journal says is OpenAI as well. Dozens of Apple engineers and designers with expertise in audio watch design, robotics and more have left for Open AI in recent months.

[Jason Snell]

I think it is a reasonable argument. I just some of the, some of those stories I question because they're like, oh, Meta bought Some more you know, AI people from Apple and I always it's not quite at the Alan Dye level but I'm like oh no, they poached all those people who built those foundation models that weren't any good and that nobody liked is that. But yeah, this is what I'm saying is Apple has a lot of brain drain problems. Some of it comes from static leadership, some of it comes from their, their hiring processes being really slow and kind of outmoded. And I think they need it sounds like that. I think that report even said in recent days Apple seems to have stepped up their efforts to pay people and recruit people in a way that I think they maybe got a shock to the system that they, that they needed.

[Leo Laporte]

But it also says none of this is an immediate threat. Consumers lives are on their iPhones. There isn't yet a killer AI app that would make the move. The presumption of this by the way, it's Rolf Winkler writing in the Wall Street Journal. The presumpt this is that this is. Some of this is because of Jony I've going to OpenAI that they need designers and people who can do this kind of hardware and they need this expertise at OpenAI if they're going to do this device and they don't make sense.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's a lot like I think and I think that I've may have been going it'd be really good if we had you know, these guys, you know, he knows who they are right. And so, but, but I also think that it is man making hardware is hard. It's super difficult.

[Leo Laporte]

And by the way Winkler did a lot of this research by going to LinkedIn and looking at going down a list of names and saying oh now this person who was at Apple is at OpenAI so some real reportage there, not just gossip. So you know, I think it's interesting. Look, this happens all the time. If you wanted somebody who knew how to do self driving cars you'd go to Tesla people and hire them away. You look for the people who have done it and you and you make them offers. And I'm not actually that surprised.

It's a sign that Apple's been successful. We'll take a break, come back with more with Andy Inatko, Alex Lindsey, Jason Snell, you're watching Mac Break Weekly. Oh, and I want to tell you about this week's sponsor because it's getting close to the holidays and I know you're looking for a great gift. How about this? The ink frame from Aura. Aura. They're brand new. Wouldn't it be great if you could change photos on your wall every day? If I, you know, if I just showed you this, you might say, that's our wedding photo, by the way. You might say, and by the way, I have this set up to change every night. I'll change it now just to show you some other photos. But it's great. I wake up in the morning and I've got something different. And if you don't, if you don't, if you don't know, you might say, well, there's just a picture on the wall, but like Harry Potter, it's magically changing every day. That's the Aura Ink Aura's new cordless. That's important Color E paper frame. What you do is you can you see how thin this is? You can hang this on the wall and also notice there's no cords. I haven't charged this since I got it months ago.

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Tomorrow. By the way. Big deal in a big day in Australia. Gosh, look at this picture. I just changed the picture.

Tomorrow's a big day in Australia.

The everybody under 16 will be banned from Facebook. X.com Instagram.

[Jason Snell]

Is that today? Is that today?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Today?

[Leo Laporte]

The 10th.

[Jason Snell]

Yes, it's happening this morning in Australia right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you hear the. The sound of a thousand voices crying out?

[Andy Ihnatko]

I hear the sound of a thousand or million kids Googling for what's the best VPN in my area?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's really good news for VPNs although as Steve Gibson has pointed out now the next stage in all of this age verification crap is banning VPNs. I mean, if you're really committed to this, well, now you have to prevent people from using VPNs. It's not a good road.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I have to say that I'm really conflicted on this. This is an issue where I 100% support and believe in the intent of the, of this legislation. I do too.

[Leo Laporte]

I agree.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think that smartphones for kids, the more we learn about the effect on kids who still have squishy minds, the more we need, we feel as though we need to do something to protect kids from predatory corporations that are really just not has their worst interest at heart. At the same time though, I can't think of a single way that you can ban these things, ban social media apps for kids without having so much of the walls and the ceiling collapsing down around you in terms of privacy and safety that it's just not worth the punishment.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Just remember, in order for this to work in Australia, every adult using those platforms has also to verify their age.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And the other thing is that, I mean, they're just, I don't get to half an hour on this, but like, number one, they're kids that their geographic community is killing them. Okay? And their social community online is saving them because they're finding people out there, they're finding their group, they're finding their people out there. That tells them that, no, you're not crazy, no, you're not a freak, no, even your own government might be telling you that you shouldn't exist. But don't worry, there are people. At some point you will not be in junior high or high school anymore and you will be able to remove yourself from a very, very bad, physically bad situation. We can't, we can't cut off kids from those kind of resources. But also, again, it's never. How do you verify ages? And it always comes down to, oh, well, we're going to hire some third party to do it for you. Which means that now everybody has to submit some form of government identification, which a, that's going to be a target for hackers. They're going to do it as cheaply as possible. So that's not a good thing. And secondly, how about privacy and anonymity on the web for people who actually want it? It's like I.

I've had the same Twitter account since I think I was something like user number. I'm in the tens of thousands. I was an early Enough thing. But now the idea that I now have to provide a government provided ID in order to keep on using that, that's not acceptable. Even if Twitter was what it was 10 or 15 years ago when I actually enjoyed it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's why Blue sky left Mississippi. Mastodon has already said, and I run a Mastodon instance at Twitch Social. There's no way we can technologically do this. Yeah, my response, my only response was to put it on terms of service. You must be 18 to use Twitch Social, but it's on you to enforce it. The problem with this is about blanket law from the government where really the way this has and only way it could be enforced and should be enforced is by parents who know their kids well, who know what they need. Admittedly, there are lots of gaps in that. Parents, you know, kids who are gay, for instance, and parents who don't want them to be gay or think there's something wrong with them. And for those kids, social may be the only way they can find peers to support them. Those parents are not going to approve. So there's a gap there. And then there's parents who just don't care. There's a gap there. I agree with you, Andy. There's a problem with young minds and social media, but I don't think a government restriction is the answer by any means. It's just. There's no way to do it.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think the hard part is there's just a lot of people that think that the government can fix everything, and many times it can't. Like, there's just things that are just. They're gonna have to sort themselves out. Now, I say this as a parent who my. My kids are still have to. As long as I'm paying for the phones, I approve all the apps.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you did the right thing parentally.

[Alex Lindsay]

And, you know, they, they have no, no real social, you know, presence. My daughter just finally got on Instagram. She's 16 years old. And, you know, and. But that was just because she's a music artist and, you know, she wants to promote what she's doing. And so that became a thing. But it was, it was. It's a business decision. They all look at their peers as kind of going crazy, you know, like the amount of time, like the. So they, they, you know, they're not in that mix. And there's not that many of folks like my kids, you know, at their high school, you know, that just aren't. They have phones, they're just not being driven by. And it's Funny that you don't see them driven by the phone either. You know, like they're, they're not like looking down at their phone all the time either. So it's, it's an interesting thing because they don't have that, that, that, that drive now.

[Leo Laporte]

They're still on restaurants these days and see young kids on phones the whole time.

[Alex Lindsay]

You know, it's, it's funny, you know, in my family, in my personal family and in my extended family, there's a real cultural bias against it. Like people, I don't know if we really say it out loud, but no one uses their phone at the table, like at the, at the dinner table, at home, going out. And I, and I feel like that is a, that definitely makes a huge difference in the quality of a lot of things. But I, but I, but I, So I say that as a par. But at the same time, I think that having a bunch of people that barely know how to use email writing laws is not a good idea. You know, like, you know, and these, these politicians who are writing these laws don't know anything. So they're being driven by, now they're being driven by intelligence agencies who would love to have a backdoor and have more people identify themselves. They're being driven by, you know, a variety of parental organ folks that just think that we can get the government to do anything. And, and I think that it's. So I, so I, I as a parent don't want, haven't let my kids do that much social media, but I definitely don't think the government should be making laws about.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I don't want to be a, you know, me, I'm not a real hot take kind of guy, but this isn't the government's business, bottom line. It's like, I'm sorry, I think that this is, if, if I think this is something that, let me put it this way.

Parents do need to be involved. I know there are bad parents. The solution isn't to just make a blanket law that, that has all of these problems. Even if you think that there is generally ill effects of kids having access. I mean, it's equivalent to saying we're going to make it illegal for children to watch television. Like, I'm sorry, it doesn't make sense. It's such a broad blanket statement and there are so many benefits that come out of access to.

And the ancillary issues here in terms of identification, in terms of preventing children. See, because the beauty is not only when we say it's up to the parents. It's also up to the kids to define what they need and go get it, which is all those kids who feel like outsiders are excluded, who can't find their tribe, who don't know who they are until they find out and they're like, whether, you know, gay kids, trans kids, whatever it is. I, I just, I think it's misguided. I, I, I appreciate the sentiment here. I think that there's absolutely some evidence that, that some of the exposure here can be, can be bad for kids. But to just have a blanket ban of technology like this, I'm sorry, I think it's just deeply misguided and wrong and will cause more damage than it helps.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I do hope that we continue as a society to try to find answers to this. Part of the answer might just simply be about. There are bills.

Worldwide about the idea, well, what if we just hold meta responsible? What if we just hold YouTube responsible for saying, look, if you, if your algorithms are known to be creating harm for kids, you are going to be responsible for that in some way, in some way, shape or form? Because I, again, I don't think that the idea of protecting kids online from predatory algorithms, predatory social media companies is a bad thing. I think that's something that we should be looking at. However, this is along the lines of we have to allow the Nazis to have an event in Skokie, Illinois, because otherwise that would be a First Amendment violation. The First Amendment would have to be completely rewritten. So guess what? We're gonna let Skokies, we're gonna let the Nazis march in Skokie, Illinois.

[Leo Laporte]

So the other issue, of course, is that it's the beginning of a larger tranche of age verification laws. California earlier this year proposed a law banning sale of skin cream that had alpha hydroxy acid in it to people under 18, requiring age verification. You know, I mean, just, it's just there'll be a whole bunch of these once, once this starts. I, I think Australia is going to be an experiment that we, yeah, Australia.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Is very, very aggressive with these things. Yeah, this is where, this is where they, this is where the, I don't want to say the crazy ideas, but the most extreme versions of what could possibly be a good idea. That's where the land first in Australia. And I think that they're almost like, at this point, they're almost like a test bed. Okay, we know that this is going to be horrible. But let's see, let's see areas in which this actually works. After getting a couple of years worth of data. And hopefully that will inform a better version. A better version of if there's legislation that's appropriate, a better way of doing that.

[Leo Laporte]

I think, honestly, it's unenforceable. And I, I, what I expect will happen is nothing, because it's just unenforceable.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, look, underage drinking is a problem, and so kids can't buy alcohol. But guess what? There's still plenty of underage drinking. In fact, I would say probably all of it. Right. Is like, it's just not, it doesn't solve. It doesn't solve the problem. It just, you know, you're kicking the can down the road. It doesn't solve anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Also an attempt to apply rules that do work in a brick and mortar world where you show me your driver's license before you get that vodka right to the Internet world, which where it's very, very, very different. And show me your driver's license.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And the Internet as a very, very.

[Jason Snell]

Easy to lead to a. You know, we need, we. I mean, something Andy brought up about people reaching, you know, not wanting to say that they're gay and reaching and finding their people when they're a teenager and their parents are against it. Anonymity, Having a screen name, having a different personality than what's on your driver's license is, I would say, a good thing for teenagers. And, and really for people on the Internet. And if we're leading to a place where, like, everybody must use their registered screen name, which is tied to their government id, that is a bad path to walk down. And I will, I'll just say it. I'm just full of the hot takes, I guess. You know, it's very easy to put up a crisis, call it a crisis, and say you're gonna have to give up a bunch of your civil liberties because we're in a crisis. And so it's like, oh, now we need to do this. And then you never get them. I mean, this is the USA Patriot Act. Right after 9, 11, there were a whole bunch of things in terms of that happened and ways that people gave up several civil liberties because everybody was afraid of terrorism. And this is like, we got to protect the kids. Why would you be against protecting the kids? And the answer is, because in the name of protecting the kids, you are going to create a surveillance society. And it's just not acceptable.

[Leo Laporte]

Who's gonna, My question, who's gonna protect the kids from Justin Bieber? That's my question.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He's very violent, he's naked and he wants to wrestle. That concerns me.

[Leo Laporte]

Justin Bieber, Canada.

[Jason Snell]

Come get your boy.

[Alex Lindsay]

The next album, I think, is going to be Agronaut who gave Justin money.

[Andy Ihnatko]

For the candy machine. He's all hyped up.

[Leo Laporte]

He's complaining about the UI in Apple's messages app. He's got a picture of, you know, the microphone next to the imessage data entry, you know, text entry field, where, by the way, yes, he's right. The send button also appears. If I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time, I'm gonna find everyone at Apple and put them in a rear naked chokehold. I'm not sure what that is. Even if I turn off dictation, I somehow hit the voice note thing. The send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot. I think this is why Alan Dye left. I'll be honest with you.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Once you lose Bieber, it's over. I think that voice memo. I know some people use voice memos. I would like Apple software to be smart enough to know that, oh, you've used an iPhone for 15 years, you've never sent a voice memo. I'm gonna not offer a voice memo in a prominent location. Maybe you could choose to do it or not. But like, like, it is so prominent. And I, I know there are people who do that who send little audio. This is not even dictation. This is send an audio file to someone else. I will never, ever, ever do that.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And yet it's right there. And I press the. I touch it by accident all the time. So I, I'm with Bieber on this. I mean, I know about the name.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm on Team Bieber.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, 44.9 million views of that tweet.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So.

Someone was told after a very, very wearying sigh inside Apple. Yeah, get on this. I know, I know, but get on this. I mean, it's the first thing that I've been very, very happy about Justin Bieber doing. It is. And Apple is not the only culprit here. It's like he reminded me of like, a problem that I've been having with Android. So this is like the. At the bottom of the screen here is like, oh, there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Same thing.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Which is one of the most useful things that are in the Pixel launcher. But. But they are running out of. They want to make this search bar do more and more things, and they're running out of places to put icons because they're not rewriting it from scratch. They are just basically sticking it somewhere. And the number of times where I should mention at the bottom, like, see that little bar at the bottom? That's also like the app switcher. The number of times I've intended to simply swipe to switch an app and accidentally tap the microphone to do like a Google search or a voice search. It's like, that's not what I'm doing. Like, Jason, I want to be able to say, I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do that. So what. In your. What. In whatever heat map that you're using to decide whether or not I'm pushing the mic button, unless I'm pushing that absolutely dead center, please assume that I don't care about this microphone button.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think that the, the, the thing that he. What might have gotten that tweet to go out is that oftentimes I look down and somehow I've hit it and there's like, it's been recording for a sec, you know, 20 seconds or five seconds or whatever. I see it building and I go, oh, no. When I knock it off. And I can very quickly, you know, very easily accidentally send. It's usually like butt dial material. Like, it's not like. It's like. It's just like rustling around. But you worry about it and you're just like, oh, I hope that never, ever actually happens. But I have. It probably happens for me two or three times a week that I look down and there's. And it's starting to record something in a conversation with somebody else and I have to delete it. And.

It hasn't risen to violence for me, but it is a constant, like, oh, no, I don't want to do that. They shouldn't put that there. And then I get back to what I'm doing.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I know it's impossible to do, but Spotlight, for instance, became a lot more useful to me when I remember that. Oh, well, if you are annoyed because it keeps giving you search results that are never relevant to you, such as, like, oh, well, I searched through your contacts for bbs. Like, oh, you can actually go into settings and tell it. Please don't ever, ever, ever think that I want to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, or this. Like, I would love it if apps had more granularity like that. To say, I never, ever, ever use this feature.

Even if it were to work the way that wifi works, like on the iPad, where. Hi, please turn off Wi Fi. Okay, I'll turn it back on in a day. But, okay, I'll turn it off for now. Even if I could just simply say, oh, by the way, I will subtly reset this in a month.

[Jason Snell]

Month.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But okay, you've told me you need a break from these miscues. And so I will let you once a month tell me. Don't ever do that again.

[Leo Laporte]

You understand what you all are asking for is basically AI.

I mean, that's what you want. You want the device to be smart enough to know what you're up to.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, I mean, to do.

[Leo Laporte]

Do what I mean is what you want the app to do.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Sure.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't know if I want AI to figure it out for me. I think I just want to be able to say the only way I want some. You know, and I know this will.

[Jason Snell]

Alex just want settings.

[Alex Lindsay]

I just want settings, like hidden settings.

[Leo Laporte]

There's already so many settings.

[Alex Lindsay]

If you hold down a. But turn it sideways and you do something else, you can get into a thing where you just have every setting that you possibly can turn all these things off.

[Leo Laporte]

The easy setting box and just all the. I agree. I mean, ideally, that's how it would be with messages.

[Jason Snell]

I'll put it this way. There are so many features I use more often with messages that are under their little plus symbol, and yet that one is out under the main. And so I would say maybe let me choose what's out under the main instead. Or maybe that thing shouldn't be out there and it should be in the plus. Like if, If. If texting a photo requires you to tap the plus and then find. And then tap photos and then find the photo. Maybe the people who send voice messages could tap the plus and then tap voice message so that it's not there for me to accidentally.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm just saying it's not unusual for me to accidentally recorded the last half hour of my conversations.

[Jason Snell]

And then you text it to a friend.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank God. So far I don't think I've said.

[Jason Snell]

It, but that's going to be the next Watergate, right? It's going to be. It's going to be like Trump records his call with Putin and then he like fat fingers it and it goes to the New York Times and he's, oops.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, well, I have exactly the same problem with share sheets that it never learns what I'm. I mean, I am constantly sending web articles to my bookmark manager. It doesn't. Using the share button. It does not seem to remember that. And I have to constantly dig through my settings.

[Jason Snell]

It's weird. Parts of that have gotten better for me in 26 where it. Because now they've got the new share sheet design where you can have like the top four items or whatever. You can edit and set what those top four items are. But you're right, with apps especially, I get that where it's like, every time I share in this app, I'm sharing to this other app, and yet that other app is never there. It's like, what are you doing?

[Leo Laporte]

It's not in the edit fields either.

[Jason Snell]

Learn, please.

[Leo Laporte]

It just puts some stuff there and some stuff's not there. I don't understand.

[Jason Snell]

Anyway, machine learning. Let's do it.

[Leo Laporte]

If I can ever figure out what a naked rear chokehold is, I'm going to join Justin. Does it mean he's naked? Yeah, that's.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. We don't know. I mean, I think it's.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mean, I mean one or both.

[Leo Laporte]

Parties or is it a Brazilian jiu jitsu technical term? Like you're. You're. I. I don't know. Maybe I should look at. Look it up. Ask. Ask AI. Speaking of which, my Google devices all just suddenly over the weekend got Gemini for the voice assistant.

Man, it's light years better and it really encourages me for what we might get in a few months with Siri 3. Yeah, Gemini 3 is very good. And having it on a voice device, I've been. I asked it like my. My synology nas was beeping and I said, hey, you know who what? Why is my synology nas beeping? And it, it told me, well, here's what it could be. Here's some of the things. Here's how you change it. It walked me through it. Here's how you go to the settings to change it. This is what a voice assistant should be. I'm very impressed and I'm very hopeful about Siri.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think that this, if we're. If we're going to be optimistic about stuff, that maybe it will be a big benefit that so many people have absolutely lost confidence in Shlomo, like several years ago. Because when basic LLMs come to Shlomo next year and they suddenly. The big change just simply being that you can have a conversation with your smart assistant the way that you talk to actual people, as opposed to, like the way that Shlomo and the Google Assistant have historically worked pre AI, which is, I'm going to format a command in a way that I know that this smart assistant will understand, add a calendar item to this, or turn my lights on or off, as opposed to simply having a conversation Asking questions and saying, I forgot to mention this, please add that. Or as you say, just simply, I'm in the middle of debugging something and just being able to say, wait a minute, I've got, I'm seeing three microphone buttons in the interface for this app. Which one is the one that I actually want to use to start a voice recording and without taking my hands off the keyboard getting that kind of assistance. It's not necessarily that it's agentic, it's not necessarily that it's any more smart at doing things. It's the fact that you can actually speak to it like a human being and not have to pause. I've always, historically, I always had to pause like three or four sets, three or four seconds to think I want to be set a reminder for this. This is how you format a voice command for a reminder. So I'm going to say that correctly. It's going to be really, really big.

[Jason Snell]

That's like the command line version of a voice assistant. Yeah. And the system hooks are such a big part of it too. Right. The idea that Leo, if you're, if you're in an app and you want to share to another app, imagine saying like I do this all the time with links. I'll be like, like, you know, share this story with the upgrade note in notes. Right, right. And like it should, I should be able to do that, speak it naturally. It should be able to figure out what I want and then use its hooks, which are like app intents and things like that, to like do the right thing to navigate my system. And, and you know, some of this, you know, we can use ChatGPT or Gemini on the iPhone today, but not with all those hooks into the system.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. The ability to simply say like, hey Shlomo, every time I get an imessage from my partner who asked me to pick up something on the way home, set a reminder that's location specific to that store, that grocery store that's nearby that I pass by all the time when I come home and suddenly it's no longer I have to remember this or I have to manually do something just simply when I enter the store, I see a surface reminder from my spouse or my partner saying, oh, by the way, we need pork chops for tonight. That's the sort of stuff that's going to make people finally think that AI is worth whatever damage it's doing to the planet.

[Alex Lindsay]

I'm going to come back to the fact that when I'm listening to a song and I walk into my office. I don't want my AirPods to jump to my Mac. I'm listening to a song on my phone. Like I'm in the middle of.

And I'm connected to my AirPods and I just don't want it to change.

[Jason Snell]

There is a setting for that that.

[Alex Lindsay]

I know, but it's like I, I, there's a setting and, and, and you can turn, you know, you can do that. But the insanity of the fact that it should ever do that, like it's, it should never just be like when I'm in the middle of an operation on one device, it should not decide.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

To change devices. That's all I'm saying.

[Jason Snell]

I hear you. I hear they're trying to be magical there, but it's not smart enough.

[Alex Lindsay]

So not magical.

[Jason Snell]

That's the problem is it ends up not being magical. Well, so this is not quite related, but I'll just say this stuff happens all the time. I was Airplane a video that, you know, I couldn't get it on the Apple TV so I had to airplay it to the Apple TV and then I switched to another tab in Safari and loaded Blue sky and it found an animated gif that was 40 posts down. And like 40 posts down it wasn't at the top and my airplay just started playing the animated GIF instead and stopped playing the video I was watching. It's like, who asked for this? And who asked for a computer that's incapable of doing things? I, I, I guess I'll get you Alan D. I just feel like, I.

[Alex Lindsay]

Feel like there's a. When in doubt, don't do anything. Like, don't, don't poke at it.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, like why people make a big deal about Alan D. Because we do want to blame somebody.

[Jason Snell]

We want to blame somebody.

[Leo Laporte]

You and I know. Logically, it's not Alan D's fault. There's a whole bunch of people involved and it's a complicated computer science problem.

[Jason Snell]

Apple's too big.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's just that we all die a little every time we like ask, Ask Shlomo to set a reminder as playing. Set a reminder on Apple music. Like yeah, or when I, when I.

[Alex Lindsay]

Ask, when I ask for a song to be played, I never want the live version. Ever.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, no kidding.

[Alex Lindsay]

Ever.

[Jason Snell]

No kidding. Or the demo.

[Alex Lindsay]

I never, I don't want any. I just want to hear the version that I know if I wanted the live version, I'd ask for it. You know, like, like, you know, and, and I, and I, and I didn't. But that's not what I was asking for. I just wanted to play the song. And you know, you get it's like 30% of the time you get the live version and you're like, what made you think why is this such a common factor is to play the wrong version of the song?

[Leo Laporte]

I'm just going to reiterate this is why you want AI because at some.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Point that is the thing that's going to get myself and a whole bunch of people super excited about the future of AI when the example I always fall back on has always been impossible, but now it feels like it's within reach. That line from Broadcast News when the intimacy between two friends is illustrated by a single line where they need to meet up someplace and Albert Brooks says let's meet at the place with the thing where we went that time. And Holly Hunter immediately knows what he's talking about. Great, see you soon. And hangs up the phone. AI is on the precipice of understanding. When he said play this song, I know what he means. I know what he likes. He doesn't mean the recent cover version that is now blowing up on TikTok doesn't mean the demo version that's available that was recorded on a cassette tape for the Beatles Anthology series. They won want this exact version. And I don't need to be told.

[Leo Laporte]

That I've been using a variety of voice assistants to play music. I've seen all of these problems for a long time. It bugged me because the Google voice assistant on my Google device that I listen to music to in the morning.

Couldn'T tell me what a song was. I said what is this song? And I don't know all of a sudden with Gemini it can, it can give me a lot of information about the song if I ask for follow ups. So I even that there's little things I'm just saying I we're not so far off from a. From a dream.

[Alex Lindsay]

In defense I I tweeted about this last week but in defense I the the one that blew my mind last week my my daughter and a friend recorded a song and I just so I knew where it was. I put it in notes. I just grabbed onto the MP4, you know, she recorded on Logic and then I think I talked about it last week and they I just grabbed it to put it in notes and then I just left it there and when I came back notes had transcribed the song. They transferred no, no, not only had it transcribed the song, it has the little highlight that goes along when if you Play the song in notes.

[Leo Laporte]

It.

[Alex Lindsay]

It highlights it. And that was probably the most mind blowing. Like, I was like, what? Like, I looked down and it's like playing. It's like they're doing the little karaoke, you know, thing with a song that I just took and just left in notes for it, you know, for a little while. And then at the bottom it's like says, do you find this useful? Like, so I'm sure it must be beta or new or something. I was like, yes, Can I hit that button like 10 times? Like, I don't know how often I'll use it. But I was like, that is the craziest thing. So there was some magic there.

[Andy Ihnatko]

There should be like a really nice, unique, like, Animoji of a doggy. And that just next to every single thing it does. You can just pat the doggy on the head, say, nice doggy.

[Leo Laporte]

Who's a good boy?

[Andy Ihnatko]

You're a good boy. Yes, you are. So it knows that. Hey, I'm going to do that again. Again.

[Leo Laporte]

Because I would be remiss if I didn't point out it will also find hideous new ways to frustrate us. So just count on that as well.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Oh, yeah, no, it's part of the fun of like the, of the. Of the AI like, and especially like vibe coding related Reddits is all the people who are like, now that there's. Google has, it's like a AI based ide. There are people who are using it, like with the safeties turned off and just like, yeah, it decided to execute a root level, like, delete my entire home directory command when I just asked it to find.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, it's like, yeah, we have actually.

[Leo Laporte]

A very good demo of anti gravity on our AI user group from last week. Thank you, Lawrence. One of our club members did that. So if you're interested and you're in the club, you look on the Twit plus feed and thank you to another club member, Paul.

Better known as Chocolate Milk minisip, who has sent me the Wikipedia article for Rear Naked Choke, which has an absolutely horrific picture of a Marine getting choked. The naked applies refers to the fact that you're not using a training uniform or gi. You're not naked.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But is that what Justin Bieber meant, is the question.

[Leo Laporte]

We don't know what he meant, but it sounds like he's.

[Jason Snell]

It will take better people than us to know that.

[Leo Laporte]

Or he's in the Canadian Marines. I don't know.

[Andy Ihnatko]

More adventurous people than I will investigate.

[Leo Laporte]

Recent studies have shown the rear Naked choke takes an average of 8.9 seconds to render an opponent unconscious. So there you go, Justin. Use it with care, use it with caution. We're gonna take a break and please do not you do not attempt to rear naked choke anybody during this break. We will be back with more back break weekly Andy, Alex and Jason. Our show today brought to you by Space Mail. We've been talking about Spaceship for a while. Really great domain name service but they do a lot more. I want to tell you about their very nice professional email service Spacemail. It's business email. Now of course, I've said this for years. The best way for you to make your business email look professional in every message you send and give your emails the best chance of reaching the inbox, not the spam folder is to switch to Space Mail, get a domain name that's your business name and switch to Space Mail where delivery happens. It's why over 2,000 users switch to Space Mail every month. Switching super easy. Spacemail has a very fast unbox process that links your domain and email in seconds. So all you do is you go there get a domain for your business or your family or whatever. A custom domain is so much better than gmail.com or aol.com or heaven for fed hotmail or yahoo.com it shows you're pro, it shows you care. And once you set up Space Mail keeps everything running smoothly with built in spam detection and a 99% uptime guarantee. It's really great email. New features are shaped by user feedback. They, they're, they pay attention to their, their record credit users and of course people who send them email and fill in support tickets on their website. And they build stuff around what people want. For instance, built in calendar. There's a great AI email assistant built in. There's an app for iOS of course and for Android for mail on the go. And all of those things were suggested by Space Mail users. They really listen. Space mail is, is a key part of the wider spaceship universe if you, you will pardon that expression if you listen. You know I talk about spaceship all the time. Some of the best prices you've ever seen on domains, not just for Cyber Friday or Cyber Monday but all year round. Plus the add on features you might want including VPNs, website builders, hosting, VPSs.

Tracking protection, all sorts of stuff. Take a look. Whether you're building something big or launching your first idea or you just want an email address for your family, Spacemail gives you a pro email address without the pro level price tag. And with a 30 day free trial, you can start today at zero cost. Take a look at the deal they offer if you transfer domains over because it includes spacemail as well. Visit spaceship.com TWIT to see the exclusive offers and discover why thousands have already made the move. That's spaceship.com Twitter TWIT I think you will like it. And don't forget their little ALF AI assistant who helps you do all those little fiddly bits that you know every domain requires from time to time. [e-mail] TWIT thank you Spaceship. Apple is still facing all sorts of government concern. They may have to enable always on GPS in India. I wonder why the government would want that.

They're reviewing a proposal that would keep GPS location services permanently active on every iPhone sold in the country. According to Reuters, it wouldn't just be Apple, it would be all smartphone makers that have a gps.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, apparently this was a proposal that the telecom regulators in India floated privately in July. And both Google and Apple have been saying there's no way we can do this.

All foam said, there's no way we can do this. For too many reasons that we can possibly explain we can't do this. So given how quickly they backtracked on this, hey, how about we make everybody install this force, install this unremovable app and they backtracked a day later. Hopefully they are respondent to the idea of everyone that they require to have sign on this and complicity on this saying that we are not, not on board with this at all. Not even a little bit.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's good. You got to fight these authoritarians because you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. You really.

[Andy Ihnatko]

There's definitely a line.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. Russia has restricted FaceTime because, well, because of course you wouldn't want your people communicating with one another. Roscom Nadzor which is a frequent punchline on security. Now Russia's FCC alleged in a statement the service FaceTime is being quote, used to organize and conduct terrorist activities on the territory of the country to recruit perpetrators, commit fraud and other crimes against our citizens. They also blocked Snapchat while they were at it on the same grounds.

[Andy Ihnatko]

End to end encryption is not helpful to them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we must be able to check to see what you are doing and.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Of course tick that checkbox. Like Jason like was mentioning earlier about the Patriarch, I said, oh well this is a move to keep our people safe from terrorism. Like I said, don't think that that's why you're doing this. But Keep talking.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

What else is kind of. It's going to get a little slow. That's the irony of Apple saying, oh, you know, we're going to bury these announcements in December. When you're a show that covers Apple entirely, that's the worst time because there's no other news. Here's a love letter to a glory days of iPhone gaming. This probably should have been a pick of the week for Andrew Webster, writing in the Verge. It's a new collection of old games from Simago or simogo. I'm not sure how you pronounce that.

They have done other games before, but now they have this samogo legacy collection. Seven games from the good old days.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't made the good old days of iPhone games.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, good old days, that's a good question. Cosmo Spin.

[Alex Lindsay]

I mean, there's a lot of great.

[Leo Laporte]

Road beat, Sneak Bandit.

Year, Year Walk. I don't, I don't know these games.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Oh, you know, I'll say the good old days when you could just say, hi, I have a game to sell. It costs X amount of money.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Andy Ihnatko]

If you pay this amount of money, you will get this game game like, oh, and I won't have to buy things to make things. Nope, nope. It's $4.99. We think that's a fair amount of money.

[Alex Lindsay]

Great.

[Leo Laporte]

That's.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's the only nostalgia I have for early iPhone games and all games in general.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, if you're a fan of the Walk now, you know where you can get it.

[Alex Lindsay]

I. I sometimes feel bad because I, I bought Kingdom Rush is the only game I play on iPhone and, and it's. But, but I have like.

[Leo Laporte]

I think you love tower defense games, don't you?

[Alex Lindsay]

I love tower defense. No. Here's the funny thing is I'm pretty picky about tower defense. I. I don't know. I don't play very many of them because they're always two something. So it's trying to find the right mix. And so Field Runners, of course, was the one that I enjoyed the most and it went under probably because it didn't ask you to do it. You bought it once for 3.99 and then never paid for them again. There's only so many of us to do that. But Kingdom Rush is the one that I still, I only play it on. It's too addictive for me. So I only play it on the planet. So if I take off, I get to play Kingdom Rush.

[Leo Laporte]

Fortunately, you're on the plane every week.

[Alex Lindsay]

Not Very often anymore. But when I'm on plane, I play Kingdom Rush.

[Leo Laporte]

That seems like you have been for a while.

[Alex Lindsay]

The fall has been busy, but usually I'll play. But I feel like it's the right mix of. You can buy things from them, special characters or something like that, but you can completely play the game without buying anything. And especially if you're like me, that will play. Play. I only play one level on. On the game. You know, there's one level that randomizes the. The challenges. And so. And so I. I just play that and build up a lot of points so I can buy all the things I need.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But the.

[Alex Lindsay]

The. The interesting thing is, is that with the other games, I. I do feel like they've gotten into this thing. Like, we have to figure out how to cash, you know, how to get you to pay another 99 cents or $1.99 or $3.99 constantly. And. And it doesn't last very long for me. That's the point.

[Leo Laporte]

Problem.

Well, that's the freemium model, and I think to some degree, you can blame Apple for that because of their unwillingness.

[Alex Lindsay]

They promoted it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, also their unwillingness to offer demos. Right. It was the only way. It just kind of got us in that. Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think that the hard part is that I have noticed and this is always. I don't know. I don't know how everybody else. How it affected everybody else, but the subscription model has definitely greatly depressed my interest in buying apps or downloading apps. I used to download, maybe I used to buy an app probably once a day, once every other day, but for a buck. 99 or two. 99 or whatever, you just, oh, I'll just give this a shot. And now I have this, like, kind of PTSD about 100%. What is this going to look like? And how is this going to. What is this going to mean? And, you know, one of the. Again, the reason that I'm so attached to the Apple the App Store is because I can see all my subscriptions and cut them all off. You know, like, I just cut them off constantly. I look at everything and I. And the hard part is I get to end up with other subscriptions if I buy. I'm always afraid I buy very little outside the App Store because it's mostly just because I don't want to manage it. I don't want to remember that, you know, now I have to go through my credit card and figure out who's charging me for what. And. And so. So I think. But I I thought about it the other day that I was like, I barely ever download an app, you know, like unless, you know, it's just very, very rare when it used to be something, I mean I have hundreds of apps I used to download, download them all the time and I'd pay a buck 99 or 2.99 or 3.99. It was no big deal. And I think that that lifestyle has ended with subscriptions.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's tough. And I'm on your side.

Whether I'm buying an app on the Apple App Store or on Google Play. I've realized that I entered the search with the idea of I'm probably going to get cheated If I'm not 100% on guard and vigilant because there so many different ways to just for it to absolutely. And horribly. There was a time like a moment last month where spontaneously I needed an app for my Android phone that was the equivalent of Apple's like measurement app. And so okay, but there must be something on the Play Store because that's actually a useful thing. And of course the number one title was okay, this actually has a lot of reviews, but hey, it's 13.99 free for the first three days. Then after that is 13.99 twice a month. And it's like, so now I have to look and it wouldn't have zorched me because it is a Google Play like Google Payments thing. So I could like find all my subscriptions. But for that and like a 10 other reasons I have to evaluate that. Okay, is this actually just taking 100 different permissions for privacy violations that it does not need for this app? Is this something that it will not really work? It will work for the first like 15 minutes until I need a critical feature that is behind a $5 a month paywall. Well, I hate the fact that even a well reviewed app, I'm thinking, great, this is open source. Everyone this is clean, doesn't ask for permissions. I also have to remind myself that maybe a year from now, two years from now, some very bad entity will ask this independent developer, here's $100,000, we would like to buy your app. And then suddenly they put all kinds of trackers onto it with the next release of it. I hate the fact that I have to feel like I'm stepping onto a used car lot every time I search for an app, whether it's for the Apple Store or the, or the Google Store. It's terrible.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, yeah, it's hard. I think that, you know, I, you know, and there's some apps subscription comes up and I'm like, what? And, and then I think about how often I use it. Like Polycam is it, it hurts when, when Polycam comes up, it's like $99 a year. And, and you just go, oh, but I use Polycam every day. So I'm kind of like, okay, I can, I can get another year to that. But. And they, and they're constantly constant to their defense. Polygam is constantly upgrading the app like every time I open. In fact, I feel like sometimes they do too much upgrading because I can't figure out what's going on.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like Discord. Every time I open Discord, I gotta download it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Maybe, maybe it's just because of like how my brain is deficient in so many ways. But it's like I stopped like buying annual subscriptions because I can keep on top of things on a month by month. Something might slip past the net for a month, maybe two months. But it's very, very easy for. But I'll get it.

[Alex Lindsay]

It.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But some. But the number of times I said, hey, why do I Suddenly have like $200 less? What was this $200 something dollars charge? It's like, oh, it's for this app that was actually quite useful to you a year and a half ago, but you haven't actually touched in six months. And now I have to trust that this company is a good company that says, yeah, if you cancel within 24 hours, yeah, we'll give you your $200 back. I never feel more stupid than when I'm charged for an app that I.

[Alex Lindsay]

Don'T use anymore that I do. Yeah. And I really find that for me a lot of times, if it's a one year app or it's a. The reason it pops up like for the Polycam one is because I cancel all my apps, you know, almost after I wait.

[Leo Laporte]

Silly.

[Alex Lindsay]

So that way you don't cancel them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

And then I just. And then they drop off if I don't update it, you know, so if I don't go in there and consciously update it, they're all set to expire.

[Leo Laporte]

I do like it that when you delete an app on the iPhone and iPad, it will set up. Say you want to manage the subscription too. That's a. That is a. That is looking out for you.

[Jason Snell]

The flip side of this is I use Final Cut Pro for iPad occasionally for live shoots and then not the rest of the year. And for 4.99, I think I unlock it for A month I do my thing and then I move on.

[Alex Lindsay]

Right? If you're, if you're well managed. And I, you know, the. I felt like with, with Logic, I paid a lot. You know, I got Logic on the iPad and I was just about to. I recommended it last week, I was just about to delete it, and then suddenly realized that, you know, suddenly recorded something. It was actually easier to use on the iPad than it was on the, on the, on the computer. And now I'll be using it all the time. So that's the other side of that. But, But I think that. But I have paid a lot more for it because I left it, turned it on to see what was going on, and then forgot about it. That's. That's the problem that I get into.

[Andy Ihnatko]

We're talking about apps on the, on iOS. So I'll, I'll mention this pet peeve that I had to correct the number of times that, like, I fill my iPad with lots and lots of stuff. Sometimes I run out of space and I finally had to turn off the feature that said, hey, would you like me to help save space by automatically removing apps that you don't use any you haven't used in a long time when I'm short of space? Because the number of times where, like, oh, I just downloaded a huge, like, YouTube playlist or put like, a whole bunch of movies on it, like, okay, I'm right. The margin that, oh, gosh, I'm. Okay, great. I'll delete all this stuff that I don't use anymore. These playlists I don't use anymore, anymore. But now, like, it. I wish that it said, oh, you have lots of free space left. Would you like me to redownload, like, all the apps I've removed? Because I'll find myself, like, in a place without WI fi or where my WI Fi connection is my mobile hotspot where I have limited space and like, oh, God, thank God. Thank goodness. I have this podcast recording app. No, I don't, because it got removed. And now, okay, this is a 200 megabyte download that's going to take a while to install, and it's also going to cost me a lot of my money. Mobile hotspot data. And now I wish that I'd unchecked that checkbox. So I unchecked that checkbox because I want the apps that I installed to actually stay installed. Because there are a lot of apps that you just, like we've been saying, you use them once every few months and you forget that Maybe it could have been deleted in that time and you're kind of hosed because you're in a hotel room with like basically dial up speed wi fi and you're like I wish I had not elected to delete this 100 megabytes app.

[Leo Laporte]

I just want to say a shout out to Howard Oakley who does a blog. He must have been drinking a lot of coffee lately he's been posting like crazy. The Eclectic Light Company. It is about Apple hardware, software and art.

[Jason Snell]

Fine art. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And there's great fine art posts almost every single day. And there are amazing technical, deep technical articles about Apple. Most recently when I wanted to bring this is the blog the Eclectic Light Company Max and painting no AI content. Howard Oakley, its author and the most recent article I wanted to mention is the issue which remains. It's been a problem ever since Apple Silicon. I think it's even before Apple Silicon, since the security chips got put into some Apple devices with fingerprint readers of making a bootable external dictator.

Very tricksy. In fact almost impossible. And the reason Apple gives for this, and it's a perfectly good reason, is you don't want somebody booting your Mac from another drive. It's a security issue, but.

Since ever since I started using personal computers, it's always been my habit to make an external bootable drive. If your internal drive on your Macintosh dies, there's no way to recover it without, I don't know, bringing it to the Apple Store.

[Jason Snell]

I guess if a chip is fried, yeah, for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

So he's got a really good piece. It's not for everybody, but if you want an external bootable drive for your Apple Silicon Mac, there's a new process in Tahoe that you need to follow and I would recommend it. And it does. Unfortunately, because Apple does not offer downloadable ISOs of their operating systems, they used to have it in the App Store. So you have to go to Mr. Macintosh to get it. Which I'm not crazy about that notion.

But okay, if you trust Mr. Macintosh.

Apple, you should really continue to provide the current Mac OS in the App Store. But anyway, it's a process. You should check it out. Out. I'm not going to go through it, but I don't. Isn't. Is this no longer advice that everybody should have a bootable external drive?

[Jason Snell]

Not since it was impossible.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't use them. I mean I, you know what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

If you Mac dies? Well, you have so many. You just go to a different one.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, I, you know, I have. I keep my resources off the computer on a separate drive. So, you know, all the files that I have are somewhere else.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the key, is having a backup somewhere that you can use. Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

And so then the hardest part is the apps that don't have.

The apps that don't. That aren't in the App Store. Because the big thing with an imac is you grind it down and then you.

[Andy Ihnatko]

There's.

[Alex Lindsay]

I've got a lot of App Store apps, and you say, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And it just. And you go away and you come back and they're all installed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I use homebrew for that, but it's. It's really handy.

[Alex Lindsay]

Then there's a handful of these other apps that, you know, all these other apps that you have to remember where all those passwords were. I've been trying to keep them, all the passwords in a place that I can find and easily put them back in. But that's the. That's the big challenge of, like. Especially because a lot of the little apps that I have that aren't in the App Store but do have passwords were things that I installed very quickly, like, oh, I need this for right now, and I go do it. And now I have to figure out what I did with that.

[Jason Snell]

The truth is that what they're doing here, because a lot of failures are on the boot partition. They're on the partition. They're not a chip failure. And so unless the chip that contains your entire SSD dies, there is a recovery partition and you can. You can boot to recovery and then reload and get back where you need to be. And so they put their money down and basically like, that is going to solve this almost every time. And they get all these benefits. So I think almost nobody actually needs a bootable external. Although if you were somebody who's technical enough to do it, by the way, those Mr. Macintosh links, he's just looking to where you can find the Apple.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so there's nothing.

[Jason Snell]

They're from Apple. They're just a little harder to find than maybe they should be.

[Leo Laporte]

So they're trustworthy?

[Alex Lindsay]

Okay.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Yeah, they're trustworthy. So it's.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, most people don't need to do it. I think we all kind of got out of the habit. But the fact is that Apple's SSD chips are reliable enough that it's not like the old spinning hard drive days where it could die immediately. And the fact that Apple is confident in enough that they put their recovery on the Same chip as storage suggests that they think that chip is probably going to be okay and that the problems you have with your disk are not going to be related to a failure. But yeah, if it fails, I mean, you basically. What are you going to do? You could boot off of an external, but really, you got to get that computer fixed. You've got to do it.

[Leo Laporte]

How hard is that? In this day and age with everything glued in and soldered in and hardwired hardware that's.

[Jason Snell]

I think they can extract that pretty easy pretty easily.

[Leo Laporte]

Can they get the drive out?

[Jason Snell]

I would say if you're somebody for whom everything depends on you and you. If your computer breaks, you need a. You need a backup and running instantly, which was always the argument about the external drive. If you're that important, have another computer.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Have a second computer.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's just why Alex doesn't worry, does he?

[Jason Snell]

Because most people aren't. Most people aren't in that position where it's like, I must. I'll pay whatever price in order to be able to be. Be back online in five minutes. It's like, most people don't live like that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That said, there's a difference between, like, oh, God, that my SSD died. It's going to take me a whole day for like a brand new, like, M2 SSD to arrive from Amazon. It's going to cost me all of $70. Oh, damn. Versus yeah, let me take. Show you the new M5 MacBook Pros because it makes no sense for you to pay to have this repaired because it's going to cost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Jason brings up a hugely important point. That it's not that Apple is cavalier about giving users options and power over their own hardware. It's that they feel as though it's no longer necessary to the use. Cases for which having a bootable external drive was very, very important aren't as relevant in 2025 as they were in 2015. That's absolutely relevant. It's the. I like the.

I just aborted a very, very interesting digression, but let's move on.

That said, I'm so glad that the one and only time I've ever lost an SSD was the very, very last time there was a removable SSD on a MacBook. Even there, I needed to get like a bootleg adapter because Apple did something kind of, kind of weird saying, yeah, it's M2, but we're going to switch a few things around and just to make sure that you can't just Simply buy any M2 and replace it. But the fact I'm very, very cognizant of the fact that I was up and running again in like a day or 2 for $70 or $80. Whereas if the SSD on the MacBook I'm using right now for it to fry, there is absolutely no option but to find at least $1,000 to buy a brand new, at least a MacBook Air just to get up and running again. Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

And I will admit I take full advantage of iCloud in the sense that any of my documents that I need I reflexively put in iCloud.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, of course.

[Alex Lindsay]

So my keynote, because I use Keynote. So keynote and pages and numbers and then anything else that I need I'm constantly putting up there because I just.

It means that it's less about my computer going down and more about I'm somewhere and I need that file. And I don't, you know.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. It's miraculous how easy it is that again, like.

If my MacBook were to just basically drop into a sewer and be recoverable, I could go to the Apple Store, buy a brand new one, hook it up to the Internet and basically be completely back to where it was before, after however much data was transferred back. That's quite a blessing. But I'm just saying that let's not lose. It's still very disappointing that an SSD which is not necessarily a forever component failing means essentially buy a brand new machine. I don't think for a lot of.

[Jason Snell]

People, I mean, I don't think I would have to look up what the repair prices are for that. But I don't think that the SSD failure is buy a new computer. I think it's take it into Apple and have them replace the SSD chip with a new one. And I don't know what they'll charge you for that, but I don't think it's going to be $1,000. I'm just, I'm just saying that most people aren't in a position where they need to build a bootable backup because that is going to not be a huge. Because. Right. Because then it's up to date and all of those things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we used to do that with Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner. They would let you make identical.

[Jason Snell]

A full bootable clone.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, full bootable clone that you could keep up to date. So at any time. But you're right, we don't really need that. I guess in the days of sst. But it was. I just felt like it was a nice thing. I guess I'm old school.

[Jason Snell]

No, I mean, that's right. I guess what I'm saying is the failure percentage here is so low that it's not likely to happen. And if you're the person who's like, literally, economies depend on you being at.

[Leo Laporte]

Your computer, have a second computer.

[Jason Snell]

That person probably should have a second computer for a regular person. If you're backing up and you're on the cloud and it's going to be the. It's going to be that Average Joe kind of like, oh, no, this really sucks. I'm going to either have to have my local repair shop or my Apple store switch out the SSD and I'm going to have to pay for it. And I don't know, I think it's a couple hundred bucks. It's not. It's not, you know, a thousand dollars.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think it's another motherboard replacement. I don't think they will just pull the bad SSD and put in a new one.

[Jason Snell]

I don't know. I would have to look it up. I've been trying to look it up during this entire show and I can't find it it. But it shouldn't be that hard because it is a separate part.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, all right. I guess maybe I have brought up something eclectic. Light company. Go look it up and you can make one without completely disabling security on your system. But maybe you don't need to. I think, Alex, you should probably take a look at Homebrew. This is what I use to build a system, and it's really amazing. And in fact, they just announced a new feature. You can install Flatpaks with it. So Homebrew, which is a package manager for the Macintosh, it also can be used on Linux. I don't use it on Linux, but I do use.

[Alex Lindsay]

I usually think of Homebrew as something like. I'm going to put something heavier like FFMPEG or something else.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no. So listen up. You can. Now with Homebrew, actually, I've done this for a while. You create something called a brew file, which has. It's a manifest of everything installed in your system, including, including Mac App Store packages, GUI packages, you know, DNG files, and so forth. And then with that brew file, which I always save off, you can run it with the Brew bundle command and it will reinstall everything. And now with their new release, 5.04 this week, they support an additional format called Flatpaks, which are very big in the Ubuntu world and in Linux world. But now you can install other apps and this is on the Mac as well as on Linux. You can have a single script that will install everything for you. And it's even a configurable script with variables and if statements and so forth. So you can make it more sophisticated. I don't do that. I just dump out a brew file and then I have it and I store that externally, actually put it in notion. And then if I need to rebuild a Mac or I get a brand new Mac, I have to admit, like restore for me.

[Alex Lindsay]

And it is a little bit painful. I don't update my computers very often and usually when they get updated they kind of slowly just get what they needed. Like I usually don't try to reproduce everything that I had. I usually am slowly putting things on like, oh yeah, I need that or I need that. Like I got a, I have an Ultra, an M3 Ultra that I got for doing immersive stuff, stuff that's behind me. And for that computer it is definitely like a. I'm adding things. You know, it only has the apps that I need when I need them. Now it may eventually it's going to become. It's going to replace the M1 that I have here that I, you know, use most, most days. But I don't know exactly when that'll occur, you know. And so for me, I like to start with a clean system when I get a new computer and then slowly add what I need it. Not just automatically add what I would consider because there's a lot of apps on this app, on this computer that I haven't used since three days after I downloaded it. So I kind of like one kind of feel like the apps have to prove themselves, like, oh, I missed that one. And then I'll go install it. So that's, that tends. And I know that that's a very inefficient way to live, but no, every.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Time I get a brand new device it's like, like nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Like it's the only way to make sure you're not. It's the, the times where I've upgraded to a new phone or to a new laptop where I've just simply said the rule is we don't install an app until the moment that we need it. And then suddenly, gosh, it turns out that, yeah, it's like a little gift.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's like a little gift from past. You though. Cause you go up to the App Store going, oh, I'm going to download this app. And you're like, oh, wait, I owned it. The little cloud download.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I'm like, oh, look at that. I already. Please do not re. Download every app that I've installed in the previous one because that was part of my. That's. That's not your fault, App Store. That's my fault App Store.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the Brew file that I generated on the laptop I'm using right now. It is an editable text file. So if you decide, well, I don't want to automatically reinstall this stuff, you just delete it. You see, the taps are all things like fonts. For instance, I install hundreds of fonts all at once. You can have apps and as I said, you can now have Flatpak. So it's a simple thing to take this Brew file and edit it. If you say, oh no, you know, I don't want lol cat. From now on I just delete that line and it won't install that. From now on you can make a stripped down version of the Brew file. But I like it because I can also generate a Brew file and get my Mac right back to where it was the day the hard drive died. So I think this is probably. I mean, I'm not going to make a bootable external drive, apparently on a laptop. Top David Schaub saying in the YouTube, that's not even. None. That really isn't doable. It is a motherboard replacement.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, apparently so.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

It's brutal. This is bad. This is. What I'll say is, I know this all sounds very bad. I think this also shows you how confident Apple is that it's extremely unlikely that the SSD chip is going to fail. And if it does fail, I would also say it probably means they think it'll fail immediately within the warranty period and they'll have to replace it for you. That's my guess. Yes. Yeah, I've never had this happen either where your drive, you know, literally the memory chip that is your SSD completely.

[Leo Laporte]

Fails and that is Surface mounted on the motherboard. So it is not, it's not $6,500, not something you can just pop. And this is the other thing I do with my Brew file is it will also install Mac App Store apps. I know that's why you like those. Alex, these are all Mac apps. See the mas.

[Alex Lindsay]

It just runs the camp. It. It runs the script to do that.

[Leo Laporte]

It needs the id. Now, this is the only downside I've found is that ID is version specific. So you got to keep the brew file up to date. If you want to have the latest versions, it doesn't install the latest version of the app installs that version of the app. But I don't think that's the end of the world. And so for instance, I'm going to take Omnivore out because that company got sold, went out of business. So I'm no longer going to automatically install that, just delete that line and I don't have have to have it. I, I think this is horrifically useful. So I, I, I do recommend people take a look at Homebrew. It's free, it's open source and it's reliable and, and a great way to to get make a reproducible system. That is really the goal. I think if you can't make a boot disk, the next best thing is to have a reproducible system that you can rebuild and, and be up and running quick. Quickly.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. This is why it's so important to remember that keep your focus on what the desired result is as opposed to a feature that you thought you should have but you don't have anymore. What is the desired result? Well, I want as low a period of downtime on my MacBook as possible. And to me that has always meant have a bootable backup at hand so that I can always just simply restart and redo it that way. But again that is like 2008 thinking. And now the idea is, well, let's make this so reliable that you don't need that and that to restore from a completely toasted motherboard now just basically takes is capped only by your Internet connection speed, nothing else. Because believe me, my instinct is that why are you removing this feature that I think is important or that I've always relied on or that safety my life like 10 years ago, like, because that was 10 years ago and you don't need that anymore. I will still kick back on. I don't care if you're telling me that nobody uses the headphone jack anymore. I use the headphone jack all the time and I want to know why you're removing it and not giving me something back that makes it that kind of replaces what's good about it. But nonetheless it's important to take that step back and say what result do you want? And like is Apple actually giving you the result that you want in a different way way? So don't complain if you're still if your status quo has not changed just your feature list has changed.

[Leo Laporte]

I apologize if I am stealing anybody's app pick of the week, but I think this is probably the time I should mention that iFixit has returned to the App Store with its Fixit app and it now has AI guidance in it.

[Alex Lindsay]

Now with AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's AI. Well now it's got to be good, right? So the iFixit app, which I think is free. Yeah, it's free for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro. It's got the, you know, the repair guides that are also on the website ifixit.com but it will walk you through it and the AI assistant will give you.

Answer questions based on the iFixit library, which means it's probably somewhat reliable. Yeah, I haven't tried it, so I don't know.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, me neither. Yeah, I'd love to see if they're going to be puckish about it. I'd love to see them do like a different version of the app. That said, and here's how easy it would be to fix your iPhone if Apple made it. Absolutely easy repair. Hey look. Use this screwdriver to remove the four screws that holding the hold the back plate on. Hey look, here is something. There is something that's socketed that's easy to remove and put back in again. Wait a minute. You don't have to re register this to to make sure that all the serial numbers match. Like yeah, that would be.

[Leo Laporte]

I suspect that they want to maintain their relationship with it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I would say so. And it would be mean spirited.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't want to do it. But it's where I know I probably should download this onto my iPad. Your Pocket Repair Genius. Be good to have it. I must stand corrected. The article I read said it was available for the Mac. I don't believe it is just iPhone and iPad. If you have the Mac, you could just go to their iFixit website. But you wouldn't have the Pocket Genius.

You can't put your Mac in your pocket. Anyway. All right, a little break and more to come. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy and Nako, Jason Snell of6colors.com Alex Lindsay, Office Hours Global Our show today brought to you by our friends at outSystems, the number one AI powered low code development platform. That's a lot of buzzwords all stuck together. Let me explain. Organizations all over the world are actually creating their own custom apps and AI agents. And they're doing it the easy way, the right way, without systems and the Outsystems platform. And there's good reason for that. Outsystems is all about outcomes, helping teams quickly deploy apps and AI agents and deliver results and lots of success stories. You'll find them all on the website. They helped a top US bank deploy an app for customers. Yes, it be could can be customer facing as well to open new accounts on any device. By the way, the results are fantastic. It delivered a 75% faster onboarding times. They can also do internal apps. They helped one of the world's largest brewers deploy a solution to automate tasks and clear bottlenecks which delivered a savings of 1 million development hours. They even helped a global insurer accelerate development of a portal, an app for their employees employees which delivered a 360 degree view of customers and a way for insurance agents to grow policy sales. You've probably been in a situation where you're thinking ah, I wish we had an app to do this task that we have to do over and over again. But I don't want to go out and buy one. It's going to be too generic, it's going to, it's just going to need too much customization or be too hard to learn. And I certainly don't want to build one because that's just a nightmare. Expensive, time consuming. We've, we've gone through the build versus by conundrum here at Twit many times and usually chose wrong I might add. But now there's a third way. Low code plus AI. The OutSystems platform. It's a game changer for development teams with AI powered low code. You're not vibe coding exactly. You're low coding using the help of AI. So you're getting great robust custom applications that are exactly what you need need. They're future proof because it's easy for you to change them and update them. And you're getting AI agents and you're all getting it at the speed, getting all of that at the speed of buying. Plus because it's outsystems, it comes with all of the platform stuff you really need and want. Automated architecture, yes. Absolute security built in. You've got integrations with other tools you use, data flows, permissions, all that stuff that you would want just comes. It's, it's, it's, it's just table stakes. Without systems. Without systems is so easy to create your own purpose built apps and agents you no longer have to consider off the shelf sameware software solutions again. OutSystems, the number one AI powered low code development platform. Learn more about [e-mail] TWIT that's OutSystems.

We thank him so much for the support of MacBreak Weekly.

Did you see the new pebble ring? I guess this is not exactly an Apple story, although I know a lot of. Andy, you use a pebble watch or no. You were thinking about it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think I want to get one of the new ones. I broke up my old one when that news came out.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah. So now they have a smart ring, but it's not a health ring. It does one thing and only one thing. It records you. It's going to launch next year. It's not an AI recorder either. It's a stainless steel ring. It's got a single button. You press and hold the button which activates the microphone on the ring.

After which you can whisper into it, speak anything from reminders or to do lists and that. That's it. No health tracking, no sleep tracking, no notifications. It's 75 bucks right now. At an introductory price, I think it's going to be 100 bucks.

That's all it does.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I don't know. This has become such a huge category in the past year. Just a device that records your every. This is the exact same thing, but basically. How about a microphone and recorder that you just basically keep using all the time where the default.

[Leo Laporte]

And it does have AI to the extent that it will transcribe. It's kind of like a ring for drafts. I've used drafts for years as a way to get text in. It's kind of like that. And by the way, it's not rechargeable because they say the battery lasts forever. You never need to recharge it. You never can recharge it. The battery lasts for years.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's understandable if you're using it intermittently throughout the day.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But yeah, it's still, it's still kind of. It's only 75 bucks.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't, I don't like no subscription. Right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The biggest thing I don't like about rings is that they are just basically built to be e waste because they can't be repaired.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way. You're gonna, you have to wear it in your index finger and this is not gonna inspire. It's not jewelry. Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I just, I, I, I'm, this is, I don't know. This is just something that kind of concerns me about like 10 years from now. Are we going to be. Is the marker of being Gen X saying, I just think it's weird that people just always have Recording devices that are recording the audio of everything around them at all times. Like, oh, come on, Gen X, What's.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, I don't want anybody to record me over at Grandpa.

[Andy Ihnatko]

If I'm having a conversation with you, just like a regular conversation, do I have to be concerned that, like, you're recording this and not. And not because you are trying to do anything insidious, but simply because. Oh, of course. No. I have this thing in my pocket that records, like, all because, you know, I want to be able to remember, like, what was discussed or I remember where I was, things like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But I'm not happy with the idea that I always have to feel as though I'm on the record when I'm talking about everything. Like, do I have to worry about that without a physical, without you wearing, like, a little, like, button that says, beware, I'm unrecording you right now?

[Alex Lindsay]

And then. And I've said this before, but in the 90s, my father, you know, was a. Is a lawyer. Is a lawyer. But in the 90s, 90s, you know, people would come to him with a car crash. You know, I was in a car crash. I don't think it was my fault. Very first thing he would do is subpoena the cell number, sell the cell records. This is before everybody had a phone. But he, if he said, if they had a cell phone and they were on it, I win. Like, that was. And so. And so the, you know, like, because the insurance company will just let it go and they'll just say, okay, we'll write it off. And I think that that left a lasting impression, you know, that left a lasting impression on, you know, that, that you got to be very careful about what you put on the record when you're emailing, when you're texting, when you're. But wandering around with me recording all the time.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

On purpose. I mean, that is discovery gold. You know, like, if someone just goes, you know, and the problem is, is that you have something there. And when they do discovery and they say, we want it, it's very hard for you to redact everything that's there. They're just, you're just going to, you know, they're going to want that recording and who knows what's on it? You know, every discussion, all the other things, I, you know, and a lot of times people are just trying to think out loud. You know, they're thinking about things. It doesn't mean that that's the way that they believe everything should be. And I think that when we record everything, we take away the ability to think out loud. And I think that's very problematic.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. But again, just the loss of the idea of a casual conversation where there are things that I will say to you, Alex, in person that I would not say on this podcast because if I'm saying it for the podcast, I have to have that little pre processor that says I have to make sure that for the purposes of this being part of the public record, I'm being very, very clear and specific about my intent when I. Whereas, like, we've been friends for a mighty long time, you understand my intent, you understand my meaning. However, out of context, it might sound like, wow, what a petty and cheap thing for Andy to say about that thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, are you fans of Sneaky Sketch Sasquatch? Dear kids fans, it's not a great game from my point of view, but I don't. It's very, very.

[Jason Snell]

I tried it once.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So if you are or you know a kid who is a sneaky, it's hard to say. Sneaky Sasquatch. Fuck fan. Apparently you can spot a Sasquatch at a Today at Apple session or join a dance party on the big screen at select Apple Store locations. Families can sign up for a kids draw with Sneaky Sasquatch session. They're making it even harder to spark some creative fun. Kids can help Sasquatch create a festive party scene on the iPad using drawing tools every weekend through January 6th. I didn't even know this. Apple Stores apparently have an Apple arcade bay where you can play the game as well. In Los Angeles, there is an interactive installation that opens to the public Friday and Saturday to join Sneaky Sasquatch at Apple December 12th and 13th. Okay. Yep. Consider yourself warned.

There will be a Sasquatch in the store.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't think we say it often enough. Every time I walk in by an Apple Store or walk into an Apple Store. When you think of so many people having trouble with retail and it's just this crazy hive of activity, there's people like, you know, you walk in and there's people like learning on a big. They're taking a class over here and figuring stuff out and buying stuff. And I think that. I think a lot of companies would. It would be good to study that a little bit more. I know people have done studies, but I believe it still makes more money per square foot than any other retail outlet in the world. But a lot of it is that it is Apple's hub. It's your point of contact with Apple and you have. The other thing you notice is that when you're there, everybody really knows what they're talking about. Like, you know, very well trained, very. I mean, you know, like, it's. It's not just someone that they hired and said, okay, we're going to put you out in front. You get the impression that everyone got trained pretty heavily on both and how to interact with people, but also about the products and about how to make things work. And it's just a really. I just find that it's just such a huge success.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's, you know, it's. It's a sec. It's a success story that goes far, far beyond simply retail. It's like every time I go to an Apple Store, particularly one that's like a. Like one of the big, like, dedicated Apple Stores, it feels like visiting the expat community in a foreign city where it's like.

I know that if I go to America Town, in this city, in this part of the city, if I order a hot dog, it will not be like a sausage on a different. It will be a hot dog made with chemicals and meat with all kinds of relish and chopped onions and things on it. When you go to an Apple Store, you know that, okay, I know where I am. I know that this is part of my community to the extent that Apple still has, like, a separate community. But it's like, okay, everything will make sense within my understanding of myself as a. As a Mac user or an iPad user or an iPhone user. And as you say, people can just like.

It'S one of the reasons why. It's like, I kind of regret that malls are dying, that people are just going there just to, like, do a couple errands. But hey, I'll stop by the Apple Store and see what's going on there. Or my phone needs a charge, or, hey, I want to download something for the drive home. Hey, I'll go to the Apple Store because I know that the WI fi is going to be good and it's going to be trusted, trustworthy, and that they won't kick me out for just plugging into an outlet for 45 minutes.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. And I think that when you get there, and a lot of times it's like, I need to solve something really quickly. And I know it'll be at the Apple Store. I know it won't be the cheapest solution. Right. But if I need another cable or something like that, I know where all these Apple Stores are. And it's just, you know, I've been in Apple Stores all over the world. And what I do like also is the fact that they are, they have their own character. You know, the one in Paris and the one in Coventry and the one. And you know, you know, each one of them has their own little, you know, it feels like someone had little projects anyway, I just, I'm always amazed that they do that so well, you know, and when I, when I go and I was just in one yesterday morning, like, I was just like buying, you know, buying a charger, you know, like, or buying a cable that I forgot, you know, and, and just thinking, wow, this is. And it just feels good when you're there. That's the interesting thing.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And let's, let's also call them out for doing their services to architecture that we're in a world in which every beautiful, grand, formally public building is being turned into a trendy restaurant or into condos or something like that. Saying, what used to be, hey, this is what a bank or a post office or a movie theater used to look like in the 20s and 30s and 40s where we want people who come in off the street to feel as though they're in a palace in a wonderful place. Like, no, now you need to have, unless you can afford $160 meal, we don't want you in here anymore. That they're taking these places and turning them into flagship Apple stores. Even when they do brand new construction, they're not just, what's the cheapest way we can make a box with windows on it that we can put advertising and it's like, let's make something that feels as though it reflects the vibe of this city that we're operating in. That will be a pleasant place for people to come in and actually use and be for a while. So many ways. Do you use the word success when you explain the Apple stories?

[Leo Laporte]

I want to take a break. And then it's time for the Vision Pro segment. So John Ashley, if you would poise your finger over the button, we will.

We got both. You want to, you want to do Vision Pro, right? Oh, you know what? You're champing at the bit. Let's do it. Vision Pro, what do you see?

[Alex Lindsay]

What do you know? It's time to talk to Vision Pro.

[Leo Laporte]

Really nothing to talk about.

[Jason Snell]

Why are we doing this segment? Leo, what's going on?

[Leo Laporte]

There's nothing. Well, Andriy has provided two stories, one of which is not about the Vision Pro. But it's okay. It's Vision Pro adjacent.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the story that is Vision Pro. More all black Vision Pro prototypes parts surface online.

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So at one point they thought that they want like the raccoon stuff style.

[Leo Laporte]

Which would have been cool and all black, but they didn't do it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Or you could pretend to be a cartoon burglar. Yeah, would have been fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Hey, you wanted a Vision Pro segment and then Andy for some reason decided he was going to talk about Google's device, the Galaxy xr.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No, just as a footnote. So on Monday Google essentially released their specific roadmap for 2026 and basically showed you. Here are three different levels of hardware that we'll be shipping next week. At the very, very top, Samsung's Android XR device, which is going to be much like a Vision Pro. One step below that, a pair of mixed reality glasses and then at one step below that that's tethered to an external battery. Interesting trick. The battery also has an integrated trackpad into it which I thought was interesting and it's a very, very bug bottom here is a very, very subtle pair of like meta style glasses that will have like a monocular display that will essentially which I think is the sweet spot for this kind of device where no, it's not supposed to be like a mixed reality situation, but at times where it's relevant for an app on the device or on your phone to give you a live display of a map or show you a notification or show you a live translation, there is like a two color or three color color simple projected display on one lens that will actually give you that information and then be turned off when it's not actually relevant at the moment. So I just thought it was interesting as Apple, which is not to say that Apple is not working on all of those things. It's just that again differences between Google and Apple, philosophically they're perfectly fine to say here's our. Because they need to have so much sign on to get Android XR support from hardware and software development developers. Here is specifically what we'll be shipping in 2026. After a year or two of basically fainting towards here's what we think the ecosystem is going to look like and.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S your Vision Pro segment, Nancy.

[Alex Lindsay]

Now you know, we're done talking. The Vision Pro.

[Jason Snell]

That wasn't so bad, was it?

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't so bad. That wasn't so bad.

I'm struggling here. F1 comes out this weekend for free on Apple TV. I have not yet seen seen it. You saw it this week, you saw it last week, didn't you, Alex? Did you like it?

[Alex Lindsay]

I said, I had the conversation last week.

[Leo Laporte]

You saw the theater?

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, I saw it. I saw it at headquarters. And the funny thing, someone asked me on like, end of last week, they were like, so what did you think of it at the Dolby thing? I was like, I was pretty good. I was like, there's these parts that I like better at the Stag. It's Skywalker Ranch, Horton. I was like, I'm in a different world when it comes to watching movies.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, the Stag is a nice theater.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, it's very different.

[Alex Lindsay]

The audio in the Dolby Theater, the Dolby Headquarters theater is crisper. And the screen, the. The images is more detailed than. Than the Stag. But the Stag has. There's something about sitting in there that.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the Lucas design.

[Alex Lindsay]

Super special. And. And so. So it was kind of half, you know, a little bit of both. And. But the. Yeah, it's. It's an incredible film. Like, it's really well done. I mean, there's some. There's some. There's a part at the end that kind of feels like the end of Lord of the Rings, you know, end of the. The Return of the King, where you're just like, what are we doing here?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Like, it's like it's going to be a sequel.

[Leo Laporte]

We already know that.

[Alex Lindsay]

I know, but the last.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The last.

[Alex Lindsay]

There's like the last 20 minutes. You're just kind of like, okay, you know, like. Like we did. We lacked a little discipline. But until then, the. There's. There is. It's just such a. Visually, I mean, it's very seamless. Like, you don't feel like there's a lot of. You don't feel like you're watching visual effects, even though there's incredible amounts of it. And it just. It's a very, very well made film. So I. And I'm not a. I'm not a car guy. Like, I'm not. I don't watch F1. Like, I don't. So now I've seen it twice and. Well, actually. Yeah. Yeah, so.

I've actually seen it three times because I bought it. I mean, I own it on my Apple tv. Then I watched it there. I've watched it on my. So I've seen it, I guess, four times now. And again, not a. But not. But. But I like, there's so many parts of it that are so well made that I just enjoy it.

[Leo Laporte]

And you're watching it from a technical ang.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, and I. And I enjoy it. I mean, except again, I, I, when they, well, anyway, I'm not going to do any spoilers, but there's a part near the end. I just go, okay, I'm done. But, but I, but I like, okay, you know, like, but, but the, but for the rest of the film, it's just a good ride. I mean, it's not, it's like Armageddon. Like, it's not like, I like, I like, I like Armageddon.

[Leo Laporte]

That's kind of what I thought it would be, is a Hollywood action, big budget action, but, but the effects are.

[Alex Lindsay]

Great, you know, and it looks good and it really feels like you're there. And so, you know, it's the question now.

[Leo Laporte]

So the actual effort one racing season ended this past weekend with a cliffhanger on the world championship, which I won't say anything about, but it was very exciting. But then I realized as I'm watching it, in fact, I deleted the F1TV app from my Apple TV. And I realized this is the last time that this is going to be through F1's own streaming service. Apple has purchased it for three quarters of a billion dollars. And starting with the new season, which begins March 7th, actually Apple posted this on, on, on Twitter. F1 has a new home in the.

[Jason Snell]

U.S. anyway, Leah, one thing, you're going to have to bring that app back because F1TV isn't going anywhere.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, really? I thought Apple was replacing it.

[Jason Snell]

No, if you have an Apple TV subscription, you will get access to F1TV Premiere as well.

[Alex Lindsay]

Oh.

[Jason Snell]

So if you're enough of a, if you're enough of a racing fan to want the extra app, you can do that.

[Leo Laporte]

But do I have to pay extra for it?

[Jason Snell]

No, no. It's part of your Apple subscription in the United States. If you're in the United States, which is where the rights are. And then the Apple's promo showed multiview and driver cams and stuff. So some stuff that maybe was only in the F1TV app will probably be available directly in Apple's TV app.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's interesting. So they have that capability in Apple tv?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they do. I, I, I think Apple wants to build something that shows off that they're a little more than what ESPN was showing.

[Leo Laporte]

Have a dedicated, I guess they'll have a dedicated F1 app.

[Jason Snell]

No, no, I think it'll be an Apple TV. It'll be in the TV app and then if you want, you'll go to the F1TV app and watch it there. But if you've got Apple tv. You can do either. There's no separate subscription for the U.S.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because I also have a really nice third party app called F1 TeamViewer or F1. Yeah, something like that. That gives you multiview, maybe that gives you all of the. You can have all of the windows up on a big enough screen the same time. And I hope that that will continue to work, but I don't know if it will. But I won't delete those.

[Alex Lindsay]

I do think that there's so many things that Apple can do. There's so much there both with MLS as well as with F1, and there's just a lot of potential energy there between immersive and 3D and all of the different things that Apple could be doing and all these extras because you're not connected to just a linear channel. Being able to add so many other things to the experience. And I think part of it's understanding the teams and interviews and behind the scenes and everything else that I think that I'm hoping Apple takes advantage of that. No idea. So far I feel like MLS has not taken a heavy advantage of that process.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I agree. And baseball did not either.

I was a little disappointed. There is an opportunity. I wonder if. Did they say anything about the broadcast team or anything? Are they just going to keep everybody.

[Jason Snell]

The promo for the real Kremlin ologists of the F1 like.

Like my podcast partner Mike Hurley. The audio they used in the promo is the F1TV announcers, not the. The sky announcers from the UK. But Apple hasn't made any announcements. And what I said is if they have their own broadcast team and are not using that F1 English broadcast team, they wouldn't announce it in a promo video. So if they do have an announcement of new talent to be made, they haven't made it. I imagine they will certainly have their pregame and post game people who will be doing Apple stuff and that they'll do that. But the question is, will the race have one of those English language feeds that's familiar or is Apple going to build their own just for the us.

[Leo Laporte]

We don't know which. They did with baseball and it was not very satisfactory.

[Jason Snell]

Baseball is a totally different deal. They're using MLB's production arm and then they brought in different announcers, many of whom had relationships existing with MLB Network and they're using their cameras. And this is a little different in that it's the F1 relationship. They did hire all the announcers for MLS, so it's a little more like that probably.

[Leo Laporte]

So the screenshots are interesting. You got onboard driver cameras, which is great. You get multi view, which is great. It will work on Apple TV, iPad and Apple Vision Pro. Ah, that's interesting.

[Jason Snell]

We should have been in the segment anyway. Yeah, they've got Multiview already built, right. So if you've got multiview sitting there and you've got F1 and you know that there are other cameras, it's like, is the average F1 viewer gonna pop, pop up a couple of alternate camera angles along with the main race? Probably not. But I think if you're Apple and you want to show off your technical prowess and say, we're not espn, we are software so that we can do special things. ESPN was doing the, you know, press the red button, which is on a Sky TV and so ESPN or like what red button where like Apple will not do that. Apple will let you have an interface to pull this stuff up. And yeah, if they've got access to multiple video streams and they've already built a multi view feature for tvos, this is.

[Leo Laporte]

Why would you not in fact really a more interesting play for them than MLS or Major League Baseball was because every F1 car has terabytes of data streaming off of everything.

[Jason Snell]

It's a good fit. It's a good fit for Apple software public operations.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So many also because like there's so much money in F1 right now that it's not. If they were to mess around with people's access to mls, that would be a worldwide revolution and Apple would burn. As opposed to F1, which is still.

It's an international sport. However, it is a sport with lots and lots of money in it and they can basically create a whole bunch of features that require a lot of new fancy hardware, including a Vision Pro in order to really appreciate it. And I think that this is the. It's exciting because this is the sort of skunk works where when it comes time to figure out how can we enhance Major League Baseball, how can we enhance soccer, how can we enhance more routine sports, all of this information and all this knowledge, not just about the technology, not just about the streaming, but also what features and what goodies our audience is actually eager to get that will actually enhance the experience. All that stuff is going to feed down into the broadcast experience. So it's a perfect fit and interesting to see what's going to happen three years from now from what Apple learns from this iPhone.

[Leo Laporte]

App of the Year. It has been announced in the App Store Awards. It is Teo, which turns your chaotic calendar into a timeline of soothing colors. Yeah, no, thank you. Anyway, don't really want that iPad app of the Year detail.

Something about storytelling. It's an AI. Oh, AI Video editor. Okay. Have. Have you tried that, Alex? Do you know anything about it?

[Alex Lindsay]

Nope.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Nope.

[Jason Snell]

I've heard good things. I've heard really good things about it.

[Alex Lindsay]

I have heard good things.

[Leo Laporte]

I've never used Mac App of the Year essay.

For academic work organizing sources. Sounds like Scribner or something like that. Formatting everything perfectly.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's specifically for people who are doing essays with specific references and all.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Of that stuff where there's like a hard, hard, hard wired format to how everything has to be noted and cited and reported and formatted. And I've spoken to people who are in academia and who do research and so like the. Who have been at it for a long, long time. And they said the amount of time that I used to spend 10 years ago just making sure that I was using the correct font and just making sure that the footnote number was actually the correct number of M height between this, that, and the other, when I thought that it didn't matter. And now the fact that we have apps like Essayist that will just simply say no, we'll just give us the information. We'll make sure that it fits whatever format you need it to fit. This is why it gets people who don't just simply like it, but absolutely love it it because, oh my God, my brain is now has 20, 20% more capacity than it did before because I no longer have this burden on me.

[Leo Laporte]

And man, I should have saved this for the Vision Pro segment. The Vision Pro app of the year. Explore pov. It says the closest thing to teleportation. Explore POV whisks you to beautiful beaches, lush forests, and bustling cities around the world. It's an app, is it?

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, James has been doing that. He's out of. Of James Zealand. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And he.

[Alex Lindsay]

He was on our. Our first immersive show. So. So we've talked to him a little bit about it and, and he. But he. But. Or maybe it was an extra hour doing too many shows.

[Leo Laporte]

Strava, the app of the year for the watch.

[Alex Lindsay]

But yeah, so it's a. It's a great show. He started with before the immersive camera, so he's got lots and lots of content out there that he's. He's done. It's great, great, great work.

[Leo Laporte]

Congratulations to all the winners and losers. But you're not losers, you're just runners up.

Oh. Big Golden Globe haul for Apple TV F1 Golden Globe nomination along with Severance, Pluribus, Slow Horses, the studio and morning show. The, I mean the Golden Globes are not the the most prestigious award in the world, but F1 nominated for cinematic and box office achievements, achievement and best original score by Hans Zimmer. Severance, best television series best performance by a male actor Adam Scott, best female actor Brit Lahore Travel Trammel, Tillman best performance by a male actor in a supporting role on television Pluribus, best TV series and Rhea Seehorn, best actress slow horses best TV series. Apple's going to be competing against itself throughout. Three nominees in the best TV series, drama, the studio, musical or comedy nomination, the morning show best performance by mill actor Billy Crudup and F1. Oh, I mentioned F1. It looks like it's a box office. It's an award for the box office.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They had that category a few years ago. It's the Golden Globes. It's like if we don't have awards for movies that are just plain popular and made a lot of, of money, we will not get the stars of those. We will not get, we'll not get Scarlett Johansson in to be on the telecast.

[Alex Lindsay]

So. Hosted by Nikki Glaser. If you, if, if this year. Yeah. If Ricky Gervais made you uncomfortable, hold on to your.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, she did it last year. It was, it was not bad. It's not bad. All right now we will take that break and get your picks of the week coming up in just a moment. You're watching Max Mac Break Weekly with Alex, Andy and Jason. Our show today brought to you quite literally brought to you by Cashfly. You've heard me say it many, many years. Bandwidth for Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by cachefly@cache flashly.com Twitch for over 20 years, CashFly has held a track record for high performing ultra reliable content delivery serving over 5,000 companies and in over 80 countries. And we've been using it for almost all that time, practically from the very beginning when we first started doing these podcasts. We struggled with how do we get the bandwidth to bring, you know, thousands of people these shows. And then we started doing video and it got even more significant. Well, we've been using Cashfly ever since Matt Levine of Cashfly came to me, came to our rescue and said let us help. We love Cashfly's lag free video loading, their hyper fast download downloads, friction free site interactions. What we really love is there's never a problem with our feeds. Thanks to Cashfly.

No downtime. Join companies like Adobe, Microsoft, lg, the NFL and many more like Twit that rely on Cash Fly. Most CDN providers will hold you back with Cash Fly no you get a tailored solution and performance and obsessed parts. So your CDN becomes your competitive advantage. And the proof is in the petabytes with Cash Fly events stream smoothly to millions of concurrent users worldwide with less than 1 second latency. Online games start 70% faster, scale instantly and play without lag. Software downloads flawlessly during releases, patches and updates. HD video plays on demand with ultra fast sub second start on every device. Just go to our website, start to watch one of our videos. You'll see it. And I have to say that's important because if people have to sit there and wait for even a second or two, chances are good they're going to leave your site. We're that impatient. And of course with Cash Fly, podcasts like ours reach global audiences at record speed at any scale. We literally deliver petabytes of data every single month via Cash Fly. Cashfly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major seats CDNs and you can do something now with Cashflow we've been doing practically since the beginning. We put all our content on their servers. You can now shield your site content in their cloud which means you never have a cash miss. You have a 100 cache hit ratio and that means even better performance. The other thing we loved about Cash Fly we didn't know when we started doing it what was our peak bandwidth? How much demand was there going to be. It was all a question mark mark. Cash Fly is incredibly flexible. Month to month billing for as long as you need it. Discounts for fixed terms once you're happy and you never have to worry about service overlap they they will let you design your own contract when you switch to Cash Fly. It was a big thing for us. Cash Fly it's like gaining the extension of your team and that's important when your entire business model depends on delivering massive content. You cannot afford to do it on your your own. You gotta have Cash Flight and man their service. Incredible personalized help anytime from a tenured expert who gets it Smart engineers engineer to engineer 247 learn how you can get your first month free at cashfly.com TWIT that's C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT thank you. CashFly picks of the week let's start with you, Jason Snell.

[Jason Snell]

All right. I'm going to make. I'm going to blow everybody's mind. I'm going to make a meta pick. I'm going to pick MBW picks.com he's picking the picks. The place where you can find all of our picks. It's done by a guy named Paul Mason who is making a lot of. A lot. I don't know how much money from Amazon Associates putting these links there.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm glad. Good.

[Jason Snell]

It's very helpful to us. I will say we don't pay him for it. I will. Yeah. I've never met him. As compensation I will say maybe to twit management that this company could be a business model for a different site. That's more official. But hey, Paul Mason is doing it.

[Leo Laporte]

In the meantime away from Paul.

[Jason Snell]

He's been in particular that I'm going to recommend Paul's site. Not only do we rely on or I can't say we. I rely on it to make sure that I'm not repeating myself. But he just broke out the most sales of items from his site anyway that we recommended in 2024.

[Leo Laporte]

You like this because you're number one. I aren't you?

[Jason Snell]

I am number one in the ranking. Although Alex has more picks on the list. It's of the top 20. But so these are the most.

[Leo Laporte]

The best selling picks from the year.

[Jason Snell]

Of @MacBreak weekly of people clicking through from MBW Picks. Anyway. Right. So number one is a bunch of zipper bags that I recommended that you put your cables in. Number two is that neat USB C power meter that Andy recommended. Number three is a laptop charger from Anker that Andy recommended. Number four is the Big Larry Work light.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm one Larry.

[Jason Snell]

I'm one of the people who bought that from that link from Alex. And number five was the Pentel Presto Jumbo Correction pen.

[Leo Laporte]

I bought those too.

[Jason Snell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I bought.

[Jason Snell]

I buy a dangerous amount of MBW picks and so mbw picks.com you can find them all. And I love the top 20. It's what a. What a way to like revisit what we've done in the last year and see which ones resonated with at least a portion of our audience.

[Leo Laporte]

I bought that Tanganda T by the way.

[Alex Lindsay]

So good they're probably wondering they're to.

[Leo Laporte]

All of a sudden this Zimbabwe selling all his tea.

[Alex Lindsay]

Where did all this tea go?

[Leo Laporte]

Look at this. Hey Paul. Thank you. I've never met, never even talked to him. He's been doing this Forever.

[Alex Lindsay]

And, and, and I do the same thing. I, anything that I'm not that isn't released immediately, I go, oh, have I talked about this before? And I, that's, that's the site I go to.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the rankings. Popular picks by host numbers. Number one on the list. Alex Lindsay, six picks. Andy's five, Jason's five. I'm two, which is amazing since I rarely pick anything. Shelley Brisbane got one and Stephen Robles got one. Very nice. That's nice. And of course, every episode when we do pick something, it shows up here. And yes, I'm glad he's getting an affiliate.

[Alex Lindsay]

That's good.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's good.

[Leo Laporte]

He's putting a lot of work into this thing.

[Jason Snell]

That's right. And it's such a great resource for us and for listeners. I mean, so, yeah, if you haven't already bookmarked it, dear listener, mbwpicks.com when you had that moment of like, what was that like, Paul Mason has done the work for you.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Paul. Thank you.

[Jason Snell]

But now Paul has to put himself.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Jason Snell]

On his site.

[Leo Laporte]

You are picked.

[Jason Snell]

So I expect a link on nbwpicks.com to MBW picks.

[Leo Laporte]

That'd be hysterical.

[Jason Snell]

And then it just, it's Skeletor all the way down. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Andy and Nako.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Pick of the week after Labor Day. My, my picks are on a very, very tight and important schedule. And sometime in October, I'm going to be picking it's the Great Pumpkins Charlie Brown. Because I need people to know that the free weekend is starting out November.

[Alex Lindsay]

I'm going.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. That's a Halloween.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No, no, I'm not. I'm building. I'm building up.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I'm building a pyramid here.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Okay. In November, I've got have to say one of the picks is going to be it's a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving again. Because I want people to know when the free weekend is. And in December, it's time for me to pick a Charlie Brown Christmas. Because the free weekend is this weekend, Friday and Saturday. You can go on Apple TV and watch it and stream it for free.

Apple will. You don't even. You don't need an Apple TV trial account or anything. They don't even ask for you to sign up for free for anything. You don't need a credit card. You can just Simply go to tv.apple.com Go to the landing page. All you need is an. Is an. You do need an icloud account. But it's not like you have to drop a credit card at any point and remember to cancel something or just scoop it up.

[Leo Laporte]

So weird to see this in 4k.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It really is because it was remastered so well. Because especially if you're Generation X and you basically spent your childhood looking forward to it every year on like broadcast television on like a 19 inch screen.380 and Hero. And now you can actually see it where you can actually. It doesn't. If you freeze frame it, it looks like you see a photograph of a cell set up with shadows on the, on the down, on the downlit end of it. And you were seeing details you have never seen before.

[Leo Laporte]

1965, this came out. I was nine years old.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It is the 60th anniversary.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. 60 years ago.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

A Charlie Brown Christmas.

[Andy Ihnatko]

As part of the coverage of the 60th anniversary, it's revealed that yes, sales of aluminum trees, like nose dived when this show became popular. Because again of course of lions and Charlie Brown like saying, oh, it's not such a. I didn't even know they made real trees anymore. Although I will say that if you have more than one, if you have more than one Christmas tree in your house, like a solid aluminum pink Christmas tree would be pretty dope as your second one. Not as the big one you take the pictures next to, but if you have a second one in the playroom, especially if you have cats, want cats to like kill anything. A aluminum cone that's pink would actually be quite nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you so much, Andy. And now finally, our last pick of the week from Mr. Alex Lindsay.

[Alex Lindsay]

This, this one is brand new. I think it's this week. This is hysterical Generate. It's called G. It's g e n r8. And what it does, it seems like a simple thing. But those of us in production are like, we finally have a test generator on our phone. So this will do HDMI out. So you do USB C to HDMI converter and you put, you can plug it into your system. And now you get bar, you know, all kinds of different kinds of color bars. It has HDR bars, Luma bars, you know, convergence blocks.

[Leo Laporte]

Used to call these test patterns, right?

[Alex Lindsay]

These are all test patterns. And it's just so I felt like I had something else planned for today. And when this came up in office hours this morning, I just really felt like it's so important. Important for us to support people who do crazy things like this. This will actually open on my computer, but it doesn't work perfectly yet. But it works on your iPad. And of course you can Use your iPad. But the most important thing is it's got USB C to HDMI out so you can plug it into your system and be able to generate it. So now you have this little portable, you know, and we haven't had time to test it yet, like run it through scopes and see what it's generating and everything else. But, but I think that it's, it, it's. It's really cool. And it, it's. So far, looking through it, it really does seem to have, you know, all the tools that we need. And I, you know, and I. And it's 20 bucks. So it's not like a, you know, but it's not a subscription. It's one time only. And it, it really looks like it does the thing or it. Or it will soon, you know, he's got all the pieces there.

[Leo Laporte]

Only one question for you. Does it have the test pattern with the Indian in it?

[Alex Lindsay]

No, no, no, no.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They have the cool BBC one where it's the girl with a creepy doll.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

The puppets got all. I think, I think he tried to.

[Alex Lindsay]

Stay away from the, the hot potatoes after. I think I'm just going to do the ones that you need. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

After the shows were over, they would play the Star Spangled Banner with a waving flag. They say, this concludes our broadcast day on WJAR Providence. And then they would put. Put this up for the next 12 hours.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

Before they realized they could sell you things in the middle of the night.

[Leo Laporte]

How often did I wake up to this?

[Alex Lindsay]

I think they were just. I remember a little bit of it in my childhood. And then pretty soon they were like, hey, we could make money if we left it on. And crazy people.

[Leo Laporte]

We have our own. John, Ashley, do you have the twit test pattern? Okay. We have our own version of the Indian head test pattern which dates back to 1939.

Very good. Gen R. 8. G, E, N. The letter R. The letter 8. It's 20 bucks on the App Store.

[Alex Lindsay]

If you're a production person, worth every penny.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, if you need it, you know, if, you know, you know. Thank you, Alex. Lindsay, I don't know you.

[Alex Lindsay]

If.

[Leo Laporte]

If this is going to make it to MBW picks. Top list. There's no affiliate. In fact, I apologize to Paul. None of the picks this week had affiliate.

[Alex Lindsay]

We were like, look at the great affiliate sales. Then we're going to where all this.

[Leo Laporte]

Stuff could you get on Amazon? Not one of them.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, yeah, that's how you know this isn't a badger game. We're pulling we're just legitimately. Whatever happens, happens.

[Leo Laporte]

Unless Paul's going to pay himself an affiliate fee for linking to his own site, in which case, have at it. Mr. Jason Snell. 6colors.com Great site. The upgrade podcast you and Mike talked about the layoffs. Oops.

[Jason Snell]

We did a whole episode about everybody leaving. Oops, all departures. Yeah, everybody leaving Apple and what it might mean. So people can check that out. Relay fm.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And of course Six Colors. Com Jason for all of the shows that he does. And Six Colors is a must read now. You've got John Moore Moltz, you've got Glenn Fleischman, you've got Dan Morin, of course, Jason himself.

[Jason Snell]

Fun little gang over there.

[Leo Laporte]

You've really got a team. And by the way, I did send an email to Glenn. His surgery went well. Yes, he's feeling good. No pain at all, which is remarkable.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, he's just got to kind of get back up to speed. But I think he threatened to turn in his next help. He does a Q and A column for us. So I think he threatened to turn in his next one next week, which means, means he will have. Basically he wrote ahead. It's that classic thing. It's like, how can you miss him if he doesn't disappear? Because he pre wrote a bunch of columns. But yeah, he's doing great and he writes every week. And for our members, John Moltz, who has been writing funny stuff about Apple for a very long time, has a weekly wrap up column that's full of jokes.

[Leo Laporte]

You may remember him as the Macalope.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, you may, you may. You may not remember him as the Macalope, but he was, he was the Macalop.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's okay.

[Jason Snell]

It's on the site. It actually says if you click here, if you want to know who the Macalope is, it's John Moltz. That's who it is.

[Leo Laporte]

It's me, John Moltz. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Andy Nakko.

That's all I have to say about that. Thank you. Anatko Bluesky Social. I, H, N, A T, K O. Remember how to spell it. Someday that will be useful to you. I, I promise. And people want to know where you got your beautiful hat.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Oh, well, it's just a standard like black hat. It does have, it's, it does have a, A Woodstock closure.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look at that. You've got a pin on it with Woodstock. Now that's showing your affiliation. Charlie Brown.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But sun fade. I perhaps should maybe next pick of the week. Will be another.

[Leo Laporte]

When I see a baseball player with a hat that's not sun faded, I said, dude, you need to get out there and do some pepper.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I'll call it. It's my rally cap.

[Leo Laporte]

There you go. Turn it upside down. Alex Lindsay Office Hours Global. God. A constant stream of information about media production and more. It's at Officehours Global. You can join in.

[Alex Lindsay]

We had a good friend, our friend Oliver Breidenbach was on extra hours last night and we spent an hour talking about Memo Live and how we use.

[Leo Laporte]

He's mad at me for using. For using ECAMM instead of Memo Live.

[Alex Lindsay]

You know, they're different. I think ecamm's a little bit more approachable and Memo's probably got a couple more features. And so we use Memo Live for some of our evening shows. But we also use ECAMM and Vector. So we use a lot of different things as we kind of work through it. But he was on last night talking through it. We had a good chat. I am also.

This little drawing package. I'm trying to beat him. Andy out. So I think we've both been working on our project for the same. For about the same amount of time.

[Leo Laporte]

Telestrator.

[Alex Lindsay]

Time Telestrator. So it's not quite out yet. Hopefully. We're just waiting for the approval. So it'll be next week or the week after.

[Leo Laporte]

Alex is our own John Madden Lancetturducken.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. So anyway, so that hopefully will come out in the next week or two.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice. Very nice. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Jason. A special thanks of course to our club members. Man. We appreciate you, especially this time time of year. You've made a big difference in 2025. 25% of our operating costs come from your memberships. And I just want to say thank you. We really appreciate what you've done. If you're not a member, this is a good time to join. We've got a 10% off coupon through the December 25th. We've got a two week free trial. Lots of reasons to go to Twit TV Club Twit ad free versions of all the shows, access to the Discord, all the special program programming we do, and most importantly, the fuzzy feeling. The warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing you're supporting the programming you see here. We literally couldn't do it without you. Twit TV Club twit. Thank you for your support. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. You can watch us do it. Live if you're in the club, in the club Twit, Discord. But there's also YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn, and Ken Kick. So plenty of places you could watch live, but you don't have to. It's a podcast, which means you can go to Twitter TV MBW to download it. That's the website. You can watch it stream live on that site as well after the fact. You can download audio or video of the show there. There's a YouTube channel with video of course. The best way to get the show? Subscribe in your favorite podcast client and you'll get it automatically as soon as we're done. That's also where you'll find a place to leave a five star review for us should you be so inclined. Klein thank you for your help. We'll be back again next week. We will be taking.

The week after Christmas off December 30th off. So we will be back the next couple of weeks with Mac Break Weekly. We hope to see you next week, but meanwhile, I'm sorry to say it's my sad and solemn duty to tell you to get back to work cuz break time. So it's over.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's over.

[Jason Snell]

Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible. Overcoming High Interest Credit Card debt. It requires merely one thing, a SoFi Personal Loan.

[Leo Laporte]

With it, you could save big on.

[Alex Lindsay]

Interest charges by consolidating into one low.

[Leo Laporte]

Fixed rate monthly payment.

[Jason Snell]

Definitely SOFI High Interest Debt with a SOFI personal loan. Visit sofi.com stunt to learn more.

[Leo Laporte]

Loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member.

[Jason Snell]

FDIC terms and conditions apply.

[Andy Ihnatko]

NMLS 696891.