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MacBreak Weekly 1003: The Intersection of Greed and Delusion
02:12:28
The OS 26.2 Update Is Out Now!
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- [00:00]
A
Alex. It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Alex Lindsey has the week off. Andy and Jason are here. So is the snow. We'll talk about 26.2, some new features and very important security updates. Apple loses in court and in Japan. And we'll talk about why you probably should be backing up your data right now. All of that coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly. Episode 1003 recorded Tuesday, December 16, 2025. The intersection of greed and delusion. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news on a freezing cold December day with the. The sun has disappeared for the next few months. Let's say hello to Andy and Notko where it really is.
- [01:02]
B
Col. We had, we've, we've had a bit of a couple of days as a matter of fact. So I, I've been, I, I've, I've been not feeding the squirrel so much as like, I've got a gift basket that involves walnut that has a. Can contain walnuts. And I thought actually, you know, I'm going to keep, I'm going to like leave a walnut like at this, on this little rock on the way on my walk, like to the library. And every day like, I leave it when I come in and then when I come out, it's gone for the past two days. However, Monday's walnut is still there. So it's too cold. Even for the squirrels.
- [01:33]
A
Even for the squirrels, aren't you.
- [01:36]
B
I even put a little, I could have put like a little red bow on the top of it and it. And yet it was like, no, no, no, we're good for the. At least until it gets into the high 30s.
- [01:46]
A
A cold squirrel lover. Now here Jason and I are in California. Jason Snell of sixcolors.com hello.
- [01:53]
C
And even what I like to call California cold. It's California cold, which is when I walk the dog. I have to put on a jacket. The heavy hoodie is not enough. I have to put on an actual jacket. And that is, that is when you know that it's in the 40s in San Francisco. What was the damn cold?
- [02:13]
B
But what was that line from LA Story where Steve Martin plays a weatherman and he's talking about the brutal coat snap, cold snap he talked about. Oh, so you're saying that it was so cold that you actually had to let the cats back in overnight? Yeah, there's a, there's a line that struggles to recover.
- [02:33]
C
There's a line in 30 Rock where somebody tells Liz Lemon that she's. That she's moving to the Bay Area. And Liz is very angry about it, and she says, have fun carrying a light sweater everywhere you go.
- [02:44]
A
It's like, yeah, that's a good line.
- [02:45]
B
It's pretty.
- [02:46]
C
Pretty, right?
- [02:46]
A
That's really accurate.
- [02:47]
B
That's about it.
- [02:48]
C
But anyway, so, yes, it's. It's a. It's jacket weather, but we're not built.
- [02:52]
A
For this, so, you know, that's in blood.
- [02:55]
C
Yeah, we just leave our windows open all year long and usually it doesn't matter, but now it's real cold. Should have put in closable windows, I guess.
- [03:05]
A
Well, Apple gave us a little gift over the week, 26.2 for all of the things.
- [03:13]
C
Yeah, gotta ship that before you can go on your Christmas vacation.
- [03:16]
A
You think that probably that's what happens, right? They. Yeah, they're running out the door.
- [03:20]
C
And they did put out a 26.3beta, but I suspect that's more like as a placeholder of. And this cycle will now begin and we'll see you next year.
- [03:29]
B
There were a couple of interesting things in 26. 3. We'll get to it. But like, there especially, like, things where it's like, if you are not 100% invested in the Apple ecosystem, thank the EU for the following two features that have already been spotted. So it's pretty good. I have to admit, though, I'm a little bit gun shy and I'm like, I'm going to wait until, let's say, Saturday at 2pm Before I install 26.2 in all my devices because I kind of like the fact that my devices are all kind of stable right now. And I kind of like to keep that mojo going if I can.
- [04:00]
C
Why not? Why not do that? I mean, 26. Two is. It's. It's small, but. Because actually, it's funny, a year ago we were talking about big updates happening in Point one and Point two because, remember, Apple kind of overpromised and underdelivered, and that's an understatement. And this year, they really basically just announced features of WWDC that they thought they could ship in Point oh. And so these Point one and Point Two releases have been minor, I'd say. I think the biggest story here is just that they added a whole other set of iPad multitasking features. So when the very good multitasking iPad feature shipped in 26, we heard from a lot of fans of Slide over, which lets you dock an app on the side of the screen, either side, and then just sort of like swipe it away and then swipe it back in while you're working on another app or other apps. It's a really nice feature. They didn't implement it and I don't know whether that was an oversight. And they were just sort of like, well, you don't need that, just make a window. They brought it back. And a lot of what's in 26.2 on the iPad is about dock focused multitasking because you used to be able to use the dock for a lot of stuff and that kind of went away in 26. So they brought it back. So now you can drag an app out of the dock, an app icon, and put it all the way on the corner on the edge of the screen and it goes into Slide Over. So you don't need to mess around with other ui. You can just do, I think a very intuitive. Put this app over there on the side and it does it. You couldn't. You used to be able to switch apps in Slide over and you can't do that anymore. And so they added a feature where you can drag an app icon out of the dock onto Slide over and it changes into that app, which is not quite the same, but I think it's pretty good. And then if you don't use Slide over, it's still pretty good. You can drag apps out of the dock to make windows and it's got a. If you like Split View, which is another thing that basically went away, you can tile two windows to be split and it acts like Split View, but it mostly has been oriented toward like floating windows like the Mac. Now when you drag an app out of the dock, if it's toward the left or the right side, not kind of out in the middle, you'll actually see the preview icon change shape. And what it's doing is it's changing into one half of a split view. So actually a couple of swipes will put you directly in split view out of the dock. And these are all features that my guess is they were thinking they would do them, but they weren't ready for point zero. So they're like, we'll get to that later in the fall and here we are and they've shipped it. But I think I was already super impressed with multitasking on 26 for iPad and the fact that they have done more. They added a bunch of stuff in point one, including bringing Slide over back, and now in point two, they've done more refinement. I don't know if there's more to come or not, but I feel like now it feels much more complete even than the very good point zero version that they shipped. So for me, that's the biggest one.
- [06:53]
B
And I'm really, really glad that Apple's listening to feedback that I think it surprised them that they got so much feedback, quote unquote, about losing Slide Over. That's when they found out that, okay, I mean, they didn't just simply pull this out of their ear. They feel as though they had enough metrics, enough data to support the fact that, yeah, there's some people who use it, but it's an underused feature and we don't really. Given that we're totally redoing how multitasking works in the iPad, this would be a good time to lose a feature that is clearly on its way out. But the fact that people, the people who do use are just such big fans that they don't want to be without it. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm at that point, now that we're at 26.2, that I'm now going to have to read up fully on how multitasking and multi windowing works on iPad, because it's still doing some stuff that I'm not anticipating and still doing stuff where, wait, why is there, like the leftmost little strip margin of a window sort of hanging out at the right side of my iPad when I switch over? And how do I get rid of that? It's like, I think that there's a collision between multi windowing and multiple workspaces that isn't really clicking for me. So at this point, I don't know if it's, wow, this is kind of poorly designed. And I kind of. It's a little bit clumsy because we have seen some clumsiness in this update. But it could be that it's not a given that every good feature is something that could be instinctively learned without actually reading the documentation that Apple publishes with every major release. It's a pain point right now.
- [08:26]
C
My feeling, I think you're right. My feeling about Slide over and Split View is that the people working on these new features viewed that. Remember, that was the original multitasking. When they did a multitasking on the iPad, it was just Slide over and Split View. And then they added Stage Manager. And like, they kept putting more lipstick on that pig until they finally, literally, they threw that code away and made an entirely new system, which is what's in 26. I suspect the people who are working on this new system just thought of Slide over in Split View as compromises, right? As like, oh, that's because we couldn't do real window multitasking. That's the only reason those things existed. But the fact is people like them, and I think they were really, I suspect they were taken aback by the fact that people were kind of aghast that Slide over wasn't there. Maybe they, you know, they just thought, oh, that's just an old compromise and now you've got Windows, you don't need it. But people really like that and, and I mean, they said so in the beginning of the summer when that feature wasn't there. And so it takes a while to ship a feature. But I think that if they weren't already planning it, they got the message over the summer. It was very clear that there were a lot of people who just love Slide over. And so I'm glad that they got.
- [09:33]
B
It back just quickly. Apple has a special challenge here because I'm using multi windowing almost exclusively, actually probably exclusively on a 12.9 inch iPad Pro. I don't think that multi windowing necessarily scales really well to smaller sized iPads. And that's where you really, really appreciate Split View, where I don't need to have three or four or five windows altogether. I don't even necessarily need to have three windows together. I just need to be able to have two apps that I can basically dip into very, very freely. And on this small screen, it is a pain in the butt to have to manage like, oh no, that's overlapping in a way that I don't like. And so that's why Split View and Slide over were such interesting answers to that problem. Unfortunately, my iPad mini is no longer supported, so it's essentially an E reader that mostly uses the Kindle app and vlc. I would like to see how well that performs on like a modern iPad mini because it seems as though I'm skeptical that multi windowing would be a good fit for a screen that small.
- [10:43]
C
I've talked to people who've done it and they say it's okay, but like it's not ideal because the screen is so small. It's small. And remember, it's also higher resolution, I think. So everything is sort of smaller on it, so there's more space. But oh, I wanted to mention another point too thing that is totally esoteric but it's interesting. Apple has been boasting about the M5 being great for on device AI. Because the M5 chip added GPU acceleration. They already added like CPU acceleration and the neural engine is there, but they added GPU accelerators as well. Because a lot of, a lot of AI tasks use the gpu, are written to use the gpu. And so they said they accelerated it. And what happened is there were a few apps that seemed accelerated. And my understanding is it's not because they were brought into Cupertino to accelerate their apps. And this is all on device like image generation and stuff that's happening on your device instead of using the cloud. And my understanding is those apps weren't specially written for the M5. They just happened to take an approach that worked with the new accelerators. And the M5 with point 2, Apple's whole extension system for machine learning, MLX, I think it's called, has now been revised. And you can get software that will build, that will generate things that are compatible with M5 and take advantage of it. And if you look at some tests like Federic, Fatici at Max Stories did some tests on it, the speed claims that were kind of hard to verify when the M5 came out are verifiable now on the Mac and on the iPad. And that's. So that's. It's good to verify that, that, that speed claim because they made a speed claim where basically nothing actually could take advantage of it. So it was hard to verify it. We can now. It is, you know, legitimately way faster for GPU tasks.
- [12:39]
A
I feel like a bad iPad user. I don't use any of those multitasking features.
- [12:46]
C
It's okay.
- [12:47]
A
I mean, am I a bad person?
- [12:48]
C
No, actually, I think the best thing that they did in 26 for iPad is make multi window a mode. Because it used to be if you dragged wrong, you got in a multitasking mode and then you're like, what happened? Or a split view or slide over and you're like, what happened? And I think it caused a lot of support issues because even I, who has a keyboard, you know, a magic keyboard, and I use multi window mode on my iPad a bit, you know, most of the time I'm not in multi window mode. I really, I don't mind just turning it off most of the time. Unless I'm doing something that requires intensive looking at multiple apps, I don't bother. And I think that's fine for the default to be classic iPad, one window and then if you want more, you can flip a switch, not accidentally and get into it.
- [13:34]
A
Yeah, okay, so you're.
- [13:36]
C
Okay.
- [13:36]
A
Okay. Sometimes it does stuff by accident that I don't really understand or like, but other than that, I don't think. I think I just use it. Like I always use it. And I'm saying this so that people, the people at home, you lovely people at home don't feel guilty if you're just doing what I'm doing, which is swiping back and forth between full screen windows, which seems fine.
- [13:57]
B
I think there's always going to be some tension between two different communities of iPad users, people like myself and Jason, who use it as, not necessarily MacBooks and desktops as well as iPads, but we do like to use our iPads in a very, very productivity oriented. Like, I don't need to bring two different devices. I can just bring this one with me and it'll do things just fine. And people who just want, I want immediate. I want a content consumption device that also can do really cool stuff. These are the people who are like, do not understand why people are spending over $1,000, maybe even 13, 14, $1,500 on an iPad Pro with a keyboard, when, gosh, I can't. If you gave me 500, if you gave me $1,000 to spend on an iPad Pro, I could never, ever use it so much to even justify that sort of thing. So I think there's always going to be tension between those two kinds of users. And I think that this is the price that Apple is paying for my belief that Apple just missed the bus on multitouch on desktops like a while ago. It's way too late now to really do a multi touch version of macOS in the same way that Windows can do it, in the same way that Android, the new versions of Android can do. Because again, they really, really put that hard partition between the two. But if they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have this tension today.
- [15:17]
A
The other thing, there are many things in 26.2, but you can now change liquid glass in a new location as well. The lock screen. I guess Apple's really recognizing liquid glass. Maybe not the best. Maybe with Alan's eye leaving.
- [15:35]
B
Yeah, well, it's fine. Remember we went through the exact same thing with iOS7, where iOS7 was almost a brutalist version of iOS. If it were a brick courtyard and a concrete building, it could not been more brutalist. And eventually they realized that, okay, this was as a hypothetical design task challenge inside our labs. This was a beautiful thing to make, but now people actually have to use it to, I don't know, make phone calls and Text people with it and they're not liking it. So we are not going to simply say, well, too bad. This is the OS we're giving you. It's like, nope, we're listening. And we can see where, where we can push a little bit harder and where we need to fall back. They haven't fallen back completely on liquid glass. They just simply said people just want the ability to dial it back where they want to dial it back. So I think it's a very, very positive thing that Apple's doing. It's not a retreat.
- [16:24]
A
Yeah, yeah. They're giving you the choice, which is fine. Yeah, Choice is good. Lots of security updates, as we would expect from any update to iOS or iOS or TV, OS, everything. OS, watch OS.
- [16:39]
C
All right, we can just say 26.2 now and we meet everything.
- [16:42]
A
It's all the same. Let's see, there was a big webkit, big security.
- [16:48]
B
Yeah.
- [16:49]
A
Security that they patched.
- [16:50]
C
Yeah.
- [16:50]
A
Okay. Yeah, I see a JPEG bug, an app Store bug.
- [16:55]
B
It's actual zero day.
- [16:56]
A
That's zero day.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah.
- [16:59]
C
This is one of those things that don't really. If you're running in 26 now, you probably should just go to 26 too, because there are some serious security. It sounds like they essentially, they shipped this. They were working on this os, they were going to ship it anyway, and then they had this issue with this WebKit security flaw, so they rolled it into the shipping to the 26.2 and shipped it. So it does include. It's not like there'll be a patch later. Like it's in there. So that's a, that's another reason to just update to 26.2 and credit to.
- [17:30]
A
Apple and to the white hat hackers who find these. And that's so really, it's, you know, good for Apple. They're actually starting to tell people where this came from. The red team at ByteDance, a guy running a company called Totally Not Malicious Software, Anonymous researcher, Alibaba, Trend Micro, Zero Day Initiative.
- [17:50]
C
Right. Got in there. Right. Yeah. Giving them credit is good. Giving them money is also good.
- [17:57]
A
I think they do both. Right. They still have a bug bounty, although.
- [18:01]
C
You know, it's debated. Right.
- [18:04]
B
They need to keep that funded very well.
- [18:05]
C
Yeah, they do.
- [18:06]
A
Because people are talking about.
- [18:07]
B
People are doing this just out of the. It costs money to find these bugs and their people want to be not only recognized for the work they're doing, but also compensated for all the time they put in.
- [18:17]
A
Well, yeah, not only that, there are people out there, bad Guys out there like Zerodium who will give them millions for a really good zero day non click iPhone crack because they're going to sell that to some nation state and so you've got, I mean admittedly they're going to always pay more than Apple was willing to pay, but at least you got to give them something so they can say, well, I'm, you know.
- [18:39]
C
Well, and some people, right. I mean there are people out there who are going to be malicious and all that. I think, I think most of these folks are not interested in selling to the highest bidder. They just want to be able to support themselves and do this as their, as their job. And they're essentially, if you're not going to be on staff somewhere as a security person, you can be an independent freelance person and be anywhere. And those people are super important because they're smart and we want them to not have to make a bad choice because they need to feed their family by letting them do this. Rosnaya Keller, who's on Mastodon and is a long time Mac developer, is credited multiple times, which is great to see. And the messages, it's a messages bug especially that was critical and ported back, ported back to iOS1,8732 because it was such a big deal.
- [19:33]
A
That's the other thing. In many cases you're going to want to go to 26.2 but if you are not yet on 26.
- [19:39]
C
Yeah.
- [19:40]
A
Update patched older versions.
- [19:42]
B
Yeah, that's the canary Keller.
- [19:45]
A
That's the totally not malicious software person. I love that name. Yeah. Messages are particularly problematic because that's how you get those zero click attacks. I don't know if this was a zero click, but the idea that you could send a message and even if I don't read it, it could hack your iPhone is terrifying. Yeah. I don't think this one was like that. But there are a lot of WebKit bugs. It just, there's a long list, longer it feels than usual. But I don't know. And look at all the acknowledgments for all the fixes in all the companies. I think that's really great. Good on you Apple for giving them credit. I think Apple knows they have to do that. Yeah.
- [20:31]
B
It's like, yeah, yeah. And the money is also important too. It's like as it happens, I was watching Steve Martin's acceptance speech when he won the Mark Twain Award and he said the Mark Twain Award is the second oldest prize awarding greatness in American comedy. The first award is of course money yeah. And the thing is, like, if you. Unfortunately, you show respect by saying, hey, here's a $500 gift card to the Outback Steakhouse.
- [21:02]
A
No, no.
- [21:03]
B
There is a. Not a life, necessarily life change. But here is a substantial amount of money that says that we are willing to crack open the checkbook and thank.
- [21:09]
A
You appropriately, the immortal words of. What's his name? Show me the money.
- [21:16]
C
That's from Jerry Maguire. Rod Tidwell. It's Cuba Gooden Jr. In that movie.
- [21:22]
A
Show me the money.
- [21:23]
C
Show me the money. Yeah, it's. It's. Or as Mike Montero says, and I'll clean it up. Fu. Pay me.
- [21:31]
A
That's a good one, too.
- [21:32]
C
Which is also. Is that in Goodfellas? I don't know. Anyway.
- [21:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it is. Good. Fellas. I feel like there's a.
- [21:39]
B
There was an earthquake.
- [21:40]
C
And, like, I can confirm that was indeed Goodfellas. I know, but then Mike M. Wrote a whole book about it, I think with a different title, because that would not be a great title, but it actually. It is a great title. But this is the point. Yeah. Compensate people for their work. And white hat hackers and also just programmers who find things. Like Rosa Nikkel are, I think, just found it. Right. Like, what is going on here? And they investigated it and it turned into three CVEs. So, like, that's. That's great. They should. They should. They should pay that person because that person saved their bacon. Yeah, right.
- [22:16]
A
Yeah. It's the carrot and the stick. You don't really want to emphasize the threat that they might sell it to some bad guy. But that is out there, I must say. There's also on Apple tv, there's a new feature you might care about kids mode on the Apple TV app. None of us have young children.
- [22:36]
C
Not anymore.
- [22:37]
A
I might do it for my mom.
- [22:38]
B
I don't know.
- [22:42]
A
It's also Apple liquid glass for Apple tv. That's about time. You know, I want some transparency on my tv. Okay.
- [22:52]
C
Yeah. So you can create a profile that isn't linked to an Apple account, and then you can also set up a profile that has just got all the parental controls turned on and TVOs. And I mean, that's a thing that you should do. But. Hey, Leo, I told my daughter that you're Salt Hank's dad, and she was suitably impressed.
- [23:14]
A
I'm doing well.
- [23:15]
C
Speaking of our kids that are not young anymore.
- [23:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing really well with those. That age group.
- [23:21]
C
It's very funny because most of the Stuff. I mean, she had its upgrade video, so she does see the computer stuff go by. But then I meant I was like, oh, let me drop his name and see if that gets a response. And she's like, no, really? Demographics.
- [23:36]
A
It makes me so, so happy. He's in a Super bowl commercial, by the way. He's going to la, I don't think. He says I'm just an extra. So I don't, I don't know if he'll.
- [23:44]
B
Oh, yeah, that case.
- [23:47]
C
Yeah.
- [23:47]
A
But yeah, just an extra has not.
- [23:49]
C
Been a Super Bowl.
- [23:50]
B
I mean, let's put things in perspective. I didn't land on the moon. I was in the command module orbiting the moon while the other guy is. So come on.
- [23:59]
A
Thanks, Michael Collins. Thank you. Let's take a little break. That's the 26. 2 update. Is there anything I missed? Jason, you wrote a whole great article@6colors.com with all the features, but is there anything significant that we should mention?
- [24:12]
C
No, it's, it's, it's a good thing if you're on 26. You should go to 26 too.
- [24:16]
A
I did. I went to all the devices and.
- [24:19]
C
If you're an iPad user who misses or, or I actually have heard from people who are like, I'm not going to update to 26 on my iPad until they fix Slide Over. Now do it. It's your time.
- [24:30]
A
Yeah, yeah, they fix Slide Over.
- [24:32]
B
The only other thing before we move on. So 26.3 is out to developers. It does have a couple of interesting and significant like.
- [24:40]
A
Oh yeah, let' about that.
- [24:41]
B
Yeah, yeah. Chiefly for like, like I said, EU compliance. That is not the sort of thing that we pull our hair out about. But like, oh yeah, actually it would be nice if I could like buy a Samsung or a Garmin smartwatch and it could get notifications for the microphone. Yeah, A pebble or pretty much literally anything other than an Apple watch. And so we're starting to. And the EU basically said. And of course Apple's argument against the EU was like, oh, but that's some of the most private and personal things and we can't allow like, yeah, but what if the user actually wants that? And that's kind of the reason why they spent $780 for this top of the line Garmin, like fitness and workout watch. So essentially there's infrastructure for that. That's in there. There's also infrastructure.
- [25:23]
A
Let's be fair, this was because the EU forced them to do that.
- [25:25]
C
Yeah, exactly. It sounds like it's going to Be everywhere. And it's basically a Bluetooth setting that lets you take a paired Bluetooth Device. This is 26.3. So this is just the beta, not the thing that shipped. And you can turn. For a Bluetooth device, you can turn on notification forwarding. And that is the idea is that you can then say, I would like my notifications pushed to this. Which is really good because, yeah, as somebody who used to use a Pebble and I know a bunch of people who are really excited about the kind of new Pebbles and Eric from Pebble. Eric pebble wrote that blog post about how it was going to be bad on the Mac or on iPhones because of this. And it's like bad for iPhone users. Right. So it's good.
- [26:09]
B
Interesting that at least in the state that it is right now, you can only click. You can only authorize one device at a time. So if you are basically there's going to be just one holy device of your choosing. And if you happen to have, if you happen to switch between, oh, for my ultra marathon training, I use a Garmin, but for daily wear I use Apple Watch. You're going to have to make a choice or you have to keep. But again, this is in that category of why weren't they doing this all along? And it's where, yeah, you know what? Again, the world is not going to end if you give people the option of turning that on. It's kind of like basic nutrition for the constellation of devices that people own.
- [26:50]
A
Okay, 26. Three coming soon. Not till next year, I guess.
- [26:56]
B
Right?
- [26:57]
A
They're all going on vacation. Well, oh, the watch has sleep score updates. Okay.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah. And I don't think we can even. We can credibly create a Vision Pro segment today, but they did add something interesting to Vision OS 26.2, where travel mode, they understand that. Well, sometimes people. Maybe we don't want people driving while they've got a Vision Pro on, but maybe there are people in the backseat and maybe there are people who are in an Uber or a bus. So they've enabled travel modes so that you actually use your Vision Pro while in a moving car.
- [27:32]
A
Good.
- [27:33]
C
Yeah. Which you didn't used to be able to do. And the switch to iPhone and switch to Android stuff, which is. What is it? I think Google has enabled it in a build for their phones so far. So it's early days. And it's also signs of it in 26. 3. The idea here is that Google and Apple announced that they are doing this and I think they're Doing this everywhere, not just in the euro, but I think it's because of pressure and it's a great thing for users because they basically are going to work together and this is the first release of it, first sign of it, to build a standard system by which anybody on iOS can export their data to an Android phone and vice versa, which not only is that great for consumers, but honestly, if that's your bulwark against people switching off of your platform, you have other problems. So I think it's great. Pro, consumer. Good for Apple, good for Google. Sorry it took this long, but I love it. I love that. That is, it's a little like something like Google takeout, which is like I just want to have it like it's good for consumers to feel like they're not trapped somewhere.
- [28:42]
A
Yeah. All right, we're going to take a little break, come back with more, including the story of one of our club twin members from down under who was trapped in the Apple ecosystem. But he's now been released. Maybe that's not the best way to look at it, but we'll talk about that in just a little bit. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Oh, I didn't even mention. You might have noticed that Alex Lindsay's not here. He's off on assignment, working hard, doing something else. He'll be back next week, our last show of the year. The Christmas week will be a best of episode and then we'll be back in January. So we will be here one more week and the good lord willing and the Cricks don't rise. Alex will join us for our last episode of the year next week. Meanwhile, it's great, it's Jason, Andy and me. What more do you need?
- [29:31]
C
What more do you need?
- [29:31]
A
What more do you need? Our show today, brought to you by Framer. I'm sure you know the name. Framer is a great place to do your website but if you're, they've got a new feature I think you're going to love. If you're still jumping between tools just to update your website, you know, maybe you've got Figma and some other things. Framer has decided this is no reason, no reason for this to be these import export things. Framer is now bringing together design, your cms, your publishing and it's all on one canvas. No more handoffs, no hassles, everything you need to design and publish in one place. Framer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful production ready websites. And now, now it's redefining how you Design for the Web with the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas based design tool, Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all in one design platform. From social assets to campaign visuals to vectors to icons, all the way to a live site. Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish. And oh, by the way, it's free. Framer is a free full feature design tool. Think unlimited projects free. Unlimited pages, free. Unlimited collaborators free. All the essentials you need. Vectors, 3D transforms, gradients, wireframes. Everything you need to design. Totally free. Now they do have a pro tier, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to. I'll tell you how you can get a deal on the Pro tool in just a second. Framer though. Even the free version gives you your entire workflow in one place. No figma imports, no messy HTML. It's faster, it's cleaner, it's more efficient, and it does now design much more than websites. You can create social assets, campaign visuals, icons, site resources, all within the tool, all without switching back and forth. Remember this name, Framer. Framer stands above the others because it's more than a site builder, it's a true design tool. It also just happens to publish professional production ready sites. If you're ready to design, iterate and publish all in one tool, start creating for free@framer.com design and use the code MacBreak and you can get a free month of framer pro. That's framer.com design and use the promo code macbreak framer.com design promo code is macbreak rules and restrictions may apply. Framer. Thank you Framer for supporting Mac Break Weekly. Well, in court, Apple got a little bit of a defeat. Tim Sweeney is jumping up and down. You may remember the scathing judgment handed down earlier this year by Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers, saying that Apple had willfully, willfully violated her 2021 injunction to open the App Store payment system. Apple appealed, of course. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has come down with a ruling that Apple's initial attempts to replace the 30% vig with a 27% vig that's a prohibitive effect quote had a prohibitive effect in violation of the injunction they held against Apple. That appeal failed. The appeals court said Apple hacked it in bad faith. And so now I guess it's done right.
- [33:15]
B
Yeah, the only slight win for Apple is that the three member board basically said that. Yeah, we're agreeing with you, Judge, that Apple was not compliant with any of this and they're kind of being jerks about it. The one thing that Apple kind of won was that the panel also said, yeah, but maybe take a look at commissions, because maybe it should be okay for Apple to charge some commission, something, whereas just not 27%. Exactly. Epic's position, of course, which of course they did not lose any time in posting a blog post, was that, no, no, no, no, no, no, you should get paid for your. For, for what you. Apple should get paid for what they have to do to technically mechanically scan this content to make sure that it's not going to be harmful. But that's it. Nominal fee. That's it. They should not be profiting off of our work. And the truth will probably be someplace in between.
- [34:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, that's an extreme view. Right. Which is the idea that no one should ever make any profit margin on anything if they're in the middle is a little bit much. Right. Like just this is. Yeah, that's kind of ludicrous because, in.
- [34:19]
A
Fact, what Tim Swinney wants to do is have his own Epic web store in which he will be the middleman. Make money off of.
- [34:26]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [34:27]
A
He wants to make the money instead of Apple making them.
- [34:29]
C
Exactly. But, but it is in the middle here. And I think. I think this is a good result. But the problem is going to be that Apple. We kind of know how this is going to go. Right. Apple may respond by doing what it's done in other cases, which is, oh, yeah, we're going to do a new thing because that one is too much and it'll end up being, you know, what they did in, in the eu. I think it was like, it's complex. It's sort of like this. For this. This percent. And then this gets added on. And if you do this, it's. It's this other thing. But. But yeah, I think that in some ways, I think this is a victory for Apple in the sense that it's saying you can't ban all commissions. Right. Like that opens the door for Apple to set another commission percentage that's not 25%. And then. Well, I mean, maybe. Or maybe it's 20. Who knows? Who knows? Or it's. Or it's more complex than that.
- [35:23]
A
But I think already. Right. For big guys, I think the smart thing for Apple to do is just say, well, we're going to make that 15 for everybody.
- [35:30]
C
Well, the little guys are 15. I think in app purchases for things that are 30 and a lot of games, that's where they make all their money.
- [35:38]
A
People don't like, like Fortnite for instance.
- [35:40]
C
It's a really funny argument because. Yes. Has Apple earned anything for that? Not really, other than building the system and then they're just charging a toll at the same time. It's also digital goods that have zero value. So other than the cost of Epic or anyone else creating those things, creating an unlock for a feature or a gem or whatever, it's, it's, it's a little rich to say that Apple is the only one exploiting people here because these things have no intrinsic value beyond the basics of it. But they end up being an enormous profit center for game developers especially. So, you know, I think, you know, nobody's going to defend Apple taking 30%. I wonder, I think what Andy and I are both going to be watching in this is how snotty does Apple get responding to this? Do they say fine, 28% or do they say okay, 10% and if you're this, you get a 5% off and if you do this it's 10% more and whatever. Is it something that everybody will look at and go, especially a judge will look at and go that's reasonable and Epic won't agree but maybe that will still make it better for everybody.
- [36:45]
B
Yeah, it was, it was, it was always a weird addition to just being snotty about it, which is something we will, we agree upon. It always was a weird argument because if you're have, if, if you imagine you're having a conversation with, with your nine year old child in which you basically have to like help them to understand the fallacy of the argument you would have to say so you're basically saying that the services that you give to people who sell through the App Store have zero value whatsoever Apple. Because it turns out that even if someone wants to sell through their own App Store, you're charging them the exact same amount. And that was always kind of weird to me.
- [37:24]
A
Me.
- [37:25]
B
But also there are two ways that Apple can punish people for not using the App Store. One is by making them pay pretty much damn near as much money as they would spend if they were in the App Store proper. The other is to we will bury you in so much paperwork and bureaucracy that you will take one look at this 321 page PDF of and no, no, not a PDF, we'll make it a Microsoft Word file. We're going to make it as hard for you as possible to parse all the, the filing requirements that we're going to demand from you that you will get to page three and say, I give up. I don't want this hassle. I just want to sell my app. So this is clearly an ongoing thing. I mean, yeah, Jason, we're wondering at one point, does Apple decide that, okay, we believe we have fought this as long as hard as we possibly can. We don't believe there's a potential for any greater wins than what we've already won so far. It's time to figure out a way to remake our App store in a way that is going to be accepted by worldwide regulators, because all these countries and all these governments are not letting this go. I don't think this is that moment. I think that they're gonna continue to argue. Again, the only win was that the judge was basically said, yeah, Apple should get some sort of a profit off this. But it's. And so Apple gets to basically haggle about. I don't think they'll go to 27.2%, but they will say, we're gonna see here is the largest amount that we think will not get us hurt by the court and laughed out. And we're gonna.
- [38:59]
A
And we're gonna yell at us again?
- [39:01]
C
Yeah, I mean, remember, because we talked about this back then, this is that moment where Apple was like, oh, we did fine. And Judge Rogers was like, no, you didn't. You lose everything now. No commission for you. And these judges are like, yeah, I know why you're mad, but you can't do that. You need to actually, like, let them set a commission. You can't. So, you know, but again, Apple has to please Judge Rogers with what they do.
- [39:24]
A
And it's still.
- [39:25]
C
I think it's her discretion.
- [39:26]
A
Okay, so it's interesting because the headline really tells you something about the writer of the headline. For instance, Arts Technica says in the Goliath versus Other Goliath section, Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case. But then MacRumors says Apple wins ability to charge fees on external payment. Law links. It's the same ruling, just, you know, glass half full, glass half empty. Tim Sweeney was pretty scathing. He said, and I don't think he's wrong when he says when people are afraid of Apple. He said the fear of retaliation is what has led many iOS developers to pay 30% without complaint because Apple has, quote, infinite power to retaliate. End quote. Yeah. He calls this a totally illegal exercise of soft power, which to me may be saber rattling, but maybe an indicator that he wants to pursue this even farther.
- [40:21]
B
Remember what kicked this all off? It wasn't that, Gosh, we don't want to pay this and let's start litigating this. It was. Apple said, okay, not only can you not have Fortnite in the App Store, we're going to pull your developer license so you can't develop anything for any of our platforms. At which point it was, it started.
- [40:36]
A
They yanked his development.
- [40:37]
C
I mean technically it started when they shipped a hidden code in their app that turned on external purchases of in app purchase items in Fortnite. At which point Apple yanked that from the store. Because they, but they look, they were, they wanted this fight. Epic wanted this fight. Because I believe, not only does Tim Sweeney believe this on business grounds, but I think he also believes what Apple is doing is wrong and that he is the one person he thinks anyway who has the guts to stand up to them and willing to fight for. And he will. And here's the thing, he is, look, he's an extreme, extreme extremist, basically. He has an extreme position here. There are a lot of people who fight for rights who are extreme. Eff. Right. I love the eff. I don't agree with their positions on a lot of things because sometimes they are taking the most extreme position. But I'm glad that they're fighting and if the result is an improvement that is fair, I think that that's good. Tim Sweeney will never be satisfied. Right? He will, like Hamilton, never be satisfied. But, but if the judge is satisfied and it's Apple charging less when they used to not want anything at all, they just, you don't do it. And if you do do it, we want all the money still, then the consumers win. So like that's why you have the judge in the middle. And Tim, sweetie, can, you know, he will have changed Apple's policies positively by doing this, even if he's not satisfied at the end of the day.
- [42:04]
B
Yeah. My position has always been that there's, there's absolutely. There are cases in which the people who are trying to get Apple change their ways through the courts are absolutely pursuing a legitimate claim. There are times where it is self serving and there are times where it's both. It doesn't necessarily negate each other. However, I'm always of the position where when you have companies that are this large and there are a lot of not just Apple here, the great thing about cases like this is that it forces these companies to say no. You don't just get to say we are doing this to preserve the integrity and the safety of our users. Okay, great. Then you should be easy enough for you to prove this. Give us your proof, let us show us the documents that actually demonstrate this. And no company with that kind of power should never have to say, show your paperwork, show your homework.
- [43:01]
C
Yeah, I mean the idea, I mean this is a classic Apple thing where they say, well, we're here to protect you. And the attitude is that if it's not inside Apple and done by Apple, it's dangerous. And this, this is why they've ended up having a policy scheme that, that, that's like links URLs are dangerous. They could kill this URL, could kill you, this giant credit card processor, right? Like, oh, you don't want to use Stripe. You don't know, maybe there's bad people back behind Stripe who are going to steal your credit card. And like, like that's the idea is they want users to believe that the big bad Internet is going to get them. And there are arguments there, but like they're not interested in the little deals, they just want it all. And there's no competition. Like no competition.
- [43:48]
B
Yeah, it's kind of sad on a level because you would like in an academic, in an abstract sense, you would like people and organizations like that to think, yes, we have some of the most satisfied customers. Yes, we have a user base that is huge and it's just growing every quarter. And the reason why that happens is because we try to earn their custom each and every time they use an Apple product or service. If part of the pillars of that growth is that we are going to really put the hurt on anybody, whether it's a developer, a user, anybody who wants to leave our ecosystem or at least invite in a competing set of earbuds or a competing watch. We're just gonna try to keep people as Apple Watch users and iPhone users because we're make it really, really hard for them not to be that thing that's not working from a point of pride. And so you hate to see that no matter who's promoting that sort of thing.
- [44:45]
A
Well, and get ready because in two days in Japan, the app store for both the Android and iOS, they will have to start offering or allow third party app stores on the devices. Now I don't, I don't know how big a market for Apple or Android Japan is, but I figure it's probably pretty important. And that's done, that's a done deal that starts in the 18th. So yeah, I think, I feel like it's Domino's, right. That this is just going to eventually be global.
- [45:20]
B
Absolutely. And this is why you're seeing things like where Apple, where Apple can see a way forward towards, okay, we can make it easier for people to switch from Android to iPhone and iPhone to Android. We can find a way to get people to put their notifications from the iPhone on a competing device. It's not that they are suddenly thrilled with the idea of making it easier for other people to again use competing products. But unlike 10, was it close to 10? It must have been close to 10 years ago when during the discovery process I think of this exact trial where it was. Why is Apple not embracing certain types of messaging for imessage? Because we don't want to make it easy for people to introduce Apple devices. This is not the same world as it was when Federighi participated in that conversation. This is a different world which, okay, we had it really nice for a while. We can. It's a natural thing for us to try to be as selfish as possible because sometimes selfishness is not necessarily. It's just a word. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Self interest, let's say we're going to act in our own self interest. However, the window for us acting in our own self interest all the time without any repercussions is over. We have to figure out how we're going to live in this new climate and we're going to fight tooth and nail for some things, but other things, there's no point in fighting this because we can't, we can't flip the bird at 18 governments at the same time. You have to choose one or two.
- [46:56]
C
And the idea that they're going to have to come up with a scheme that works for them and that works for everybody that's different and they've resisted having to do that. But I'm going to cart out. I wrote about this a couple years ago. Apple already built a scheme that's open that still allows Apple to have a lot of control over privacy and security and provide its own app store. It's what they did on the Mac and they could do that on iOS and iPados and I think they would be just fine. I know, I'm not saying it would be easy. I'm saying Apple already came up with a system that allows the Mac to run anybody's software and verify developers and kill malware as it spreads while letting you install software from other locations. And I think in the end they're going to lean. They're already doing it a little bit in the eu. They're going to lean on the choices they made to build that system, to revise the iOS system. And I think they can do it and I think it will be okay when they do it. And I think what we've seen in the eu, and if Alex were here, he would say this too, is not a lot of people are using alternate app stores in the eu. But the idea is that if you could have a global audience and you have something that Apple doesn't want to exist, you could still sell it and that's, you could still give it away. Because right now, if your app, if Apple doesn't want your app to exist, you've. You've invested in the iOS app. It's a native app. It's not on any other platform. And Apple says, no, you have no recourse. You cannot put that on that device anywhere other than, I guess, the eu, where they have alternative app stores. And it's just, that's not, that's not a way for devices to be. Apple will still control most of the app market and it will be fine, but there will be the ability for other developers to go their own way. It only seems right. It works on the Mac. It's worked for years on the Mac. That's what they're. I think that's where they're going to end up.
- [48:41]
B
Yeah. And a lot of this is about Apple not necessarily being violently opposed to again, notifications on external devices or sharing WI FI network passwords to other devices. Sometimes it's like it's going to take time for us to do it the way that we as our corporate culture would want to do it. So it's not just something, okay, we're going to vibe code, 100 lines of code and add it to the OS. And great presto. Suddenly saved WI FI passwords can be pushed onto Android devices. Gruber, I think a few weeks ago, had a post about that. He had some sources that were explaining exactly what was going into notifications and other devices and sharing WI FI passwords. And it really was, here is how we want to do this in a way that in our culture is going to be safe and secure. And that takes time. And again, people like me who get curmudgeonly about this would not be quite curmudgeonly if Apple were not so publicly virulent about this. If they did not hit the. Okay, time to hit Command Shift 8. Command Shift Option 8, which pastes in. We are only interested in preserving the integrity and the security of node tell us that we're not necessarily opposed to it, but you don't understand how difficult that's going to be, to do it in such a way that will protect the safety and the integrity and the security and privacy of our users. Again, remove that keyboard macro and I'll stop complaining about this sort of thing.
- [50:05]
A
All right, let's take one more break. More to come. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Anako, Jason Snell. Alex has the week off. He'll be back next week. Somebody was asking and I'll repeat it. Next week is December 23rd, the day Christmas Eve Eve. And we are going to do a show Christmas Eve Eve or Christmas Steve.
- [50:25]
B
As some people mention.
- [50:27]
A
Is that Festivus? When is Festivus? I don't want to miss this. That I gotta, gotta make sure I get the airing of grievances in time. I did not figure that out.
- [50:35]
B
I did not earn grievances. But then again, I haven't checked my Twitter.
- [50:38]
A
It may be there are some grievances next week and I hope Alex will be here for that, by the way. It is tough.
- [50:44]
C
It is.
- [50:44]
A
It is. That's what I thought. Yes. So Festivus next week for the rest of us. For the rest of us, we will celebrate. And then the 30th, we are gonna, everybody's gonna take that week off and so we'll have our best of show and then we should reconvene next months. So just as a kind of calendar thing, our show today, brought to you by our friends at Outsystems, the number one AI powered, low code development platform. I think you need to know about Outsystems because they solve a really common problem in business. We've had it, We've faced it. The Build versus by Conundrum Room, you could, of course, solve your problems. We wanted a sales system, right? So you could solve your problems by going out. And I mean, you can look for podcast sales systems. None of them quite fit. But, you know, you could buy it and it's. You got it and it does something, or you could do what we decided to do at a great cost. And if it was probably a foolish move, design build your own. That's buy versus build. So we built something. Actually, Jeff Needles, one of our employees did a very nice job, built it, then left and says, no, I'm not supporting it. We still use it, but it has a little, it has some bugs. You know, if two people try to work on the same document, it crashes, things like that. And then we have to call somebody to reset it. Build versus buy. Neither one is exactly right. Well, there's now a third way. Thanks to Outsystems, organizations all over the world are building, creating custom apps and AI agents. But they're doing it on the Outsystems low code platform and with good reason. Because Outsystems is all about outcomes, helping teams quickly deploy apps and by the way, AI agents and other AI tools and deliver results. Because Outsystems is. They've been doing low code for years, but they have now added AI in addition, which means it's fast, it's efficient, it works really well and the success stories are endless. For instance, they helped a top US bank deploy an app for customers. This is a customer facing app. Allowed customers open new accounts on any device, 75% faster onboarding times. The customers loved it, the bank loved it. They helped one of the largest brewers, well, it's right there on the screen. I don't know why I'm being so coy. They helped one of the largest brewers in the world deploy a solution to automate automate tasks to clear bottlenecks. That delivered a savings of 1 million development hours. And you ain't pay those developers minimum wage, I could tell you that right now. They even helped a global insurer accelerate development of a portal and app for their employees, which really delivered. It gave their agents a 360 degree view of customers and a way to grow policy sales they'd never had before. And it was a huge success. This is the true third way. Build versus buy versus Outsystems. The Outsystems platform is truly a game changer for development teams. With AI powered low code teams can build custom, beautifully purpose built, built to order tailored systems, future proof applications. Because you can always upgrade it. You built it, IT and AI agents all at the speed of buying as quickly as buying. But you get all this infrastructure built in because it's outsystems. Fully automated architecture, security integrations with other software tools, data flows, permissions. All the stuff you want, you need is there already. Without systems, it's so easy to create your own purpose built apps and agents. There's really no reason to think of buying off the shelf sameware ever again. I wish we'd had this when we were building our sales System. OutSystems number one AI powered low code development platforms. Learn more at outsystems.com TWiT that's outsystems.com TWiIT and do me a favor, use that URL. But if they ask you say yeah, we heard about it on Mac break weekly or we heard about it on Twit. That's very helpful. Outsystems.com Twitter. They're very helpful. Very. You'll. I'm. Like I said, if only we'd had out systems in our back in the day. Oh, have you called. Have you called the number on the screen? Imploribus. Just out of curiosity.
- [55:23]
C
I haven't.
- [55:24]
A
Have you?
- [55:25]
C
No, I haven't.
- [55:26]
A
It is. It is. They have. There are two numbers actually. And I could call it. I don't know. Should I just. Maybe I'll just play it. I don't think Apple will take me down for that. I would hope. Let me just. Let me just play it and you can hear what happens when you dial.
- [55:51]
B
Has always been very reasonable.
- [55:52]
A
Yeah, It's a Washington D.C. number. It's a real phone number. 2038-0820-2808-3981. Hello? Hello? Well, maybe not.
- [56:12]
B
I don't know what happened.
- [56:14]
A
I guess. I guess I should call it on the phone. How about that? Let me. Let me try it this way. Way.
- [56:21]
B
This must be very nostalgic for you during. During your radio day doing phone calls.
- [56:25]
A
Yeah.
- [56:25]
B
Do you know the count or the amount?
- [56:26]
A
You know, in the old days, I would have had a way to do this without actually resorting to a telephone.
- [56:31]
C
A little dialing music, please, Paul.
- [56:33]
A
Yeah. Thank you. Let's see if we can put it on the speaker here.
- [56:38]
B
I miss that. Then you try to figure out why is he playing this song? Because there's definitely a reason why he chose this song while he's calling it. Taylor.
- [56:46]
A
Oh, gosh. This didn't work. Work. This is so bad. I'm sorry. Bad radio. But. Oh, it's not radio. It's a podcast. There's nothing wrong on a pod.
- [56:55]
C
Yeah, we don't have a time slot. We could go on forever and we do.
- [56:58]
A
Oh, it hang up on me. You know what? Maybe it's disconnected now. Never mind.
- [57:02]
B
Maybe that's a problem.
- [57:03]
C
Hello, Carol?
- [57:04]
A
Hello, Carol. It did. It did the. Hello, Carol. The number one ever of all time watched show on Apple tv. Congratulations.
- [57:14]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's good. They got another hit. They've got another buzz show.
- [57:18]
A
I don't think I'm getting a little bored. Can I tell you be honest? I'm a little bored with it.
- [57:22]
C
I'm riveted.
- [57:23]
A
Are you? Completely riveted because you know something's gonna happen eventually.
- [57:27]
C
Well, no, I mean, again, okay, I've heard this criticism and I just don't agree to it. People are like, come on, I want the plot to move forward. It's like, oh, you don't want Gilligan.
- [57:36]
A
I mean, he did a whole episode on a fly.
- [57:39]
C
First off, it's about the characters. Second, it's about Carol processing. I'm not gonna spoil it, but it's like about Carol processing. What, what, what could you do if you could do whatever you wanted and realizing that in the end, if it's just you doing it, it's not actually that fun for that long while. While the other character, she is starting to realize that.
- [57:59]
A
Which I like.
- [58:00]
C
Yes. And the other character is in a colossal man versus nature battle.
- [58:03]
A
Holy cow.
- [58:04]
C
Out in the Darien Gap.
- [58:05]
A
The Darien Gap is.
- [58:07]
C
I mean, I thought that idea, I thought that was amazing and riveting. For those who don't know, Darien Gap of the is one why you can't drive from the top of North America to the bottom of South America is that in between Panama and Colombia there is an impassable jungle and there's no road. And they've tried and there's still no road because it's just, it's, it's ridiculous. It's like marsh and, and it's a.
- [58:28]
A
60 mile strip of jungle that is mostly occupied by drug traffickers and migrants.
- [58:34]
C
Last year, half a million people went through the Darien Gap last year.
- [58:39]
A
They say, I did, I had, I did. I don't, I feel ignorant. I didn't know anything about it.
- [58:44]
C
And north and Central American governments actually don't want to open the Darien Gap up because it will spread. There's foot and mouth disease in South America and it hasn't been in the livestock and it hasn't been in North America in 50, 70 years, something like that. And they're concerned that if you open up that transport, it'll be very easy for the livestock to cross over.
- [59:04]
A
And it's also the boundaries. It's on the border between Colombia and Panama. And I wouldn't be surprised if those countries said, you know, we don't want your people going into.
- [59:15]
B
Could be.
- [59:16]
A
But you can go around, you can go by water. And we won't explain why there was.
- [59:20]
C
A ferry, although there isn't right now.
- [59:22]
A
But yeah, you could even get a boat. But we don't explain why this person is doing it the way he's doing it. You have to watch the show.
- [59:28]
C
He needs to be a man versus nature in a real sense there. I want to say, not too surprising given that it's a buzz show and people are talking about it and that it's doing well for Apple also. We could probably guess that Apple TV is. Has probably got. It's probably growing. Right. It's probably got more people overall subscribing than it ever has. Yeah, I know they've done well on Amazon channels as well. I think that it's a growing service and so obviously a growing service. The raw number is going to be higher. Right. Their ceiling is higher. But still, still we're talking about severance, which had a lot of buzz, and Ted Lasso, which had a lot of buzz. And for this to surpass it is. I mean, Apple paid a lot of money for this show. Lots of different people were bidding on it.
- [60:12]
A
Oh, really? I didn't know that was very expensive.
- [60:15]
C
Yeah, yeah. And they, and they, they paid the most for it, but I think they're getting their money's worth.
- [60:20]
A
Yeah.
- [60:20]
B
And surprisingly we, for the first few years of Apple TV production productions, we would sometimes have like, news stories about how Apple is just meddling and nitpicking and they want in on every decision. And if that, either that is not inoperative or they decided, well, this is the guy who did Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. What if we just let him do his thing?
- [60:42]
A
There was, I was surprised, a little bit of nudity, which I don't remember ever there being in an Apple TV show before. I mean, it was very mild.
- [60:50]
C
Yeah. They're not too worried about it, I think. Also, so also the perception that it's like Eddie Q and Tim Cook are giving notes. I mean, it's Zach and Jamie, the guys they hired from Sony who've been running Apple TV since the beginning. And those guys are pros and those guys are at the top of the chain, really. And I think Eddie talks to them and that's it. Right. So it really is quite remarkable for Apple actually to set up this entire other business that is not in their area and that they brought in outsiders to run and that it's been very successful. But I think it's been successful for that very reason that they brought in pros. They gave them a budget, they said, go make a great service and then they let them do it. And they've made something that is basically, you know, they're striving for HBO level. And they really have done a great job, I think.
- [61:37]
B
Yeah. And also goes to show, like, when the company that owns you makes a huge amount of money on something that is not necessary, if they're not necessarily required to force you to wring every penny of profit you possibly can out of everything you do. That's a great place in which creative things can happen happen. And as long as people still want phones and specifically still want iPhones, I think that we'll still continue to get things like severance on Apple tv and maybe it will not land on HBO and it will not land on these other services that are being bought and sold like so many trading cards.
- [62:10]
A
I, in a year will have to replace my car. The lease runs up. And I know one thing, I will not be considering a Cadillac or a Chevy because they don't have CarPlay. GM says no CarPlay for you, but their position is softening. I don't know if this is enough for me. General Motors says we are going to allow native Apple music in our cars.
- [62:37]
C
What?
- [62:38]
A
Huh?
- [62:39]
B
Yeah, that.
- [62:40]
A
I guess it'll be an app, right? An Apple music app. I don't want. I want CarPlay.
- [62:45]
C
Well, okay, so this is the thing. So Tesla and Rivian do this too. And the idea is, is, you know, they build a web framework and then they put Spotify and Apple Music in it and Apple podcasts in it and stuff like that, right? And they say, see, this is it. But the fact is, if you use a different music service or a different podcast client, you're never going to or anything else. If you use Libby to do ebooks, like, they're not going to cover the App Store. They're going to cover two or three things that are easy for them to cover, and then they're going to walk away. Which is why. Why it's, it's silly. There was Ben Thompson just did an interview with the, the guy at Rivian and asked him about why Rivian doesn't do carplay. And that guy is so high on his own supply. His answer was basically, well, in other cars you want CarPlay because the experience is so bad. But at Rivian, we're committed to doing such a great experience that you want to do CarPlay and it's like, dude, one, you can't. And two, that's not it. The reason is we all our data and apps are on our phone and we would like to use them, please. And then his other ARG, the Rivian guy was, we think that CarPlay is a take over the screen experience and we wouldn't want to do that because it hides all of our important things. It's like, there are plenty of cars that could put CarPlay in a window with your controls around it. And also he said Apple wouldn't like, you know, a window inside a window experience when they literally let you put an iPhone inside a Mac last year. So what are we even talking about the guy again, to rephrase. Again, Again, high on his own supply. It's ridiculous.
- [64:18]
B
Yeah, it's, it's. There, there are two different sides to this, one of which is like, there's no reason not to have CarPlay. There's no reason not to have Android Auto. Okay? That's for all the reasons that Jason talked about. Like, this is what we want. I just want my phone is inside my car and therefore I've got all my playlists, I've got all my settings, all the apps that I know are working correctly and all. Everything that's, that's that, that I, I know and love the others. There, There was a vaguely okay, argument that I think he was making earlier about how, or it might have been another automaker about the widespread, the larger goals and ambitions of CarPlay to basically say, well, actually, here's a demonstration that Apple put up of how CarPlay can basically be every glass screen, every. The entire interface. And they're saying, yeah, but.
- [65:05]
C
When you.
- [65:05]
B
Turn, when you turn on the air conditioning, when you turn on the air conditioning, is that something that should be handled by Apple or should be handled by the people who designed the air conditioning? But that is a totally different sort of thing.
- [65:16]
C
We have a Chevy bolt.
- [65:18]
A
I love the bolt.
- [65:20]
C
It's got CarPlay. And CarPlay takes up most of the screen and then there's a border around it that shows you what's playing on the radio, what the temperature is, what your AC is set for, and you've got physical controls, but you can also go into the controls on the touchscreen and CarPlay goes away and you do whatever and then you go back to CarPlay. It's not unreasonable. I do think, See, I think it's an excuse. I think that the, the, the, the especially the EV makers, but in general, carmakers are saying, well, when we're doing smart driving or battery, you know, smart maps that are guiding you to a charger, and you need to know the current state of the battery on the car, we have decided, like, that's a better experience in our ui and maybe it is. Although there are carmakers now who are using this new Apple Maps feature that actually lets you, you lets the car tell Apple Maps how much battery they have, which is interesting, right? Like you could do that. But I'm, I'm receptive to the idea that, like, nobody, when you're in a car, when you're in a Rivian you want to use Rivian's maps probably because it's going to know where you can charge and it's going to know you know and it may navigate you there and it knows the status of the battery and all of those things. Okay, fair enough. But like that argument only goes so far. But because the argument against CarPlay is this absolutist strawman argument which like, oh, they're going to take over everything and then our software is not going to be there and it's like that's not it. That's not what people want. People want to use their podcast app or their audiobook client and also your implementation of Apple Music is not going to be as good. It's just not because you're not Apple. You're using an Apple API on whatever platform you're on. It's not going to be as good. So, so, you know, it just, it's, it's so anti consumer and I was disappointed because I think Rivian's done a lot of really interesting things and the fact that he is still at the point where he thinks that they can out interface Apple and that they can beat the app store on your iPhone, it's just delusional.
- [67:16]
B
Yeah, I think that there's something to be said Again, it's part of the discussion. So I'll say it in there in their defense, this part of it, that when designers design a car, they want to design the entire car. They want to design the speed cluster, they want to design the buttons, the tactile buttons and the virtual buttons. And maybe they don't want to give up that. But the bigger thing that's so shady about this kind of absolutist policy is that no, they want all the data, they don't want to have to go through the privacy. They don't want people to have their behavior inside that car controlled by Apple privacy guidelines. If they want to see what are you listening to inside this car while you're going, they want to collect everything so they can categorize it, collect it, package it and resell it because that's another profit center for this vehicle. So yeah, it's shady as anything that they are sticking to this idea of no, no, no, no, no, no. The people don't want Apple CarPlay, people don't want Android Auto, they want our own bespoke solutions are exactly what are. We know the Cadillac cost.
- [68:18]
C
It is the children who are wrong.
- [68:20]
A
Exactly. Well, I am very happy with our bolt that has CarPlay, but there's no way, sorry GM, you should listen to your customers. I'm gonna buy another GM car or a Rivian or a Tesla. I had a Tesla and I didn't like it. I mean, I didn't like that aspect of it. I really wanted CarPlay. And once you get CarPlay. Now the BMW I have has a BM. You know the normal. When you get in the car, you don't see CarPlay. You have a little CarPlay button, but you see all of their stuff. But I can go to the CarPlay button and this CarPlay takes over the screen. I can even sit there. I can use all of the CarPlay. It's possible to do this intelligently and it's very disappointing.
- [69:04]
B
We didn't have this problem when we just had a cassette deck and a simple cassette adapter.
- [69:09]
A
That's probably where they're coming from, right?
- [69:13]
B
They're just coming from a point of greed and delusion. Intersection of greed and delusion.
- [69:17]
A
The intersection of greed and delusion. That's, that's how Steve Jobs would have put it. Apple has bought two, count them, two new buildings in Cupertino pushing their local real estate spend past a billion dollars. They got the money in July. They picked up a $365 million four building Matilda Campus and now another one pair of buildings for 350 million. And now a 166 million three building Cupertino Gateway complex. They're all near the original campus. They're on Stevens Creek Boulevard, which those of us who've ever lived in San Jose know that street name very well. It's where the auto dealers are.
- [70:03]
C
Yeah, and that's basically where Apple is, down the Cupertino end. I mean, you talk about a company town. Also a bunch of these things are right by, they're right by Tantau, which means they're right across the freeway from Apple Park. And if you've ever been over there, it's surprising that there are any buildings left that aren't owned by Apple.
- [70:20]
A
Yeah, no kidding.
- [70:21]
C
Also, I don't know if these buildings, some of these buildings may have been rented by Apple and now are just being bought. I mean, almost every space in Cupertino, if you've ever been over there, is Apple. Apple, like Apple has spilled out. For those who don't know, Apple park and Infinite Loop are not it. It's also every other office building between those two. Like everywhere you go, there's more and more Apple. It's not just in those two main areas. They've got lots of different stuff going on in different places and so like, yeah, it's. It. I don't know if it is the most company town of any town. I mean, I guess like the, the SpaceX starbase town that they incorporated at their launch facility in Texas might be. But like Cupertino. So much of Cupertino is Apple at this point. I'm surprised there were more office buildings for them to buy.
- [71:11]
A
It's amazing, but it's a great location. Kudos for them for kind of staying where they were born and kind of taking it over. I, you know.
- [71:19]
C
Yeah, no, they're, they're committed to that area. That's, that's where they started and that's where they want to be.
- [71:24]
A
And the fact that they're buying plenty of offices and other.
- [71:26]
C
Yeah, so these are literally. It's two, it's two office buildings on the, on the west side of Tantau where they already have like five buildings on the east side. And the, and the building behind them away from Stevens Creek is an Apple building. And then next to that is the shopping center with the restaurants and stuff, if you've ever been down there. So like it's literally. It would be shocking if they didn't, you know, buy those buildings because it's practically on campus already.
- [71:54]
B
Yeah, a lot of the major ones. I read the article in Silicon Valley that it is, it is a subliminal release of an existing.
- [72:01]
C
It's Valco 3 and 4. So these were already Apple office buildings. They're just buying the buildings.
- [72:06]
A
Is it the old Valco Shopping Center?
- [72:08]
C
It's on Valco Parkway. They're still redeveloping the Valco Shopping center and they're going to. There's a huge plot of land across the street across Wolf Road that they're redeveloping that some developer is redeveloping and they're going to knock down most of Valco. And yeah, that land is so valuable whether you put houses there, whether you put, you put shopping there, or whether you build more buildings for Apple there, they will buy them. But yeah, I'm looking on Apple maps and they are labeled Valco Parkway 3 and 4. But like, why rent when you can buy, right?
- [72:42]
A
If you're Apple, you got the money. There's probably tax breaks for buying, do you think? I don't know. I don't know that many people work at Apple. You do. Is it depressing if you get the job at Apple and you're not in, in there's.
- [72:56]
C
I think there's some status. Right. Like if you're in the park, you are, you are kind of the creme de la creme in that way.
- [73:02]
A
Right.
- [73:03]
C
And, and now it's an interesting thing.
- [73:05]
A
Where Feel terrible Fire in one Valco Center.
- [73:08]
C
Yeah, well, I, I don't know. So here's the thing. I, I think different groups are in different places. I think a lot of Eddie Q's group is now in Infinite Loop. So Infinite Loop is now sort of the second campus, right. And there are a bunch of buildings around there. But I think, I think different groups are in different places. I think if you're in the, the region of Apple park park, if you're in Tantau or even Valco and you're right there, you're probably feeling pretty good because you are a short hop from Apple Park. But I don't know. I mean, I don't know all the details of that. Maybe if you're on the other side of 280, you're not as, as good or something. But sometimes it's about what group you're in because like I said, I think that a lot of the, the, like the App Store stuff is happening over at Infinite Loop.
- [73:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, you just have to live with that. Infinite Loops, the old, yeah, the old.
- [73:57]
C
HQ that is still there and they're still using it. And it's not like they. And this was when Apple park opened. People were like thinking, oh, all of Apple is going to move into Apple Park. And it's just not true. They have dozens of buildings in Cupertino and Santa Clara and Sunnyvale and like they're all over and you cannot turn around in Cupertino without seeing an Apple sign on a building.
- [74:19]
A
So we were talking about Japan, we're talking about the EU now the UK today is pushing for nudity blocking software on your iPhone and your Android phone. They want technology companies to block explicit images on the phone and computers by default. Think of the children with adults having to verify their age to create and access such content. No more selfies in the bathroom. What are you nuts?
- [74:49]
B
This is a story from the Financial Times in which this, the. They have sources that say that they kind of the government wanted to push for this directly and they realized that, no, we're going to have to move slowly on this and get of course, the inevitable sign in sign on from everybody who's going to agree with this. So basically they are looking at ways that they can encourage Google and encourage Apple to do this sort of thing. Good luck to them because this is the sort of, this is exactly the sort of thing where it's like, like, nope. We fight, we fight, we fight. And we are putting on the table. We simply do not make. We do not make available in this country services that would require us to comply with this. Because this breaks everything. This basically.
- [75:27]
A
And I just want to tell the UK that here in the United States, the number one holiday gift giver to children in need are the strippers of America. So think of the. You think of the children, but think of the strippers who are thinking of the children.
- [75:42]
C
Okay.
- [75:43]
A
Hey, I just saw that stat. Okay, you may not believe me.
- [75:48]
B
Citation needed. I'll look it up for you.
- [75:52]
C
I feel like we just had this conversation too. But again, it's like, first off, this is super nanny state. Like you're telling. You know, you're basically saying every adult has to opt into some sort of.
- [76:02]
A
Tells you something. Britain has a safeguarding minister, the minister of safeguards.
- [76:09]
C
But even, even if you go with that and say, you know what, I would also not like to be surprised with any nudity. And that's a great feature. I'm glad it's turned on by default instead of me being an adult and turning it on if I feel that way. The age verification thing, it is the government saying that some entity must verify you using documentation, at which point some entity has all of your documentation and personal information. And maybe it's Apple, maybe it's the government, maybe it's a third party that is unreliable and will disclose it. Do you want anybody should. Should the conditions of me using my phone be providing a passport? Right.
- [76:52]
B
Yeah.
- [76:53]
A
And you allow, by the way, Page Six to have nudity. Why, why can't my iPhone. Yeah, you know, we were born naked. It's okay, you know, calm down.
- [77:04]
B
It's just impossible. It's also my least favorite type of government attempts to regulate, which is, we don't know if this is even practical or feasible, but we're going to make a law that basically says technology will save it. You guys figure it out. And here are the penalties if you don't figure it out to our liking. That's like, this is not. This is not even an argument to be made. This is. This is. You have to immediately be suspicious of the reasons why they're asking for this and all the reasons that have nothing to do with child safety and csam. It really is about. If you allow that kind of screening on device. You're essentially saying that everything asked. We want the power to compel a company to examine content before it's encrypted and is Therefore out of control. It's like, no, no.
- [77:48]
A
It bugs me that in order for me to visit the IRS or the Social Security website, the federal government asks me me to provide ID to a third party. ID me. That bugs the hell out of me. But I don't have any choice. Just what are we doing here? Yeah, the Home Office wants. This is the British Home Office wants to see operating systems that prevent any nudity being displayed on screen unless the users verify they are an adult through methods such as biometric checks or official id.
- [78:23]
C
So I'm watching a movie that has a little bit of nudity in it, and the blocker pops up and Apple is watching the movie to see if their machine. I mean, it doesn't. Not only does it fall apart, but, like, is that what we want, is mandatory? It's ridiculous. It is. No, that's what it is because it's. We're gonna watch everything you watch and approve it or disapprove it. And we need to know who you are. And remember there was that story a couple weeks ago about how in India you have to provide ID to get a SIM card so they know based on what SIM is in use, where you are, because it's tied to your id. It's like, you know, this is all about putting more personal information in the hands of people who, in a lot of cases, can't be trusted. I would trust Apple to verify my age more than some other entities would. But like any third party that you give that to is increasing your chances of being tracked or having it leak and having your identity stolen. Like, it's just such a bad idea made by people who don't understand the ramifications of the thing that they're talking about. It reminded me of that classic. Was it the Washington Post where there was an op ed that was like, the wizards can come up with a magic golden key that fixes encryption. Like, that's. No, you don't understand what's. What you're asking for here.
- [79:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's why I'm saying, like, you don't. This is not something that. This is not something that the companies do not want to do. It is something they don't want to do. But the reason why you're asking something that is not actually possible. And it doesn't matter if you say, well, we. Too bad, we've legislated it. Go figure it out. It cannot be figured out. You are legislating perpetual motion. Okay. Unless there's a breakthrough in the understanding of encryption and security that nobody has thought of in the past 70, 80 years. It's not going to happen.
- [80:19]
A
Okay? Big story. And I did not know this at the time, but fella in Australia and it was covered in daring fireball and Apple and cider. Michael Sy has written about it, the Register's written about it. Paris is the name has and I think an Apple developer who has created some interesting Apple sites for developers. He says, I don't want to gender him. I think it's a he.
- [80:54]
C
Yeah. Paris Butfield Addison.
- [80:56]
A
Okay. And he says, I'm writing this as a desperate measure after. This is his blog post. After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer authoring technical books on Apple's own programming languages, Objective C and Swift, spending tens upon tens of thousands of dollars on devices, apps, conferences and services, I think most of us would say, that's us. I've been locked out of my personal and professional digital life with no explanation and no recourse. And how did it happen? He bought a gift card at a major Australian retailer. He doesn't say the name, but he says, think Walmart for those of you in the United States. The code from the gift card could not be redeemed. It was a $500 Apple gift card. He was gonna use it to pay for his icloud storage plan. The code failed shortly after my account was locked. He's been on the horn with Apple support like crazy and they say, well, you can create a new account. Yeah, but that's not gonna do it because all of his apps, all of his music, everything, and his devices presumably.
- [82:00]
C
Are locked to that Apple id.
- [82:02]
B
Right. And that's part of the. That's part of his complaint that, no, none of these actual devices are unusable because I'm logged out at all my accounts. It won't. It's. It's devastating. Like, what this error has had and what frustrates the hell out of anybody who reads this is that you just recognize that. You recognize that. Oh, well, we're not going to tell you. What? Why, what's wrong? No, no and no. We didn't approach you to say, hey, there's a problem. Can we get collect some information for you before we decide to absolutely torch your entire existence in the Apple ecosystem that you've built for the past 10 or 15 or 20 years.
- [82:35]
C
No.
- [82:35]
B
And, well, now that you've done it, will you explain why? No, we won't.
- [82:39]
A
Please, I know people at Apple are listening. If you have any sway, please do something for Paris.
- [82:47]
C
Paris has been. So what's interesting Here is for people who don't know. Sometimes when a high profile person has a problem with Apple, Apple and they start yelling about it publicly, very frequently they are contacted by a mysterious group inside Apple called Executive Relations. Yeah, these are the same people who like, if you send a heartwarming message to Tim, they may get back to you with a, you know, something, a heartwarming response from Tim or something like that. But they are also the tactical team to suppress really bad stories by solving the problem. And it, they, they, they swoop in, they have swooped in, in this and so far Paris says no, you know, no response, no resolution.
- [83:35]
A
He knew this, asked for the executive.
- [83:37]
C
Team, which is amazing because the Executive Relations group, this is the group that fixes this stuff so that these things go away. And that's why I still believe that this will get resolved. If it doesn't get resolved, things are really, really bad. Because this is the case of somebody who has a receipt from the retailer. The card was legitimately purchased. It wasn't like a fake on ebay. It might have been a fake put up at the store. But again, to go from fraud detection to locking account, I get it. Apple locks accounts all the time for lots of reasons. I have a friend whose account gets locked all the time. He doesn't even know why. Just somebody is trying to log in and things are weird and they lock his account and he has to call Apple. The problem is what happens then because what Paris did is fell in a hole. Like this is, and this is I think the consequence of Apple growing so fast that a lot of their systems have just not grown commensurately to deal with issues like this. And like Apple has invested so much in tying all our devices to our Apple IDs that this is, this is a death sentence for your devices. You're going to lose all your photos, you're going to lose all your music, you're going to lose all your movies and TV shows that you bought. You may not be able to use your devices anymore. There has to be a process and it has to have some level of transparency. And the scary thing here is not that Paris is going through this, believe it or not, because the Executive Relations team has been in touch. The scary thing is if you're not a high profile person who wrote a bunch of O'Reilly books about Apple and has a blog and knows people, this could happen to you too. And there's no recourse.
- [85:16]
A
Yeah, it's a cautionary tale for all of us. It's not just Apple, it's Google. Paul Thurat went through something similar with Google. Almost lost a whole bunch of stuff because Google canceled his account, including his YouTube account. It's true with Amazon, it's true with Microsoft. It's one of the reasons I went out after reading Paris's story and bought a ThinkPad which I'm gonna put Linux on. I wish I could buy a phone that wasn't owned by big tech. I moved all of my books off of Audible. I moved all of my music off of Apple. This is a cautionary tale for all of us. Think about what would your life be like if you lost your account with one of these big tech companies. Remember, they're so big now, there's no, you know, I remember I had somebody call the radio show or Gmail. Academy had been same thing. Summer summarily terminated. She said, so I found the Google office in Irvine and I went down and I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. There's nobody inside. She said, what do I do? I've heard these stories for years. This brings it home. If you don't have a way of getting. This is why Google takeout is so important. You mentioned that earlier, Jason. If you don't have a way of getting your data at of there, get it out now while those accounts are live and start. I think we all need to start thinking about ways to not be so locked into these big tech companies. I think Linux is a very good choice. It's sad. There is really no. You know, I looked at the fairphone. There really isn't a good choice.
- [86:52]
B
Yeah.
- [86:53]
A
On a phone I'm going to put I have a Pixel, my old Pixel 9. I'm going to put graphene OS on it. That is the closest you can get to a de googled version of Android and it's secure. I think we should all be aware of this and be prepared for this because this is not good.
- [87:08]
C
Yeah, prepare. You said prepared. I was going to say you sound a little like a prepper, so that works. But I would say but I'm terrified.
- [87:15]
A
This could happen to me.
- [87:16]
C
So for people who are in the Apple ecosystem, what I would say is if you've got icloud photos, make sure you've got a Mac somewhere. The hard drive big enough and you're syncing all files locally so that if something happens to your icloud photos, you have all the files. Photos, that's a number one. If you're renting or if you're buying movies and tv, consider that you kind of got A license for it, and they could kill it at any moment. And if it's something that you really love, you know, maybe you can get it on, on Blu Ray or DVD or something instead. That I think. I think protecting yourself from the worst of this is the thing that people who are invested in Apple platforms should do at the very least. And Photos is the big one, because Photos are irreplaceable. Like there's a setting on Matt that says download all of them locally. And if your drive isn't big enough, get an external drive and put your Photos library on it. But do that, because that's the big one. To me, it would be terrible if you had to buy your apps again. Absolutely. And if you lost all those movie purchases that you made. Although, by the way, Movies Anywhere is a service that syncs your movie purchases between Apple and Amazon and elsewhere that you can do. That might be a way to do some of this too. And your DVD purchases just right. Because for a lot of people, getting a Linux computer and a phone that isn't tied in is not realistic, even if it would maybe protect you. But you can take some steps so that all your eggs are not in your Apple id.
- [88:46]
B
Yeah, we've forgotten the trifecta of backups that you. You're supposed to have three copies of everything that's important enough for you to keep, and one of them should be off site and another of them should be on a different form of media than the rest, otherwise it's not truly backed up. The thing is, cloud syncing works so well and it's saved your bacon so many times that you kind of forget that. Yeah, there's still one point of disappearance there. And so the thing is, you can get a terabyte SSD for not a whole lot. And for a lot of people, their libraries are actually. So you can get, for less than $100, enough storage probably to back up your entire cloud library. And I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do. And it's going to. You're going to anger the other people in your family who don't understand that why can I no longer stream at 4K, like over the past days? Yeah, that's because I'm basically moving half a terabyte or three quarters of a terabyte off of the cloud and onto here, because otherwise, again, it's just gone. And the thing is, this actually ties into what we were talking about earlier about regulation that when you give a company like Google or company like Apple responsibility for policing against like pirated content, pirated streamers, accounts that are being used for malicious things. You are basically telling them that our default position should be kill the suspected account immediately and make it incredibly hard for anybody to get it back again. Make someone actually have to us before we will restore this account because that is the safest way for us to be in compliance with this regulation. If we are tentative about it and if we. Why should we hire other people and spend a lot more money to really, really verify that this account is actually being used for piracy, for instance. Well, it's just a lot simpler and cheaper for us to simply zorch it and then whoever has that account is just going to have to deal with it. It's a huge, huge problem. I mean I have, I have Dropbox, I have icloud and I have Google Drive and I really have to set myself a twice a year reminder to say that make sure you pack a lunch, get all that off the thing and have a local copy of it because otherwise it's the difference between Paris problem, which is that 20 years worth of stuff is destroyed and getting it back again is going to rely on the good graces and the intervention of prison and saying damn, that's annoying. It's a good thing I have that 10 terabyte hard drive that I spent $200 for that has a complete backup but boy what a pain in the butt.
- [91:19]
C
Grr.
- [91:20]
B
And then move on with your life.
- [91:21]
C
The black box is the thing that I think is the most disturbing and again it's Apple culture and it's also I think a vestige of an earlier time when Apple was not responsible for like it's over time the Apple ID has grown and grown and grown and grown in terms of connecting all of your data and your devices together and the rest of the support system just hasn't really. And the black box nature of it is the other problem. So not only is support sometimes seems overwhelmed and underpowered to do anything, but there's no clarity about where you are in the process. At least developers who have their apps rejected know that they have an appeal process process and it's internal, but there is an appeal to somebody else and that's a frustrating black box process. But this it's consumers. Like I'm not saying that the EU needs to do a rights of consumers thing that has creates a whole weird Apple court structure or something for support issues, but Apple should be trying to get ahead of this and if there is not an organizational will and there isn't somebody leading the charge here. There needs to be, there needs to be somebody who looks at this and says, says this shows that our process is broken and our fraud detection is having adverse impacts that are just exposing how bad we are, how bad we are at taking care of customers like this, where they have no idea what's going on. Because it's very hard to believe that Paris is at fault. Right. Paris got a bad gift card almost certainly, but, but got it from a legitimate retailer. Like there needs to be a process to say, we get it, your track record is perfectly clean. We're sorry that this happened, we can't honor the gift card, but we'll turn your account back on because we know that this is a one off or whatever. And if it keeps happening, then it's a different story. But to do that, you have to communicate. Apple doesn't ever want to communicate. They don't want to talk about their processes. They don't want anything out in the open because part of their culture, culture from Steve Jobs especially, is don't let anybody see anything that happens on the inside. Don't tell anybody anything unless you absolutely have to. And that attitude is kind of toxic. And if you're a company that prides yourself in good customer service, you can't have it. So I hope that the end result of this is not just the Paris gets his account back, but somebody at Apple says, why did this happen? Don't let some executive, maybe even Tim Cook, and says, don't let this happen again.
- [93:58]
B
Fix this, because they need to fix calls to mind. A number of years ago, when Apple Music started up and the lamented not late, but retired, Jim Dalrymple had his entire music library killed by its first version of Apple Music. Because Apple Music said, oh well, I see a track whose name and title I remember recognize, I'm going to replace it with this version that I have on our server. Not knowing that, no, this is a live version and a special thing. And Apple had, of course, had. It's worse, it's bad when one of the most biggest audience, when one of the journalists with the most, the biggest audience and strongest voices gets undone by a bad Apple service. And even then it took a while for Apple to essentially do what it had to do to get his data back. And you think about all the people who do not have that kind of reach and do not have that kind of power. Whereas to just like, no, I don't want you to send me a fourth email that says, we know how much this might be frustrating. Unfortunately, we did review the case and decided that we're going to. No, you didn't review the case. You basically have a bot that says, how long do we have to delay this response before it sounds as though a human had actually done it? And you just want to throw things, specifically every Apple product you've ever owned and replace it with something that does not make you absolutely filled with rage.
- [95:19]
C
And let me tell you, if the next step is a lawsuit, the first thing that's going to happen is the lawyers are going to say, what the hell is this? And somebody at Apple is going to go, jeez, fix it. Right? Like, you don't want it to go to a lawsuit. You don't want that. You want to be able to handle your customers fairly and have it be fine. You should never get to the point, and this is why executive relations is involved, is you should never get to the point where we're talking about this for 20, 20 minutes and everybody else is posting about it because it makes Apple look really bad and calls into question everything we're talking about about the Apple ID and putting all your eggs in this basket. So I'm shocked that it hasn't already been handled. My guess is there's some real deep down tiger team fraud prevention because Apple gets defrauded all the time. Right. There's a lot of phony hardware and phony gift cards and all this stuff. And I'm sure they have a whole system to deal with that and that Paris fell into it. The question is, if you built a system where people who don't deservedly fall into your trap are trapped there, there's a problem. You need to be able to get them out. You need to get the people out of the trap. And they seem to say there's nothing we can do that is just so broken. So I hope the executive relation team. I have never heard of an example where the executive relations team came in and then said, welp, we can't help but, you know, Jim. I don't know if Jim got his resolved. So, you know, maybe it turns out that the only thing more powerful than customer service is the group that bans accounts.
- [96:56]
A
I don't know. Well, this is three days running now. Paris, I don't know if you're listening. I don't think he is, but.
- [97:07]
C
Three days.
- [97:09]
B
Yeah. We hope that the suffering that you go through. And thank goodness he lists all the things he's doing, including saying, no, I think we've gone beyond simply complaining to Apple. I'm actually filing grievances with the Proper authorities here in Australia about how a tech company is abusing me and my data. And so let's see where that goes. I think he actually mentions that a lot of his stuff is actually backed up elsewhere. You have to.
- [97:33]
A
I read it this morning, use your hardware. You can't use your hardware.
- [97:36]
B
No, exactly. But saying it's like a lot of this is, yes, I want justice. But also I get the impression from this blog post that he wants to be a conduit for improving what is obviously a broken system.
- [97:49]
A
Right.
- [97:50]
B
Good for.
- [97:51]
A
It's a shame for them. Really is a shame.
- [97:53]
C
Yeah. It shouldn't happen. I mean, that's the takeaway of this too is again, whoever is in charge of this part of Apple needs to say, hey, we need to make sure this never happens again. Right.
- [98:06]
B
We don't expect Apple to never make mistakes, but when they make a big mistake, at least treat it seriously as opposed to okay again option command nine. It's like, we know that this is distressing. Unfortunately, we're as mad about this as you are.
- [98:21]
A
Don't pull your fingers.
- [98:22]
C
It's like our hands are tied. You are Apple. Right? Your hands are not tied. This is, that's a classic thing. Which is like, I'm sorry, the policy says I can't do it. It's like, who made the policy? You did. You represent Apple. You got to fix this. You are all powerful inside Apple. There's nobody inside Apple who will refuse an order from Tim Cook who says, fix this. Yeah, so fix it.
- [98:43]
B
If only they could blame Epic Games or Samsung for this. That's they're, they're typical devils.
- [98:49]
C
Tim Sweeney is putting bad gift cards up in Australia. Just, we would let. Just to watch the world burn.
- [98:54]
B
We would love to restore your accounts and data, but that doing so would violate the privacy and security that our customers rely on and therefore we have to take an ethical stand.
- [99:03]
A
Yeah, I'm sorry.
- [99:05]
C
That'll be a new way. A new attack surface for high profile people is send them a bogus itunes gift card to break their Apple account.
- [99:14]
A
There you go. Yeah. I mean, look, maybe not everybody can do this, but if you can get your stuff out of there and at least back it up. Yeah.
- [99:28]
B
Remember, it's not backed up if the only backup is in one place on a cloud. In the cloud, on a computer you do not control. That's not a backup. It's a convenience feature.
- [99:37]
C
Get your photos on a drive in your house, period.
- [99:40]
B
And there are actually a lot of even open source and free very well supported projects that are like here is how for two or three hundred dollars you could essentially get IPhotos Google Photos, like on your home network. Not the actual service, but every single thing that Google Photos and iPhoto does and Apple Photos does, essentially everything you do is going to be backed up immediately to a server that you own. And it can actually, after it's on your home NAS your home server, it can actually also be backed up to whatever cloud provider or multiple cloud providers that you ask for. Takes a little bit of effort, but they're very, very mature technologies and they cost next to nothing except for the.
- [100:19]
A
Hardware I use, and I've mentioned it on the show before, an open source command line tool called iCloud Photos Downloader, which I run on a Linux box, but you can put it on a nas, you can put it in a lot of different places and you can run it in the background, as in a cron job, or run it manually and it will download. I'll show you how. I'll run it right now. It will download. There's my. Oh, you can't really see it because it's.
- [100:44]
C
Oh, it's stumbling, snowing.
- [100:45]
A
It's snowing in terminal land.
- [100:47]
C
Festivus. Yeah, I love it.
- [100:49]
A
It will download. So what it's doing is it's, oh, I have to authenticate. Well, I won't do that right now. You'd only do it once every month or so. But once you authenticate, then it will download. I have it set up to only download new photos, which is fantastic. Let me type this in. I'm in a boot loop with Microsoft, by the way, for Windows because my authenticators, I got new phones and none of my authenticator stuff works. And Microsoft says, well, don't worry, we get you your account back in 30 days. Well, you know what? I don't need Windows that badly. Thanks Microsoft. Anyway, I'm telling you, these guys are just making a mistake.
- [101:33]
C
I learned learn to live without Windows.
- [101:34]
A
Don't mind if I do, don't mind if I do. And frankly, I might be learning to live without Apple.
- [101:41]
C
Good luck in your bunker.
- [101:43]
A
I'm reliving Linux is pretty dang good, I have to say. You know what? Linux is pretty dang good. I just wish there were a phone solution, but I don't know if I try this graphene. We'll see.
- [101:54]
C
I don't know if I've told you my wacky theory, but that moment when the Steam Deck stuff versus the Xbox stuff that Microsoft's trying to do, I had a moment Where I felt, I wonder if we've actually reached the point where Linux is going to become more relevant than Windows for a lot of stuff. Because now that games basically run on Linux, I wonder. And I'm not as worried about Apple, right, because Apple is kind of playing a different game. But if Microsoft is sort of just the default, if you could get to the point where Linux could just be the default. It's not like lots of people are Microsoft customers because they love it, right? I don't know.
- [102:36]
B
I installed the new POP OS a couple months ago and it's like, ooh, it's good. Really, really good. And the things that drive me up a freaking tree about Linux like are. No, there's an app store type experience. No, it's very fixed. A lot of they're drivers for pretty much everything on like the couple of devices that I use. Again, there's still like a bit of a learning curve, but it's not, not obnoxious as it used to. It used to be that using Linux as an actual day to day basis had to be a lifestyle choice. Kind of like, no, no, no. I own a classic car. I want to own and run a classic car as my daily driver. Now it really does feel like, no, it's a legitimate alternative. It's a platform that you can choose to use and it runs like stink on a $35 ThinkPad that I bought at the MIT flea market like five years ago.
- [103:29]
A
So. Yep, exactly. All right, we're gonna take a little break. More to come. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Alex Lindsay has the week off. Andy Inocco is here, as is Jason Snell. Our show today brought to you by this. I hope it's not too late. Have you done your holiday shopping yet? Maybe I can tell you about our sponsor Aura. You know the name Aura, I think consistently, year after year picked as the best digital photo frames. But they've got a new photo frame that is, it's just not adding another screen to your life. It's just adding great photos to your life. Imagine if you could change the photos that are hanging on your wall every day. You know all those photos that are in your computer? I have 60,000 something like that that you never see. What if they could just show up on your screen on your wall as a picture like a real photo? Well, this is the Aura Inc. Ink. It's Aura's all new cordless color E paper frame. And notice something, no cords. Meet Ink, Aura's first ever cordless color E paper frame featuring a sleek 0.6-inch profile and a softly lit 13.3-inch display. Ink feels like a print. It functions like a digital frame and perhaps most importantly, lives completely untethered by cords. With a rechargeable battery that lasts up to three months on a single charge, unlimited storage and the ability to invite others to add photos via the Aura Frames app. It's the cordless wall hanging frame you've been waiting for. And by the way, they just added a new feature. It's not in the ad because they added it last week. You can text photos to it. You can send photos via imessages. So what this is going to be, this is going to be the hollow don't tell my mom, but her Christmas gift. All the family photos are going to be on here. And when there's new pictures of the grandkids opening presents, I will message them, I'll text them over to the frame and she'll see them that day. That is awesome. Aura's put a lot of engineering into this. It's a breakthrough in E paper technology. Ink transforms millions of tiny ink capsules into your favorite photos. Renders them in vintage tones. They look like a photo on the wall. Wall. They really do. That's because partly because of the design innovation. It's a graphite inspired bezel, a paper textured mat. The glossy glass in front. It looks like a piece of decor. It's not another screen in your living room and I didn't really want that. Unlimited free photos. You just download the Aura app and connect to Wi fi. This is the gift to give family members, especially I think grandparents, anybody who or parents, anybody who appreciates innovative design and cutting edge technology. Actually kids, you know, if they're in college, be good to have something on the wall remind some of you the people who are paying the bills still exist. Sleek, subtle and stunning ink blends the warmth of a printed photo with the versatility of an e paper frame. No chords, no fuss, just your memories beautifully displayed wherever you want them. Head to auraframes.com Inc. To see for yourself. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. That's auraframes.com./inc. Act now. They are offering a limited time holiday discount but that ends soon. It looks great with black and white photos. By the way, a lot of my photos are black and white. Looks fine with artwork as well. In fact I have, I have to confess I've put some AI generated images in here just because I think they're fun and I like to see them every once in A while. This is one that I did for our Dungeons and Dragons game of Sag Bottom the cheerful the bard that I played. And look how great that looks. It looks like a painting in the frame. Isn't that great? Auraframes.com Inc. Highly recommended. Oh, you can hang it on the wall. And by the way, it does portrait and landscape mode automatically. But they also have a. Again, the engineering is so cool. They have a little magnetic stand that just clicks in and it can go either portrait or landscape and it just clicks in so. So that you can take it out. Put it in. Am I doing it right? There we go. And it doesn't fall out. I think this is in every way. They've put some real thought into this. It's very nice. I'm going to put it right back where it was on my wall. Auraframes.com Inc. Did we bring the site down? Coinfig says I can't reach the site. Okay, well, go there in a minute. I didn't mean to do that. Sorry. A lot of people interested in this I think. Let's see what else is going on. I guess we have a lot of rumors. I don't know. Are we ready to start talking about the next iPhone? It's pretty certain at this point it's going to be a folding phone, right? There's a lot of supply chain evidence.
- [108:29]
C
Along with the others.
- [108:30]
B
Yeah, there are a couple of rumors.
- [108:33]
A
One the premium one.
- [108:34]
B
Yeah, there are a couple of rumors. One of them is that they're going for truly an all glass display that wraps around like all the corners. And unlike many weeks these are not German rumors. These are supply chain rumors. Another rumor is that with the foldable that no they were going to have to. They're not going to be able to do face id so there's going to be a fingerprint sensor like in the power button or something like that.
- [109:04]
A
I like that by the way. That reminds me of old Android phones. Right? With this, the curved screen. Was it a Samsung phone? Yeah, it was full.
- [109:12]
B
Samsung did that. The Pixels used to do that. My Pixel 7 Pro does that still. I'm not sure. I love it because you gotta make the thing is like what happens when you put it inside a case? Are you adding gestures that are now. Yeah, it's also. You have to ask now how difficult is this going to be to take apart so that you can can do a repair like four years down the line? Is this going to make things more fragile? After Apple's success with the iPhone air about saying no I dare you to bend and break this with your hands. And people not being able to bend and break it with their hands, I'm sure they've thought of that. But it's going to have to be one heck of a style statement to justify it as a consumer, not as a journalist, but as a consumer, it's going to have to be one heck of a style statement. And I'm going to have to wait a couple of months to see before I would buy it, before to get reports from the first few hundred thousand people or a million people to see how it holds up again. I just don't think, I wish that maybe it is a personality sort of thing. I just want to have my phone inside a case. I don't want to have it absolutely bare naked to the world. I want to have inside a case for any number of reasons. And so. So once you put it inside a case, a lot of these style decisions that were made kind of get negated because how many times did the design team at Apple cry because, oh my God, we designed this to be the most beautiful object. How much thought did we put into this color of orange? And you immediately put it into this pink sparkly iPhone case that you got for $8 on AliExpress because you like it. Is that a good one?
- [110:56]
A
A little out of touch. Because they get free phones, right? So if they drop their uncased phone, it's not the end of the world.
- [111:02]
B
No, they do a lot of testing. They have a lot of tests.
- [111:05]
A
Do they assume that people aren't using cases?
- [111:07]
C
No, I think, I mean, Apple makes and sells, makes a lot of profit on cases too. I do think they approach it as a design ideal and they know that some people don't use cases and they want to make it look as good as they can in that scenario. And then if you put a case on it, they want, you know, they sell cases that they think look good and that's fine. I did notice that especially with the newest iPhone models, you end up with a very large camera cutout that goes all the way across now. Right. And one of the advantages of that is that means that your color is that much more visible through a case in that sensor area. And I actually thought that was kind of clever because that allows it to shine through. Like, do you have the orange one? Well, then you're going to have the orange accent up there. There. Do you have the blue one? Then you'll have the blue accent up there. And I think that that is Apple trying to get a little Bit like poke a little bit of their design out of that case that you put on it, whatever it is. But you know I, I mostly go caseless and I take the risk because I just prefer the feel but most people don't, you know. And that's part of it too. I'm intrigued by the folding phone only because I do love my iPad and the idea of having something that might be my phone and also an iPad maybe mini intrigues me but we'll have to see how they implement it and if they do something like split view for that or what they choose to do with that. And then yeah, lots of sources say and Gurman says this, that the phone in the phone the following year is going to be a real, the pro phone will be a real kind of reinterpretation of the iPhone where they're going to try to make it, you know, as featureless and sleek and. But you know that platonic again they're always endlessly searching for the Johnny I Platonic app.
- [112:54]
B
The cultural idea inside Apple of less is less which I think is the.
- [112:58]
C
Goal, I think is a good approach to take as long as you don't let it wreck your usability. Right. Like I think that's always the balance there is that it is both those things. But I don't mind the guiding star of Apple being that the iPhone should be a mostly featureless, highly polished pebble and because I think it has driven them from the original iPhone to where they are now and I think that's a good place. Place. But yeah, they always have to keep in mind that if you do something that makes it look better and you and harder to use, you failed.
- [113:31]
B
Yeah. Also the other problem that Apple faces is that the iPhone, it's beautiful, it's well designed. It is also a fleet vehicle meaning that it is they're the only manufacturers of iPhones which means that they as they want to make it as beautiful and well designed as possible but it has to be a design that appeals to, to all of the 10 million people that are going to buy this. So they can't do something like the nothing phone which is delightful to see what they're doing. Like the idea of well what if we had like an OLED display on the back that could either a just have fun little graphics when the thing is face down but also could be used for like timers could also be used for like selfie, a selfie preview. Like what if we just for no reason we made it look, look like a, like a gadget from Tron and just put light bars like zigzagging from the back of it. What would that look like? And look for. And the people for whom that looks like an amazing thing that I want to own. Congratulations. They can buy that. But Apple can't be as radical as that because they have to make sure that whoever picks this up is going to understand it, want it, and not be confused by why they made the choices that they did.
- [114:37]
C
Yeah. And they. And they ship in such volume that, you know, they. They have to make anything they ship. They're going to sell millions of. And so you can't just say, oh, this is a little weird one that a few like that. That isn't.
- [114:48]
B
We decided to put a hand crank on the side of it.
- [114:50]
C
The scale is so enormous that they can't do that. But what they can do now that they're selling like, this year, they came out with five different iPhones. Right. There are five different iPhones that are on the 2025 model year, the 16e and the 417s that came out this fall. The advantage of that is Apple can make phones at the high end, especially that push in weird directions and might be more expensive or might not appeal to everybody because they have other phones you can buy that do have more mainstream appeal. And it gives them a little freedom to do that where it's like, well, if the 18 Pro is too much or the 19 Pro or if they call it iPhone 12. Right. They will probably also be selling a 19 or whatever that is more like the iPhone you're familiar with. And they can do that now because they've got five in addition to the older models that they still sell. They have five brand new models. And that's a lot of models to choose from.
- [115:54]
A
All right, one last break and then get ready because your picks of the week are coming up. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Alex Lindsey has the week off. Anadine Nako is here. Do you celebrate on the 25th or are you going to do pierogi Christmas in January?
- [116:09]
B
I do both at my household. It was great because we would have like the big, big, big family extended family Christmas, like on December 24th, 25th. And then we would also do Russian Orthodox Christmas in which be pierogi. It would be Kibasi. Dad would go. Would source mushrooms from an exotic store because he wanted to get exactly the kind of mushrooms and the honey and. And how fun it was. It's so. It was like, imagine like a Christmas dinner that was just for your immediate family and not Any pressure on it whatsoever?
- [116:39]
A
It's just something special.
- [116:41]
B
And mom would make. Mom would make her bread, which is the one. The one of the two times a year she would make the bread.
- [116:45]
A
It's like, oh, I've never asked you this. Were your parents first generation?
- [116:49]
B
No, but they were both. Three of my grandparents were immigrants.
- [116:53]
A
Okay.
- [116:53]
B
And. And the other. And the fourth was a first generation American from Russia. American. Two from. Two from Czechoslovakia, one from Italy, and one was the daughter of an Italian immigrant. So immigration is.
- [117:05]
A
My grandma was an Italian immigrant.
- [117:07]
B
Yeah.
- [117:07]
A
And then on the other side, well, we sort of immigrants. We were descended from Hessian troops that were brought in to fight the patriots in the revolution.
- [117:15]
C
Oh, awesome. That's awesome. I'm watching the American Revolution, Ken Burns, and they talk about that. About a bunch of them stayed afterwards.
- [117:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's.
- [117:25]
B
It's great. My. My father used to. One tradition for. For a little Christmas that he didn't carry over where you tell the story about how, like, my grand. My. My grandfather would like, just. He would. That my dad would come home from school and, like, they couldn't use the bathtub because there was a lot. There was a huge live carp or something in there that grant that my grandfather bought before the feedback because, of course, you know, this was like, must been like the forties or something. I was like, no, he doesn't have, like, they don't.
- [117:54]
A
They don't have refrigerator refrigeration.
- [117:56]
B
Yeah. I just always love the idea of like, oh, oh, I just need to see. Oh, that's right. There's a big carp in the bathroom.
- [118:02]
A
It must be time for Christmas. There is a carpet. And. And so have a wonderful holiday, Andy. I guess we'll see you next week. So. But I'm just a little early and Jason, are you gonna be in town? Are you gonna go out of town?
- [118:17]
C
Oh, yeah, no, we're staying here. The kids are coming in. We're a mixed household. So we've been doing Hanukkah, and then Hanukkah is timed. So it's like a perfect lead into Christmas. We get to do both. A lot of fun and good to have the kids here.
- [118:31]
A
Yeah, that's the. That's. You know, it's funny. It's very bittersweet when the kids leave to go to college, but then there is some joy to see them come back.
- [118:40]
B
Back.
- [118:41]
A
You know, I'm gonna see my kids for Christmas too. I'm looking forward to that. Salt. Hank. We'll be jet setting in briefly.
- [118:48]
B
Looking forward to watching the live stream.
- [118:52]
A
I don't know about that. Yeah, he's. I'm gonna make him cook, though. He better darn well better make us no French dip sandwich for Christmas. That's all I'm asking. I tell you there's one other thing I am asking and that is for your support in this holiday season. How about giving a geek in your life life a club TWIP membership. Do you ever think of that? This is a good time to do it. We have a 10% off certificate in the club right now for annual memberships for either you or as a gift. But it does expire. I mean, you've got till December 25, so you've got a little, you know, a week and a few days to take advantage of this twit TV club. Twit. The club gets you a few benefits ad free versions of all the shows, which is nice. You also get access to our Discord Disco, the club Twit Discord, where we talk about all kinds of things going on in the. In the world as well as about the shows. And it's always snowing in the club Twit Discord, by the way. Just. That's actually thanks to that program that you recommend, Jason Festivus Festivities or whatever it's called. We also have special programming that we do in the club. Only actually we've got got some stuff coming up. The AI user group. I think Micah's doing his crafting corner tomorrow. Yep, 6pm Pacific. I'm going to do an interview. This is kind of off the wall, but I'm going to do an interview on January 2nd with a comedian, New York comic Mark Malkoff, who is a big Johnny Carson fan. I am a big Johnny Carson fan. The Tonight show, He interviewed everybody. 400 interviews about Johnny and he's written a book called Love Johnny Carson, which coincidentally he wrote, wrote to ask me if he said, I know your audience is geeks, but do you think they'd be interested? And I said, I just bought your book and I'm listening to it and I love it. And yes. So we're going to talk about Johnny Carson.
- [120:41]
B
I know it's a little off the wall.
- [120:43]
A
That's a club event though, so we get to do things.
- [120:47]
B
I learned about that book because it was on one of the a top 10 best comedy books of 2025 list.
- [120:52]
A
Yeah.
- [120:52]
B
So I look forward to that.
- [120:53]
A
It's thrilling. I can't wait to talk to him. We do our AI user group usually the first Friday of the month, so. So that'd be January 2nd as well. So we're gonna do kind of back to back shows. We've got the photo show we do every month. We've got Stacy's Book Club soon. And that is a really good book. I've been enjoying reading that. The Under Under Hollow London, Underneath the Hollow London, something like that. But anyway, the point is we do a lot of extra programming. We have a lot of fun and the real reason to join is it supports what we do here. Without you, we would not be able to do what we do. So if you like the shows, whether it's Mac Break Weekly or Twitter Intelligent Machines or Security now or Windows Weekly or this Week in Spare, all the shows we do, support us. Would you? Twit TV Club Twit Breaking News.
- [121:38]
C
January 30th for the book club.
- [121:41]
A
January 30th. We set a date. All right, good. One other thing. Have we put the survey up yet? Is it up yet? I don't know. Survey, go to Twitter TV Survey 26. If it's not up yet, go in a week or so. Because we like to do this at the end of this end of the year. It's another way you can support us. Just, it takes a few minutes. Helps us get to know you a little bit better. It is up. Helps us to get to know you a little bit better, but also helps us with advertisers because we don't know anything about you intentionally. We don't want to know anything about you. We don't want to collect information about you. And RSS podcasts have no way of doing that. So we do this survey every year voluntarily. If you want to just tell us a little about yourself, we're not going to, of course, attach it to your, you know, personal information. We only do it in aggregate. You know, 91% of our audience are it decision makers, that kind of thing. But it does help us a lot. Year end. We do this once a year. TWIT TV survey 26. Yes, survey was in the newsletter. Yes, there's a newsletter, Darren, you didn't know that? That's free. Twit TV newsletter. There's, you know, we do a lot of things. Things. There's the Club twit forums@twit.community actually, those are for everybody. Not just club members, Twitter community, the forums. There's also a Mastodon instance. Twit Social. We do a lot of things. We like keeping the family together in this holiday season. There's no better time to keep the family together. So thank you for being in the family. Thank you for listening and if you want, join the club, we'd love to have you. Now it's time for our picks of the week. I already gave you mine, which is that Icloud photo downloader. Jason Snell, do you have a pick of the week?
- [123:23]
C
I do. This is. It's kind of a weird one, but I was thinking, what have I been using lately or bought lately that I think might be interesting? And I bought a thing from a company called, I think it's Fosi or Fosse, I don't know, audio. It's called the BT20A. But what it is is it's a Bluetooth amplifier. So it's very small. It's a very small box with a little antenna on it. And that's good because a lot of these boxes that do this same thing don't have an antenna and their Bluetooth range is really bad. And this one has a little bit better Bluetooth range. Why would you buy this if you have.
- [123:58]
A
Describe your use case. Because.
- [124:00]
C
Okay, so the reason you buy. A friend of mine has this and he uses it out on his deck. He has a couple of speakers, like stereo speakers that you have to have an amp to run. This is a teeny tiny box. You run speaker wire to the speakers and then you can pair to your phone and play music and it just goes out over the speaker. So if you've got speakers that require an amp and you're like, I'm not going to buy another big receiver like what I've got for my 5.1 stereo or whatever, there's a little tiny compact amp that does Bluetooth. Now how I'm using it and you're going to love this, Leo. I wanted to a system so that when you're reading an ad and I walk away to get some more water or get a snack or something, that I can still hear you. And so I bought this. I have a little Bluetooth transmitter in my office. And then on the other side of this wall, I have this amp that's paired to it and it's attached to a speaker that is a rogue speaker in my ceiling that never got used. And so what happens is I press a button here, here, Audio hijack starts streaming to a headphone jack on my Thunderbolt hub that's attached to the Bluetooth transmitter. I take my headphones off, I walk out there and I can hear you reading the ad. And that means I know when I need to get back in my chair. And I do that for Upgrade as well. When my Curly's reading the ads, I need this because for years I've been like, I have to personally time, like how long do I think the ad is going to be in rush? And now I can actually hear the ads and get an idea that it's wrapping up and then. And make sure I'm back in time. So it's like a little. It's like a little studio monitor like you used to have at the Eastside studio when we would have somebody come in on Zoom. Yeah, we play them over so that even if you didn't have headphones, you could hear them. I thought, I want that in my house for my. For my podcast when I'm not hosting and I can take a break.
- [125:50]
A
How's the latency?
- [125:52]
C
Well, so this is the thing. I have airplay speakers out there and I could have used airplay, but the airplay latency is terrible. The latency on Bluetooth is much less. So it's under a second. It's like a quarter of a second, a half a second. It's really not very much. Whereas airplay latency is actually really bad. And that would be bad, right? Because then I'd think you weren't wrapping up and you've already wrapped up. Because I've got. I didn't want to do it that way. But a more common use case would be again, if you've got a speaker or speakers that you're like, I can't use this because it's just they're old because they want were attached to my old stereo or whatever. These things are really cheap. They're on Amazon or there's Sonos speakers.
- [126:34]
A
That only work as speakers because the Sonos Sons of guns.
- [126:38]
C
No, I mean you need. This is classic speaker wire. Right. So you got to have the little.
- [126:41]
A
Dual powered, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [126:43]
C
So they're power. So you need an amp. You need an amp for them.
- [126:47]
A
And this is the amp.
- [126:48]
C
And a lot of people have those left over. And they're like, you're thinking of the amps that they've got that are these huge things that they used in their stereo background in the day. But the speakers are still good. The answer is buy a cheap Bluetooth amp. They actually put out a decent amount of power. And if you've got them, like if you've got powered speakers outside or something and you're like, what do I do with that? And once they're on Bluetooth, you can just use them from any device you want. And I thought that's a really cool idea. And like I said, a friend of mine has these out on his deck basically because he had a pair of speakers, outdoor speakers that he wanted to power with this and it gets them into the model modern world with Bluetooth. And now I can hear you in my living room.
- [127:24]
A
Now you can go to the bedroom.
- [127:25]
C
Whenever I want and I can go to the bathroom and then get more water. So I'll have to go to the bathroom later.
- [127:32]
A
That's a, that's a, that's a mighty big jug.
- [127:35]
C
You gotta go.
- [127:37]
A
Andy Inako, my friend, your pick of the week.
- [127:41]
B
Mine is a little bit of fun that I really, really enjoy. It's a screensaver. Now you've seen the, the classic shop sign where when a shopkeeper needs to jump out for about 20 minutes we'll hang this ubiquitous white and red and blue sign will return and then little plastic dial say here's what the time I'm going to return. So Yuchi Arachi of Tokyo decided to do this as a screensaver. So you can basically just set what time? Like if you're going to step away from your desk for lunch or for whatever reason reason, you can just basically set the time. You can optionally set a message. But the thing is that it is a 100% faithful looking version of that sign that will just be a screensaver on your screen showing again with the red plastic hands of the dial showing whoever's coming by your cubicle what time you will return. And it's free. It's like the silliest but most joyful thing you could possibly have. And then you realize that, wait, I could actually use this. I no longer have to like put a post it note on my screen anymore to tell people that I'm going to be back in 40 minutes after taking my dry cleaning.
- [128:48]
A
Brilliant. Will return at 9pm thank you Andy and Ako. Have a wonderful holiday. We will see you.
- [128:58]
B
I am.
- [128:58]
A
And I will all of you on the 23rd.
- [129:00]
C
Yes.
- [129:01]
A
I don't know what it is about 2025, but I'm playing Christmas music. I'm loving the decor. I'm eating cookies. I'm just enjoying it.
- [129:10]
B
We need to retreat into a space of joy that has been constant for, for some of us has been reliable and constant. The things that are, that are fortifying. Actually I, I actually did a marathon of my favorite Christmas specials including Charlie Brown Christmas, but also the Dick Van Dyke Show Christmas, Alan Brady Presents and, and a couple other things. It's like, you know what this is? I'm going to retreat to a place.
- [129:36]
A
That is very, very comforting news this week. We need a little bit of horrible weekend.
- [129:42]
C
Amen.
- [129:43]
A
Yep, you too, Jason Snell, so nice to see both of you. Will be back. One more show before the end of the year. The December 23rd show. Let's hope Alex can make it. He's, you know, he's busy this time of year, but it would be nice to have the more Making Toys for.
- [129:59]
C
All that's Right.
- [130:04]
B
As a live stream this year.
- [130:05]
C
Yeah, I know. That's it. That's exactly it, though. They're live streaming the sleigh and boy, that's a lot of setups.
- [130:11]
B
One hell of a gimbal on that sleigh to make sure he gets steady. But those of you who have vision pros are going to really enjoy those.
- [130:17]
C
Well, I mean, when you do 8k per eye at 120 frames, you really got something.
- [130:22]
B
You can't have Santa getting motion sickness while wearing those goggles on the sleigh going at Mach 1.8.
- [130:28]
C
Yeah, well, unfortunately, he can do that now because the travel mode. Will you do that?
- [130:31]
A
Frankly, on behalf of all the people who play the drinking game, thank you for saying 8K screen, 28 frames per second because they are now satisfied. They were worried there'd be no opportunity to imbibe without Alex.
- [130:44]
C
Lindsay, Alex is always with us.
- [130:46]
A
You've made up for it. Thank you, Jason Snell. Thanks to all of our wonderful listeners. We so good to see you in, in this holiday season. I hope you're, I hope you're finding some joy and family and love this season. And if not, out there, in here. Okay. Okay. We love you. We're glad you're here. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 18, sorry, 1900 UTC. You can watch us live if you want. If you're in the club, of course, we're in the discord, but you can also watch us on YouTube, Twitch, X dot com, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kick after the Fact. You can download copies of the show. There's audio and video at our website, TWiT TV, MBW. You'll find a link there to the YouTube channel for Mac Break Weekly dedicated to the video. Great way to share clips with other people of things you see on the show if you want to do that. And of course, the best way to get all of our shows is subscribe. And your favorite podcast player. There's audio, there's video, there's both. If you subscribe, you'll get it automatically as soon as we're done. Thanks to John Ashley, who is our producer for today, who's editing the show. John, is it you?
- [131:52]
C
Always and forever shall be me Always and forever. John Ashley.
- [131:57]
A
That sounds like gonna be a good song. Thank you, John Ashley. Appreciate your being here as well. We will see you all next time. Security. Now, coming up next, for those of you watching live. But now, I'm sad to say, for those of you who are at work, it's time to get back to work because break time is over. Bye. Bye.