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MacBreak Weekly 1007: They Plump When They Cook
02:41:38
Apple's AI to Use Google's Gemini
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- [00:00]
A
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inoco is here. Jason Snell's here, filling in the empty chair left by Alex Lindsey, the wonderful Doc Rock. We will talk about the big news. The problem is there's a lot of big news. Google is now the official AI partner for Apple's Siri. That's exciting. Chase is taking over the Apple credit card. We'll talk about Verizon. They've changed their rules on unlocking iPhones. And a new feature from Claude called Cowork that makes it a lot easier to use AI in your everyday tasks on Macs. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly. Episode 1007, recorded Tuesday, January 13, 2026. They plump when they cook. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Hello. This was a big week for Apple news. Good news. The doctor is in. Doc Rock joining us from Honolulu. Hello, Dr. Aloha. Aloha. Sporting the orange Doc Pop this afternoon actually is red.
- [01:24]
B
My color thing is tripping today.
- [01:26]
A
That's reddish. It could be red.
- [01:28]
B
I'll fix it.
- [01:29]
A
It might be me. Might be me. It might not be. It might not be orange.
- [01:33]
B
It's. What do you call it? A gentleman of a certain vintage. Yeah, that's what.
- [01:37]
A
That's me. That's me. Also joining us from the library in. In beautiful New England California. Andy. No, I don't know where I did it to. California. New England. New England.
- [01:48]
B
Andy.
- [01:48]
A
Inocco. Hello, Andrew.
- [01:49]
C
You know, there are parts of the country that aren't California. Mr. Californian Guy.
- [01:54]
A
No, it's all California and some of New York.
- [01:58]
C
But fine. We had a whole sitcom based in Boston once and was real popular, too. Cheers.
- [02:05]
D
Good night. Beantown.
- [02:06]
A
You can go to visit. Oh, Beantown. Yeah, that's it. And Boston Legal. There have been a number of things. In fact, maybe movie makers love it a little too much. That's Jason Snell.
- [02:17]
D
Hello.
- [02:18]
A
Who is in California.
- [02:19]
D
California. California here. Reporting in. Yes.
- [02:21]
A
Purple, blue. Doc Pop.
- [02:23]
D
Yep. You know, colors. They're good. Have them.
- [02:26]
A
I love it. I say I love it. Well, the big story of the week, there's many, actually. We're going to talk about the. We'll have our Vision Pro segment in a bit, so don't worry. We'll talk about the Lakers game. But I think the big story is one that we kind of been hinting at with rumors galore. But Apple made it a final Official announcement. Yes. Gemini will be standing up in the place of Siri.
- [02:54]
D
Well, not quite.
- [02:56]
A
It's going to be white labeled.
- [02:59]
D
Gemini will be powering the foundation models on Apple's devices and in private cloud compute. It sounds like there are a lot. It was a very limited thing. What that means is that Siri will be powered by Google models by Gemini. That doesn't mean Gemini is replacing Siri. Right, Like Siri is not going to be replaced Siri.
- [03:23]
A
Will I be talking to Gemini?
- [03:25]
D
You'll be talking to a Google Gemini model furnished to Apple.
- [03:31]
A
That's the two backs, Is that what you're saying?
- [03:34]
D
You will not be talking to Gemini. You will not be talking to Google's servers. You'll be talking to Apple's servers.
- [03:40]
A
That's important, isn't it?
- [03:41]
D
And it will not change the branding. It's still going to be Siri. So it's, I mean this is, look, this is a very complicated thing that they haven't released any substantial information about. Just two cryptic paragraphs given to Jim Cramer at CNBC and then later posted to Google's blog. So we have to kind of backfill. But it sounds like you know, Apple's replacing the models that its AI group developed with Google models. That's the bottom line. And that, that goes to not just Siri but all Apple intelligence features.
- [04:11]
A
Yeah, there's really no different after careful evaluation. In other words, they were talking anthropic, they were talking OpenAI. Who knows, they might have been talking to Meta and Microsoft. We don't know. Google determined that. Apple determined that Google's AI technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple foundation models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will run on Apple devices and private cloud computer while maintaining Apple's industry leading privacy standards.
- [04:42]
C
Yeah, I was, when, when the news broke, I was looking for well what has Apple posted to its newsroom? And they posted nothing. They were allowing Google's joint statement, the joint statement that posted on Google's blog and Google servers to stay stand as the official statement. Even the quote, official statement and quote that they gave to CNBC was essentially a two paragraph, a two sentence quote from like that original statement. Obviously Apple, for a good number of reasons including user confusion, they don't want people to think that Gemini is coming to Apple and replacing their plan for Apple intelligence. Like Jason said, this is more like a case of they are subcontracting out a job to a firm with way more experience and way more success at this Just like any number of contractors that have contributed invisibly to any number of very, very front facing Apple projects. So Google is basically building Apple whatever Apple thought that they were or promised they were going to be building as Apple Intelligence two years ago. That plan is still moving forward. However, they've hired a subcontractor to actually build things to their specifications, which includes all the privacy stuff running on Apple servers. Google has I think also clarified that no, Google will not have access to any of the data that comes through Apple Intelligence for its own training purposes. It really is just they are building a white label unit, they're building an engine plant, a power plant to power Apple Intelligence. One of the things that was kind of up in the air when these rumors started floating around was exactly how much is Google going to be providing? And according to the joint statement, they were not very, very vague about specifics. It really does seem as though again, their foundation model is going to be built by Google based on Gemini technology, which when you get down to it, it's just this, it just seems like the smartest thing Apple could possibly do. It's not as though that Apple doesn't have the ability to build a really good foundation model. It doesn't mean that Apple was in a real rush that they have to deliver this or else people are going to start buying Android phones instead of iPhones. However, it was becoming very, very clear that by the time Apple created an in house foundation AI model that was capable of whatever they wanted to do, they would have essentially been shipping the iPhone 4 when Google and everyone else was shipping the iPhone 13, 14, 15. So there was really no, it was really the smart thing to do. Whether or not the interesting question that's still on the table is how much more work does Apple want to do on developing its own foundation model if they're a couple of years away from finishing something that's very, very useful? At the end of this, what is described as this multi year commitment between Google and Apple, are they just going to say, well, what's the point? We've got something great, we've got something very, very mature. Assuming this has been a very good, fruitful working partnership, what can we add to the game now by creating our own foundation model that we can't get by simply having a more intimate relationship with Google's Gemini team to build us Apple Intelligence the exact way we want it? So it's interesting to see in two or three years time if this is going to Google is going to remain the provider of foundation model AI intelligence to Apple intelligence forever or whether this is just a stopgap measure. I'm betting that there's. This is a very, very much a long play.
- [08:10]
B
I think it's brilliant in the fact that, I mean, I see so many people get this twisted, but like they were spending a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of resources and realizing having the common sense to know when to cut bait is actually one thing a lot of businesses don't do. And if you really think about it, so RBPT. Sorry, I'm gonna go F1 for a second or River Powertrains have been Honda, Honda, Honda, Honda, Honda. And now they're not first anymore. So they thought about some stuff. 2026 rules are changing. Cadillac is jumping into the fray. So they're gonna like revive Cosworth and bring back the Ford powertrain team. So RB26s are going to be Fords. You people don't make engines, they make power drink. So if you want to be, you know, Max Verstappen back at the top again, then you go get a different powertrain company. It's not every other business does it. But Apple's like, oh, we're gonna go and just let Google do this for us. And people just went bananas. And it's kind of crazy because we've been using, you know, basically Google technology as the search for Safari since 2007.
- [09:22]
A
It shouldn't really surprise us because we did have the story almost a month ago that Apple had moved John Jandrea out and brought in a new head of AI who happened to be the guy who was the product manager for Gemini. So that's kind of a hint Apple's thinking along those lines. Mark Gurman's Tweet, Jiandrea got $25 million a year. Is that J. Andrea he's talking about before stock games for eight years. Do the math. And they just got rid of him and hired the guy who helped build Gemini at Google. Good, good work if you can get it. You know, I wouldn't feel too bad if I'm Gendrea, you got a nice little payday. And you know what I don't? Do you think it's them saying, john, you failed us? But fortunately Google's been working. Here's the thing, it's a little risky and I understand Apple's delay in this because right now it is a heated head to head race between Google, Anthropic and OpenAI.
- [10:28]
D
Yeah.
- [10:29]
C
And China don't. They've got an open source model that is doing extremely well outside of the Western world.
- [10:34]
A
I think the consensus, the general consensus is I will back this with my own experience that Chinese models are impressive for what they have done with the limited resources they have. They've also shown the way they did a year ago with reinforcement learning, but they are still. I would not have chosen any. And Apple's never going to choose any Chinese model for Siri, but maybe in China they will.
- [10:59]
C
Oh, sorry.
- [11:00]
A
I think the smart thing to do was to pick one of the big three. The problem is who's the winner. You know, Gemini two months ago was easily the best when they came out 3 0. I would submit that as of November 24th, Anthropic with their Opus 4.5 model has now taken the lead.
- [11:17]
D
Here's the thing.
- [11:18]
B
First, Anthropic is the best model, but Anthropic's CEO is not the easiest person to play with, even though he's probably the most brilliant. They were talking to him, they were talking fully understand. But considering how he got to that versus OpenAI and that it was like, do you really want to play there? And then OpenAI is good, but they're also a little bit confused in who they want to be. And they're also heavily Microsoft. And I don't think the whole Apple Microsoft thing plays out like the way people think it used to play.
- [11:50]
A
And Google's already given Apple at least 20 million a year, so give them back a billion.
- [11:54]
B
So big deal. It's the devil, you know. I mean for like, for lack of a funnier term, like it literally is the devil, you know. And the one thing that Google just.
- [12:03]
A
I'm worried they're picking the wrong horse is what I'm saying.
- [12:05]
B
No, no, I think the horses will be even for so long that it's not really a matter of the wrong horse. It's going to be like, you know that thing where you squirt the water in a clown's mouth and it kind of goes up and down and up and down and up and down. It's going to stay that way for quite a long time. I don't see any of these guys pulling.
- [12:24]
D
I mean it's going to be modular, right? That's the thing about this is Apple, Apple is building features on top of these models. And although this is a multi year partnership with Google, the features that it builds are going to be on the iPhone. So on that level you could swap in a new model and it wouldn't be that big a deal. I think also yes, it's a horse race. At the level that Apple is using this stuff, which is not at the level that people who are pushing the frontier of an LLM, I think that those details, those little distinctions are probably not going to matter so much. What Apple's trying to do here is build iPhone features, not build a coding assistant or, you know, it. It's probably not going to show as much. So they can drop it if they need to. It's not going to show as much. It's up to them to build actual features in their operating system that people are going to want to use. But that's the advantage. Those are Apple features on top of someone's LLM that is like a, you know, a part of a car that's being provided to them, but then they're building everything that goes around it. So I don't think it's that big a deal. I think maybe when this all started, everybody was thinking, oh well, if you're Apple, you need to build your own LLM. And maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't. They thought it, but they failed. And I'm not sure it matters in the long run because there are so many other suppliers and access to all. You know, everybody who uses an iPhone is a pretty big deal. So I think that this is okay for Apple as long as they can deliver. That's the question is, can they deliver okay? They won't have the model as an excuse anymore, but they still have to deliver features that people want and integrations into the iPhone and the Mac that people want will actually use and find valuable. That's the question.
- [14:04]
C
What I was going to add was that to piggyback onto Doc Rock's comparison, it's like I think that Gemini, that Google is the best choice for what Apple needs because there are a lot of AI companies that are building cars. I think that Google is specializing in building engines. So if you're trying to. When you come to a company saying, hey, we want to build a machine that can be used to to till land on farmland like Gemini, Google understands well, we build an engine that can turn a shaft. We can build a custom engine that's really, really good for that, that can help you build this thing, they are the company that back when AI was nothing, but not even a really interesting demo, back when it was just people knew about it of, oh, well, there is this cute little research project that can play the game go that that very few people outside of Japan have really heard of. That's when Sundar Pichai was on stage Sticking his neck out, saying that we are pivoting. We are basically defining the next chapter of this company as artificial intelligence. So they understand basic fundamental things about this technology that goes to. We want to do a language model. Great. We can build a language model. You want to build a science research model and a medical model. We've built those too. You want to build a robotics model? We've built a robotics model. They're the company that has really at least demonstrated the ability to go beyond asking questions of a chatbot and getting answers back. And so if you want to basically say, we need you to build us something to our specifications for our use case, I can't think of how you could do better than Google in terms of actual resources and actual proven capability.
- [15:49]
A
Well, it remains to be seen. They're going to roll it out slowly. It won't happen all of a sudden, at least according to Gurman and others. I think Ming Chi Kuo, the first inklings of it will be in. Will it be in 2062? Maybe, but it won't be till June. I've seen some say wwdc, when you get the full features of Apple intelligence switched on through Gemini, I mean, they're doing fine. It's the best image model right now, which is, you know, it's a close race between it and ChatGPT, but it's a, it's, I would say Nano Banana, their newest model, is pretty impressive and Apple obviously thinks that's important. I don't know, how is Gemini compared to the others for writing? It feels like Apple cares more about things like image generation, genmoji, writing, summaries, that kind of thing, than it does about things like coding, which is what Anthropic is really good at. Jason?
- [16:55]
D
Well, they, I mean, they do have LLM integration and xcode for coding and they are going down that path. That's a separate path. Right.
- [17:02]
A
They're also doing health. They've announced health and they have partnerships.
- [17:05]
D
Right. They have partnerships with other LLM companies to do other things. The question is sort of like what they're doing here is the stuff that they were relying on their own models for. They're going to replace those models with Google's models because they're better.
- [17:18]
A
There's a lot of testing, too, about how well it integrates with Siri, because that's at least my sense of it from the past two years is that was the hard thing. Was this the back and forth Voice chat.
- [17:30]
D
Yeah.
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A
Look at Alexa plus, for instance. It's. It's hit or miss.
- [17:34]
D
Yeah, I think, I think that's part of the challenge is that they really, they have a. I mean, when they say that it didn't pass their quality bar, they do mean it. I think they tested it and like, this, we can't ship this. It's just not good. Even though it's going to make us look bad that we can't ship it, we can't ship it because it's not good enough. So I just, I would caution anybody, you know, if we go down the path of who's ahead in the horse race for image generation or who's at the head in the horse race for coding or whatever, like it's going to be back and forth. And honestly, I don't think it matters when you're at the level where Apple is implementing features in UI on top of these models, in OS releases for regular users to do stuff. I don't think that if one model is slightly better than the other, nobody's going to care. And keep in mind, if you want to download the other, you know, an app that uses the other model and run it on your iPhone, no one's going to stop you. Right? Yeah.
- [18:28]
A
You could still use real Gemini if you want.
- [18:30]
D
You have access to all of those other models as apps if you want.
- [18:34]
A
In parity with Siri. Right. I mean, I mean, I guess if you're using a HomePod commands.
- [18:42]
D
Yeah.
- [18:43]
A
I mean, what is it? That series got an ecosystem.
- [18:45]
D
Apple has an ecosystem and it's integrated in a lot of different ways, specific ways to the hardware and the handoff to different devices for different tasks and all sorts of stuff like that. That has to be part of the kind of training and integration of a different model in. Because you have to do kind of heavy lifting in. Like if you say something in an open room, in an Apple ecosystem, there's a thing that happens where all your devices are talking to each other saying, who gets this one? Who's this for? And so they built that. But the good thing is they built it. It's just whatever they're saying there. It needs to know what device has what model that is the one that should get this. And the right thing to do at this point will be once that Google model is there, it'll be that one that should win.
- [19:29]
A
I have to say, as end users, we should be happy because there is competition and competition is really neck and.
- [19:37]
D
Neck right now, and it's competition and LLMs. But I want to make this point, which is with this deal, the default LLM integrated The default core model integrated on basically every phone in the world is Gemini.
- [19:53]
A
That's a good point because It's Android and iOS, isn't it?
- [19:56]
C
Elon Musk was whining about that the other day in response to that, oh, Apple should not have control this. Well, the thing is that I'm sure they took a look at Grok Elon. I'm sure they had a good laugh about it and then they moved on.
- [20:07]
A
It's funny, I left, didn't I leave Xai out of the conversation? I did. I haven't mentioned them. Well, I don't really have. I have it because Elon gave me a non consensual blue check, but I have no desire to use it.
- [20:20]
C
Yeah, the competition is especially important because there are so many questions still about, about what role AI is going to have it should provide in an operating system level, on a device level. I mean I brought up, I brought up China, not because I thought that in any way, in any world Apple would consider using, using their, their, their, their foundation model, but the idea that. I was read of different analysts who are saying that the thing is they're making a lot of, they're making a lot of inroads and in countries outside of like what we consider the western sphere and they are also, their models are not as good, but they're one part of the bet is that it's good and we don't know what good enough is yet. And if they are providing a model that's good enough and is has open weights and can be run on a lot less power than the best models, who knows in two or three years whether or not everyone else is going to be trying to say, yeah well let's do it, we'll roll out our own good enough models. What I'm saying is that there is so much that's in flux right now that really it's hard to determine winners and losers. One thing that remains true, however that remains a problem is that you need the power and resources of a nation state in order to build a foundation model. Now that Google is, Congratulations Google, you recently became a $4 trillion company. And all the companies that are all the organizations that are doing really good foundation models have those resources to pay for all of the development and all the support and all the compute that they need for this. So essentially either you are a country in and of itself or you're a corporation that's so huge that you have the powers of a nation state. So that means that if the five companies that are Doing competitive foundation models are doing bad things collectively and selfish things collectively that are bad for people, bad for society, bad for the planet. There's no room for an upstart to come in and say, guess what? We're going to come up with a much better solution because you are not going to be able, unless you have a, unless you have a backer of that scale, you are not going to be able to build it.
- [22:23]
A
It really does give Google a leg up on the other guys. I mean this is, this is a, a big win for Google, which is probably why Apple gave them the press release.
- [22:32]
C
When you think of Apple not just as a client, not just as a partner, but as a client, now every other company that needs, needs AI services, well, guess what? Apple looked at all the different, all the different organizations that could provide with the services and the technology they need. They pick Google. Why shouldn't we at least take a look at Google number one on the list and then ask ourselves, why not Google? This is a big, big win for Google.
- [22:55]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [22:56]
B
It's kind of the tone for everyone else. Like you said, you know, now Google gets to use that thing where you see, you know, you go to the site at the bottom, it says, oh, picked by Adobe and Proctor.
- [23:09]
A
And you won't see it on any, on any Apple stuff. Right. They didn't even want to put it in their newsroom. And you, you definitely, and this is reassuring to people, won't be sending data back to, as far as we know, back to Gemini. Right. This is still just as private. It's going to run on Apple servers on Apple's.
- [23:26]
D
One of reasons this deal may have happened the way it did is also because keep in mind Apple's not just doing a bake off of the best LLMs. Apple is doing some negotiation involving compatibility. Right. They want an on device model presumably. Right. And they also. So that's got to be a lot more lightweight. And then they want something that will run in their private cloud compute infrastructure, which again is not the wild, you know, any data center run by any LLM. It's a very specific set of rules. Obviously Google said we could do that. I think Google is an interesting partner in part because Google is one of the only major players that seems to really, really have a reason to care about on device models because of Android. That's important. All the frontier stuff is happening in giant data centers. But in the long run, the more stuff you can process, if you can have a powerful chip in your phone, which we do, and they're Getting more powerful all the time. Much better to run that thing locally with no latency. And then if you can't do that, having a model that runs on Apple's system where Apple doesn't even know what you're doing because it's designed to be private, and then get that data back to you, that's also pretty powerful. And not every LLM company is going to be capable of or interested in emphasizing those features right now. And Google's a good fit. So I think in that way, Google caring about smartphones makes them a good match for Apple because Apple also obviously cares about smartphones.
- [25:01]
B
If we were given points for the takes, Jason, you just got 75 points. Because that's the real answer. The fact that it is a mobile company and they actually do run their own servers and stuff, whereas Anthropic and OpenAI, they have to use other people's service, including some of Google's.
- [25:18]
D
Yeah, Google has said that they were interested. After Apple announced Private Cloud compute, Google did an announcement that was like, basically, they didn't say it, but it was basically, yeah, that's a good idea. We should do that too. For some. And it is. And Apple was the company. I don't think they get enough credit for this. But like Apple, building private cloud is really a good move. Like, that was a really smart move by them. And other companies weren't motivated to go down that path. And Apple's like, we're going to do this. We're going to build our own servers running a version of our own operating system that's going to be built to be private, and we're going to make that available for security researchers. And, and I think that was a great strategic move and it gives them the ability to play in this space. And the fact that, that I think Google thought it was a good idea too, and that Google is technically capable and willing to build a version of their Gemini engine that will run on private cloud compute. Like, I'm not sure, you know, if Apple talked to OpenAI, it may not have been Apple saying, forget it, or Open I saying, forget it. I don't want to work with you. It could have been that they looked at Apple's list of requests and were like, we aren't going to do this. Right. But Google, same thing all the phone.
- [26:26]
A
Companies did when Apple said, we got this thing called the iPhone. Anybody interested in that? And everybody.
- [26:33]
C
It's possible that it wasn't even a case of we don't want to do this. It could be that on a technical Level. We have not, we have not built a flexible enough model that can be agnostic, privacy agnostic.
- [26:43]
D
I think that's true. I think that's got to be true, Andy, because if I'm open AI, the last thing I want is for every iPhone to have Gemini on it. Right. That's the last thing I want. But I just don't think it's where. Well, I don't think it's where they're skating. I think that OpenAI is skating in a very different direction from where Apple wants to go in terms of having private, small, private clouds and on device models. And it's just like, fair enough. I think there are lots of different strategies here. We may end up having pit every AI against every other AI. It may be that ChatGPT is actually the master of this and like Claude is over here doing coding and that Google and, and Apple are working together on, on device and small private cloud and that there's room for all of those approaches because they're different right now. They're definitely all leaning into like, what they're focused on. And strategically, I think open AI would rather be the thing that drives the iPhone. But I think larger strategically, it is just not an area of focus for them right now.
- [27:40]
C
Yeah, I do, I do think that they're. I'm sorry, just quickly. I do think that they're at least OpenAI and everyone else is at least relieved to know that Apple is insisting on privacy controls because this would have been a, this deal would have been a disaster for every other AI company if Google was allowed to use the data that it, that it manipulates on iPhone to train and improve Gemini. The influx of all of that information from all of those iPhones, all of those iPads, all of those, everything would have been such a huge tactical advantage. It would have just, it would have definitely accelerated the improvements that Google could have done on Gemini. And so that, that would have been the thing that would have been not game over. But we are suddenly running, we are suddenly two bases behind on Google because that is a huge, huge advantage. And the fact that that was not going to be a deal breaker for Google also says that at least Google is institutionally aware of the need for privacy. There was an announcement last week about how, oh, good news, they're embedding Gemini even deeper into Gmail and now it can give you all kinds of information regarding all 20 years of your emails. And even there they had to basically point out, oh, by the way, let's be explicit here, we are not training Gemini, based on your emails, we are doing all of this within our, that private cloud compute analog that we announced a few months ago. So they're at least big. They've got a big enough business, they are not desperate to pinch every, to steal every penny they possibly can from its users and its clients, which probably was also an advantage. I'm sorry, Doc.
- [29:18]
B
Yeah, and I was going to say real quick is, you know, there is a limited talent pool of the people that can do this. And so, you know, there's been a lot of conversations about Apple's inability to do this or Apple can't catch up and they got all the money in the world. It doesn't matter how much money you have in the world.
- [29:34]
A
If this.
- [29:35]
B
Let's just say there's only 2,000 people out there with the skills to make this happen and you have a large portion of them already divided up amongst the top three. Unless you're going to go and pilfer people from some of these other companies. Companies to try to get them in, which they kind of sort of did a little bit. The smart play is to just realize that based off in the course, they have business decision people out there, they have analysts that goes looking at the talent that's coming out. We don't see anybody that's doing anything that's kind of like the next Johnny. I've of this, if you will. So realizing that there's no talent right now and we don't have a lot of time and everybody's pressing us, stockholders want this. The media is slamming us. All right, here's our next move. There was a business analyst decision and it was a brilliant one. Now if we had a massive pool of talented people come out there, yeah, it might be worth taking toys going in the corners and trying. But yeah, there's. And so people act like there's this infinite, you know, number of people. I mean, I consider all four of us to be relatively smart. None of us was going to go work at Apple and do the AI team. No, like, I could talk about Allen Iverson, but not about this. So, you know, so like, I think, I think people need to like, like get off the, I guess, how do I say it? It's not really a doom and gloom thing, but it's always assuming the worst. No, they're doing the best they can with what they have. And to me, it's a brilliant decision and we know that they're going to strive for the privacy thing. And andy's point is 100 valid. This is Literally probably the best thing. And I am happy that it's coming. And I really hope that the one thing that we talked about a year and a half ago that we still don't have is I want to be able to say to Siri, hey, Siri, you know, exactly when was the last time I got to hang out with Leo? And it was according to your calendar, it was, you know, such, such and such. That promise has not yet been delivered. And it was a feature that actually makes it semi useful. You know what I mean? I was just in Kyoto like last week and I was trying to remember this small mom and pop, you know, udon shop that we went to that was fabulous. And I couldn't remember where it was. And I'm looking at my photos album trying to find it. And because of the way photos does Japanese streets, I, I couldn't exactly nail it. Now I eventually found it, but it would have been so much easier if I can just say, Siri, hey, the last time I was within two miles of here, where is that udon shop that I went to? And Siri would be like, oh, it's on Karasuma Dori Nijo. Just go there and 100 meters to the right and it's underneath those steps.
- [32:06]
C
Yeah.
- [32:06]
B
You know what I mean?
- [32:07]
C
It's so seductive, isn't it? Like, even as I get, I like Google, but even so, I'm like, do I want Google AI like attached to my inbox? But it's so seductive because again, you've got. I don't use my Gmail account as my primary thing, but it is like where receipts and stuff go and, and a lot of other information goes academically. If both of my mailboxes, my primary mailboxes were connected with AI, the ability to say, I know that. God, the last time I had a plumbing problem, I went with this water heater guy who fixed it really well. But that was like six or seven years ago. Who was that guy and what did he charge? And just simply not like, here's a search result, here's the email, say, oh, well, it's so and so here's his contact information. Actually, I also found his business address. So he's still in business. If you want to call him, touch this button and it'll go. Or even complex things like how much, how much on average did I spend on. Every time I flew to San Francisco for the past five years, what was the average amount I spent on airfare? And simply trying to figure out, like, am I paying too much, too little all these things and medical stuff, scheduling stuff. It's like I want to be safe. I don't want to trust a $4 trillion company with like personal information. But if it can answer questions that are really, really, really vital. And turn like the last example is like there's a, I need to invoice somebody for a job I did a few months ago. But it was like instead of like, oh, just give us an invoice, we'll PayPal you the money. It's like, okay, first we need you to onboard you onto our payment system. You need to sign this. Also we need a new user agreement for this, that and the other. And I haven't gotten around to it because like I actually have almost lost track of all of the emails about all the things I need to do. And if I could just say Gemini, say give me a to do list of everything I need to do to get paid for this job and it will just simply give me a table. And Here are the PDFs that you need to sign. Hear the emails that refer to this. It's like that would solve a lot of my problems right now and maybe I don't mind being exploited by a $4 trillion company if it sometimes helps me out like this.
- [34:06]
B
You know the funny thing you just said, Andy, which cracks me up how I actually found the spot was because of the breadcrumbs that you leave in Google Maps because I never turned, I never turned it off. So it was actually leaking my data. Privacy actually helped me find my spot again though and it was good. By the way, I can send you recommendation if you're in Kyoto's.
- [34:28]
A
It will be interesting to see what happens. I think Apple did the only thing it could do. I guess that's the bottom line. I think you would agree it may not be enough. Here's the question. The world is very rapidly now bifurcating between people who believe AI is transformational and is about to change all of technology. I'm in that camp and people say AI, that's the worst thing. It's slop. I guess there's a few people, probably most of the three of you who are kind of in the middle. But yep, it really is, it is. There is this division happening. There will be people who say I will, I love Apple because they don't have AI.
- [35:12]
B
And Apple will make phone 8.
- [35:14]
D
Apple will let you turn it off. I think that's the thing is Apple, Apple. You can turn Apple intelligence off now. I think in terms of is it too late? I think only in the sense that Apple should have realized that this was not a game it needed to play a few years ago and instead it was like no, no, no, we can build it all ourselves. And it is a hump for Apple to get over whenever it decides this is not a thing it needed to do itself and it couldn't do itself. And they should have recognized that sooner. But they really believe they hired John Gian and Andrea, he was going to get it done. But there I think if you talk to John Giann, Andrea, he would probably say Apple was, it was never going to work with Apple because of the way Apple builds products and the way app AI and what it was for. And you know, in terms of the transformationality of, of AI, I mean Apple hitching its, its wagon to a company that's really devoted to this stuff I think gives it a leg up. If I utterly transforms everything to the point where you have to question every assumption about everything, then everybody's going to be in the same boat. I think, I think Apple will have to deal with that. Like if, if the iPhone becomes irrelevant because of AI, then that's bad for Apple obviously, but that's going to be bad for a whole lot of people. But at least, but they're not gonna, what they're not gonna do is be stuck on the side of the road, you know, with their, with their tires off the car. Right. Like they are gonna be rolling down the road and using a, a well thought of AI model to run their stuff.
- [36:45]
A
Yeah.
- [36:45]
C
And that's, that's something. Actually you, you got got me thinking about something that I actually hadn't considered before that. What if all these doom and gloomers are at least partially correct and that AI devices are going to partially replace phones because Apple is not in a good position to lose like 20% of its, of its phone sales. The thing is like, especially with this deal with Google, if the next thing really is like a pendant or a pen or a pair of, an AI that goes through a pair of glasses, they're now in a very good position to have very, very flexible hardware products that they can ship that have AI embedded in them or rely on artificial intelligence in a way that maybe they didn't have that kind of flexibility even if they had landed on a successful foundation model in a couple of years time. So they're good.
- [37:34]
A
Elon Musk not happy apparently sending a message to Pam Bondi saying, you know, you really should look into this. It seems like an unreasonable concentration of.
- [37:45]
C
Power for Google as a dis, As A disinterested third party. I'm just concerned I don't have a.
- [37:50]
A
Dog in his hunt. I don't want you to think that I care.
- [37:52]
C
Oh, and by the way, thank you for integrating Grok into your defense AI system. That was. That was great.
- [37:57]
A
Yeah. That's the scariest news of the week.
- [37:59]
C
Yes.
- [38:00]
B
Oh, my God. It's. It's kind of crazy. You know, it's really weird. I was watching a bunch of coverage from CES last week, and of course, all of the tech tubers, they just all went in like, oh, everything is AI this and AI this, and they are this. And I'm like, bro, the roomba's been swinging AI since 07. Like, iPhones had it in there since. I think it was iPhone 8, if I remember correctly. It's just now that the terminology is AI and. But honestly, you know, machine learning, neural engine stuff has been happening for. For quite a long time. And the things that we do every day that sort of have this built in, you know, people are right now making a lot of noise about certain stores are now using sort of price adjusting in real time because they have so much data that they can comb through. And I'm like, I know on your end of it, as a consumer, it feels painful, but if you had a business that allowed you to actually track enough data to control your pricing the same way, and you didn't do that as a business person, you'd be a bad business person. So, like, it's easy to take the victim mindset of it, or you can figure out how to make it work for you too. And I believe that there is definitely a gray area and a gray line. But even so much talk about, you know, what is personal privacy. I think a lot of the people don't realize unless you use Ghostery or some other app, every site you go to gives up, like 80 different data points about you. Unless, I mean, Safari is probably the best, which is why, you know, Leola and I like, shut up, Google. Every time Chrome, like, do you want to download Chrome? But I mean, people, you. You say you want to give out your info. That's the same idea, you know, Same idea, right? But you're. You're giving up so much information now anyway, and you don't even realize it because so many of the people that are not our people or our audience, oh, I'm not a tech person. I don't want to know that stuff. I'm like, but you're the same one that's crying that says, you don't want to give up your private information, and yet you're doing it all the time. And this week, one of us is going to get an email from a friend that owns a PC that says that they want something from us, but it's not really them because their security is so terrible that, you know, you're getting these weird emails supposedly from Jason. I'm like, jason don't even spell like that dog. And, like, Jason doesn't call me by my government name ever. So I know you're not Jason.
- [40:26]
C
It.
- [40:27]
B
I get emails from Glenn. I get emails from Ken and Glenn saying to go and buy 2,000 gift cards. And I'm like, so we. We have a slap channel called Faker.
- [40:36]
A
You mean your name isn't Doc Rock? Wait a minute.
- [40:41]
B
But, yeah, we always send in our fake or not screenshots. You know, like, if you don't sign this employee agreement right away, you're gonna lose all your money. And then, by the way, it cost you 40 bucks to do so. And it's like, yeah, all right.
- [40:54]
A
I'm so embarrassed. I fell for a phishing scam yesterday. What? I wasn't. I was foggy. I just woken up and I got a text from T Mobile saying, hey, you haven't. Your points are going to expire. Why don't you. Why don't you get some of these fine items? Click the link. I'm such an idiot.
- [41:13]
C
Well, that's the problem, because everyone in this conversation is savvy enough to be aware of this sort of thing. But all that has to happen is that a notification appears while you're putting the gas pump back into the handle and you're checking to make sure that you weren't overcharged.
- [41:28]
A
Well, and clicked. And I am a T Mobile customer. And they. And this is the thing. And I really think companies have to think about this. I get regular text messages, promotional text messages for them. So it was kind of. Oh, yeah, of course. But it wasn't. And I should have. The giveaway was when I entered a credit card number and said, no, that one's not working. Get out another one. And I entered another credit card number and said, no, that's not working either. You got another one. And I entered. I put in three different credit card numbers before I went, oh, crap. So I immediately canceled all three credit cards. The nice thing about the Apple card. So there's a couple of Apple sidelines to this. One of them is, and I should have noticed this when I got the text messages saying, you want to use this credit card here's the six digit number which I then gave the bad guys after a long delay, right? And then I got a text back saying, it's been added to your Apple Wallet. I said, well, no, that's not what I was doing. So the bad guys are. This was a smart move. They actually took the credit card numbers I gave them and added them to their own Apple wall or some other Apple wallet for an anonymity, right? Because now they can go somewhere and use it anonymously. That was part of it. The thing that was good was I did one of the. One of, the first one I gave it was my Apple Visa. But the nice thing about Apple, you go to the wallet and say, I need to get rid of that number, I need a new number. And it's like that. The other two, I am waiting for a card to be sent to me and there are some, you know, disconnections I have to go through, reconnect. So there's some pain associated with them. But the Apple thing was very, very easy. I'm such an idiot. The only reason I say this is I just want you to know it can happen to you. It's so easy.
- [43:14]
C
Y friend of mine messaged me with a malformed, like video link. And I knew it was malformed because like, you know, it wasn't. It. It wasn't popped out into like a YouTube player, right? And like, because he's such a trusted friend, like, he's someone I chat with like almost every day. It's like, of course I tapped on it. This could have been a malicious. He could. His account could have been compromised. This could be a malicious link. And I just tapped it like, it. It turned out he just pasted it incorrectly. But it's like again. And the sort of thing that humbles you into thinking that, no, I am not invincible from this. No, I am too smart. It's like again, catch you when you. Especially catching you when you're down or when you're distracted by something else. And this is another area in which artificial intelligence is going to be helping out the iPhone, just simply being much, much smarter about being able to catch stuff before it actually interpret saying, I'm not going to hide. I'm not going to prevent you from clicking this. But realize that this has been every single earmark of. It's something that your friend has never sent you before. And it seems it has the. It has the appearance of being a scam. So I'm, for no apparent reason, I'm basically backgrounding this in Red and actually having a revolving warning sign jiff next to this. But hey, click on it if you want to.
- [44:25]
A
You'd think I'd know better. The other side of this is they within 20 minutes used it, but I had fortunately blocked it. So a $500 charge at Lowe's got rejected and man, stupid me. Let's take a break. This is just one of many. There's like five big stories today. All of a sudden. Here we are, it's only the second week of January and Apple's been busy, busy, busy, busy. Yes, we're going to talk about. We will have our Vision Pro segment soon. We'll talk about, since we're talking about AI, the fact that Anthropic has announced a new feature in its Claude AI designed specifically for Mac users. I have tried it because, foolishly, I am paying for the top of the line Claude account, which you need. You need a Claude Max account to use it. So I'll demo that. There's so much more. There's Golden Globe victories there. I mean, I could just go on and on. In fact, Claude told me that the. The Apple creator studio should be the number one story. So I blew that.
- [45:38]
C
It's super hot.
- [45:39]
A
It's super hot.
- [45:40]
C
We'll talk, but it's less relevant. I'm glad we started with.
- [45:43]
A
Yeah.
- [45:44]
C
Something that material is of the next five or eight years of Apple's future.
- [45:47]
A
I just want to reassure people who are tuning in saying.
- [45:50]
C
Exactly.
- [45:50]
A
Well, wait a minute.
- [45:52]
C
We did check the news this morning before we. Yes. Start.
- [45:55]
D
There's a lot more.
- [45:56]
A
There's a. I had Claude do it for me. There's a lot more. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Anako is in the house. So is Jason Snell from six colors.com and of course, the fabulous Doc Rock, YouTube celebrity Doc Rock. And of course, ECAMM Ambassador. Is that fair to say? Ambassador?
- [46:20]
B
Actually, now I'm the Director of Strategic Partnerships. I make sure you work for them. Yeah, I make sure that things, you know, sort of work well with, you know, when people buy hardware and stuff, we want it to kind of line.
- [46:31]
A
Up, we do it. And I have some hardware that I've already ordered that was announced today that I will be using with eCamm. But we'll talk about that.
- [46:38]
B
Now. I want to know.
- [46:41]
A
Hey, everybody. Leo Laporte here with a. A little bit of an ask. Every year at this time, we'd like to survey our audience to find a little bit more about you. As you may know, we respect your privacy. We don't do anything. In fact, we can't do anything to learn about who you are. And that's fine with me. I like that. But it helps us with advertising, it helps us with programming to know a little bit about those of you who are willing to tell us. Your privacy is absolutely respected. We do get your email address, but that's just in case there's an issue. We don't share that with anybody. What we do share is the aggregate information that we get from these surveys. Things like 80% of our audience buy something they heard in an ad on our shows or 75% of our audience are it decision makers. Things like that are very helpful with us when we talk to advertisers. They're also very helpful to us to understand what operating systems you use, what content you're interested in. So enough. Let me just ask you if you will go to TWiT TV Survey 26 and answer a few questions. It should only take you a few minutes of your time. We do this every year. It's very helpful to us. Your privacy is assured, I promise you. And of course, if, if you're uncomfortable with any question or you don't want to do it at all, that's fine too. But if, if you want to help us out a little bit. TWiT TV survey 26, thank you so much. And now back to the show.
- [48:03]
D
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now you call it.
- [48:17]
B
An early present for next year.
- [48:18]
A
What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [48:23]
D
50 off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required 45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months or 180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms.
- [48:35]
A
All right, well, let's talk about the creator studio. This is Apple's response clearly to Adobe.
- [48:40]
D
Yep. And Affinity.
- [48:42]
A
And Affinity which is also. But affinity doesn't have the full range of packages. The Apple Creator Studio which will be $13 a month, $129 a year. But and this I was quick to check this out. It is. Can be a family does count for a family plan unless you get the education version which means for $129 everybody in my family, you know, six people in my family can use it and that makes It a pretty good deal. You get Final Cut Pro, which is normally $300 one time only. They're still going to offer, by the way, the one time only for all of these. But who would pay 3 on Mac. Who would pay $300 for Final Cut Pro when $429 a year? I don't know. Logic Pro, also still expensive. Pixelmator Pro finally gets a home. Apple acquired that in 2024, but now it's part of this creator Studio Motion Compressor. These are Final Cut features. Main stage, but it also is going to take the iWork suite. It's still going to offer that for free, but it's now more freemium. Keynote pages and numbers will have additional features if you buy the subscription. Jason, is this a good deal?
- [49:55]
D
I think Apple building a Pro bundle with Final Cut Logic and pixelmator and putting it on iPad and Mac for a. I mean if you think about it, a relatively low price. I pay. That's about what I pay for just Photoshop. If you, if you're paying for more of the Adobe suite, it's a lot less than that. And it's not giving you everything that Adobe Suite is or, or that affinity offers. But you're getting video, audio and photo all in one place. I think Apple playing. I mean this is why they bought pixelmator. Right. Like they wanted a.
- [50:30]
A
This is the one missing piece.
- [50:31]
D
They didn't have a photo editor for this. Right. So like, I think it's good that they offer this. I think that this kind of high end suite is a great use of the subscription model. And if you're getting, if you use even one of these apps, but certainly if you use two of these apps, I think it's actually a pretty good deal.
- [50:50]
A
I've already paid for Final Cut and Logic. Oh, but they changed that to a subscription on the iPad, didn't they?
- [50:56]
D
On the iPad, it has always been a subscription since they came with this. It's a subscription thing.
- [51:03]
A
So you might. And you get Mac and iPad versions for that.
- [51:06]
D
Yeah. When you subscribe you get the Mac and iPad versions for monthly or annual. Yeah, I think strategically it's a good move and their apps are actually pretty good. There are probably some holes here that they might want to fill down the road, but maybe not. Maybe this is, you know, it's not a bad combination to roll them all together.
- [51:24]
A
I have to think Alex Lindsay knew about this when he left us.
- [51:27]
D
It's possible, it's quite possible.
- [51:29]
C
This was one of the things somebody squatters.
- [51:32]
D
So my niche I wish you were.
- [51:34]
A
Here to tell us what he thinks. But he won't. He can't.
- [51:36]
C
Ironically, now he works at Apple. He could definitely afford to buy him outright. So I don't know.
- [51:40]
A
Hey, that's true.
- [51:41]
C
How he's trying to cheap out.
- [51:42]
A
That's a good point.
- [51:43]
D
The part that I don't entirely understand is how where Keynote Pages and numbers factor in because they're. They're not creative apps. They were the iWork suite. They're very different apps. You get them for free. But what this announcement says is that there are new features and content that will come if you're a subscriber. Now, the content part, I get like part of this part of being an Adobe subscriber, whatever is you get like a content bundle. You get access to clip art or you get access to templates or whatever. Like, I don't have a problem with that. That if you're paying for the creative. Creative Creator Studio, it's not the Creative Suite, that's a different company's product. The creator studio, it's still cs. It is kind of logical that it's like, oh, yeah, we also make some beautiful. We have some beautiful templates that are just for you and beautiful thing imagery that you can use in your presentations and stuff like that. Like, okay, it's a little weird, but okay. But them saying that they're going to be some productivity, it seems like features.
- [52:43]
A
That'S kind of numbers, that's kind of interesting. I could see like, oh, it's a nice little sweetener. We're going to give you some templates for Pages and Keynote.
- [52:51]
B
But I got the numbers one for you, full stop. And we could use it today as we sit here in this particular guy. Okay, so numbers being connected to Final Cut Pro, also being connected to pixelmator.
- [53:06]
A
Now that might be the big thing, huh?
- [53:08]
B
Now states that when I'm going to do, you know, Mac Break Weekly 1 008, I can just say it's going to be Doc and Andy, Leo and Jason. And it can generate all the lower thirds on the fly. I don't have to sit there and edit each one of the lower thirds as a person. I mean, I'm a creator, so I use this stuff.
- [53:25]
A
What does it use for that? Numbers?
- [53:27]
B
Yeah, you could use numbers because that's the cv. Cvs. That is a drugstore, my friend.
- [53:34]
A
Does it have the COVID shot and the flu shot? I'm just curious.
- [53:37]
B
Yes, it can use the CSV or.
- [53:40]
C
The TSV now with AI generated content. Those receipts will Be even longer.
- [53:44]
B
Oh my God.
- [53:45]
C
Right?
- [53:46]
B
But yeah, so being able to do things like that. Also, Leo, if I'm using logic to do the cut down of the show and I say, okay, now that you know how to do transcripting, you also should be able to go and find me those highlights and help me generate those reels. So it's going to give me those timestamps which is now connected to Final Cut so I can get the audio to video and then the transcript and I can build that in Final Cut and I can export reels really quickly with various assets. And because of the content library that I hope that they build, like Adobe, my B roll stuff is easier.
- [54:18]
A
You know, it's a really good ecosystem place.
- [54:21]
B
Yeah, it's a great ecosystem. Even being able to take my script that I wrote inside of pages, but then I'm going to record that inside of ECAMM and then I'm going to go and edit that inside of Final Cut Pro. I can say compare my script to what I said and cut it pre cut it for me. And there's already apps that do that, but they require four different apps. And if you can tighten those things up. And Premiere has this on lock, which is the only reason why anybody still loves Premiere versus the way that say DaVinci and Final Cut does it is because Premiere does have some auto cut, which you know, now Apple is going to be able to do with Final Cut because again I can compare the script with the recorded thing and then have it go in and you know, chop. And the only reason why I know this fam is I literally last year I created 600 videos. I made a, a long form video every day for 419 days. I didn't hit 420 because I was lost in Kyoto looking for the udon shop, but legit. So I mean, because I do this every day, I can totally see where all of this ties in and it's going to be okay. Amazeball.
- [55:27]
D
So I, I get the ways it can tie in, but if you're a numbers user who doesn't use Final Cut or Logic, this is where I draw the line.
- [55:39]
A
I was this aimed at, Is it.
- [55:40]
B
Aimed at just Numbers is still going to be free.
- [55:43]
D
Numbers is going to be free. But like numbers is going to have formula generation and table fill features that are ML features that are going to be paywalled behind this design studio, this creative studio, which seems like a complete mismatch to me, right? Like they're turning, they're turning. I actually don't I don't love the idea that in order to chase services revenue, Apple is taking these apps that you get and making them freemium. But I don't like that. I think that features are different from templates and media assets. And so to withhold new features from Keynote or Pages or Numbers, unless you pay for this, not super expensive. But like, if it's not apps you use and you're a numbers user, it just kind of stinks. And I don't, and I don't see how those. You can use them together. But there are also plenty of people who are never going to use Final Cut or Logic who are going to use Numbers and Keynote and Pages. So I don't. Again, media unlocked by the subscription. I get it. But like features unlocked by the subscription. I hate it. I hate it. I think it's really gross. And that it's. This subscription makes it worse that it's not a, hey, we've been giving you iwork forever for free and now we're going to build services revenue on you, so we're going to charge you for an iWork subscription. At least that would be kind of orthogonal to what the apps are, but instead it's just like, oh yeah, some numbers features require you to buy Final Cut now. I just, I don't like it.
- [57:18]
C
I'm. I. It kind of really highlights how disappointed I've been. And really the iWork suite and the Ilife Suite just have been fallow for so long. Like, when was the last.
- [57:29]
A
Well, maybe now it'll have money and they'll be, yeah, making it work.
- [57:34]
D
Right.
- [57:34]
C
And, and I hope that it's not. You will. We will. We will materially add useful features and not just simply add features, but we will consider reconsider the work flow of creating a movie with Imovie. We will reconsider the workflow of creating music with GarageBand. As time goes by as, as the creative world changes, it's not just, oh, well, we added an upgrade for Apple Intelligence or we added an upgrade so that now it actually works with this new icloud feature that we put in like last year. It's, it's, it's. I really thought that I work in Ilife were one of the highlights of Apple because it was a chance for Apple to show off what makes a Mac a Mac, what makes an iPad an iPad. It's not just as much as I love Adobe Lightroom, it is manifestly. We have created an interface that we can port to wherever it needs to go. Not we are going to Take advantage of the opportunities provided to us by the Mac and by the Mac's APIs. And that was a chance for Apple to do that stuff with iWork and iLife. And I think they sort of let that slide by. I will say that I don't know what the market is for people who are actually using the pro tools as pros, that if spending a couple hundred dollars or a few hundred dollars for Final Cut is just, well, we don't even think about that because we're going to make that back like in the first three weeks. I do love the fact that a new generation of creators that absolutely could not afford $300 for Final Cut Pro, but I can afford 12 and a half bucks. And I can even convince myself that I can afford 12, 12 and a half bucks now that now that Spotify is raising its prices and I've decided I don't need Spotify anymore. Ditto for Netflix, ditto for Hulu. Like I suddenly have an extra 12 bucks in the kitty having not just this one app, but an entire suite of apps. So not only can this person afford to have Final Cut Pro instead of Imovie, they can afford to have Logic Pro. They can afford to have motion motion graphics. They can have everything and the ability to grow as creators and to basically take this creative idea they've got in their head and turn to something they can actually share and maybe even like make a living off of. As much as we don't like things going into a subscription model like you are going to own, you never own this app. You're always infinitely going to have to be paying for this until time goes until the mountains tumble into the sea. I do like the fact that it turns a crippling 300, 400, 500, 600 purchases to into. Can you afford 20 bucks or less a month during the one or two months that you want to try these things out or during the two or three months that you have this one project going on, many people can say yes where they cannot say yes before. So that's why I, like you just.
- [60:06]
B
Said the key thing right there. I know people who run businesses that only need final cut like three times a year. So that means that at 13 bucks, right, they can get in there and they can crank it out those three times and they can be done with it and they never have to turn it back on. The other thing, which Leo say, which not a lot of folks pay attention to now, I am one of those people who thought that I should use B and W as A child. So I'll have no kids, but people who have kids who are in the education system, the kid can turn it on for 299 and you could literally use it for three bucks three times. And from the time I worked at Apple to not working at Apple, you know what? Apple's really bad at checking your education status. So more than likely, if you really wanted to be that person, you probably can get it for three bucks because Apple's terrible at checking.
- [60:55]
A
We're not advocating that in any way.
- [60:57]
D
Shape or form, but I know I've had that we. For upgrade. Whenever we do a live. A live recording, and we've done a couple of them this year, I just turn on. I've been turning on Final Cut for iPad in order to use Final Cut camera and capture all the cameras and stuff. And it's great because I just turn it on, I use it, and then I cancel it and I pay for one month. And there are so many people who have those issues. And this is one of the. Again, it is the positive thing about subscriptions. It's not great. It's yet another subscription. But there are also. These apps used to be. So all of these apps, all the creative apps, not just from Apple, Adobe apps, too. They also used to be so expensive that if you were somebody who needed to do a project, you couldn't, because there's no way you're going to spend $900 or $1000 or $500 or $300 in order to do a project. And now you can, you can, you can pick up a project, you pay for a month, you do your project, and then you turn it back off. And. Yeah, that, that's. That's a good thing. I just, I'm stopped a little bit on the idea that Apple threw. I work in here and.
- [62:01]
A
And I don't feel like they're gonna. That it'll be significant. Features that are added.
- [62:06]
D
We don't know what they are.
- [62:08]
A
We don't know what they are.
- [62:08]
D
We don't know what they are. But the one they're describing, like autofill and tables and numbers, like, it doesn't. That sounds like you're. It sounds like you're doing a freemium model where you have to buy a totally different bundle in order to get some new features. And in the long run, do most of the new features get added in that way where you're paying for this thing? It feels like a bad fit. And I wonder if there's another shoe to drop at some point, because it's not a bad fit if those features are also available just in iWork for $20 a year or something. But to have to pay $100, some dollars a year for Final Cut and Logic in order to get auto fill in numbers just to make a lot of sense to me. So we'll see.
- [62:47]
A
It doesn't look like there will be a standalone paid version of iWork. You either use free version or you use the package.
- [62:54]
D
There's nothing.
- [62:54]
B
That's his hang up. Well, you know it's funny because a lot of people forget that, you know, Final Cut Studio was 9.99.
- [63:02]
D
Oh yeah, yeah.
- [63:03]
B
You know what I'm saying?
- [63:03]
D
At the box, a giant heavy full of manuals and all that.
- [63:08]
B
Yeah, that box is in the back room somewhere. But it was a massive box. It was huge. And I didn't know a thousand bucks. I worked at Apple at the time, but even then we had to pay like 200. Like it wasn't even one of those things where you just got it free as an employee. Like it was so huge that the books alone was kind of ridiculous. And the thing is, in the creator space, so many this, this drives me nuts. In the creator space, so many creators want everything for free, but yet they want to get the first question at any creator conference. I do. How do I get brand deals? How do I get paid? How do I monetize? Right now a whole bunch of the tech tubers I saw this morning are complaining about, oh, Apple, they did what they no one's going to do. They made a subscription app and blah blah blah. I hate subscription apps. You know what every one of those guys has at the bottom of their screen on YouTube? The join button.
- [63:55]
D
Yeah.
- [63:58]
B
And I'm like, dude, you, you know how foolish you sound? You legit have a pay me 10 bucks a month to get my behind the scenes content. But Apple cannot charge for this. So like if you that they by.
- [64:10]
A
The way already own 100% final cut.
- [64:13]
B
And Logic or something of that, a.
- [64:17]
A
Lot of people are chat room saying, oh no, I own Final Cut. I already own Logic. I already own a Pixelmator.
- [64:21]
B
It's never going away, right? If you have those things, it won't be.
- [64:24]
A
Will it not be updated, you think?
- [64:26]
B
No, it's going to be updated. That's the other part. Okay, so I bought the Final Cut that I'm currently using. I bought when I was at University of Hawaii and I legit paid 299 for it. I have not given it another sin other than what Jason said Turning on the iPad apps for when we're at, you know, CES or Comdex or Max Stock, where I need to be on the road and do things on the road. Other than that, I just do it on my computer because it's just easier and the muscle memory is there. But I, you know, I will legit turn it on. It's like 4.99. I'll flip it on so I can do some edits in the plane. And it's like, that's worth the five bucks because, sorry, Elon, we got Starlink on Hawaiian and Alaskan airlines. So it's fast. It's. It's faster than my dang house half the time. So, yeah, it's just one of those really, really weird situations. And again, like, people don't realize how much this stuff got even. Like, well, I can't believe they charge us for the streaming service. They should give it for free. How much did it cost to make F1 or Ted Lasso or the morning show? Like, these shows aren't free, bro. It's not like tv. We had commercials and we're still complaining about ads. Like, you can't, you know, create this stuff is not free. Even what Leo is doing. And Leo charges probably the least amount of anybody out here doing what he's doing. And people, some people like, oh, I don't want to pay a subscription to get a podcast. I'm like, do you know how much it costs for us to sit here? Yeah, like, right now, I'm being paid by Ken and Glenn to sit here. Don't tell them I'm supposed to be at work right now. Like, fam. Like, you don't work for free. Why should anybody else?
- [65:59]
D
Like, in fact, a can of Coke.
- [66:01]
C
Cost me a $25.
- [66:02]
D
Apple's Pro apps have traditionally been. Even when it was the pay model that you'd pay and then they would update it for years and years and years, and you did not have to. I think the last time I paid was final cut 10. Yeah, I've used final cut for like 15 years and paid for a one time maybe. Like, I think it is untenable for anybody other than Apple to do that. I think having a subscription model where while you use it, you pay and then if you're not using it, you stop, is completely reasonable and in fact, motivates updates. One of the best things about me paying $100 a year for Photoshop for the last decade is that there's a new version of Photoshop every now and then. And I just don't sweat it. I'm like, okay, I don't want it right now. Or then later I'll say, all right, yeah, sure. Photoshop 2026, let's do it. It doesn't matter because I. I'm. It's just there if I want it, but I. I just pay for Photoshop to have it. It's like a utility. I want it. It exists, and it is in many ways a healthier model if it's an app that you rely on and that provides value for money. And so, you know, that's. That's the thing is that not every app is like that. Not every app can provide that kind of value. So you've got to. You gotta gauge how you make it. I mean, I bought an affinity app. I bought Affinity Designer specifically because I only needed it occasionally. And there was no way I was going to get Adobe Illustrator right, and pay for it because it was not value. The value for me was not there. So everybody has to make their own decisions. I just. I'll just say one more time, I don't love the idea that I work, which is sort of like this makes your Mac work, is a freemium product now. And I really don't like that. There's no way for people who are not media creators to get those features. We don't know exactly what those features are, when they're going to roll out. They talked about them being in beta. I'm unclear. Is the beta access what you get, and then eventually they go into the free. There's a lot of questions without detailed answers about the iWork assets.
- [68:05]
A
Let's find out a little more. When? January 28th. That's when this goes on sale. I will probably sign up, even though I own three of the tools and I will never use motion compressor or main stage.
- [68:18]
B
Your compressor is really, really good, by the way.
- [68:20]
A
Yeah, I know. Alex, always.
- [68:22]
C
Yeah.
- [68:23]
A
But I don't have. I don't compress nothing now. We have a team of editors they're using right now, Premiere, but maybe, I don't know, maybe that will make sense. They're kind of in my family. Right.
- [68:33]
B
What I'm hoping for, for Jason and I'm gonna go get my tiki dolls out later, is I really would like there to be a I work pro that is like three or four bucks a month that will bring in something.
- [68:43]
A
Nice to buy that. Yeah, it's okay.
- [68:45]
B
Gemini mixed in and allow these things to work for the people who don't do the creative stuff, because that would really Help out, say my other half. You know, her business is real estate and she's not using any of those pro tools, but she could definitely use the features that make pages and numbers, you know.
- [69:00]
A
Well, let's see what Apple does. Remember, Apple doesn't have to. They're not a software company. They don't have to make money on software, they make money on hardware. And all of this really is about you buying another Mac and another iPad.
- [69:12]
D
Exactly.
- [69:12]
B
Yeah.
- [69:13]
A
So, you know, and I think they have decent profit margins.
- [69:17]
B
I think they're doing okay until, until phones kind of slowed down. I think I went a long time without paying for Apple TV plus because I kept buying new Apple devices and I kept getting the six months and so, you know, you were kind of good for a while. Eventually when Apple one came out, I just got Apple one, you know.
- [69:35]
A
And to this point, by the way, new subscribers get a one month free trial. But if you buy a Mac or qualifying iPad, you get three months for free. So they're definitely going. Yeah, see you can, you might want to, you might want to get this. The education price is 2.99amonth or $30 a year. Six family members. See, I have, I have several creators in my family besides me. My daughter uses Logic. My son, well, he's using da Vinci, but he could easily switch to Final Cut, maybe would like to, then it makes, then it really makes sense if you've got a few people using it. And Lisa, you know, I don't think I'll ever get Lisa switched from Excel to Numbers, but who knows? Maybe, maybe so there's, you know, I think this is, especially if you're comparing, well, if you're comparing it to Adobe, it's a great deal. If you're comparing it to DaVinci Resolve, that's such a hot deal. If you're comparing it to Linux, a terrible deal. You know, we live in a world with choice and you have choices and.
- [70:46]
B
You know, the best part about being here is like I don't really think I would have thought of Jason's point because I am a creator and most of my friends are creators. Well, except for the other half. And when you say that like these, these cool features in numbers and pages are going to be held hostage by Creator Studio, like that never even crossed my mind. So I, I love the fact that we have this sort of mix of brains and Leo. Tell Lisa I need her mom's Sunday sauce recipe. Send it.
- [71:16]
A
I think that could be arranged. It's actually my recipe. Oh, let's do this which she has modified and it came from Marcella Hazan, who is the queen of Italian.
- [71:25]
B
I need to order some more umami powder. That Hank, he got me. I put that Joan on popcorn.
- [71:30]
A
Oh, I know it's good. And I have your rice. So it's all what goes around comes around. Actually I bought another bag.
- [71:36]
B
It's a fair switch. Yeah, we should make a subscription to that.
- [71:39]
A
But I love that rice and Lisa loves that rice. I tried another. We talked about this last time you were on trying another brand. But man, the zojirushi with the whatever it is. What's the name of it? Rice is Koshi Hikari. Koshi Hikari is very tasty. Membership means more with American Express Business Gold. Earn four times Membership Rewards points in your top two eligible spending categories every month, including eligible U.S. advertising purchases in.
- [72:09]
B
Select media and U.S. purchases at restaurants.
- [72:12]
A
Including takeout and delivery.
- [72:14]
D
What are you waiting for?
- [72:16]
A
Get the card that flexes with your spending every month. Terms and points cap apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com business go AmEx business gold card built for business by American Express.
- [72:28]
C
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are.
- [72:30]
A
Back in Disney's Freakier Friday, now streaming on Disney.
- [72:35]
D
We switched bodies.
- [72:37]
A
I am freaking out right now. I think I just peed a little.
- [72:40]
D
It's an absolute riot and the only.
- [72:43]
C
Movie that can be described as so.
- [72:45]
D
Much weirder than the last time. What last time?
- [72:48]
B
It's the Frequel. You ready?
- [72:50]
C
We've been waiting for that absolutely slays.
- [72:53]
B
Disney's Freakier Friday now streaming on Disney. Rated pg. Whether you bond over streaming binge worthy.
- [73:01]
D
Videos, watching sports recaps, video gaming, or by unplugging altogether, the 2026 Lincoln Nautilus Hybrid helps keep you connected throughout your journey.
- [73:11]
A
Learn more@lincoln.com available connectivity, features and functionality.
- [73:15]
C
Vary by model package.
- [73:16]
A
Pricing, trials and term lengths vary by model.
- [73:19]
B
Video streaming and games are only available while parked.
- [73:25]
A
All right, well, that was story number two. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Jason Snell, andy and Ako Dr. Rakta. Love to have all three of you on, but let's continue with the third story of the day. And I think this might be a good time to play the Vision Pro scene.
- [73:47]
D
What do you see?
- [73:48]
C
What do you know?
- [73:50]
A
It's time to talk to Vision Pro. Really legitimate Vision Pro news on this, the nation's premier Vision Pro pod.
- [74:00]
D
That's right. Perhaps the world's.
- [74:03]
A
You know, Doc, do you have a Vision Pro?
- [74:06]
B
Yes, I do.
- [74:07]
A
Okay, wait a minute now. Now we're back to two. This is good, Doc. You may have just put yourself in the front of the line for Alex Lindsay's replacement.
- [74:18]
B
The dumbest thing I did though, because I thought I would use more of the computer side of it is I upgraded all of the memory stuff so I went like 5G's on it, which was really ignorant because I just use it for a monitor, but I just use it.
- [74:32]
D
I bought the cheapest one.
- [74:35]
A
Yeah. NBA basketball.
- [74:37]
D
NBA basketball on Vision Pro. It happened Friday night. And then there's a replay that people can watch on the NBA app now. I watched it. I watched the first quarter. Even though I was not in the LA area, somehow I got in there. I don't know really how it worked, but I did. You did a little.
- [74:52]
A
Oh, so you, you watched it live?
- [74:54]
D
I watched it live. And, and I think the most remarkable thing is we've been talking about this and Alex and I especially been talking about this of like, how do you do it live? And like obviously they struggled to get the hardware together. And these are their blackmagic cameras, but they're, they're live versions and I don't know what's involved in that, but they had to do kind of like they had to build a production studio where they've got multiple immersive cameras at a stadium and then they had announcers and they switched between camera angles and they did a full on thing. So I see why it took them so long. The most amazing thing about it is that it didn't seem unreasonable. I wondered, is it going to be low quality? Is it going to be really up to the standards of some of the other immersive stuff we've seen? And it was. Now I have a fast Internet connection at home. But like it was not weird in some way because it was live. It was an immersive video. They did a really good job. Those cameras, those blackmagic cameras are really good.
- [75:58]
A
Well, the only video I've seen is the one from underneath the basket.
- [76:02]
D
Okay. So they had, they had, they had a few different cameras including one that was at the scorers table. So right at the center of the.
- [76:08]
A
Oh, that's kind of cool.
- [76:09]
D
Yeah. And then, and then underneath and behind both baskets. And so they, what they did is they experimented. It really was an experiment. They did some possessions from the scorers table. So you're, you, you are courtside looking left and right and watching the game unfold before you. And then they did, for some positions they did a switch where you are when they're at one end of the court, you're down at that end, watching them straight on behind the back basket. And then when they run to the other end, it flips around, and now you're at the other end and you have to reorient. And so, you know, some people like Ben Thompson at Strateckery basically said, why did you do that? Just let me sit with the one angle at courtside. It's amazing. I have to be honest. I didn't like the courtside look as much as I liked the behind the basket looks, because you're seeing the front of the players as they're. And they're very close to you. Whereas if you're in the middle of the court, you're seeing their backs down there, and then they run down here, and you're seeing their backs down there, and you're a little further away from them. The difference is, and what Ben's complained about is every time you make a switch, your brain is like, whoa, where am I now? Right? And it's not a TV screen. It's a bigger thing. That said here. And so I get like. I think first off, that we need options. I think. I think the right thing to do is to say, would you like to just sit courtside and have their two channels just stream that camera?
- [77:36]
B
Exactly.
- [77:36]
D
You can have just a couple of different options. But I will say this, too. I generally agree with Ben Thompson that too many cuts in an immersive video is bad. It just is bad. It takes you out of the immersion. That said, once I figured out that they were just toggling back and forth between this side and that side, and that when a guy was going away from me on my right side, headed down to the other end, and then it flipped, I knew he was going to be on my left side coming up this way.
- [78:05]
A
That's like crossing the line.
- [78:07]
D
Super crossing the line. But what I would say is, you know, when we started doing cuts in.
- [78:11]
A
Movies, we'll get used to it.
- [78:12]
D
People had to learn the. The grammar of film. When they started doing instant replays in sports, they had to tell people they didn't just score another touchdown. That was a replay of what had come before. Army has not scored again, I believe is the famous line.
- [78:27]
A
Yeah. And it's funny because we did get used to it. And they barely mentioned, we now know, oh, that's a replay.
- [78:31]
D
That's a replay. So I would argue that, that you. I. In just a few minutes, totally, my brain figured out how to handle the cut between the two different shots at the two Ends of the court grammar.
- [78:43]
A
Is such a good way to put this. And I really like that.
- [78:46]
D
It's like film grammar. It's. It's different. So I personally would rather have that view of the game where Ben would personally prefer the courtside view.
- [78:53]
A
Ben Apple. His headline was, you still don't understand the Vision Pro.
- [78:58]
D
I think he overstates it. I mean, he and I were in full agreement that. That their quick cut sports highlights packages were a disaster because you lose all immersion when you do that. But I would say that I actually kind of like the behind the basket with the. Again, they're minimal cuts. And they did some replays that were hilarious because they put up a big replay graph. They're replaying something at the same camera angle because it's a fixed camera. And so it's like there's a jump cut and then there's a jump back to live action. And that part. They got some stuff to work on. But bottom line, and Ben would agree with me on this, did they succeed at making it feel like you were at the basketball game and doing it while they were streaming it live? And the answer is yes. Like, this could work. There needs to be much more work put into it. And I think they do need to make some decisions about personally. I mean, because Amazon does this with their NFL broadcasts, you can have different options, right? Like, I would love Ben to be able to choose. I would love to be able to choose a different option. I also think it's arguable about whether you even need announcers. They had announcers that were custom for Vision Pro, so they'd literally say, oh, there's Doc Rivers off to the left of your Vision Pro. He's talking to me. Yeah, but I'm not sure you need it. If the sound is good and you've got the PA announcer, I don't think you need a scoreboard score bug, because you've got the scoreboard to look at, I think.
- [80:22]
A
Oh, that's interesting.
- [80:23]
D
Right? That's a good point. You could. You could make it more.
- [80:26]
A
What would you have at the game if you went to the game? That's what you would have.
- [80:29]
D
And my only other technical criticism is I don't think they've nailed the sound yet. I think the sound was more flat. And one of the things that Alex and I learned when we were down in Cupertino is, is audio is part of the immersive experience. Spatial audio really is part of that experience. And I think they didn't nail that part. But I couldn't I mean I really couldn't be more impressed because I. I did not believe it would be as good as a regular immersive video basically. And. And it was. It was like I was there on the floor at wherever it is the Lakers play. I don't even know the name of it anymore. It's not the fabulous Forum anymore.
- [81:05]
B
They moved crypto. Crypto.com.
- [81:07]
D
Crypto.Com. Aren't I just. Okay, we'll just call it it the place that the Lakers play then.
- [81:12]
B
Yeah, I still call it.
- [81:14]
A
Yeah, I think of it as Staples center myself. Yeah, that was.
- [81:17]
B
Call it Crypto Arena.
- [81:19]
D
But anyway, so the. The answer is it was pretty good. If you could keep this up, I think you could sell some vision pros to. To.
- [81:25]
C
To fans.
- [81:26]
A
I think you're right.
- [81:26]
D
I also think it's optimal. I think a basketball court is so small and the players are so large and the depth is it. I think it is maybe the perfect live sport experience of any other sport.
- [81:38]
A
That would do as well. He makes the point, Ben does that this the reason he likes the scoring table 1 is if you ever sat courtside, which I have once on an NBA game, it is a completely different experience because you get a sense of the size and the power of these.
- [81:54]
D
Guys and the depth where the ball like they're behind each other and the ball is coming and going and having it be three dimensional. Yeah, it's like. So you're looking across the chessboard instead of just set at the flat version that's on tv. Yeah, it's really important.
- [82:09]
A
He said that was good. That's why he liked that score table thing. But on the other hand, he also points out that the board seats aren't bad either. He says these are also not bad seats. I've had the good fortune of sitting under the basket as well.
- [82:22]
D
Yeah.
- [82:22]
A
This is where you get a sense of not just the power but the physicality. So what? Yeah, maybe don't switch. Maybe give me the choice and I'll switch when I feel like it. How about that?
- [82:31]
D
Yeah, I think. I think that is probably the way forward. And I would probably choose to have the switch between the back of the basket views because I thought that was the most fun. But if, if you're give people choice. I think. But I think the truth is also that we don't really know what the grammar is going to be and what the. The core of Ben's argument is. Right. Which is there are obviously people at Apple who think lots of cuts and immersive video is fine. And it's not. It's not that, like whatever you're thinking, take, take the length of time you're thinking of holding that shot and triple it. Right. Like that's really what's going on here. And he's not wrong in saying they sort of directed it like it was a 2D television broadcast. You need to take your foot off the gas. But the good news is, because this is all streaming, what you really could do is just offer.
- [83:19]
A
Well, that's the point he makes. When you try to do it like an NBA broadcast, that's expensive. You have to have a studio, you know, you have to have a host, you have to have a production crew. It's very expensive. Alex gave me a tour of the Amazon trucks and there's like six of them for Thursday night Football. Unbelievably complex. But Ben saying, you know, you just put a camera.
- [83:42]
D
The Lakers are going to play music and have an announcer who tells the scored. And like they already have built an entertainment experience for everybody who's at the game. So if you're at the game, you get that entertainment experience.
- [83:55]
B
Kind of don't need that.
- [83:57]
D
And I think there's truth in that.
- [83:58]
B
I would rather feel that I'm at the stadium than watching what I could already watch on TV with just a different set of cuts. Yeah. And you run into that when you're watching say like WSN versus watching ESPN for basically the same game. Right. So in a way, I think the idea, like you said, is great. Also think here's the cool thing. When we get. Okay, I understand during the game you're cutting in life. But when you get to show me the game after the fact, just put all three angles up and let me use my hand to switch the gestures as I'm watching it. You know what I'm saying? So just put all three, run them simultaneously and just let me pull the trigger. Now I understand that might be like.
- [84:35]
A
The multi view on. On YouTube TV where I choose the game I want to watch. Yeah.
- [84:40]
B
100. So I think that these things are going to be good. I am excited about this. When they don't show the fakers and they show the celtics, then I'll.
- [84:50]
A
By the way, you must be happy. The fakers lost in the 100.
- [84:54]
B
Like I. Yo, yo.
- [84:55]
A
Embarrassing to lose.
- [84:57]
B
Ever since Larry Bird, I've been anti Lakers. I've been a hardcore Celtics fan since day one.
- [85:03]
A
What do you think about F1 in this format?
- [85:05]
B
I was just gonna say. I was just gonna ask that question. Do you Remember Super Speedway? I was gonna say 1977. It's not that old. 1997, I believe super Speedway was the movie where you basically sat in the car with Michael Andretti on IMAX and he drove you around the track. Insane, insane things. I. I still have this Blu Ray somewhere. It was really incredible. And that was the first time you're getting to see what we now know as the. The steering wheel computer. And you can see him looking around and checking things out. You could even see on the tires as they expand and shrink. This will be freaking amazing for F1. And the hardest part about that is at the speed they're traveling, the data transmission of letting me jump in the car with Lewis and then letting me jump in the car with Lando and then let me jump in the car with Yuki, who I just root for because he's such a nutcase.
- [86:02]
A
You like him because he's Japanese. Let's face it.
- [86:04]
B
No 100%. But he's also a nutcase. Like his. His only English is swear words.
- [86:09]
A
I know, but, man, his radio is great. I love listening to you.
- [86:12]
B
His radio is the best. I can listen to him for the whole race. What the.
- [86:16]
A
You guys, this is the point. And this is what Apple's inheriting, which is a production that has all the radios for all 20 drivers, all the driver views for all 20 drivers.
- [86:28]
D
That's why.
- [86:28]
A
And the race view, plus immersive. I mean, this is a lot of data.
- [86:33]
D
I think immersive is not the right answer for F1, because you're not going to have immersive in a car because of the bandwidth of it and what you want. And you can have immersive, like, by the side of the road, but it's just going to be. And then they're gone. But what you want there is a big dashboard. You want a live track in front of you in 3D that you're watching like it's toy cars. You want multiple. You want to get that full on Adrian Veidt and Watchmen thing where you've got, like, just monitors. That was for Andy. Monitors everywhere.
- [87:05]
A
That's how I watch.
- [87:07]
D
And with the sound. And the sound is coming from those monitors in. In various places.
- [87:13]
A
And you should do that in immersive. Right. You could have the track on a coffee table in front of you, but not immersive video.
- [87:19]
D
It would be a different kind of experience. But I agree. Yeah, that's the right approach for F1.
- [87:25]
B
I want to have multiple streams of.
- [87:27]
D
Video and 3D tracks and stuff.
- [87:29]
B
Right. Leo I want to see Ricardo Adami screens while I'm watching Lewis hit.
- [87:34]
A
Wouldn't that be cool?
- [87:36]
B
You know what I'm saying? And then when Ricardo.
- [87:38]
A
He's talking about when you're, you know, the. The. The team has. They all sit in a room. So cute. And they have all these screens, and they have their radios in front of them, and all you see is the back of their heads most of the time. But it looks like they got a pretty cool view of what's going on during the.
- [87:51]
B
Right. They're running the stock market live at crazy.
- [87:54]
A
Exactly.
- [87:55]
B
And then I want to see the part where he says, okay, no, we're going to stretch these tires.
- [87:58]
C
And.
- [87:59]
B
And Lewis is like, no, no, come in. I want to look at it and almost want to be able to chat with Ricardo and be like, nah, dog, get these. Get them in these. It's about to rain.
- [88:07]
A
That's a vision. That's the other side of the vision Pro. It can give you a lot of data because it has a huge field of view. So you could do that instead of being immersive. So that's a good point. Yeah.
- [88:17]
C
And it could. It could be that, like, immersive video is nice, but AI on a. On a sport like F1, I think would be the real boon because there is, like, everyone saying there is so much data being collected, not just video data, but actually just numbers spilling off of all of these cars that over time for basically for an AI to learn. Here's what I'm interested in. I'm interested in these drivers. If something very surprising happens in the backpack, I'm interested in that as well. I'm particularly interested in these four drivers. I'm interested. Interested in tire changes. I'm interested in pit times. Interested in this. And it will be very, very coarse to begin with, but even over the course of one race, by the end, yes, I can still have full control over what I'm looking at. But there's also these live infographics and these live feeds being put together on the side of the. On the side of my main display that is tracking the things that really keep me absolutely 100 engaged in the sport. There's. There's. I mean, there. There are sports that I never really got into, including the NBA, chiefly because with my level of perception of what's going on, it's like people are moving from right to left and they sink a basket. Now people are moving from left to right, and they think, oh, nope, they didn't sink the basket. Now they're Moving to the left again. There's so much going on that you don't. I only see when I see somebody later put together a video of what was actually going on. Maybe we found the killer dynamic sort of thing.
- [89:36]
A
This might be the killer app for the Vision Pro. This might, this might be the thing, the Vision Pro.
- [89:40]
C
Remember, remember that there was, there was, there were developers making like an F1 app that were using data.
- [89:44]
A
Yeah, F1, which I've used. And it's well there. Okay. Yes, pulled that.
- [89:50]
C
Yes. Either because F1 said, yeah, we're not, we're not going to sue you, but you're not allowed to use our data that way. Or because they were simply like operation paperclipped into the, into the machine saying, this is really great. We would like you to not make it free and we would like you to work for us from now on. We know. Don't know what happened, but we'd love to see that again.
- [90:09]
B
Well, that'll be just so crazy though, to be able to see all these things. And I think of so many different sports where I would love this, I would love this in football round and you know, football oblong. When we get to the point where you can put like, I can see Saquon. I want to see how this fool find these holes. This dude, he's a, he's so little and shifty and he does this little thing and next thing you know, is like, he's tackled. He tackles. Nope, he's not tackled. There he goes. He's gone. Like, how did he get out of that? Like, I would like to be able to see, you know, the, the front helmet cam of Saquon Barkley when he finds these little cracks to slip through. It didn't work for San Francisco, but like, you know, he's an amazing runner. You know, I, I would like to see even like the quarterback read sometime. Like, what did you see? Why did you throw that interception? You ding dong. That dude was not open. You know, I think these, these are all things that would just be absolutely. Even for golf. We got the ball track catapult systems. You know, I think they did ball track first. And then it actually was hockey. Hockey, hockey had it first. Remember the puck with the blue line? I want to call that like 94 or something. And so Hawkeye, Hawkeye turned in and then catapult is the other one that brings you the yellow lines in football and, and you know, things like that. And then we got sky cam. So we've been working at this for a minute. If there's a way to tie all of this in and then you add the AWS data overlays on top of it.
- [91:36]
A
Those are always stupid.
- [91:38]
B
You think so?
- [91:38]
A
Sorry. There was a 32 chance of him catching that. What is it?
- [91:42]
B
Oh, no, not though. I like the speed and the velocity. Oh yeah, that's the love attack stuff. But like the, the guess there is.
- [91:48]
A
A good camera and the F1 AWS camera with how close they came to the wall. Yeah, I really enjoy.
- [91:55]
B
But. But trying to put a percentage on somebody like ODB catching the ball, you can't guess that that dude is a phenom. He will catch a ball with like the ends of his fingertips. And you've seen it in that one Giants catch that we see over and over again. That was a mathematical. So those parts are dumb. But some of the speed math and like you said, how close did they get to the wall type of stuff.
- [92:15]
A
So that is cool. I admit that's the way it makes.
- [92:17]
B
Your heart pump more, you know, and that's. That's part of the fun of watching it so.
- [92:22]
A
Well, I think we're all in agreement that the sports is live Sports especially is going to be a great opportunity. Could be apple with a Vision Pro.
- [92:29]
D
And they seem to be capable of doing it now. So the question is now what they. I mean, there are seven more Lakers games for them to try and then will they, will they try it with. With baseball or MLS or something? Again, I don't think it'll be as successful.
- [92:44]
B
Guys, what about NASA launches? How would you like to sit in a chair when, you know, one of our space knots goes up?
- [92:52]
A
I need a, A butt kicker subwoofer.
- [92:56]
C
In the chest.
- [92:58]
D
But I mean, I would love to try baseball game. I just don't think it's going to be as good because you're not going to get a lot of depth out of it. And not the way it's possible, but still it would be. It could be real interesting to try it. Why not try it, right? We're obviously at the infancy of all of this, so give it a try.
- [93:12]
A
I think it's a. It's almost a. It's a. It's almost a gimmicky thing that you could just throw in there. I mean, we got tickets once. For some reason the Giant stadium has on deck seats that are below the level of the field. Like the field's eye level and you're looking up and the on deck's broken. Yeah, the on deck batter is right there. It's Kind of interesting to hear how people yell at them.
- [93:36]
C
I think baseball would be weird because one of the great. Baseball is one of those sports where it's the director in the truck who tells this amazing story from all of these different angles. Baseball is different from any other sport because there are these incredibly intense, dramatic, quiet moments in which it's just a pitcher facing off against a battery and things are. And the infield is coming in and one of them looks a little bit nervous. All of these shots that are selected at the exact right time all the way to realizing that, okay, George Brett is looks. Is looking really, really angry in that dugout. I bet he's going to start, he's going to chase after the umpire and try to do him an injury. Let's have the camera right here and give you ready for that shot. I have such love and such appreciation for the people who direct baseball as opposed to any other sport where it's not the sort. It would be a lesser experience if I were choosing this. Even if I was telling him here's what I'm interested in.
- [94:30]
D
Maybe the disagree but I go to a baseball game and I enjoy seeing sitting in a chair at a baseball game and watching the game. And from where I sit, I'm usually looking kind of down on the field from the front of the upper deck. And I get it. It's a video game view, but I can see where the outfielders are going. And you get to look around and know what's happening. And so like, it's just different. It's just.
- [94:53]
C
And that's where directors. Let's take a look at the bullpen. Cause someone's warming up now. That wasn't warming up.
- [94:57]
A
There's two presentations.
- [95:00]
D
I like watching baseball on TV and I like going to ball games and they're different. And when I go to the ball game, I get to be the director. And I'm not saying that watching it on TV isn't good, but I'm saying you could also go. And that's also good. It's just ball game food.
- [95:12]
B
Like unless they can doordash you the ball game food experience.
- [95:15]
D
Hot dogs are available right there. Doc Rock here's a hot dog.
- [95:20]
A
But I don't know what they have in Hawaii. But whatever you do, don't eat ballpark franks. Okay? Okay. Just trust me. Not ballpark, at the ballpark. Ballpark, capital B trademark Plump them when they cook. You don't want to know why they plump when they.
- [95:37]
B
But whenever I come to the mainland, I always try to catch A pro game. And one of the last pro games I saw was at Motor Center. And this is really funny because Trailblazers basketball, there was Trailblazers and Cavaliers and that's when I first experienced. I think they call it a monster burger, but it's a cheeseburger with peanut butter, butter and jelly on.
- [95:54]
A
Oh, God.
- [95:55]
B
Sounds great, man. It's delicious. I just did it because I was there and I'm like, Portland is keeping it weird, dude. But it is so good. I think it's called Killer Burger or Monster Burger. But you have to try it at least once. It is mind blowing.
- [96:09]
C
Sorry.
- [96:10]
B
Now that said, there's Portland too, so there might have been the problem.
- [96:17]
A
You are watching Mac Break Weekly. Well, let's see how many of the top, top 10 stories that I was.
- [96:22]
D
Provided by my pro segment first.
- [96:24]
A
Yeah, yeah. Oh, close the video.
- [96:27]
D
Yeah.
- [96:27]
A
Gotta remember to do that.
- [96:28]
D
Yeah, leave that out there.
- [96:29]
A
The Vision Pro segment. Now you see, now you know, we're done talking. The Vision Pro.
- [96:38]
D
All right. Gotta be. Gotta close it. Always close your parenthesis.
- [96:44]
C
I have to say that I have a friend who is a. Who is a professional Broadway performer and he actually texted me to say that is some on the point handwork you've been doing ever since that again, if you knew. If you knew his resume on Broadway.
- [96:57]
A
Are you doing jazz hands? Is that what you're doing, Jazz hands?
- [97:00]
C
He just said. That was like. Okay, right. I'll take that, Chris. Thank you very much.
- [97:04]
A
Oh, let's see, what else? Oh, well, it was announced by Apple that JP Morgan is leaving the building and Chase is going to take over the Apple card. It's going to take a little while. 24 months, two years. Goldman has been dying to get out of this. Did I say J.P. morgan? I did. I meant Goldman Chase. It's J.P. morgan Chase who's taking over. Yeah. Goldman has just hated this whole experience. They've lost money.
- [97:35]
D
They thought they were getting into consumer banking and then they thought better of it. Basically.
- [97:39]
A
We don't want to be in consumer. We like, like ripping off the millionaires. That's the way to go.
- [97:44]
C
The Wall Street Journal had a really good breakdown of not only like the negotiations, but also the history of these two companies and why it just was not working. It was like Apple saying that, no, no, you're going to take a lot of. We want to sign up almost everybody that we possibly can. It's like, okay, that's a lot of like super subprime lending that we don't really want to get involved in and hey, and we're also going to, we're going to, we're going to like make sure that we ship all the bills on the same day. So say okay, but there's a reason why in the past like 40, 50 years of this industry we don't ship them all on the same day because we can't handle all this customer service stuff on the same day. They both got into trouble with consumer organizations in the government because of failure to report certain things. The Wall Street Journal again does a really good job tying this all together. It's not as though they were fighting each other all the way. It just seemed like they were quoting quite incompatible. And they, they've been trying to get this deal closed for months and months and months.
- [98:44]
A
Two years it says. The Journal says they were negotiating.
- [98:46]
C
That's to the degree that Chase was actually like getting shareholder comments during their quarterly saying hey, how come you haven't closed this thing yet? And one of the, and one of the problems was that like okay, but we're gonna have to, if whoever picks us up is gonna have to take a discount on all this debt, like what should that be? All these little details that are like it was never going to work out between these two companies. But it was such an entanglement that it really was drawn out so super long.
- [99:12]
A
I apologize to Super Denny. I scared him when I separated J.P. morgan and Chase. That is one bank. Goldman Sachs is the, is the other bank. You know, Apple has a whole FAQ on this, like how is this going to affect you and stuff. But you've got plenty of time. And Apple Card users can continue to use their card as they normally do during the transition. No, you don't need to get a new card. You can, it's all going to be the same. In other words, you, it's really the back end, it's not the front end.
- [99:48]
B
Yeah, I gotta give a disclosure. My brother in law is a high executive at Chase.
- [99:56]
A
Oh, hey, I got some questions for you.
- [100:00]
B
Yeah, Karen's brother, like he, he's been working there for a long time. And I think this is actually, you know, maybe helpful too because I think the Apple card does have a lot of cool things about it. It does that, you know, if you use it wisely, like any card, I guess. But I love going into the store, even if I have the money like to go in and get a Mac studio say and then just like lace it out and instead of giving them five grand, I give them 200 bucks a month for 12 months. Zero interest. Interest. And I have the money, but I just want to let it. I want to keep it just in case something cool comes up, like, you know, I. I need a sudden trip. Okay. I still have that money.
- [100:41]
A
They're gonna keep that. They call it acmi. Apple Card. Monthly installments. That's gonna stay the same. You will still be a MasterCard. They. They are. They kind of fudge the details on whether you'll get a new physical card. I like my titanium, clanky titanium card.
- [100:58]
B
But I do love that sound. I never use it. And it's funny because all of my cards are metal now because I have the MX Platinum, two of them in the Apple card. So I like it.
- [101:10]
C
You got an Apple card, and you got Steve Wozniak's business card. You got all the cutlery need for any meal.
- [101:16]
A
Plus, if anybody shoots at you, the likelihood of the bullet hitting some form of metal before it hits you is high. Exactly. So that's good.
- [101:22]
D
Good.
- [101:25]
C
For most people, it's like. Yeah, exactly. If you get shot in the butt, okay.
- [101:28]
A
That's.
- [101:29]
C
Your butt is valuable. That's why you people should be covering your butt at all times. That's what they say.
- [101:35]
A
Didn't I see a picture of a MacBook that had a bullet?
- [101:40]
C
Yeah. That couple years, a fighter, a Ukrainian mentioned, basically posted these pictures of their MacBook. Their MacBook Air stopped a piece of shrapnel with a very, very. Yeah, that's the sort of thing that gets spread a lot. It's. You never. It's old, you know. Oh, no, it's not old. It's not old old. It's maybe two or three weeks old.
- [102:00]
A
Yeah.
- [102:01]
C
I don't know when the. When the original incident was, but it got traction a few weeks ago. But, yeah, that. That's where you don't regret spending money for MacBook build quality.
- [102:08]
A
Yeah, he did. By the way, the MacBook still works, but the K key is missing, which, I don't know. I. I think that would be. Be problem. That's where the bullet hit the K key.
- [102:19]
B
That's super funny when you say K key. I was thinking about the kid was missing. What kid?
- [102:23]
A
No, no, no, the K. The letter K. Yeah.
- [102:27]
B
You know, in Hawaii, kiki means child.
- [102:29]
A
Kiki. I know. Yeah.
- [102:31]
B
I don't know why.
- [102:32]
A
And I also know what uku means.
- [102:35]
B
Oh, my God, Leo.
- [102:37]
A
You know who told me about Keiki and uku is Becky Worley, who grew up, went to Punahou, and I think her. I want to say her grandfather was the Head of. Head of the Punahou school. But she said in school they would have the UKU check every. Every once in a while.
- [102:55]
B
100%. You got to detect your hair. Yeah.
- [103:00]
A
Here's a video. You can still read the tweets in X even though there's a bullet gone straight through it. That's kind of amazing. Yeah. Isn't that wild? All right, let's see. We're done with J.P. morgan, Goldman Sachs. I don't think there's any more to say about that. Yeah, there is a very lengthy Wall Street Journal article about. I was surprised that it took so long to negotiate, but I guess when it comes to money, nobody is in a hurry. Apple has some more transitions. Lost the Safari lead designer to Atlassian, which owns now the browser company. The folks who did arc, which was great and are now doing a AI browser called dia, which as far as I know no one uses it is based on WebKit however, so it makes sense that. That Marco Treverio, lead designer for Safari, would. Would go to the browser company.
- [104:02]
C
Yeah, that. That's another app that I've really. That seems a little bit moribund. Like they've been doing a lot of good work to make it. Make it secure.
- [104:08]
A
I love Dart.
- [104:09]
C
Yeah, exactly. Just. Well, like there are things like, like split browsing, which is like. That has totally changed how I do a lot of work. The ability to not simply have to have two windows side by side that are pain, but basically say, I want this split in two. I want the. On the left, I want this app. I want. I want this, this, this new lengthy news article on the left. On the right, I want the Google Doc prime writing something happening. It's like, why don't you do that in Safari? And like every reason why. I know all the reasons against using Chrome versus Safari are really good reasons, but the thing is like the usability of Chrome and pretty much any other browser other than Safari is what keeps Safari as the. The thing that I launch only when I can't figure out why something's not working with Chrome. And so okay, well, let's open up Facebook and Safari and see if I can log into this page that way. So it's. It needs. It needs some love that hasn't.
- [105:02]
B
And the sad part is it's available on the iPad and I do it on the Mac, but then it requires splitting the browsers and either using the green button and doing it that way or I have moom. So I just press a button.
- [105:15]
A
But it's one of the reasons I move you 100%. I mentioned I use Firefox. I'm actually using a Firefox fork called the Zen browser, which is an intentional duplicate of Arc. And I love it.
- [105:26]
B
Zen is nice.
- [105:26]
A
It has many of the great ARC features. So that's what I use. Rogue amoeba responding to the icon gate. The unwanted menu icons in iOS 26 showed that they have figured out how to remove. You know, I didn't realize this, but it's not just an Apple software. It will buy by default in any software. So they figure out a way to strip out all of those extra icons in their rogue amoeba software. They're very good. I really think these guys are great. So Apple's mess, they call it. And they found a way to fix Apple's mess.
- [106:04]
C
Yeah, Nobody, nobody's running up to say, hey, I'm going to defend that. I think that it's a solid design choice and a good step forward for user interface designs like. No, we don't just. No, thank you. We're, we're actually willing to put in extra work to remove these things rather than simply accept things as they are. That's how badly people are reacting to this.
- [106:23]
A
It was Brent Simmons who led the way on this with his free app, which is great Net Newswire. He, he says, I was wondering how difficult it would be to get rid of all the menu item icons. Turns out it's quite easy. Just a few lines of code and they're all gone. And he, he posted it because it's open source. He posted the GitHub gist so everybody could see how to do that. So thank you as usual, Brent. Isn't he the guy who did pull to refresh, which is now.
- [106:53]
D
That was Lauren Brichter who did that.
- [106:54]
A
That's right. Lauren did that. Yeah, that's right. Well, we should debunk the story. You might have seen, Everybody was saying iOS26 showing unusually slow adoption after release. Turned out that the data was unusually stupid. The stat counter data didn't count. What was it? It didn't count. Safari.
- [107:25]
C
Yeah.
- [107:26]
D
It was looking at headers. Yeah, yeah.
- [107:28]
C
The thing is like, because Apple doesn't actually report on, basically outsiders have to use tricks to sort of infer knowledge. The standard used be. Okay, well how about of all the people who are using Safari, Safari rule report like what operating system you're using, how many people are using the new version, how many people are using the older version? But they did. And so there was. Oh, well, gosh, yeah. No, look how low the Uptake is validating a lot of commentators. You see people are rejecting iOS 26. They hate it. All the mistakes are huge and they're terrible. And then a couple of people were pointing out that, yeah, in iOS 26, how Safari reports OS changed. They stopped actually reporting the actual current OS that it's running on. Basically tricking this hack into thinking that people are still on the old version. So this story was on fire like a couple days after, like we did our last week's show and then it's just as quickly, about four days later, people started, oh, okay. Turns out that our inference was not correct.
- [108:31]
A
Yeah, this and credit to the nick here's Pixel NV blog where he noticed that his updated version of iPhone 26 was reporting 18.7. Yeah, and that's apparently a Safari thing. And so there you go. Yeah, the user agent string is notoriously unreliable. If you look at it often says you're Mozilla and all sorts of.
- [108:54]
C
Yeah, I think most of the data was. But Chrome was. Chrome does not use that same system. Was actually reported accurately. However, Safari was not. Even though it's a WebKit browser, it wasn't reporting it correctly in the other platforms. Again, it just shows how. I mean, I hope that I'm not as guilty as this as others might be, but once you have an idea in your head, a story in your head that not only is iOS 26 the most horrible thing that Apple has done to its users ever, but you're looking for rebellion, it's like, ah, see, I'm absolutely correct. As opposed to interesting data. Where did that data come from and can we trust it?
- [109:28]
A
Right. Well, I don't think we reported it, so I think we don't have to issue a retraction. Good news Global. I don't know if this stat is right. Counterpoint research says Global smartphone shipments grew 2% year over year in 2025, but it was enough to put Apple on top. And we did report that earlier that they for the first time in some years beat Samsung as the number one smartphone.
- [109:55]
D
And we know market share from Apple statements at the end of their last quarterly disclosure that they expect this next quarter to be their best all time quarter, which implies strongly that they believe that iPhone sales this fall were really, really strong. So we'll, you know, we'll know more about that at the end of the month. I think it's the 29th that they're.
- [110:17]
A
Doing well, we're going to see what happens in India because the Indian government has demanded of Apple something that they will ever, never, never, ever, which is give the government the source code for their operating system.
- [110:32]
D
Great. Good luck.
- [110:34]
C
Are they trying to like, what if we, our open bid is really, really, really huge and then we'll settle for the thing we actually want. Because it's like if there's, if there's one way to guarantee that someone's going to say no. It's like, okay, how about give us, give the most valuable thing and the thing that would invalidate the security and the privacy of the entire platform forever. Sure.
- [110:54]
A
Now I'm going to give, I'm going to give, you know, some credit to Prime Minister Modi. Probably doesn't deserve it, but because he says this is to boost security, which, you know, maybe that is their intent, it's not the way to do it, but it, maybe that is their intent. And by the way, India's backed down on other things they've asked for very recently. So once they see the response, they may change their mind.
- [111:20]
C
Mind.
- [111:21]
A
It's a package of 83 security standards which would, among other things, require Apple and others Google to alert the government to major software updates. But the source code I think is a non starter. Now Google can do it because Android is open source, although Google has considerable proprietary code on top of it. This is not necessarily. There's. India's government on Saturday said we're having an ongoing consultation with the tech companies on our proposals.
- [111:54]
C
That happens a lot in India. You hear this announcement and you wonder exactly how far in discussions internally they were with this before somebody decided, some bureau decided, okay, we're making an announcement or we're going to talk to somebody about this thing that we absolutely, totally want to do. Well before they even decided what they want to do do.
- [112:13]
A
But the fact, and again, to be fair to Modi and his government, they're not saying we want to access the source code so we can change it. They're not proposing, at least as far as I can tell, injecting new code into the iPhone. They merely want to see it so they can look for security flaws, which honestly is why open source works. So I don't think they're fully wrong. But Apple's not, not gonna.
- [112:38]
C
Yeah, but I mean a few months ago there was also a similar type of story where they said that no, we want access to all the data that's on every phone that transacts like on all of our networks. It's like, and that's when they back down on like two or three days later again. Makes you wonder what, how they Internally, they vet these ideas before they let them get out of the house.
- [112:57]
A
Yeah. Or they just float these as trial balloons. And maybe when an Apple goes. What, are you kidding? Now, if you were thinking perhaps that our federal government, in particular the fcc, is very consumer friendly and cares a lot about you, this story will not please you. The fcc, which you know, only a few years ago told Verizon and other phone companies, no, you, you can't lock your phone for the entire contract period. You can only do it. Verizon said, well, no. What about the phone's falling off the truck. We want to lock the phone to our carrier just for a little while so we can make sure they're not stolen. And the FCC said, okay, you can do that. 60 days. They have now lifted that restriction. Verizon will be allowed to keep your smartphone, your iPhone, locked within the network for the entirety of your payment plan. This is a completely anti consumer move. This is a totally pro cellular company move. There is no justification for it at all. But it's something, of course, Verizon has wanted for a long, long time. And this has been one of the greatest things. You go to the apps, go to the Apple Store and you buy a phone. You buy it unlocked, you buy it. So it'll work with any carrier, right?
- [114:16]
D
Yeah.
- [114:17]
B
The funny thing is, and this is kind of dumb, the dumbest thing about locking phones is kind of a overhanded move. It's like, you ever seen those people that have like a poodle, but they got the dog chain that's made for a pit bull.
- [114:31]
A
The spikes, you mean? Yeah, yeah.
- [114:33]
B
Like this is one of those ideas. People are afraid to lose their number. Now, porting works amazingly. It has worked amazingly for a long time. I've only ever run into one issue where I can't get a number out of Ring Central, which is now owned by Verizon. And then my company that I was moving to, also owned by Verified Verizon, they still couldn't figure out how to port the numbers. So I still get stuck with Ring Search Central, which is really dumb because, you know, I'm trying to switch the Spectrum, however.
- [114:59]
A
Oh, well, see, that's why you don't. They don't want you to switch to Spectrum.
- [115:02]
B
Well, but it's still Verizon. So Verizon is the person number and they own the whole thing. So that's the reason why it's absolutely ignorant, is we're nerds and we know how to port. Most people still don't even realize you can port your Numbers people are not going to just pick up and go to another company because they're afraid that they're going to lose all their content. It's not even stored in your phone anymore. Like your contacts are stored in the cloud.
- [115:27]
A
Sophisticated criminal networks have exploited the handset unlocking policies to carry out criminal acts, including transnational handset trafficking.
- [115:36]
D
The FCC is a talking horse.
- [115:39]
B
Wilbur.
- [115:40]
A
By waiving a regulation that incentivized bad actors to target one particular carrier's headsets for theft, we now have a uniform industry standard that can help help stem the flow of handsets into the black market.
- [115:54]
B
Wilmer.
- [115:55]
C
Now, Jason, I don't, I don't, I don't want to correct you, but technically speaking, Brendan Carr is not actually speaking in that voice. They smear peanut butter on his lips. So he just, lips around his lips actually is doing, actually I was doing.
- [116:10]
A
Francis the Talking Mule. But that's okay.
- [116:12]
D
It's all okay. It's all in the genre. It's not him anyway, it's his spirit. Spokeshorse.
- [116:17]
B
Spokes.
- [116:18]
A
That's right. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So just to be aware of this, I guess really you probably should never buy a phone from Verizon. Just I presume Apple will still offer unlocked iPhones that you can choose.
- [116:31]
C
Technically speaking, it's not as though they're never going to unlock it. They used to be ordered to basically say after 60 days, Verizon has to unlock it. Now with this new guideline, they're basically no longer required to do that. They're required to do that only upon specific requests and only after the terms of that contract have been fulfilled. So if your contract basically says that no, you're not allowed to simply pay off the phone and take it to another carrier, they can basically keep you in on for the entire terms of the contract if they want to, if they want to write that way.
- [116:59]
A
Fair enough, I still won't buy a phone.
- [117:03]
B
You know, that contract was always jacked up and we mostly don't live there anymore. But like, remember they used to put you in because they're quote unquote subsidizing the phone. But if you calculated it, the phone was paid for in 14 months. Right, but you were in a contract track for 24. So for the last time, they didn't lower the price of your phone bill, even though the phone's now paid for. So they weren't really subsidizing anything. Like it was just a complete farce. And thanks to John T. Mobile for snitching.
- [117:30]
C
But, but like, but like you said before it's. It makes access. It makes premium smartphones accessible to more people. By again, you may not necessarily have a thousand bucks to spend today on a new phone. But, but if you spread the pain out amongst two years, especially if you were just not planning on changing carriers anyway, it's like, okay, yeah, you notice.
- [117:49]
B
I don't know if you noticed this year a lot of the lock in was moved to three years. I don't do that. I just buy my phone. But I did notice when I was looking at the store a lot of the new lock ins had moved to three years instead of two now.
- [117:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, but you don't have to get their most expensive plan I hear. Yeah, don't bring your giant TV into the TV store because they're not going to take it. You see, I watch a lot of ads. That's what, that's the downside of NFL playoffs. You see a lot of ads on.
- [118:20]
B
Repeat, by the way.
- [118:21]
A
On repeat. I know, I'm got a memorized. I do like the dog park one though. Dog park, Dog park. I do enjoy that. All right, you're watching Mac Break Weekly. I'm glad you're here. Especially thanks to our Club Twit members who subsidize everything we do. You may notice we didn't have any ads today. That's not unusual in the first quarter of the year. We've also changed how we sell ads and it's a little slow right now. But we're going to keep doing the show because the Club Twit. Club Twit members subsidize the cost of the show, 25% of it. And all of our programming. You get some benefits. There's reasons to do it besides just, you know, we want to keep Twit going. We like the show. We want to, you know, help support it. You also get ad free versions of this show and all the shows. You wouldn't even hear me begging for money, which is probably a benefit. You also get access to our Club Twit. I call it the Disko, but it's actually a discord and it is a lot of fun. It's a great place to hang lots of smart people and a whole bunch of join ye Club Twit peasants. There you go, Joe. Oh, that's pretty fly for Cisco. Another one of our AI users making these great little ads for us. Joe does quite a few too. And here is another member, Mashed Potato in the disco. So that's fun. I very much like the Club Twit Disco you also get some very special programming that we do in the club. Club programming. Mike is crafting corners coming up tomorrow 6pm at chill time to join Micah Sargent and a bunch of other crafters. He does Lego usually, but there are people knitting, there are people painting, there are people cooking, there are sometimes there are people coding. Friday is photo time with Chris Marquardt. Looking forward to that. Every month Chris comes by, we have a photo assignment. He gives us latest photography news. One of our favorite photographers, I just arranged for Johnny Jett to join us to talk travel. We haven't had Johnny on since the radio show ended a couple of years ago. So I'm looking forward to catching up with John. Stacy's book Club is the 30th. Jason, have you read the Heist of Hollow London?
- [120:35]
D
I have not.
- [120:36]
A
It's quite interesting. Eddie Robson's sci fi novel. I like it. I'm really enjoying it, but I think opinions vary. We'll talk about it January 30th, 1:00pm that book club is also a regular feature. There's plenty of other things. Our AI user group is is really hot and happening. That's the first Friday of every month, so it won't be till next month. We already did it for this month. But that is really interesting because we have a number of club members who are very active in AI and they've been showing off. Larry showed off using Google's anti gravity. Darren has been doing a lot of stuff with MCP agents and N8N we and I'm going to maybe do maybe we'll do a little vibe coding on the next episode. I've been using anthropics Claude, to great effect. I wrote on Sunday morning. I just felt like I said, well let's see what I can do here. I wrote an application, just personal application to scratch my own itch. So I'll show that a little bit. It's kind of amazing. Anyway, if you're into tech, you really ought to be into the club Club Twit at Twit TV Club Club Twit. I'll be looking for you in the disco and you're dancing. I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed or even walking around. I was wrong though. Not everyone at risk will develop it. 99% of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles and it could reactivate at any time. I developed it and the blistering rash lasted for weeks. Weeks don't learn the hard way. Like I did. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK.
- [122:20]
C
It's a historically hideous season. It's our 100th ugly house.
- [122:25]
B
And if these walls could talk.
- [122:27]
D
Do you cry a lot? I do.
- [122:30]
B
Ugliest house in America. All new Wednesday at 8 on HGTV.
- [122:35]
D
New year, same extra value meals at McDonald's.
- [122:39]
B
So now get two snack wraps plus fries and a medium soft drink for just $8 for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary.
- [122:47]
D
Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California.
- [122:49]
A
And for delivery, let's talk Golden Globes. The studio best comedy, Seth Rogen, best actor. I might disagree with that, but okay, he won. But I do agree with Rhea Seehorn's best actress win. Although as they call it, best female actor win for Pluribus. She really is kind of amazing. So some success for Apple in this is. This is, of course, the beginning of the awards season. Actually wasn't the first. We had critics circle. We have had a couple already, but yeah, all leading up to the Oscars. I don't know if Apple will have an Oscar nomination.
- [123:31]
C
F1 can get some nominations for it. They've had a couple of studio releases, so. But I'm not sure sure if any. I'm not sure if Brad Pitt's gonna win. Gotta get a best supporting actor nomination.
- [123:42]
A
I finally saw it once Apple made it for free. I think I mentioned this last week. Underwhelmed, but yeah, I mean, it's a.
- [123:47]
C
It was. It was a good movie. A fine movie. Wasn't the sort of thing that you.
- [123:50]
A
Wasn'T a great need to own. Yeah.
- [123:54]
B
I'm glad I didn't buy it. I'm glad I didn't watch it in a theater. I will say it sounds really good on the avp.
- [124:03]
A
Yeah, I bet it does. Although I didn't. One of the reasons I didn't like it. Well, it's such a thin script. And it's clear that the script is just to separate the action sequences, but the action sequences. And I'm an F1 fan. I know you are, Doc. Looked like a video game to me. And then having Crofty's voice with an echo on it made it even feel. And saying stupid things that he would never say made it feel more like a video game, like canned announces. And that really turned me off as a fan of F1.
- [124:34]
B
That was good about it, which I think is all I really expected because I seen Drive and I seen some Drive to Survive.
- [124:40]
A
Makes it happen.
- [124:41]
B
No, not the Drive to Survive. The original movie. Drive.
- [124:43]
A
Oh, drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [124:45]
B
You know, they had a couple of these racing flicks. What made this movie really good is that Lewis had his hand in it, so he made sure that they didn't jump the shark too far.
- [124:57]
A
Yeah, I know. He was a producer of it. Yeah.
- [125:00]
B
He wasn't just a technical. He was a real, like, legit producer of it.
- [125:04]
A
Hamilton, we're talking about.
- [125:06]
D
So.
- [125:06]
B
Yeah, sorry. He just lose to me. And then, you know, I called him up on Wednesday, and I'm like, hey, would you. I can't do it, man. I'm on Twitter with Leo. He goes, oh, tell Leo I say, what's up?
- [125:15]
A
Oh, hi, Lou. I call him Lou. You know, it was great that he made sure that Roscoe, his bulldog, had a cameo in it. And Roscoe is credited. Of course, he passed away after the film, but I was really. It made me very happy to see.
- [125:30]
B
Roscoe and his street cred alone. Made all of his friends have to stand there and be in it so they. That look like somebody. They had all of the real cats and even Toto coming on in the end.
- [125:43]
A
Wasn't that hysterical?
- [125:44]
B
They had kind of a fight, you know, during the part of the filming, and Toto's still like, okay, dude, we. We want enough together. I will come and be in your movie for, like, like, 13 seconds.
- [125:54]
A
But it really did feel like the obligatory moment.
- [125:57]
B
Yeah. It was like, listen, Toto, if you.
- [125:59]
A
Don'T even gun my movie, even Gunter was there. Yeah.
- [126:02]
B
Oh, Gunther was the best, but he didn't get any F bombs in. I will. I will let out these pictures from that one time in Vegas if you don't come to my movie.
- [126:11]
A
My mind. So it was really good.
- [126:14]
B
They kept it together. I agree. It was very thin. It was made for F1 fans. And, you know, sadly, it wasn't F1 driver. Drivers.
- [126:22]
A
You know, I mean, that's what's sad about it, is I felt like that ended up being made for people who didn't know anything about F1 and F1. Yeah. As an F1 fan, I was kind of disappointed.
- [126:32]
B
I thought it was basically a commercial for the upcoming season, let's just put it that way. And. And if you put it in that point, it's kind of like when I used to watch. Oh, my God, what's his name? Airplane movies. Oh, my God. I'm gonna bring this with Leslie Nielsen. Leslie Nielsen. There we go. I was trying to get that out. You know, we weren't looking for acting. Roger Ebert. I heard one time Roger Ebert say it was dumb. And I was like, roger, that's what these films are for. I respect you in so many ways, but these films are just for being dumb. Like, don't, don't grade it like that. You know, Roger Daughter, Chili, Willy, Manili, Vanilli.
- [127:07]
C
Yeah, it's, it's. I mean, the Golden Globes mean nothing but promotion. It's.
- [127:12]
A
It's even worse now that CBS owns it. It is even worse.
- [127:16]
D
Yeah.
- [127:16]
C
I mean, the organization, a bunch of media. Media organization that owns a bunch organizations bought the Golden Globes after it imploded a few years ago. Right. So it's. And it was. And the Golden Globes was never meaningful except for PR because it was always who's a member of the. Who's a member of the voting body. We don't know.
- [127:33]
A
Foreign Press Association. Yeah. And like, Whoever that is.
- [127:37]
C
83 people who, like, buy them a bunch of watches, take them a couple of dinners, you're in. But also Apple's. Apple's very, very proud of this stuff because it's all over. Like the newsroom where the two most interesting ones for me are the Producers Guild and the Actors Guild. Those awards are coming up and they. And both. All of these stuff got lots and lots of nominations. These are like people who actually work in those industries. And, and again, it's not as though it's a litmus test for what's good and what's the best work, but at least it's not. Again, 87 people that probably work for the media company. There was a. I forgot where I read it, but someone was talking about how like deadline, the deadline.com or one of the other Hollywood Reporter or something someone else owned by the company that owns the Golden Globes and they are basically also selling at. Buying advertising from F1. Buying advertising from all these organizations that are. Who want to be nominated, want to get awards. So it's like, okay, so the foreign. Hollywood Foreign Press Organization no longer runs the Golden Globes, but it was at best a lateral move into different types of. Of.
- [128:40]
A
I thought CBS owned it. So it's not as Penske.
- [128:42]
D
Yeah. Who owns Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.
- [128:45]
A
Yeah.
- [128:45]
D
They also own the. It's. Yeah. It's all very similar.
- [128:48]
C
As Doc Rock said a word that I love and I wish we could revitalize. Shifty.
- [128:53]
B
Yes.
- [128:54]
A
Well, I'm just glad that, you know, in a way, I'm really happy that one of our own, a person who came up in podcasting, really became popular and famous in podcasting. Amy Poland won The best Podcast Award.
- [129:06]
C
Good to see one of our own.
- [129:08]
A
One of our own making, right?
- [129:09]
C
Yeah. You know, it's not about. It's not about the stardom. It's not about the celebrity. It really is just the quality of the work. And that's what I hope that this new best podcast category is going to really bring to. No, of course we're being very, very sarcastic and very, very spiteful. It's like, gee, is it going to. Is it going to be. Who's going to win this year? Is it going to be Conan, a former SNL cast member or.
- [129:31]
A
Or Will Arnett or. Yeah, who's it gonna be?
- [129:34]
C
Yeah, we need to, we need to up their numbers a little bit. We need to get. Bring some attention to how well they, how well their publicists, like, have organized things. They're great.
- [129:42]
A
The Producers Guild Awards got. They got nominations for F1, Pluribus, Severance, the Studio, the Gorge. The Gorge, really? Mr. Scorsese, which was pretty good. Snoopy present, huh?
- [129:55]
B
Have you, have you watched that at all? Palm Royale?
- [129:58]
A
I, I tried. I watched a couple episodes. I like Kristen Wiig a lot, but.
- [130:04]
B
I love Kristen Wiig. That's the reason why I watched it. But also Allison, Jenny is one of my favorites.
- [130:09]
C
I love her.
- [130:11]
B
Carol Burnett. Thank you.
- [130:12]
A
She can't get out of bed with Carol Burnett.
- [130:14]
B
And I mean, she's still kicking and she. Even though her role was mostly to be what she is right now, kind of like old and just hanging in there, I still appreciated it because she's a legend. And it's actually. It took a minute to catch up. But after it caught up and I did what I just said, I took it for what it is, is what it's meant to be. It's actually a pretty good show. And I really. It's.
- [130:36]
A
It's a. It's light, but it was enjoyable. Yeah, it was. It was fun.
- [130:39]
B
Yeah, it was good. Airplane riding movies, which basically what I did. I watched it in airplane.
- [130:46]
A
I don't know if you'll recognize this, but one of my favorite games of all time is Dark Castle. And it's coming back, baby. This is the trailer now. Is it gonna look like this?
- [131:03]
C
No, they're upgraded. So the guy who. Mark Pierce, I think it was his name. The guy who did all the graphics and the animation.
- [131:11]
A
Silicon beach software in 1987.
- [131:13]
C
Right. It seems like every eight years.
- [131:15]
A
Oh, look at it.
- [131:16]
C
Y. So updated the graphics so it's high resolution. It's the same sort of like bitmap sort of platformer so the same sort of charm as originally had. But it can take advantage of the fact that, yeah, we have actually more than one bit of depth on displays anymore.
- [131:30]
A
Oh, it looks pretty. But what's nice is they're not going 4k. It still looks kind of.
- [131:36]
C
They're not.
- [131:36]
A
They're not.
- [131:37]
C
Like, now for Vision Pro, we've basically done this all. The entire thing in Blender. It's like, no. There's a reason why we kind of like it buy. There's a reason why this isn't just like a nostalgia play. It's like. It's actually a really solid platformer that's a lot of fun to play with, a lot of.
- [131:49]
A
Oh, I turned the sound off. Let me. Let me. Let me go back. Because I wonder.
- [131:52]
B
Jason, are you. Are you a King's Quest fan?
- [131:56]
D
I played it on the Apple 2 back a million years old.
- [131:58]
B
Can you imagine King's Quest, Apple, Vision Pro? Like, you're walking around and you're actually doing stuff.
- [132:03]
C
This is not leisure suit, Larry.
- [132:06]
A
When I hear that organ, that Takata and Fugue, I immediately think of this game.
- [132:10]
C
The sound of the bats, the sound of the. The rats is like, oh, my God.
- [132:15]
B
The rats are the worst part of this game.
- [132:18]
A
Yep. So this is the new one.
- [132:20]
C
It's coming. Coming to Steam. There's an announcement trailer. I don't think. I don't know if they have a date yet, but. Yeah, that's. That's gonna be. That's gonna be a good play as long. As long as it's a reasonable monomy. I would pay for this just to. Again, I don't like the nostalgia at all, but there's a reason why, like, I listen to albums that were made, like, 30 years ago. It's not because I want to be back in whatever year 30 years ago was. It's because it was a good album and it's worth a re. Listen to. And games are like that, too.
- [132:47]
A
This morning for my workout, I asked Siri for the top 10 songs from 1973, and I really quite enjoyed it. Dark Castle, Beyond Return and Future. Coming to Steam sometime soon. Coming soon. That's all. They say soon. They don't see what the price will be, but if it's more than 20 bucks, I'll be stunned, man.
- [133:13]
B
You know what's scary, Andy? When you said, like, whatever, 30 years ago, it's only 1996, that's not old enough. We actually gotta go back 40 years, 86, to get to some good albums.
- [133:25]
A
I don't know.
- [133:26]
C
I Think that Red hot chili pepper is first one that you had some place probably going on, dude.
- [133:30]
B
Rhcp. Love rhcp. One of my favorites. Okay, I. I'll give you that. But it's really.
- [133:34]
C
It was like the 1990s was also like the apex of like moody female singer songwriters. There was like a lot. Tori Amos actually. I'm sorry I said I use that to describe it because that, that's not. That doesn't apply to Tori Amos. I was thinking most. Most. More of like Lisa Lo but like. Yeah.
- [133:50]
B
What was Lisa Loeb's show called? They did lie Palooz. They did the female live Palooz. Liz Fair. Lila Fairy.
- [133:56]
A
Lilith Fair. Yes.
- [133:57]
B
Oh, that brought out some of the best of the best.
- [134:00]
A
I watched that documentary. That was a great. Have you seen the documentary? It's good.
- [134:04]
B
Yes, I watched that too.
- [134:05]
A
Yeah.
- [134:05]
B
So good.
- [134:06]
A
Texas man uses Siri to find a two carat brown diamond. Not lost in the sofa cushions but actually at the Arkansas State Park. He asked Siri for mining tips. Who first of all, don't ask Siri for anything but mining tips.
- [134:26]
D
Really?
- [134:27]
A
And it worked.
- [134:28]
C
Are we sure he didn't say Here is what Google has to say about mining tips.
- [134:33]
A
Yeah, really. According to ChatGPT. You should dig here. That's a nice big diamond. I mean I don't know what it's worth.
- [134:43]
C
It looks like earwax, but that's a very, very valuable earwax.
- [134:46]
A
I don't think there's a huge market for brown diamonds. I should ask my wife. Except I don't want to in case she says oh yeah, I need one.
- [134:53]
B
Oh no, they're actually popular right now. They call it chocolate diamonds or whatever.
- [134:56]
A
Chocolate. Oh well that's better than brown.
- [134:59]
B
Yeah. You know, the beer's got to give it a fancy name.
- [135:02]
A
It's a church.
- [135:03]
B
Basically a dirty diamond.
- [135:04]
A
Yes, it is dirty. Yeah, I, I don't know anything about the occlusions but anyway, Congratulations. James Ward, 41 year old high school teacher.
- [135:15]
C
It's nice to balance a lot of the negative press. We love the negative stuff. We give. Seriously. Hey look, it helped this, this nice man and his family. A diamond. That's not a bad thing.
- [135:23]
A
He found a diamond everybody. Anything else? I boy, now I have we actually covered all. Let me, let me look and see what Claude suggested For the top 10 stories for this week. Apple Partners with this is using the new Claude cowork feature which probably you guys haven't tried because you have to pay 200 bucks a month for. For Claude Max to use it, which weirdly, because I'm a nut, I did last week because I was so enamored. Claude's my little friend. This is a document it prepared for me. I said give me every Tuesday morning, give me the top 10 Apple stories that broke in the last seven days. It said Apple partners with Google Gemini number one Apple Card transitioning. It got the names right from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase number three. Now this is one. And Jason pointed this out. The iPhone iOS 26 adoption crisis which has been since debunked and they didn't have the debunking ces. Now this was a story we didn't mention, but I think it's worth mentioning. We mentioned it on Sunday. We did a whole CES recap and I think Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from the Verge mentioned this briefly. Samsung briefly and then realized what they had done. Showed a crease free foldable display. It wasn't attached to anything. It was just the display then remove sense almost immediately removed with a hole on the table.
- [136:57]
D
Perhaps a partner requested that it be.
- [137:00]
A
Removed but those who saw it said yeah, it was noticeably less creasy. In fact, I think I've seen pictures from one.
- [137:10]
C
I saw the phone. Technically speaking, I did. I did put that story into last week's show doc. We just didn't talk about it.
- [137:16]
A
Oh, it was last week. Oh well but wait a minute. CES was. Was it? Oh yeah, it was last week.
- [137:22]
B
Yeah, it was last week.
- [137:23]
A
Okay.
- [137:24]
C
But they were right. There was like a big display of the component and next to like the previous edition of that component and suddenly. Oh, we weren't supposed to put that out lest you screw it. And it wasn't like just oh well here's a box of stuff. It was like no, it was an actually fully prepared.
- [137:39]
A
Oh, it had a little card like a museum and everything with active displays and yeah, yeah. Vision Pro sales crisis deepens. We did not put this Vision Pro.
- [137:50]
C
Well, I mean that's a story that we talked about like four months ago and basically. So no new news on that.
- [137:55]
A
No new news there. MacBook, new MacBook's coming. $599 entry level and an M5 Pro Max. We know about all of these.
- [138:02]
D
We've been talking about that.
- [138:03]
C
Yeah.
- [138:03]
A
Yep. IPhone 17e that may be coming in the next month. I've seen some say the low cost iPhone 17. I think there'd be some demand for that. That's an A19 based we think but.
- [138:18]
C
No new details since like two or three months ago.
- [138:20]
A
Right. It's been the rumor. The only thing I did notice is somebody said it's going to be within next month, but maybe it was Mark Gurman. I think it was Gurman. Okay. And, you know, I didn't mention this, but it probably. Jason, you're going to need to get the ink cartridges updated in your printer because Apple's fiscal Q1 results will be released January 20th on the 29th anniversary and Lisa's birthday, because foolishly I thought if we get married on her birthday, I only have to give her one gift every January 29th. And that was not the case, as a matter of fact.
- [138:57]
C
Also, the annual shareholder meeting is February 24th. So they released their 2020, their latest proxy statement with a few details in there. Tim Cook got a tiny little bit of a haircut on his pay. Only 74.3 million.
- [139:12]
A
Yeah, we should mention that. We mentioned John Gin, Andrea, 25 million. That sounds like a lot. Tim Cook gets 75 million. Yeah, but that's including stocks. Stock. Right. Stock grants or. No, it's a lot of money.
- [139:27]
D
Yeah. And I think the most important thing that came out of that is that there were a lot of people who are like, oh, you think Tim Cook's gonna be the chairman and that Arthur Levinson, who's the current chairman, is gonna be termed out because of his age. And, well, that means they have to announce things about Tim Cook in early January because they'll have to put that on the agenda for the shareholder meeting. At the time, I think the most logical thing to say was, what rule requires him to do that? Who makes that rule? Oh, it's. Apple. Makes its own rules. I think the lesson is Apple will things when it wants to and not because the bylaws tell it when it must do it. So they announced, the board announced that it was waiving the age cap for its members so that the current members could continue on the board a little while longer. And it's hard not to look at that and think they don't want to bring in a new board member and chairman and whatever, because it's going to be Tim. But it's not yet, so let's wait a little bit. So they're, like, kicking the can down the road. But it's very funny because people are like, apple can't do that because of the rules. It's like Apple makes the rules, folks.
- [140:34]
B
Salary is 3 million, and then the stock option is 57.5. He gets another 12 million and some compensations and 1.76 million for budgets, aka 74.3.
- [140:45]
C
Plus, he can fall back on his Nike money if Apple goes south. Apple closes doors.
- [140:49]
A
Nike board member. Yeah. I don't know. Andy put this in. I guess he was one of the people who voted for the lego IMAX Mac G3. It has received enough votes. I wonder, though, if Apple might have something.
- [141:03]
C
Oh, God. I know, I know. There's no chance. LEGO has this thing where basically anybody can propose a LEGO set. If they actually have built it out of LEGO parts and can actually produce proposals, then it goes up for vote. If it gets 10,000 votes, then Lego will at least actually actively consider it. Like the Wall E LEGO set was originally started off as a proposal actually from a Pixar animator who was also a LEGO fan fan. And that became a Lego actual official LEGO set because of that. I don't. It looks so good.
- [141:32]
A
It got 10,000 votes, which means LEGO had the. Apple will review the idea.
- [141:40]
B
I hope Apple lets this one fly. What we need to do is start a groundswell and get Everybody to email feedbackapple.com and be like, let's LEGO make this. And don't be greedy. Just give them the dang license.
- [141:56]
C
What we need is for Apple to suffer some sort of scandal that is so horrific and so enduring that they want to distract us from it by giving us something that we'd be twice as excited about than the malfeasance that Apple.
- [142:09]
B
So we needed this last year when Siri sucked or, you know, when Apple intelligence. Right. We needed this. Last year.
- [142:18]
A
The creation took 700 Lego bricks by Terama and Tarama said thank you for voting for my.
- [142:27]
B
Oh, this is so pretty. Come on.
- [142:30]
A
Isn't it cool?
- [142:30]
B
Yeah, I want it.
- [142:33]
C
No. No way. I'm not buying it. No, it's like. Also wouldn't be. That'd be great to like, be in every Apple store, like this little display of this LEGO imac. And oh, by the way, yes, of course you can buy one of these things.
- [142:44]
A
So all it takes is.
- [142:45]
B
Behind us.
- [142:45]
D
Look. Even.
- [142:46]
A
There's even, like, you can see inside and see the. The CRT tube.
- [142:50]
C
It's not all. The thing is, it's not almost a Bondi blue imac. It is a Bondi blue imac. It's amazing.
- [142:58]
A
Pretty good. You can see the. The handle is there. The. Even the Puck mouse. Wow, that is pretty impressive. This is all with stock brick, I think.
- [143:10]
C
So I think obviously it would have to ship with a couple of stickers because there is. There's an Apple logo, there's a screen, there's a Startup screen. Would you vote for an imac where it's absolutely 100% stuck on the startup screen, or would you want it to actually be the finder to show that, yes, it's actually working?
- [143:26]
A
You know, I have this little Mac back here that boots up into System seven. You could. I mean, that's just a Raspberry PI, I think, in there, or not even a whole raspberry PI.
- [143:37]
C
PI 0.
- [143:38]
A
PI 0. So I think you could probably. Now we're talking.
- [143:43]
C
The good news is that if it can be made with stock bricks, basically you can put the plans out and basically someone's going to be able to fulfill an order for all the bricks you need for this. I would.
- [143:50]
A
Everybody agreed, by the way, on the Sunday Twitch show, that lego's new smart brick is awesome. And you could use a smart brick to at least do the startup sound. At least do that. That 700 Lego pieces. It looks. Now how can we. You can't tell from this how big it is.
- [144:13]
C
Yeah, it look. It looks like it's kind of substantial because again, when you look through the transparent sections of it, there's a lot of details in there. So if you know what the minimum size of a LEGO brick is, it would not be pocket sized. It would be something you would. I don't think. It doesn't look like it's life size, but looks like it's maybe the size of a cantaloupe, I'm guessing.
- [144:32]
A
Excellent. Excellent. All right, that's it. There you go. That's all the stories and a few that AI didn't see.
- [144:43]
C
But AI did.
- [144:45]
A
But AI, Andy and Iko did.
- [144:47]
C
Thank you very much.
- [144:47]
A
Thank you.
- [144:48]
B
That's funny. I like it.
- [144:50]
A
Let's take a little pause that refreshes and then we are going to get your picks of the week. Gentlemen, if you will prepare, start your engine in the. They actually don't say that in F1, do they? That's. That's a NASCAR thing. Indy 500, NASCAR.
- [145:06]
B
F1 has electronic start, so it wouldn't be as fun.
- [145:10]
A
Yeah, they don't just wave the green flag and everything goes.
- [145:13]
C
Gentlemen, wait for the robot to do the thing that we had to put in because some of you were cheating.
- [145:18]
A
Are you excited, Doc, about the new era? Next year, starting in March, these are going to be 50% hybrid gas engines because they want to go towards sustainability and it. And no more ground effect, no more drs. This is going to be. This is going to be a completely. We shake up the whole field. And I think it's going to come down to who the best driver is on this new platform.
- [145:41]
B
I kind of really do like this and I've seen a couple of the F1E races. I just like the sound of it. Is it?
- [145:50]
A
No, I want that.
- [145:51]
B
It's trippy. But the Thor, the thumb, the thumble, the rumble of the engine sounds better, but I just think that the side of F1E is really trippy.
- [146:00]
A
It is. It's weird and frankly, it's not as much fun. I went to an F1 race in Vegas two years ago.
- [146:05]
B
That's right.
- [146:05]
A
It's unbelievable how loud those cars are. They are really.
- [146:10]
B
And like Andy said, you feel it in your chest, right? That. Yeah, that just, that's what brings the. The thunder.
- [146:17]
A
Doc, you're our guest this week. What, what's your pick of the week?
- [146:21]
B
All right, so I got this. I was super stoked when I seen it came out. And this is the Corsair Xenon Edge. Right. This is a 14.5-inch LCD touchscreen. And the reason what I wanted for as a person who does a lot of live streams and stuff like that is I would be able to put, put the comments on or like in a day like today where we're guest hosting, instead of having the discord on my phone, I could put the discord on this guy. And it's just a little Wii monitor that would just live underneath. Most of the time I'm going to use it as sort of like a stock ticker or a news ticker. But I mostly got this one because it came in purple and it's kind of hard to see on this television here. But it, when I saw the purple, I was like family, here's my cash. Let me me know, let me know. So it's basically a monitor. And normally these touchscreen monitors are available under different brands. But I just know that Corsair said they'd make it work with the Mac. So they would. A lot of the touchscreen stuff don't work well on the Mac unless you buy like an espresso display or some of the other higher end ones. So it's really just a place to put, you know, it's a 14 inch skinny monitor. There's not a lot you can put down there. But if you do happen to watch any, any sort of chats or you know, like data that moves, you know, you're watching the National Debt clock or something weird like that, I think a 14 inch touchscreen is kind of perfect for that. So for me mainly it's Going to be for chats. And you know, maybe one of the.
- [147:46]
A
Things that bugs me, I bought one of those USB second screens.
- [147:51]
C
Yeah.
- [147:51]
A
And I use. Can use it with my iPad, but it's not touch.
- [147:54]
B
Yeah.
- [147:55]
A
And so it's disappointing. So this might be a nice. How much is it?
- [148:00]
B
250.
- [148:02]
A
That's not. It's a little. It's more expensive, obviously.
- [148:04]
B
Well, so you can buy. There's a company called Weiss Edge or something like that, which is basically the same thing minus the cool plastic frame. And you can get it for like 150. But I just. I trusted Corsair and I did like, this one is actually paying a little extra for the design. And the design meaning the plastic housing and the. The slight little angle and things that come on. The other one is just a flat little extra monitor.
- [148:27]
A
The wise Coco. Is that what it is?
- [148:29]
B
Yeah, that's what it is. Because the other monitor just looks like this. You know, it's just a little flat folio.
- [148:34]
A
Yeah. I have a Dell. It's just like that. Yeah.
- [148:37]
B
So you can get. Uperfect has a touchscreen. There's a bunch of them on Amazon where you can find the touchscreen versions. But if you read closely, just look for Mac OS with a, you know, control F or Command def, and you'll see a lot of them will say, oh, the touchscreen doesn't work on them.
- [148:52]
A
Yeah, I think that that's probably the case with all. They don't have drivers for it.
- [148:56]
B
Which is like a vertical, like two, you know, two pieces. And it's like one monitor. It folds up into a little book. That one. The touchcreen does work, but because the touchscreen works, you couldn't make it one image. It always has to be two separate monitors. Which was like the whole reason why I got it was to, you know, stand.
- [149:14]
A
Oh, you want to extend, not mirror.
- [149:16]
B
Yeah, no, I wanted to spend a picture across both. Yeah, yeah, both displays. So when I plug that in onto my MacBook, it becomes three separate monitors. The MacBook plus those two.
- [149:25]
A
The wise Coco is the same. The same price for the 14 inch. So maybe. Yeah, this is the same product with a nicer plastic frame.
- [149:34]
B
Well, it was cheaper. That one was.
- [149:36]
A
They have a 12 inch for.
- [149:37]
B
Cheaper for the 12 by 720. Right, right.
- [149:43]
A
Can't do the math that fast.
- [149:45]
B
I. I'll put the link.
- [149:46]
A
I'll put 40 by 1100. That sounds.
- [149:49]
B
I'll put. I'll put the smaller one in the disco, which is basically this, minus the case.
- [149:53]
A
Yeah. Okay. I Like it? It's pretty if you're. Oh yeah, there's the 12.6-inch mini touch screen.
- [150:00]
B
That's the one.
- [150:00]
A
That's it. 145 bucks.
- [150:03]
B
That's exactly the one. 145 and that's exactly touch.
- [150:06]
A
But then with the little purple saves you 10 bucks. So go for the touch. Yeah, I wish it would work with my iPad.
- [150:14]
B
Yeah, see this would probably work with an iPad actually because you just plug it in, it should catch it up. I just going to have the drivers.
- [150:22]
A
Let me know if it does. Yeah, that's the problem. The iPad doesn't. My pick is kind of related to this. I don't usually do picks, but this morning I woke up and spent 250 bucks. So I thought, thought, well, if I talk about it, it'll be tax deductible. I use the Insta360, the original Instalink, which I really like. They've come out with a second one since then and now they have the new Insta360 link 2 Pro and 2 C Pro. And I thought, you know what? I really like this camera. This is the one that follows you around, swivels, pivots, very good. And one of the things they've done with this is they've increased the sensor size considerably. So the quality should be a lot better. I'm a big fan of these and I think it would work very nicely with ecamm.
- [151:11]
B
I would bet it will work and the PTZ part will also work. And so I'm using two cameras that have that sensor. One is in the Osbot and one is in the YOLO cam. And yeah, one over 1.3. Sensor. Sensor.
- [151:26]
D
It's a.
- [151:26]
B
Sorry sensor. It's beautiful. And it's funny because people say, oh, that looks just like your Sony camera because it's a Sony sensor, but it's actually beautiful for a webcam.
- [151:36]
A
I. Yeah, that's what I've been using and I thought, well, I'll get the new one. Especially since. So if you get the Link 2 Pro, it's 250 bucks. They have one that's not that. So that one actually does 4K and hardware. Link 2C Pro does it in software. It is a little less expensive, 200 bucks. But weirdly they have a bundle for the same price as the Single Link 2 Pro. 250 bucks. You can get both. Oh, they just raised it. Oh. So I got a deal. They might have made a mistake and I got advantage, took advantage of it. So 50 bucks more. You can get the two now.
- [152:12]
B
But for some reason I got the email. I should have bought it.
- [152:15]
A
Yeah. Some reason. They had both cameras for the same price as one. I thought, well, I guess I can use another one. I don't know why they'd use two. Except that you could then have a two camera shoot.
- [152:26]
B
Yeah. Multi angle. Yeah.
- [152:27]
A
Yeah. Be kind of cool. Anyway, I thought I'd mention that. And yes, it does work very nicely. Do you. Is that what you use, Jason?
- [152:33]
D
Yeah, I have the original.
- [152:35]
A
Yeah, that's what I have.
- [152:37]
D
Maybe I'll have Alex recommended. It was one of his picks. And I bought. I bought two.
- [152:42]
B
This link, Jason, the one without the extra green dot. Just.
- [152:46]
D
Yeah, the little. The little one.
- [152:48]
A
That's the one I have. Alex said don't get the new one. It's not. He said he liked the original.
- [152:53]
D
Yeah.
- [152:53]
B
Yeah.
- [152:54]
A
We could ask him something, but he's in Scotch Company for the next 20 years and so. Oh, well, we'll never be able to ask him anything to figure it out.
- [153:02]
C
We can ask him at the retirement party.
- [153:03]
A
Yeah. Did you get a gold watch? No. Jason Snell pick of the week.
- [153:10]
D
Yeah, I'm gonna. It's like a pick that's also a little story. So this in my hand is the XT Ink X4.
- [153:16]
A
Oh, I've been very interest.
- [153:17]
D
Which is a little teeny tiny, super tiny E reader. Like, compared to. Compared to an iPhone. Right. It's like, it's way smaller.
- [153:25]
A
Goes on the back of the iPhone.
- [153:27]
D
And you can just stick it. Well, okay. So it doesn't really. Because any modern iPhone doesn't. It doesn't fit.
- [153:32]
A
Oh, that's too bad.
- [153:33]
D
It's not that. Don't do that. But you can put it in any pocket because it's super tiny. You just stuff it on a pocket. It's a teeny tiny E ink E reader. My story is it's 70 bucks, right? 2. Which is a great deal. Problem is, okay, the hardware, it's not great. It's got too many buttons. I like buttons, but this is ridiculous. It's got two rockers on the front, plus a rocker on the side, plus another button on the side. And it's like, I don't even know which one goes forward. It's too many buttons. Also, I will just. I'm going to just come out and say the software for this thing is garbage. It's terrible. As with so many of these things, you get a Chinese hardware manufacturer who's picking up parts and they're really brilliant at picking up a bunch of parts and making an interesting piece of hardware. But then you run it and you're like, oh, but the software is terrible. And actually it reminds me a little bit of the situation with some retro video game emulation hardware where they make amazing hardware. And then you get the software and the instruction is immediately overwrite the software that comes with it with this firmware that you can download off of the web somewhere that some open source people have put together. The same is true of this. There's a piece of software called XT or Cross Point that runs on this. One of the things I love is like, you know, Chrome will let you do a serial connection in browser. So I went to Xtinc Dve. Is that Al or AI? I don't even know.
- [154:56]
A
It's also on GitHub.
- [154:58]
D
And so basically you can flash it from your browser window. I love that you plug this in.
- [155:04]
A
Amazing.
- [155:05]
D
And it says, I see this device is coming via usb. Would you like to flip Flash to the latest Crosspoint software? Yes, please. Crosspoint software, much better. If I were the makers of this product, I would just contact them and say, can I just bundle your software on here? Community, because. And it does ePub and it supports ePub and it's got better font handling and it's got better type handling and.
- [155:24]
A
Actually looks really good on the screen here.
- [155:26]
D
Yeah, yeah, they did a good job. And it's also if you're somebody who's like, oh, GitHub, it's like, no, literally, you go to a web page and you press update and it updates it and then it's done. Like that's it, there's nothing to it. And then I, by the way, al, which is weird, wherever that is. Albania.
- [155:47]
A
All right, that's a little confusing.
- [155:49]
D
Okay, so Xteinc DVE al and then it'll just do it straight from your browser. And then what's on here? I just put in another plug. Standard Ebooks are on here because a whole load of new books came out into the public domain. And standard ebooks.org is the place to.
- [156:09]
A
Download all the Nancy Drew novels.
- [156:11]
D
And this is the Agatha Christie. It's the first vicarage. Ms. Marple.
- [156:18]
A
Look, what a nice job Standard Ebooks does. They do such a nice job.
- [156:22]
B
So good.
- [156:23]
A
So it's buying this right now.
- [156:25]
D
And like I said, I got it. And the software was garbage. And I was like, this is terrible. And then friend said, have you done the firmware? Have you done the crosspoint? And I was like, no, very skeptical. I clicked the. The link in the, in the, in the browser and updated and I was like, oh, now it's usable. Now it's actually okay. Not great, but things I would change. There are too many buttons. It should be simpler. I hope there's another rev of the hardware down the road. But like as a cheap pocketable e reader it, it works fine. Now it, it's not going to work with your copy protected Kobo and Kindle books. Right.
- [156:59]
A
I have a lot of ebook epubs and you can.
- [157:01]
D
But if you use caliber and you've got epubs, I mean if you've got. And you can strip the DRM off them or just get all. I mean for this just load it up with standard ebooks if you want and it's classics.
- [157:12]
A
Did you get the case do you think you need?
- [157:14]
D
I did not get any case at all.
- [157:17]
A
It doesn't have a backlight, so be aware.
- [157:19]
D
There's no backlight. You have to read it in the sun or with a light.
- [157:22]
A
It's like the old days.
- [157:23]
D
Yes. Which again is a reason why I think that this hardware is not very good. But for 70 bucks with the firmware it's okay.
- [157:32]
A
Firmware is free.
- [157:32]
B
Here's what I like about this, Jason. They're going to prove the point to a bunch of people who could actually come in and make the good hardware, make it better software.
- [157:41]
D
I think that's right.
- [157:41]
B
I don't want it to necessarily be Amazon but if I could get that size and a Kindle with a light paper white. I mean.
- [157:48]
D
Right. I think there's something, I mean there's a lot of experimentation going on because like Boox has done their palma which is like a phone sized E reader because it's basically an E Ink phone essentially is what it is. And that's interesting. But it's also more expensive. This is super cheap because this is an ESP32. Right. Like it's not running Android. It's super bare bones and as a result it's not very powerful. But doesn't need to be. It's just a little E reader.
- [158:15]
A
How long's the battery life?
- [158:19]
D
It's a long time. Yeah, it's a long time. Because keep in mind when you, when it's running, it's not backlit and there's no. It's E ink.
- [158:27]
A
So it's just what's your use case? Because I don't think you ride the subway.
- [158:30]
D
Yeah, well my use case is not. I mean I have so many E readers here. My use case would probably be that this Is this is the kind of thing that you would literally like put in your pocket or throw in your purse or something and just have it with you at all times so that you could pull it out and read it. Because it's got, you know, know, dozens of books on it and it's super teeny tiny and weighs nothing. That would be the use case.
- [158:49]
A
Take it with you at actually putting IDs on it. Plain boarding passes.
- [158:54]
D
Yeah, I wouldn't do any of those things. I would flash the firmware and put some good, nice ebooks on it.
- [158:59]
B
It's funny you say that about the plane boarding passes, Leo, because that same size screen with the E screen Ramoa has in one of the suitcases and it has your bag tracking stuff in there. So when you get your bag booked in, the airlines that support it will actually put your bag stuff in there. But to, to Jason's point, when I was in Japan last week, they were, they had these whole setup because, you know, books are huge in Japan. Like everybody loves to go reading. And the Palma and another company that was very much like them had these humongous displays at Yodobashi camera and they were all running around like 250 to 300 bucks for iPhone size E reader that had just incredible looking screens. And I can just see what in places where people do, you know, read a lot. Unfortunately, our country idea of reading stuff is watching TikTok.
- [159:49]
A
But yeah, that's what people are doing. So now you could put a book on there and, and learn something.
- [159:54]
C
Yeah.
- [159:54]
B
So that way when you have that brain rot section, you just flip your phone over.
- [159:58]
A
Yeah.
- [159:58]
B
And you know, I just want the IDE in there. So if I'm, you know, practicing coding something or even just a quick glance at a schedule or organizer or planner that's not in the phone because the phone causes you to be like, what is this Instagram notification. Oh, Leo sending me stupid reels again. Now you're gone.
- [160:21]
A
Andy and Iko Pick of the week.
- [160:24]
C
Mine kind of plays off of what we were talking about earlier. Dark Castle, the Original version from 19. From the Reagan era. Yes, the Reagan era is available on the Internet Archive. You can play it within a web browser through like browser emulation. So if you don't want to wait for the Steam version with all the fancy colors and all the extra levels and all the extra effects, you can go to archive.org, find it and actually just play it. In many ways it's kind of more fun as a one bit thing. I think that one bit graphics are its own aesthetic.
- [160:56]
A
Yeah. Because it's black and white. It's not. Yeah.
- [160:59]
C
And it's like there's a clarity and a distinguish and a distinctiveness that's kind of all of its own. So it might even be. I. I want the creators of this game to make money off of the Steam version, but I'm glad that the. There's somebody preserving the original one bit version because that is definitely a vibe and a vibe worth supporting.
- [161:16]
A
Internet Archive. Dark Castle available.
- [161:21]
C
Got. And I got a skate. There's somebody using the conference room in about 10 or 15 minutes. Good.
- [161:25]
A
We're done.
- [161:26]
C
Very clean.
- [161:27]
D
Bye.
- [161:27]
C
Have a good night.
- [161:28]
A
Blue Sky Social. Thank you. Bye.
- [161:31]
B
Doc Rock was packing up. I thought he was setting up some kind of like, you know, skylink.
- [161:39]
A
Mr. Doc Rock, so good to see you.
- [161:41]
B
Thanks, man.
- [161:42]
A
He is a director of partnerships, of which we are one at ecamm. You also find him on the YouTube. YouTube.com doc rock. Aloha, my friend. Mahalo.
- [161:54]
B
Mahalo. Appreciate you guys.
- [161:55]
A
All right. And Mr. Jason Snell, he's@six colors.com you can read his review of the NBA game and the Vision Pro and all the great stuff. And of course, in a couple of weeks, the massive, massive, colorful charts from Apple. It's true. Your podcasts are available at. @sixcolors.com Jason. Anything in particular you'd like to mention?
- [162:18]
D
Just, you know, upgrade is still going on with me and Mike Hurley talking about stuff every week like we do here, and people can check that out.
- [162:27]
A
The incomparable Mothership. Always great stuff there.
- [162:29]
D
Yeah. We're coming up to episode 800 this week. I think so.
- [162:34]
A
Yeah. You just did 799 a couple of days ago. Earth 2120 featuring Xenomorph.
- [162:41]
D
Yeah, that's our Alien Earth episode.
- [162:43]
A
So nice.
- [162:44]
D
With John Saracusa talking about alien TV shows and stuff.
- [162:47]
A
Lots of good stuff@6colors.com Jason or incomparable.com. thank you, Jason Snell. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We appreciate your support, especially you Club Twit members. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific. That is 1300 UTC. I'm sorry, 1300 East coast time is 1900 UTC. I mentioned the times we do it because you can actually watch us as we record the show. We stream live in the Club Twit Discord, but also on YouTube, Twitch, X dot com, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. We've got viewers in all of those platforms. Thanks to all of you for being here. We appreciate it. It's good to see after the fact. You can get a copy of the video of the show on YouTube. There's a dedicated YouTube channel for Mac Break Weekly. Great way to share clips. And of course please subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That way you'll get it automatically the minute we're done. Well, maybe take a little time for us to edit it. It's getting easier though, I have to say, so much less swearing with Alex Lindsay gone. So. No, I'm just teasing. Right, John? Ashley Right. So go on, find your favorite podcast client. Subscribe. Leave us a nice review. Tell the world about Mac Break Weekly. We would appreciate that. I am going to be off now to go do security now. If you're watching live, thank you for being here and the rest of you, you better get back to work because you know what? Break time is over. Bye bye.
- [164:35]
D
Hablas Espanol Spries to droids. If you used Babbel, you would Babbel's Conversation Based Techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly.
- [164:44]
B
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D
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