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It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Christina and Jason are here. We're just coming off of Google I O. What will their reaction be to all the AI announcements from Google? More importantly, what's Apple going to do in a couple of weeks at wwdc? Does the strategy change? Let's talk about it next on MacBreak Weekly. This episode is brought to you by Outsystems, a leading agenic systems platform built for the enterprise. Organizations all over the world are building, orchestrating and governing Agentix systems a on the Outsystems platform and with good reason. Architect, deliver and scale govern agentic systems with agility and trust using one open and unified platform Power secure company wide agentic orchestration for core business operations. Teams of any size and technical depth can use Outsystems to build, deploy and manage AI apps and agents quickly and cost effectively without compromising reliability and security. With Outsystems you can rapidly launch ideas from concept to to completion. It's the leading agentic systems platform that's unified, agile and enterprise proven, allowing you to accelerate growth, reduce operational friction and deliver real Enterprise impact with AI OutSystems. Build your agentic future. Learn more at outsystems.com TWiT that's outsystems.com TWiIT podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break Weekly Episode 1025 recorded Tuesday, May 19, 2026 below the Plimsul line. This is Mac Break Weekly. Time to talk all the Apple news. Jason Snell is here from 6colors.com. We're starting late. Thank you for your patience, Jason.
B
It's always on time when it's podcast time.
A
Podcast clock. We're using the podcast clock. Andy Nako also here. Like us, I'm sure you were watching the Google I O keynote, which is I think a preview of what we're going to see in a couple of weeks from Apple, but we'll find out. Also with us, Christina Warren, developer relations at GitHub. Hello film girl.
C
Hello.
A
Did you watch? I imagine you did. Your old boss was on stage there.
C
He was. He was a lot of my old team. It was exciting to see all the stuff that they announced and Good, good for them. Right? Is a good event, I feel like.
A
Yeah, so I guess we could kick off with that a little bit. I mean we're going to be talking about how this will affect Siri on the iPhone because as we know the Apple's going to use Gemini for Siri. So they announced a new Gemini model Which I presume Apple will get. This is all. You know, it's going to be really interesting to see what Apple says on June 8th at WWDC.
D
Yeah. Especially since a lot of the stuff that they showed off today, I wouldn't say steps on the toes of some of a lot of the rumors that we've been hearing about iOS27, but lends credence to the stuff we've been talking about for a while now, which is like if whatever AI that you subscribe to at 20 bucks a month is doing the stuff where you say, hey, whoever it is, prepare me for this meeting and make sure you get the latest data and create a table that we can send to everyone who's going in there and do that 20 minutes before the meeting starts and it can make that happen. We nobody's going to care whether that happens off of an Apple logo or a Google logo, as long as they're not the ones who have to pay for the tokens to make it happen.
A
Well, that was kind of my reaction to this is, you know, this would work just as well on an iPhone. And they made a point somewhere else. You don't really need to have a special Siri to do this.
D
Although it's, I mean the failure, not failure. But the difference is that as always, every demo that they showed off and they showed off a lot of really impressive actual live fire working stuff, but all of it assumes that. What is your inbox? Well, it's great if it's going to be Gmail. Okay, where are all your files and documents? Be great if it's Google Drive and Google Workspace, whereas I'm looking forward to seeing Apple basically say that. No, if you've got a file anywhere on your desktop or in your cloud, we'll make it work. Which is not to say that won't be true still with Google because there's some hooks that are in the Macintosh app for Gemini that are forward looking, but that's always going to be something that Apple is going to be able to play that Google and other providers are going to have a harder time doing.
A
I think Google's taking a page actually from Apple's Playbook. This is the ecosystem play they really make. It makes you want to live in la vida Google, as Jeff Jarvis calls it. And the more you use Google. So they announced a new model that they say Gemini Flash 3.5 is as good as Gemini 3.1 Pro for less cost and presumably there'll be a 3.5 Pro. But they also announced an agentic version of this called Spark. That's kind of interesting because agents are the hot thing with openclaw and so forth. They're modifying Anti Gravity, their ide to have a command line interface like Claude Cohn and OpenAI's codecs. They're going to have sub agents, they're going to have agentic. And what's really interesting, they're adding this kind of agentic capability to their search. And yes, it all works better if you use Gmail and Google Calendar and Google Address Book and Google Drive. Yeah.
D
But did the search demo scare you the way that it did me? A little bit. On one level it was really, really impressive, especially since they picked up on something that they kind of slipped under the table last week during the Android event about talking about basically generative user interfaces. Basically that we're going to whatever it is, the task that's before you or the requests you've made, we can create an actual interactive user interface that's exact for that. And one of the interesting examples they came up with is that if you want a desktop widget for your phone, for your watch, for whatever, just describe what the widget should do. We will build that widget for you. That was super interesting. But the
A
I wonder how much of this is going to end up in Siri. That's the real question, right?
D
Just to complete the thought, I'm sorry, it made me wonder if you're going to be generating those kind of user interfaces. Like, I'm not just going to give you the raw data, I'm going to interpret it a couple of different ways through a couple different filters. We will give you this wonderful interactive model of physics that you can play with and learn the answer to your question, but it's not giving you directly the answer to the question from a human being who actually published a paper on this, which is another level of okay, can I trust that this little gizmo that you've given me to teach me is actually accurate? And as always, these are great demos, but it has to work every time you try it. Google gave a big thing a few months ago about, hey, wow, now like Agentic Chrome. Now Chrome can do things like fill out forms for you. And I'm like, well, it's great because every week I fill out the exact same form to reserve this exact same conference room. It's a simple basic, like HTML form which label it, what is your name? It knows my name, what is my email address? What is my grade? The thing that I use every single week. It should be able to figure that out and it didn't work. It had to like say, well, gee, I can't figure that out. But once you walk me through this, like, no, I don't want you to. And I never, I haven't been trying it again. It has to work. If it doesn't work, you will lose the first time that they try it and then they won't keep trying it until a couple years have passed. And now you are using the Apple thing because the Apple thing was six months later than yours. But it did work.
A
Jason, if, if Apple adapts or adopts Gemini to Siri, will they be able to make the same ecosystem promises that Google is? In other words, will they use icloud and Apple Mail? Will that be as good?
B
I mean, that's the question. Ideally they'd be using on device connected data, so it wouldn't be using icloud mail, but it would probably be using whatever email was attached to Apple Mail and whatever Calendar.
A
If it's Apple Calendar. If it's the Google Calendar that's syncing, then it's fine.
B
Right? Exactly. So I think, you know, I think that's the idea. The question is like do they let third party email or Calendar apps into the party? Or you're gonna have to re add all your data in the first party app just to get it to, to look at it and all that. But that's my guess is that it won't be because Google is all about its services. Right. Whereas Apple is all about kind of the apps running on its devices. So it would be whatever you connect. I think, I think it's funny because I'm connected to Google Calendar and Gmail, so in my case it would need to talk to Google. But I think that from Apple's perspective, it's more like we'll look at whatever email you have attached to Apple Mail or your default email client, depending on how they do it.
A
Remember that Google or sorry, Apple kind of blocked AI apps. AI developed apps in the App Store, right?
C
Well, they, they blocked the ability to use an app to build another mobile app from the App Store.
B
There's nothing, there's lots by coded apps in there.
C
I was going to say there are many, many.
A
But they blocked repl it for instance, which by the way, they've made a deal now and it's back. Yeah, but they were nervous about it. Seems to me what Apple's saying is I'm a little nervous about the idea of for instance, Gemini creating an app in your, on your phone, you Know, for you, it's kind of what Google's offering, though, is these, is these widgets and so forth. I don't know. What will it look like on an iPhone to have this? I mean, it's interesting because Google's only desktop app is on Mac. They don't have one for Windows.
D
Yeah, I think it was a technicality on banning. Excuse me, they cited the rule about, no, you can't have an app that basically, once we've approved your app, you cannot then push out another version of that app that fundamentally changes what that app does without going through another approval process. I think that they said that because you're basically creating an app that can create other code and create features that have not been approved by the App Store's approval process on that technicality, we are basically saying you have to fix this.
A
Will they do that to Google Search?
D
Don't know. I'm not. Not. Well, they can't do it to Google Search because again, they don't control the browser.
A
But Google doesn't control the browser, you're saying.
D
I'm sorry, whatever. Google. Google is putting this inside a browser container, which Apple doesn't. Doesn't control with that. But. Yeah, but you're absolutely right. I mean, the biggest fun you can have is when you're actually creating things that live inside your phone. There's a rumor, I think from Gurman that iOS27, that's one of the things that one of the most interesting features of Siri is going to be that you can simply ask Siri to create a shortcut for you and it will build the shortcut for you. That's the sort of stuff that Apple's probably going to want to reserve for itself.
A
And even she was a little perturbed by that notion, I think.
C
But it's the most obvious and should be expected thing, period. Right. I mean, honestly, like the fact that, that I'm going to criticize shortcuts here because I do like it and I use it a lot, but I was actually struggling with this yesterday. I was, as I was building a shortcut out and I went, this is the worst freaking language ever to exist. It's awful. The fact that it doesn't compile down to an actual language, so you can't even see the actual code to then write it in something that is not their terrible interface. I mean, honestly, it's the sort of thing that was built for, for AI, Right? Like, if Siri can be trusted to create those things, can your.
A
I create a shortcut now? No, my AI. Here, paste this into shortcuts.
B
Federico. You talk about Federico Vitici. He's. He's talked about it. And I believe that. That, that there will be more on this later this week on Mac Stories that he has built a tool that will use Codex or Google code or. No, Codex or Claude code, and it will generate shortcuts.
A
That would be nice.
C
Yeah, that would be nice. And I.
B
And I think it's. I think. I think he's doing it now because he's been working on a long time and he's proved that it's possible, but I think he also is doing it now, anticipating that Apple will probably be Sherlocked. You can, you can do this yourself and we don't need Federico anymore.
C
Yeah, well, and I'm sure that whatever he's building is far more advanced than what I've done, but I've done the similar thing which I assume his is. His approach was similar to mine, which was to kind of create like a compiler of sorts of basically letting it create something that is able to be generated, to then be able to be imported into shortcuts. You can put.
A
Is it like a. So shortcuts will let you import some form of.
B
There is an import format. You can have a shortcuts file. It's. They don't want you to see it.
C
They don't want you to see it. It's hard to do. But I actually, I was playing around with. With the various services, like various models, actually yesterday, looking to see where we were on that, and I was. I got back something and I was able to kind of configure my own. I'm sure that whatever he releases will be better. But no, I mean, Apple is obviously, this is a very obvious way for AI to go. If, you know, assuming that this theory can be relied on to be like, okay, I can actually use actual human language to have it create the shortcut I want, rather than going through the arduous process that exists now. I think my bigger question about the Google stuff, because obviously what they're going to show off at I O, as you pointed out, is all about their ecosystem and everything that's within their world and their purview. Apple, I don't know exactly what access they're getting to everything. They're getting the models, but there's no guarantee that all these other features are going to be things that Apple will just be able to integrate into iOS or into Siri or anything else. Right. So I think that. And I'd be very surprised If Google would just let them have access to all that stuff without any of the work, I feel like there's going to have to be a lot of work on Apple side to then say, okay, well we have access to this model and we can have it talk to the local data. To Jason's point about, however, you'll get account information in and talk to the cloud and maybe do some on device stuff. I guess it'll depend. But it'll be largely up to Apple to build any of the tooling and to use the model to do what it wants to do. Whereas I think Google is making a very clear play to say, yeah, if you stay in our ecosystem, you can do all these wonderful things on our services and those services might include our iOS apps. Right. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it includes the core iOS stuff. Just because Gemini is going to be powering Siri doesn't mean that everything else that, that Google is bringing to that broader ecosystem is stuff that Apple will be able to get.
A
I guess that's kind of what I'm asking is, is there now a tension between these partners?
C
Of course, yeah. There's always been a tension.
A
Okay.
C
I mean, there used to be a
A
lot of tension under Steve Jobs. Remember, he sued.
C
Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's
A
always been tension frenemies. More lately.
C
Well, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure that, look, big companies work, at least my experience, you have lots of different divisions of people who make different deals for different reasons. And you have some groups of people that are going to be very upset by how those partnerships work. And you have other teams that are going to be very happy that those partnerships exist because they hit different revenue parts of the business and different people get happy about those things. But no, I mean, I think that this has always been a we need to rely on your technology standpoint, but it's always been a little bit of an awkward situation. And this is true for a lot of companies that Apple has relationships with. Right. You know, have had partnerships with Amazon in the cloud and Microsoft even going back a decade, and they've done some Google Cloud too. And I'm sure that they have the Google search deal. I'm sure that Google doesn't love that a huge amount of their search revenue is incumbent upon being the default provider on iPhone. At the same time, that's also $20 billion or whatever that they pay Apple because they get more than that, you know, in aggregate. So I think there's always going to be tension between those things. And just comes down to where are those swim lanes and what do you do to differentiate? And I think that this is even more increasingly an opportunity, ironically I think for Google to kind of show we have models that other people can use to build their own ecosystems, but we have our own ecosystem too, and that's interesting.
A
Mark Gurman had a big leak yesterday and I'm kind of thinking maybe this was planted the day before Google I o to reassure the Apple faithful. He says besides having a grammar checker, company's testing a new write with Siri toggle at the top of the keyboard as well as a help me write option. But this is the key the iPhone maker. This is yesterday in Bloomberg. The iPhone maker is additionally preparing an upgraded version of Shortcuts, its app for creating time savers such as for sharing calendar availability and summarizing a PDF or automations like opening the garage door, turning on the lights. The version now in testing lets users create shortcuts simply by describing what they want them to do. A prompt, in other words. Yeah. In the updated app, users are presented with a prompt asking what do you want your shortcut to do? Along with a text field to describe the request. The system then automatically builds and installs the shortcut on the device.
B
Gurman reported a version of this a couple years ago that this was in development. I think it was more in the context of the Vision Pro, but it leads to the same place. I don't think this was a chosen planned leak. If anything, it might have been timed by Gurman to have it be like here's your answer already about some of the stuff that he knows that Apple is doing.
C
I don't know.
B
I mean you never know with big companies, but Apple is kind of a customer of, of Google and Gemini and so if the people who are supplying the Gemini tech to Apple view them that way, then I don't, I don't know how awkward it actually has to get. I think more of the concern is like what's the lag like because with AI like how what is their plan not just for WWDC and for shipping iOS 26 or 27 in the fall, but like as the models progress, when does Apple get access to that model? Is there or a model based on the new model and, and that's the stuff that they presumably been talking about. I'd actually be surprised if Apple if the people working with Gemini at Apple were surprised by anything that Google said because they're their customer and their supplier and they obviously are planning to be supplied with future Gemini models as a part of their development process. So I think this might not be too much of a shocker. The challenge though is that Gemini isn't just like one thing. And what's really going on is there's the Gemini at the core, that's the model and then there's all the connections you make to control apps and to everything else in the os. And that line is the difference between Google builds it and Apple builds it. Right. Like Apple has to build the connectivity in iOS. Google's just supplying them with that model. And that model will have capabilities, but get, but Apple will have to implement it for their customers just like Google is for, for their customers. It's not a monolith. So I would imagine that they actually talk a lot, but that, that doesn't necessarily affect the outcome of like what Apple. Apple's vision for how this stuff gets implemented in an iOS context might be very different than Google's vision for Android.
D
Yeah, and also a lot of the stuff, particularly the stuff that they showed off today is not on. A lot of the stuff is on device stuff. They made a big deal of how they've got their Nano models, the stuff that's going to run locally on device, but they're also leveraging the idea that, look, you don't have to keep your laptop on while it's working on this, this agentic stuff. We will actually create an instance for you in the cloud, so it'll be running in the background. And also it means that you can start something on your laptop and then have the widget appear or have the solutions appear to you on your phone or on your watch, like much, much later. So that's ob. It's not something that it's, it's not something that by virtue of the fact that there is common DNA between Apple's AI model and Gemini that all these features are going to go across. I mean this. We, there's still so much we don't know about what the, what the limitations of that deal are. Mostly we've. It's been described in terms of. No, it's not as though we're, it's not as though Apple is buying a shrink wrap copy of Gemini and installing the CD and, and using Gemini as their AI model. More. More like this is a company that has built this wonderful model. We want to use this as the basis of our brand new model while we build our own foundation model. So yeah, there's still a lot up in the air about. While a lot of the stuff that they were talking about today at Google was simply the difference between Gemini 3 and 3.5 and the leaps that they're making there and also the leaps that they intend to be making towards AGI in the near future. So yeah, these are all very, very relevant questions. Will Apple benefit from access to that DNA or, or is it. No. You bought like the four cylinder grocery getter car engine. We have this 12 cylinder. 12 or supercharged turbocharged one for aircraft. You don't get that because you didn't actually buy that or that's not the engine you wanted us to build for you.
A
So. All right, so I feel like that Google today showed stuff that is completely independent of either Android or iOS or any operating system. That really incense you to just live in the app or the browser. Right. Just not leave everything you want to do, including shop by the way you do in that window. And that's what I mean by la vida Google. You don't need anything else.
D
Yeah. The flip side of that though is that it means that if you have any machine with a decently modern browser browser, you can have access to all of this stuff. Remember that. This is another big difference between Apple and Google. Like was showed off again last week at the Android show where Google said, oh wow, here's this wonderful Gemini intelligence. Look how wonderful your phone will be. And then in the small print it's like, yeah, if you bought a phone like 12 months ago, it's not going to work on your phone. It's only going to be like you got to buy a phone this year or next year for it to work. Whereas we can pretty much count on Apple creating features that are going to be as device agnostic as possible. So there's the flip at this, the traditional flip of the coin where Google is trying to when it comes to software, they try to make stuff that is on as many platforms as possible because so long as more people are using something that Google has touched, they become more valuable property to Google. So it's very much in their best interest to make sure that they've got ecumenical services, which is great because we don't want to have this sort of AI divide where there are people in the room who can't afford to have their own Apple Mac Mini running openclaw. They have to basically grind through their inbox all by themselves. These people should have access to these same sort of productivity tools. They can compete on the same level. So it's okay so long as it works for everybody. It's bad when it becomes a divide between I'm sorry, you don't have a phone that will run this sort of stuff.
A
Ah, it's very interesting. I'm just really curious how Apple's going to spin what Google did today.
B
Yeah.
D
Are they going to modify the key the keynote for in the few weeks basically not. Not change it all.
A
They must wait. But they have to address some. Do you think Google, I assume they
B
know because they're the supplier, they're the client and they're supplying this that they know at least broadly what Google's doing. But is Apple capable of building on this stuff yet or is it like in process and Apple will get it later and there's all that Myst. I think how Apple sells all of this is fascinating and a point we've made here before. The Apple Google relationship thus far has been defined by like two sentences that were released jointly by Apple and Google and have been occasionally repeated by that's right, executives word for verbatim.
A
Right now I'm thinking there's.
B
So we don't know anything more than that now. So they have to say what it is.
A
They're being cagey, in other words.
C
Well, I mean it might also just be as matters. Look, there's a lot of things that I can't say, but what I can say is and I don't know how much they knew about what was going to be announced at IO or not. I'm sure that they're broadly familiar with the capabilities of the models. I also feel confident that they have looked at other past relationships that companies have signed with model providers and didn't just lock themselves into one version and whatnot and probably had a clause that said and all subsequent types of models going up to a certain amount will be accessible to us. So I'm not going to pretend like I know what features they had access to and what they don't, but I will say it, that these things change relatively quickly and the partners often don't get a ton of advance notice about what the capabilities will be when they come out and what they can build on with those things. Apple might get more than others. I don't know. I don't know if there's any reason why they necessarily would unless that the money that they were getting paid was so significant. I don't know if that would be any different from anyone else. But I mean I don't know what this. This changes again, this is. Is Google's implementation of their models and their ecosystem and whatever Apple things that
A
Apple probably would never want to do, like A command line interface or an agentic interface.
C
Well, exactly. And so, you know, whatever Apple is building and whether they think Apple would want an agentic. Yeah, I mean, I think they would, but I think that they would do it in a different way.
A
Right.
C
I think that they would abstract it more than the way that it's being abstracted. And it's kind of, you know, on, you know, on main, you know, at Google events or
A
aimed at real people though, compared to, say, Open.
C
Sure. Well, Spark is. But I'm saying some of the other stuff, like, I don't know Apple, I don't necessarily see them getting into the developer tooling space. The way that Google is that Microsoft is that Amazon is that OpenAI and Anthropic both are. I don't know, but I, I don't feel like that that would be the right abstraction for what they're doing there. But I feel like what they can do is they can take the capabilities of whatever is going to be available in these latest models and then write that into their. When we talk about their narrative about this is how we will continue. Siri will continue to add features over time, Siri will continue to get smarter over time, and they can continue to build out new integrations as that becomes available. Now, what that lag will be in terms of when the model is released and when those things can be updated up to Apple's capabilities, I don't know. This is the downside of relying on someone else's tech for part of what you're building is that you have to do that.
A
Remember what Apple said when they released, I think it was when they released itunes for Windows. They said, but the best experience will always be on Apple.
C
Yes, right.
A
And I think Google will say, well, the best experience will always be on Google. Here's a question from Victor Garcia wants to know, I pay for Gemini, but will I have to pay for Gemini when Apple rose out? Gemini? No.
B
Right.
C
No, I'm sure you will.
A
Oh, you will. I'm sure you will if you want those extra capabilities.
C
Yeah. You want the extra capabilities. I'm sure it'll be exactly last. So how much will Apple get plus now? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I assume that it'll be similar to whatever Google gives for free through the Gemini app. Now they do have a free tier. I'm assuming that it'll be, you know, some very similar to the way that the GP, the ChatGPT integration works. Now this is just my guess where if you connect it to your page, paid ChatGPT account, you can obviously do more things with it. And I imagine that there might even be potentially a rev share agreement that says if you sign up for, you know, Gemini plus or whatever through, you know, Apple, that Apple gets a cut. I have no idea. But, but I would not in any way expect all of the add on services that Google is charging $20 a month for to come to iPhone users for free just because it's part of the operating system. I mean that, that, that's insane. That's absolutely not going to.
B
I, no, it may be. There have been those reports that they're going to let users connect with different AI providers and that's probably where that factors in is like outside of whatever Apple's Siri or whatever you want to call it is, if you want to use Gemini, if you want to use stuff from OpenAI or Anthropic, they'll let you connect it in. But there will be like the base that Apple provides and that I think will be covered by you're using it Now.
A
I should mention OpenAI's according to, to TechCrunch and others considering suing Apple. I guess it was Bloomberg reported this
B
that because they're talking to lawyers who might consider to consider possibly, possibly thinking about suing them, which is the weakest.
A
They're merely saying, hey, we're a little miffed that you chose Gemini instead of OpenAI for your model.
B
But that's not the suing. The suing is we wish that 2024 WWDC announcements had gone better. To which Apple would say, yeah, us too.
A
So does everybody. Yeah, yeah.
D
I think one of the things that's been so consistent and all that shared language that Jason talked about is that Apple does not want people to think that they're interacting with Gemini. They think they want that you're interacting with an Apple product, you're interacting with the iPhone. So that's going to be buried, buried, buried hard. So I don't think that people are going to. I think there's going to be a really hard line of demarcation between hi, you are inside Apple intelligence space. When you leave Apple Intelligence space, whatever provider you use, they're going to, there's basically going to be, okay, you're now leaving, you're now leaving Apple Intelligence. Good luck with that for all these extra features. Because Apple really does have to balance this idea of they have to make sure that they're controlling the experience of their users. They have to give their users an Apple experience.
A
Is there a risk that their Users will say but I really like what
D
Google's doing and that's fine. They also have to make sure that if you like what Google's or OpenAI or Claude is doing, that they have access to that as well. But they can't allow themselves to become irrelevant in the sense that they've managed to stave off the idea of the iPhone is just the platform where you run a web browser and you run Instagram and you run your banking app and you run all these apps that are multi platform. They've managed to chase that off really, really effectively. AI is another threat to that kind of problem. If the user interface stops being Windows and menus and mouses and stops being multitouch and starts being I'm just going to speak what I want and I'll trust that it will give me what I want. Then it just becomes I've got a premium, I've got a premium phone and that's basically all, that's got all I need. I have no necessary, I don't have no, I have no attachment to emotional or technical, to this one platform. Every time I buy a new phone I will go into the Verizon store, the AT&T store and I will buy whatever has the coolest looking case. Apple has to avoid that as well. And the way they can do that is by making sure that Apple intelligence is something very, very special. And I' just wind it up by saying I think one of the smartest things that they're doing is that Google's mistake has always been that hey AI,
A
AI, hey, we know you love AI. We know that forcing us down.
D
Whereas Apple will simply say here's a cool feature.
A
Microsoft's made the same mistake and they're having to backpedal because people don't want AI forced down their throats. Front page of the Wall Street Journal this week today rather is people hate AI. They're booing them in college crowds, they're voting against AI data centers. People hate AI.
B
When I talk how Apple may get away with kind of missing the AI thing because of what they do, this is kind of what I mean is that in technology you get these waves where it's like new tech happens and it's really raw and a bunch of companies push it out because it's so exciting, but they haven't really figured out what the use case is. They just shove it out there because it's new and a lot of times that's rejected. And the more they push, the more hard the rejection is because people are like, why are you giving me this? I don't know what I'm even supposed to do with it. It's just a buzzword. And the game Apple has always played is I want to take. And this goes back like to the Apple one, right? Like, this has always been the game for 50 years of Apple, which is, we are going to take this technology and, and think about how you want to use it and wrap it in like a use case, wrap it in a feature that is a thing people want to do, a solution to a problem. And Apple has undoubtedly been so far behind and has given up in areas of AI where they're like, we're just going to use these companies that have these big models. But like, their advantage is, I think we have been in that first phase other than like the coding has kind of gotten there now, but like for consumer use. I feel like we're still in the give me better solutions to a problem. And the problem with what Apple showed in 2024 was a lot of it was like, is your problem that you want to make ugly pictures sort of based photos, you. Of people, you know, even though they were doing it and they were, and that was their mistake. So they. There's a chance that if Apple can take this stuff and having thought about it and sat in the corner with their head down for two years, they can, they can bring out things that actually are useful for people. Because I think, I think people. I think we've seen this in how people have used AI up to now. How you've got college kids who say they hate AI, but they use AI. It's like, if you can give people use cases, I think they will use it. I think what they hate is this kind of clueless pushing of stuff like Copilot and all this other stuff where you're like, but I don't want it. I didn't ask for it. What are you. Why are you shoving it at me? Because people don't like to Google that. So if you can give them what they want, they'll like it.
D
Search. Yeah.
A
Yeah.
C
Well, Siri does this. Apple Intelligence does this as well. Honestly. I mean, this is like a, this is very like fine balance. I think that all the companies are trying to, trying to find. But I agree with you. You. I think that so far it has not necessarily worked. And ironically, the services that have worked is when you go to those applications direct, directly. Like if you're actually using cloud code, if you're using Codex, if you're using, you know, the Gemini app, You get a better experience than sometimes if you're using these other services. And that's, that's the challenge. I think that a lot of these different labs have, because they have all these different services, they all act in different ways. And all these companies, to Jason's point, you know, two years ago were all about, well, we're just going to push this all on you. There's now kind of a little bit of a retreat because people realize, well, no, we actually want this to be useful. So I think whatever Apple shows off and however Siri is going to work and whatever their future of however AI is going to be integrated throughout their operating system works, it needs to be useful. The shortcuts thing, I think, is actually a great example if that will work as it's designed. That is exactly the sort of thing you should be doing with large language models, is making it easy for people to create these sorts of automations without having to go through the convoluted process that has existed now. I think that's exactly the sort of thing that Apple could do where you could say, hey, you know, write me something that will, you know, make sure that I get an alert every time, you know, the garage door, you know, is left open after X, you know, period of time or whatever, or, you know, let me know if, you know, somebody, you know, knocks on the door between this hour and this hour. Like, there are things that would be fantastic for regular users who might not have ever wanted to get into that space before that could really be unlocked, but I don't want to see the same way. I don't want to see the copilot button everywhere in Word. I don't want to see it in Apple Mail. I don't want to see it in my text messages and saying, oh, we can help you with these writing suggestions. A, no, you can't, and B, you're getting in my way and you're actually actively impeding what I'm trying to accomplish.
D
Yeah, work Google Workspace does that every time I'll open up a document and it will open up a sidebar that I will never ever use.
A
Yeah.
D
And there are like at least four or five places for Gemini in there where again, including a floating button at the bottom that obscures something at the very, very bottom.
A
Yeah, so annoying. I Google did little. At least I thought it was a little shot at apple on the IO stage today where they kind of showed a Genmoji like capability, only it looked so much better. Yeah, we got Image Playground. What about it? All right. We're going to take a little break. More to come. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Christina Warren, Andy Inocco, Jason Snell, glad to have you here. Our show today, brought to you by Webroot. This is a problem I think everybody goes through at some point. Your computer starts to feel a little sluggish. It starts to heat up. You open a few tabs and you almost can hear the gears grinding. It sounds like it's preparing for liftoff. May not be the hardware, it may well be the antivirus you're running. Many big name brands have become bulky, complicated and full of pop ups and upsells. And honestly, I think it's our industry that's somewhat to blame because, you know, PC magazine, all the magazines started doing it where we'd have those charts with all the features. And the antivirus company said, we gotta get the check boxes there. You're not gonna buy us. And so they got bigger and bigger and bigger and more bloated. And I love this about Webroot. They never did that. That Webroot offers all in one digital protection for up to 10 devices, by the way, and a variety of plans designed to protect you and your loved ones from digital threats. You get, of course, powerful antivirus, but you also get identity protection. And what you don't get is the slowdowns, the pop ups, the upsells. Webroot keeps you protected online without getting in your way. And I'll give you some numbers. Webroot Essentials scans six times faster and takes up to 33 times less space than the average competitor. It ranks number one in performance compared to the two big guys, Norton and McAfee. In fact, I'll give you some real Numbers. Webroot Essentials vs. Norton. Scans 3.7 times faster, installs 35 times smaller, uses 5 times less RAM when idle. How about McAfee? Webroot Essentials scans 10 times faster, installs 16 times smaller, uses 5 times less ram when idle. That's the kind of difference that can make your computer feel newer, faster and easier to use. They do have a fabulous in fact, you're seeing if you're watching the video, the grid of all the things they offer. They do have something called Webroot Total Protection for a very fair price. You get antivirus, identity monitoring, privacy protection, you even get cloud backup all in one simple hassle. Free subscription designed for everyday life. And it is still lighter than anybody else. Webroot Total Protection ranked first overall when compared to top competitors. It scans seven times faster than the average competitor takes up three times less space than the average competitor. And of course you know we're talking about AI. Everything's changed in cybersecurity thanks to AI. The scams are better, the malware's faster, the phishing emails look real. The good news is you don't need to be a tech expert to stay ahead of it when you use security that can keep up with these AI threats. Unlike the free antivirus tools or older security programs that never hurt watch AI Webroot is built to counter modern AI driven attacks. It's fast, it's lightweight, and it's designed to spot threats before they ever reach you. Live a better digital life with Webroot. Webroot is offering our listeners an exclusive 60% off offer. Visit webroot.com twit to learn more. That's webroot.com twit we thank them so much for their support of Mac Break Weekly. Actually, a story from Aaron Tilly writing for the Information last Wednesday, saying Apple is exploring ways to incorporate AI agents into its App Store. Now, they don't presumably plan to do AI agents themselves, but they're trying to figure out how you could have an App Store supported AI agent that would be more secure. And the information said details couldn't be learned, but staffers are designing a system to adhere to Apple's standards of privacy and security and prevent some of the more freewheeling behavior like openclaw, where agents can go haywire and delete things and stuff like that. We will see the information says next month and we now know June 8th for WWDC's keynote, which we will cover. Apple is widely expected to make a full throated AI push. Unknown whether it will announce the agent integration with the App Store at the event. You know, this is unclear. Clearly Apple has to pay attention to these trends.
D
Yeah, they have to integrate that into the storytelling. The wwdc, the keynote this year is going to be so critical that they get the storytelling correct that they say this is the next chapter of the saga, that here is where we're going, here is where our master plan is and here is what we think is important and here are things by not mentioning them that we think we can leave aside right now. And yeah, they're going to have to address the idea of boy Agentix stuff is about two years in the future where regular users are going to want to trust it and use it, but it's going to be the same sort of thing that we were into a couple of years ago with AI we, where people are using it and people who aren't people are going to start to notice, why were you able to do that so quickly? And why do you have this artwork on your stuff that's so relevant? And then they're going to want to actually have access to those same tools. And then when they find out that, if they find out that, well, my phone can't do that, my operating system can't do that, my notebook can't do that, they're going to ask, well, is there a phone or notebook or operating system that can do those things? Because I don't want to spend 45 minutes every morning summarizing and planning out my day. I want to basically have this waiting for me in my inbox. I want to be able to go into WhatsApp and simply ask a message to an agent and simply say, prepare A, B and C for me and get a reply back in the same communications channel. And I've done that during the walk from my car to my office. Apple has to match that.
A
Here's something Apple should do. But Rui Karno in the Dao of Mac blog, which he's been doing for decades, says they probably never will do. He wants a Siri for families. He says, why Siri should have the ability to understand my family as a unit. Incidentally, Google doubled down on exactly that kind of collective knowledge today at Google IO. Do you think that this is something, do you think Rui's right that it's never going to happen?
C
I think this has always been the tension that Apple has always had when it comes to cloud services.
A
Privacy.
C
Yeah, well, exactly. Well, I mean, I think that, I'm going to be honest, I think that they've presented it as privacy when in actuality it's maybe been about either their own interest or their own capabilities when it comes to being able to provide these sorts of higher level services. And the privacy became a really, really good way of marketing and telling a story around things that might have just been about okay, you know, in the pre modern AI days it would have been, you know, machine learning. Maybe their machine learning prowess wasn't. It was not as good as Google's. Right. And so there were fewer things that Apple could do, but instead they could say, oh, but our data is going to be. Your data is secure on our, on our devices and our servers. And so that becomes the difficult thing of like, how do you thread that needle? How do you go from having at this point decades of building out that message to then wanting to say okay, but we can now holistically know more about your family and we can know more holistically about the people that you want to interact with, because those two things, in my opinion, are incompatible. And I think that it would be very difficult to. Maybe you do agree to opt in for certain members of a family, but maybe there are some things you don't want people to know about, and that becomes a difficult thing too. So I think I do agree with him insofar as I don't know if this would be a thing that they could lean into it happening just because I think it goes against a lot of the core tenets that Apple has pushed out for, again, like the last, like 15 years since the existence of icloud that, you know, our. Your information is private and is kind of siloed, and there are downsides that go along with that.
A
Carnot writes, Apple doesn't think of families as a product category. They think of them as a collection of individual customers who happen to share a payment method. Every design decision reflects this. IPads are still single user devices devices icloud storage is pooled, but grudgingly and shared files live in a sort of no man's land. App purchases are shared grudgingly in a submenu of a submenu. Family sharing is an afterthought, not a platform. He says. The only thing that Apple seems to care about after imessage is that we can share what we're watching on Apple tv, which has been relevant in our family for exactly zero minutes since the feature launched. Is Rui right? Right. Does Apple not care? I don't know. Seems like this would be a great product category for the maybe.
B
I don't know.
C
I don't know if I would want this. Would any of you want it? Because I'm going to be honest with you, I don't know if I necessarily want that sort of sharing. I mean, granted, I don't have small kids, and so maybe that changes things. If you have small kids, there's a
A
brief period of time with children. I don't want that where you would want that. But I have to admit, Lisa turned off. She said, no, I want my own Apple account. I don't want your Apple, damn it.
C
Right? I mean, I have an Apple family account and my parents are on it as a way to save them money for their icloud backups, basically because I pay for it. My husband's not on my family plan, and it's not because we don't trust one another. It's Just that's just not how our world works and it never has. So I think that. But I think it comes down to what you come up on, right? Because I think if you maybe come up in the Google ecosystem where it is different and you do have these idea of, you know, like child accounts and you know, kind of carrying things on, maybe able to share more seamlessly, maybe that makes more sense to you and that's great. I don't know. I think it, I think it's it for me. It would be, I would be angry if that sort of thing changed, right? Or at least if it changed without giving me the option to keep them in these, you know, accounts that exist right now. Where it's like, okay, you're people who might not even live in the same household who have a shared payment plan, which for, for me is completely fine if what we're doing is subsidizing, basically saying we're going to have, you know, five users on a plan who are sharing the $45 a month that one of the users pays me for the icloud storage and everybody gets access to Apple music, great.
D
But I don't know, it's a very hard problem because even without technology there's information that people in the family are okay with flowing from one member of the family to the other. There are cliques within the family. If you've got more than one kid and there's stuff that, no, there's no way I want anybody to know about this. I'm still kind of working out like this experience. And so if they decide to create an Apple entity known as the family, how do they create those blobs of security and privacy? It's a non trivial problem. That said, multi users is a really, really, really multi user is necessary.
C
Multi user. I think on iPad especially that I would love to see.
A
Apple's always been bad about that. Why is it said? Well, I don't understand that.
B
I think, I think there is a philosophy at Apple which is if you would like to have two people use an iPad, buy two iPads, and I understand it on a level as a company that's selling hardware, but there are contexts, right? And the fact is I've had, I've had friends who've tried to build apps to do this. My friend Casey List built an app that was basically you got to select what photos were going to be visible in an app app that you then show to people so that they can look at photos so that they can't look at your whole photo library. Right. Because like Apple, there are contexts where you want to shut it down a little bit or, or put it in a safe mode or put it in a limited mode and it's hard to do that. I don't know why. I think there's a cultural issue there. Some of it is the one to one hardware idea. Some of it is, I think you've got people who maybe don't have, have especially kids and are not, they're, they're young enough that they're just sort of like solo operators or maybe they've got a significant other, but maybe they're coming and going and, and so they're just not thinking of themselves as individual operators. And although the managers who are higher up may think differently about it, I do, I do think sometimes that happens. The fact that it took photos like 10 years to do any sort of family sharing.
C
Yep.
B
And when they did it, it was engineered smartly to try to understand the idea that you may have personal photos as well as a shared pool with your family members. And they did a decent job at it, given that they didn't, what they didn't want is like a fire hose where you're either in or you're out and you share everything or nothing. Like, my daughter is on our shared family library, but she doesn't share any of her photos with us. Right. But she can get access to the ones when she was a kid and stuff and that's fine. So. So like they just don't do it. I think just culturally they are not, for whatever reason thinking about what do you want digitally that's shared and that's not with a family group. They like icloud families. Look, there are things about it that I really like. I like that my mom can be on my family group and so she can get that icloud backup. And I like that when I buy an app that has an in app purchase that can be shared or I buy an app that can be shared, that that means my wife doesn't need to buy it again. Like, I like that. I think that's good. I think. And it doesn't mean she has to do it that way, but she can do it that way. And they do keep track of your purchases separately. Even in a family you can see which ones you bought versus what other people bought. But like, I don't know, I just come back to the fact that I think they, they add stuff after the fact and that says something about how they don't bake it in because they're not thinking about it?
A
Is it a cultural issue? Is Turnisk maybe gonna fix this?
B
I think most of it boils. And I'd like to be wrong, I'd like to be proven wrong. But, like, my gut feeling about this is what I say about a lot of this stuff. It goes to, like, Apple Maps and all sorts of other stuff, which is who's making Apple software and who's making the decisions. And the fact is, it's a lot of relatively young, relatively single people in Silicon Valley who make a lot of money. And their bosses are a little bit older, and they do have some families, but they also make a lot of money and they live in Silicon Valley. And I think, you know, whether it's, oh, it gets cold here, or, oh, the metadata in this other part of the world is not the same, or you made an assumption about California. And I'm, I'm a Californian, so I get it. But, like, it is, I think it comes down to that a lot of the time is that one of Apple's blind spots is that they have struggled to think of a world larger themselves than themselves. And part of it, I think, is that in the classic, Apple is all about, remember Steve Jobs, the classic line was that he never did a focus group right. They just chose what they thought was right. And I think that there was a time when Apple was a size and had the reach and filled an ecological niche and an economic niche where they could afford to do that because they were a niche product and they were charting their own course. So many of their products are so huge and they reach such a broad audience that I'm not sure you can do that, navigate that way anymore, because your lived experience is probably not a good enough match for your customers. And I've seen areas where they've learned that lesson over the last two decades or a decade and a half. But I think it's an ongoing challenge for them culturally, to start thinking about, like, it's not necessarily a crime to do research about your customers. It's not necessarily, you know, going to a focus group instead of choosing what's right to do research and understand how people use your products. But I do think that maybe there's some. It's just. It's just a feeling based on what I've observed, but I think there maybe is a cultural pushback. Cultural, not individual. Right. It's not the individuals involved. You could probably talk to them and they'd all agree with this, that, like, yeah, yeah, it's very important that we understand. But, like, culturally, there's still this. We don't do focus groups. We don't listen to other people. We just make a decision. And if that's in your culture, it makes it hard sometimes to step outside yourself and think of other use cases.
D
Yeah. I also think that iPad is iPad. MacOS is macOS is a very, very hard line dogma. They're starting to break free from that by making the use cases blur a little bit. But for years and years and years, that was no, why would we ever do that? That would be like a Mac sort of thing thing. So I do think that that's another thing. But I think you're absolutely right. That's a classic thing in all technology where engineers tend to solve problems that they can see in front of them. And so you're limited by the sort of problems that an engineer making six to mid six figures in Silicon Valley tends to have. You get a lot of people who are like, how do I have a problem where I've got so many pairs of sneakers and I can't really match the laces to this? Well, okay, that's a solution. Actually what I want the solution to be is the, that I can only afford X amount of dollars and X amount of time to pick up my eight kids. The eight kids, my family, the family next to each other. How do we basically solve these transportation issues? It's like that's the problem that doesn't get solved.
A
Yeah, we were to actually, when we were doing the keynote today with Micah Sargent and Jeff Jarvis, we both, all of us noted that Silicon Valley has a culture, lives in a cultural bubble. I mean, they're talking about, about, you know, the appointments they're making and my dog has to go to the doggy daycare because we're going. And it's like, this is not the world most people live in.
B
Yeah.
A
And it really harms Silicon Valley because they're making products for themselves, but not for the mass majority of users.
B
Now you can step outside that. Like, I mean, these companies do have offices all over the world, although they tend to be in urban areas. And so you're going to get a certain kind of professional either way. But whether it's a Silicon Valley bubble or individual bubbles or whatever, I do think that one of the things, like I said, I don't think these companies when they weren't this big had to deal with this. I think Apple used to navigate on its own, kind of like do what's right and that that worked for them. But I'll give you a really simple Kind of dumb example of how this bites you, which is when they did AirPods and AirPods Pro, they, I believe the story is basically they looked at the shapes of the ears of the people who worked at Apple and they tested it on people who worked at Apple about how do they feel? And when they came out with, I forget, maybe it was the first AirPods Pro, they told me, oh, it turns out we needed to measure more ears because our original AirPods didn't fit as well as we thought they would because our group of ears was not representative of the range of ear shapes in the world. And when the AirPods Pro 2 came out, they told this story to me again and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we said that about AirPods Pro, but we, we really needed even more data to make this shape fit a wider range of ears better. And that's, that's a great example where they got a lesson because they built hardware and you can't update hardware later. And people were like, I can't use this product because it doesn't fit my ears. And they learned we were being a little too insular with something as dumb as, like, I mean dumb, but also super important that if you're going to make earbuds, they better fit. And if everybody you work with says they fit, that doesn't mean they fit. It means they fit people who work at Apple. And I think that's all of these companies as they've gotten larger. This is the struggle. I think it's a struggle for everybody, not just Apple, but it is a struggle, which is you don't want to do everything by, you know, a poll. But at the same time, you do need to have a culture of understanding who your audience is, who your customers are and how their needs are much broader. Which is why I want to differentiate between like a focus group and market research, because those are, those can be different. And understanding your, who your customers are and what their lives are like, like is important. All you have to look is at. I think the best example of the disconnect is commercials for AI, TV commercials for AI, all of which use examples that are, are nonsense. Or you could say like the, that Apple intelligence thing at 2024 WWDC where they did the I wonder what breed this dog is. The owner is standing right here, but I'm going to ignore them and take a picture and ask it's like.
A
Or look out the window and say, I wonder what the weather's like.
B
Siri. Yeah, they're ginned up examples that don't really make sense because they haven't thought it through. So I just, I think it's a really interesting subject because I think this is one of those areas where like some of the most powerful companies in the world still kind of have some boxes they could check to make their stuff better.
A
Well, we're moving the wrong direction. We're eliminating diversity. We're eliminating inclusion boards. Boardrooms are becoming increasingly white male, not the other way.
B
I would argue the building of AI models leads to a lot of homogeneity of out right which means it gives you an answer. And that answer is based on an average and it doesn't necessarily actually fit what the real answer is.
A
So I understand why the kids are booing at these college commencements. I really do. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. I feel very privileged and fortunate. We've grown up in an era where there was some opportunity. Yeah.
D
And one of the major problems with AI is that we're all going to whatever the ecological effects are going to be, we're all going to suffer them planet wide. But not everybody in the planet is going to get the benefits of AI and those are the sort of things that cause trouble when it's really, really great. That wow, I've got 100, $150 million company and I've made it much more valuable because I'm using AI tools that I've been able to retool my company to use AI and now basically we're even wealthier than ever.
A
That's great.
D
But again, there are people in this country that are not going to benefit from that whatsoever. But they're still going to have problems with power shortages that regionally are still going to have problems with water and other shortages. It's not an either or proposition. But. But the thing is the benefits get distributed very, very indiscriminately and unfairly.
A
Yep. I just learned that 50% of the American population can't make enough to pay for food, rent, clothing and medical that they're underwater. Suddenly 25% of buy now pay later loans are for groceries. 25% last year months.
D
And there can be solutions to figure out. How do we redistribute food that is not being sent to the correct communities? There is food deserts in which even if you had the money to pay for groceries, how do you get to the place where you buy the groceries? You have to go to a convenience store because there's no supermarket nearby. We'll get into the long harangue, but those are the Solutions that we hope that AI and other technologies will step up to try to solve. But unfortunately that's not the sort of thing that gets people excited.
A
Looks like they're going the other way, to be honest with you. The rich get richer. We're going to take a little break. This is Mac Break Weekly. You're watching and we're glad you are with Andy Inocco. Communist, living in the library. Proud pinko red diaper baby, Christina Warren. She works for a small little firm called GitHub. And you know what? God bless them. God bless him. I love GitHub. When is the conference coming up? Is it soon?
C
Well, so Microsoft Build is in two weeks and we will have a presence there. So that's going to be in San Francisco on January or June 1st through 3rd or 2nd and 3rd, I think is when it is. And then GitHub universe is in October. That's our big conference. But yeah, but we'll be at Microsoft build in two weeks.
A
Good, because I want my GitHub badge again. I missed it last year.
C
Yeah, we'll make sure we get you
A
one because Christina wasn't working there.
C
I wasn't there, but I'm back so I'll make sure to get you one.
A
I have a whole series of GitHub badges. I love them. Also, Jason Snell from sixcolors.com what are people all up in arms about about these days at Six Colors and arms?
B
There are very few pitchforks and torches right now.
A
Serene space.
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Everybody just writing for wwdc, right? This is the calm before.
A
This is when we get the always hard to do shows in these, you know, last few weeks before the big conference. But I have to say I'm glad Google did IE today because it gave us a lot of grist for the mill. A lot of stuff to think about and how is. And I'm sure Apple, Apple is really thinking hard about this at this point. It made me wonder, you know, maybe people should just be buying chromebooks instead of MacBooks. Do you think Apple's threatened to buy this? You can get a Chromebook for half the price of a Neo.
D
Probably not, because a MacBook is not a Chromebook. I love Chromebooks. One of my favorite laptops of all time has been a Chromebook. But Chromebooks are a very, very separate thing. It's going to be. Google really stepped on a rake when they introduced the Google Book last week without really telling people. This is just a sneak preview. We're not actually showing you the whole thing yet.
A
I Bet it slowed down sales.
D
I mean it looked lame, it looked stupid, it looked like, well great, you've got Android and a laptop, so what else are you going to show me? And no idea of what the price is going to be. So that they did say they're going for sort of a premium sort of build, premium sort of processor. So we're not talking about $300 laptops, but if they can create a $500 premium notebook that is super thin, super light, has more battery life than a Neo, can arguably be more useful day to day than a NEO with its 1 1/2 USB ports, that could be an interesting head to head. But again, we're not going to know until the fall.
C
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B
tomorrow morning is knocking.
C
Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink?
A
Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe?
C
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A
See? Let's talk about iOS 27. Here it comes. We'll see it for the first time on June 8th at WWDC. Ryan Christoffel writing at 9 to 5 Mac iOS 27's new design leak sounds a lot about what I've been wanting most. This comes from Gurman, by the way. Gurman's Sunday piece. The only thing I could deduce from it was this weird oh, Siri might be able to delete messages which, which didn't seem like a feature I really was looking for.
B
Well, I think he's, he's thinking of like, what's the chatbot interface going to be like? And, and is it going to be more like, yeah, you're right. I mean it's, it's about what details he happened to get and that, that's one that they're going to be a default auto delete and then you can set it for different things. But I think he's just trying to iterate on that same idea that they're, they're essentially out of the dynamic island, actually, which is kind of interesting. And with a gesture they're building a Siri interface that can also be, be more Chatbot like, because people seem to like that and you know, I having a Siri chat history with like they should have done that a long time ago. The AI thing is the thing that finally got them there. But you're starting to see like the dynamic island detail I think is kind of fascinating because you know, you're, you're seeing how does Apple build this kind of assistant tech into its existing interface on the iPhone. The idea that it might be kind of finally a merge between Siri and Spotlight, which I think is really welcome in the sense that right now where you depending on where you type, you get completely different responses. And why is that? So like it's all going to be in the details. And German, you know, as good as a reporter as he is, does not have all the details and we're gonna have to wait for the, the actual event to, to get all of that. But like they're obviously, according to him doing the work to try to build a better experience. That is like Siri all was used to be so abstract and I. To make this new experience be a feature that you can get to and you can look at and you can control like an app. And like yeah, that's. I don't know why it took this long, but yeah, that's a good idea.
A
Yeah. He says the image playground has been completely redesigned.
C
Yippee.
D
It would almost, it would almost have to be.
A
Apple's adding a new describe a change option to easily edit an image after it's created. And again in the prompt in text, upgraded models to make the images created with the app more lifelike. They couldn't be less lifelike, so I guess more is good. The weather app will have a new conditions section on the main page. More in depth data for things like rain and wind. You know, that is one thing that grapes me a little bit. They bought Dark sky, shut it down, and yet didn't incorporate any of its good stuff into Apple Web weather.
B
Well, I mean a lot of that is in there. The precipitation forecasts are right out of Dark sky and they're using Dark Sky's API and that API is now the Apple Weather API. So I mean a lot of dark. It's not Dark sky because, you know, again, Dark sky was a niche weather app for people who cared about the details. And Apple Weather is never going to be that. But the Dark Sky API is also now whatever weather kit and people can get that and use that. And it's basically the same sort of stuff. It's not.
A
It did create a very Fertile ecosystem.
B
The weather app's better because of it. Yeah, the weather app is better.
A
The radar and all that stuff.
B
Some of that's in there. I mean it's in there, you got to find it.
C
But yeah, yeah, it's just buried a little bit more. I think, I think that it's just. But to Jason's point, I mean, it's the weather app for everyone. It's not just for the, for the weather nerds.
D
So that, that's weather.
A
Everybody's a weather nerd.
C
Not. But, but I mean, but you have different expectations if you've purchased an app like Dark sky and you open and you use that, versus my mom, who's just gonna want to see what the forecast is. Right. Like, I think that, that, that's the, the line you have to balance and I think they've done an okay job with it. I'm glad that Acme Weather is now, you know, an app again from that team so that you can have those things. And I was glad that they kept Weatherkit around, although I was upset that they shut down the Dark Sky API the way that they did that. But, but other people were able to kind of pop in and come up with drop in replacements. But yeah, I mean, we'll see what they're going to do. It is interesting to see how some of the lead weeks are kind of trickling out. I think Jason made a point, was it last week that like a lot of Gurman's, you know, sources seem to be designers. And so a lot of these things do seem to be in some ways kind of, you know, like reinforcing, you know, like oh no, but like, but this, you know, interface that everybody hates, you hate it because you're uncultured. But we're going to fix some basic things that should have always been fixed. And look, I'm a big liquid glass hater on macOS, ambivalent about it on iOS to be honest. But if they can do something. Where I do have an issue is there are very real, I would argue accessibility problems with the way that, especially the way some of the tabbing works and being able to see through certain things, like it just, it wasn't thought through correctly. And if you don't have perfect vision or if you don't have the right type of background match with what you're trying to do, it isn't always very legible. They can fix some of that stuff. Stuff. Yay.
A
So among other things, Google announced in the new Android and they showed it today, which I really liked Is Rambler. Andy, what is Rambler? Well, it's good for people like me, let's put it that way.
D
Well, it's a piece of game tech. Well, not game technology, but it's based on. Here's what it is. And I'm actually interested.
A
He's rambling right now, folks. He's demonstrating Rambler.
D
Exactly. So what? You know, because sometimes you, you talk, you say, oh, wait, no, that's not Tuesday. That happens on Wednesday. It will basically figure out, okay, he's basically, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to put all that in there. I'm going to make it so that he just already always said Tuesday. It smooths out a lot of the things that when you're speaking because we
A
don't bother to speak in perfect sentences and you know, so that's, I hope Apple takes that part.
D
Yeah. And that's going to be part of gboard. The. Which is, which is be going to.
A
To be.
D
That's bad news for Apple because people,
A
there's, you're talking about the Google keyboard
D
on, sorry, the Google keyboard on Android because there's some, there's some problems that it doesn't cause people to revolt immediately. It's just that little things keep building and building and building. And I've never seen is Apple keyboard
A
on the iPhone getting worse? It seems like it's getting worse.
D
It's hard for me to use. I don't. And that's not even talking about the lack of features in it. I mean, it's not terribly accurate. But the thing is like, I, I have to go from other people's comments because obviously I'm using an iPhone maybe like a half hour a day. Sometimes I'll be using it like for three or four hours at a shot. I'm not using it each and every day for all my interactions, but I do notice that. So I don't know if it's because my Android keyboard just knows me much
A
better, but there's so much going downhill.
D
Yeah, that's what people keep saying because of bugs or because of. It's just not as good.
A
The prediction isn't as good. And it misunderstands my typ. Am I wrong, Jason? Is that.
B
No, I, I, I ended up resetting my keyboard dictionary because. Which you can do you actually have to go under. It's under the reset menu and erase menu. So you're like, no, no, it couldn't be. But that's actually where it is. And it wipes out your dictionary, which Means it starts from scratch and it doesn't know you. But, like, I was getting such weird responses that I decided I would do that. I don't know if it's actually helped at all, but I think they. I think, you know, I don't know what's going on there. They switched to that transformer model. It was supposed to be better. Sometimes it's better. Sometimes it's where I find myself a lot, especially on the iPad. I find myself typing things that absolutely can't be anything else but what I intended. And the Apple's response is like, I guess you mean this thing that's not a word. And it's like, it's so close to the actual word, you can see where my fingerprints were when I wrote. Wrote it. Why would you not suggest that as the word I'm writing there? And it happens all the time. So I. I just. I don't understand what they're doing.
A
It also bugs me that you can't do swipe on the iPad.
B
That also bugs me. Right. You can do it on the iPhone on the small keyboard, but they don't do it on the big.
A
I have to type it like a. Like a caveman.
B
Sometimes I'm, like, drinking tea, sitting in bed in the morning, I'm drinking tea, and I got my other hand and I have to type something in. And I'm like, guys, be one letter at a time. And it's like, I could just swipe it, but it's not there. I don't know. I. I like. Like, I'm just reduced to. Maybe next year it'll be better. Like, that's all I can say about it, is it's not great.
A
So where do I go? I go to General Reset.
B
Yeah. Scary.
A
That is really scary.
C
I was gonna say. I was gonna ask you about this, Jason.
B
Yeah.
A
And then what? Reset or erase all contents and settings.
B
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There should be a dictionary or keyboard setting in here.
A
Here's one that says transfer to Android. Maybe I'll just do that.
B
You could do that. That would be another way to go if you want to do that.
A
So should I go to keyboard? Maybe the reset's there. No.
B
General transfer or reset iPhone. Oh, no, maybe it's not there. General erase all content and settings. Nope, that's not it.
A
They moved it again.
B
Where is it? Yeah, because it's down in one of those. In one of those settings.
A
It's not in where you would expect. At the keybo.
B
That's where it used to be. Where'd they move it? Apple, Come on. Well, so much for that tip,
A
Apple.
B
I know it's reset. You have to tap reset.
A
And then not only is it scary
B
the reset, you get the reset. Network settings, which is really great if you're having weird network behavior.
A
Like, that's a good one to know.
C
Reset. Keyboard. Dictionary.
B
Dictionary is in there.
A
So. So it's reset the button. Reset is really a set of all
C
the things of all the other buttons.
B
That is horrible.
C
Ui super scary. Yeah, but that this is.
A
Plus it'd be very easy to hit the wrong.
C
It would. And this is so unlike Apple. Like, this is. They've only used. They use this UI pattern a few places, but not many. So. But you're not used to seeing another list that way. I'm going to ask you, Jason, because I've seen this tip that other people have given too, and I haven't done it. Do you think it made a difference or not? Because I however many years, this goes back with my dictionary and it's obviously not great, but I also don't want to have to have it relearn very specific words that I type all the time.
B
I mean, if you type it all the time, it'll come back. It really is like, if you are just at wit's end, I would say give it a try. I felt like it couldn't get worse, so I just reset it.
C
What about names? Is it still like, if someone's in your contact list, does it reset that too? Because that's the thing.
B
The contact list is still there and it's. It still uses that as info. So it will still. If there's a last name you're trying to type and it's in your contacts, it'll know that that's probably what you're trying to type. I don't recommend this necessarily for everybody, but if you're like, you're at wit's end and you're like, I can't stand it. Give it a try. And if it is. If you will lose that training. But like, if there's a word you type all the time, you'll type it a couple of times and say, no, that's what I mean. And it'll learn it again and that'll be okay.
A
Okay. It's not a panacea, but all the time. Safari's getting a new start page with four tabs across the top to easily move between favorites, bookmarks, a reading list of saved articles, and browsing history. Okay, what else? Apple's tweaking the tab Bar across the bottom of several. This is all minor.
C
Yeah.
A
This is all. Clearly Mark is going to his design friends. Hey, give me. I got to write a couple column.
D
Safari needs a revolution.
C
Yeah, I was going to say there's so many things would have to be changed for me to actually get excited about Safari updates one way or another.
D
Right.
C
Which isn't even necessarily a criticism. I mean, I have lots of criticisms, but I'm mostly satisfied with it. So, yay, new bot.
A
So here's you use Safari then, not as your browser on your iPhone.
C
Oh, no, I use Safari.
A
Yeah. Because we know that at least, at least in the US if you use Chrome or something else, it's still web under the hood, it's still Safari, it's just a different UI. But isn't that changing thanks to the EU or not in the U.S. not
B
in the U.S. not in the U.S. and in the EU. Right. That's theoretically possible, but it's not actually happening.
C
I was going to say no, because, I mean, it takes a lot of work.
A
Google said what, they want us to write a whole new version of Firefox for the iPhone Phone in the eu?
B
In the eu. Yeah. I think, I think everybody else who's got a browser was like, it's not really plausible for us to just do this for the eu.
A
They could, but they're just not.
C
They could, but. But this is sort of the problem with these sorts of things is that, like, the, the EU gets very excited and they're like, look at how important we are. And then the rest of the world goes, actually, no, we're not going to do this just for you.
A
Yeah, you're not that important to us.
D
But, but the, the desktop versions of. Between Chrome and. Actually between Safari and pretty much anything else, it's like, it's like going from black and white to Technicolor.
C
Oh, yeah. To be clear, I don't mind safari on. On iOS. Right.
A
Right. What do you. Okay, this is a good time to pull our fabulous panel.
B
Amazing.
A
What do you. What is your desktop browser, Christina?
C
I'm, I'm. I'm on Chrome. I mean, or Chrome Chromium variant. It depends. I mean, sometimes I use the Helium browser. I liked Arc a lot, but no, I'm. I'm a Chrome person. I miss Ark too. I'm a Chrome person. And I was a Safari Die Hard until about eight years ago. And then I just got to the point where I went, why am I torturing myself? Why am I having a lesser, worse experience? Just because I felt like maybe their adherence to certain types of standards was better and it wasn't. And the battery life argument that people used to make Chrome is actually more efficient in a lot of ways. Same is also true for some of the RAM usage stuff. So like, no, I'm, I'm a Chrome person, for better or worse and it's not even my favorite browser. There are a lot of things I like about what Firefox does better, but for rendering things the way that they need to be rendered, sometimes Chrome's faster than. It's just Chrome.
A
It's so much faster. How about you, Andy? What's your default browser on this?
D
Absolutely Chrome. And for the first reason why it was Chrome was because I do want, I did want to have cross platform bookmark syncing. And so I was at the time I was willing to take the hit for weaker battery Life on my MacBook and my iPad and stuff like. But now, like Christina said, they've really, they knew that that was a problem and they have pretty much addressed it at this point. So I don't really see that much of a difference. But on top of everything else, it's just simply. I'm looking, I'm. I've got a Chrome window right in front of me right now and I've got. Recently they added vertical tabs. So now instead of. So now I have that entire section of my window back and to the very, very left of the window there is a tiny little strip of like mini icons showing me because I go right from one app where one document or one feature to the other as much, much cleaner. It's got split views just like it basically stole a lot of really great ideas from arc and the number of times where I'm writing a show doc in Google Docs and I basically can basically have one full screen experience in which I don't have to worry about. Yes, I can have two windows side by side, but then I have to manage the gap between the two of them. So many nice little productivity features that just make it a much more comfortable place to be. It is a very modern, modern browser, just like other competitors to Safari are modern browsers. Whereas Safari is like, wow, it's good for what it is. But what it is is a very 2017, 2018 view of how we use the web.
A
All right, Jason, convince me to use Safari.
B
Every time I open Chrome up, I feel a little bit sick.
C
Me too.
A
I don't want to use Chrome.
B
I mean, I have the advantage of being only on Apple's platform. So the bookmark syncing and everything else works really for me. I just, I don't see why I would use Chrome. I, every time I use it I hate it and I want to use Safari and I go back to Safari. I have used, I've tried some of the alternative browsers. I don't like them. I heard somebody saying the other day about, about how interesting the side tabs feature is.
A
Like no, you can do left tabs now.
B
I just don't, I just can't. I'm sorry. I just, I find Safari to be fast and, and useful and I hate it when I have to. And I will say this about it. I don't understand why there is a whole raft of features, especially video conferencing features that Apple refuses to put in WebKit or Safari. I don't understand. It's been for years now. There are all of these fairly, I mean they used to be cutting edge audio ones, now there's fairly cutting edge video ones. They all work on Chrome and Chromium browsers. They use web standard and when you talk to Apple they look like you don't, they don't even know what you're talking about. They've never really supported the web RTC stuff for real time communication. And as a result I do use Chrome because if I want to record in any of the podcast recording apps that are web based I'm using Restream and I have to use Chrome. Yeah, have to use Chrome. So that's on Apple. Like I don't and that's always the risk with this. It's like if Apple just decides it's not going to support something, it makes Safari less interesting. But that said, every time I go over to Chrome I'm like how quickly can I quit this app because I don't particularly like it and I'm not like a super anti Google person. I use, like I said earlier in the show, I use Gmail, that's my email.
A
I use Chromium or any of the other Chromium spins.
B
Yeah. You know, in the end it's so, and this is the velvet trap, right of being an Apple user who's in the. And I can afford to do it because I'm in the ecosystem everywhere is it's way more convenient to use Safari because my open tabs on my iPad show up on my Mac and my bookmarks sync and all of those things happen. And if I wanted to, if I like Safari on my iPhone but not on my Mac, well what do I do then? Because now they're out of sync. Regardless, it's just a lot easier to do it. And I have never, never, I have never felt like I had a reason to stop. But I am also well aware that that is Apple using its power as the platform owner. And also I am well aware of all the times that I have to launch Chrome to do stuff. And I don't like it because it reminds me of back in the day where you would go to a site with an Apple browser and be told you can't use it because you're using a Mac or because you're not using Internet Explorer. I do not like that. And I do not like the fact that years into real time communication in Safari or on the web using web standards, there are standards that Apple just refuses to support. I don't, I don't understand it and I do not like it because I feel like Safari should strive to be the most compatible browser it can be. And anytime Apple throws their weight around like that, I have to assume, even though it may not be true, I kind of assume it means there's some strategic reason that they just decided to block something, something altogether because they don't want people building web apps using it on iOS and I hate that.
A
Well, there you go.
B
But Safari all the way Safari or die.
A
I use, I mean, I don't have
B
a tattoo, I don't have like a Safari tattoo or something. I don't go that far. I'm not a ride or die with Safari, but I am all in for now.
A
I use Zen browser, which is a Firefox.
C
Yes, Zen is great.
A
Well, it's Arc is why I use it.
C
Yeah, I was going to say it's very similar. Yeah, I loved arc.
B
Yeah.
C
The only problem that I have with Firefox sometimes, and I love people at Mozilla and I love what they're doing. But again, like you run into those little niggles and like I was, I was Jason, you know, eight years ago and then my life changed and my circumstances changed. Even though I still was just using, you know, Mac devices when you have to. If every single day you're interacting with websites that don't work well in your browser, that sort of changes what you're willing to put up with and what you're not. And you know, I don't know, I use pin boards still, even though I'm sure they're better bookmarking sync tools. But that's what I've been using for the longest time. So for me that's also part of why I feel like I Can switch browsers more frequently. My default browser is actually an app called Choosey, which lets you basically choose what web browser you want to use for a certain task. And I have it set to basically open. So Slack Links always open in a certain profile in Google Chrome for work. Right. Email is always going to open in a certain profile for something else. And you can have rules to do that. So that's actually my default browser is Choosy, and there are other apps like that too. And so I can kind of switch back and forth.
D
But yeah, and to be fair, I think that most people benefit from having more than one browser installed for different purposes.
A
Have to have more than one. Right. I mean, that's kind of a requirement. Requirement almost. Yeah, yeah.
D
I mean, I had, I had to look up a. The name of a commercial product and whenever and I didn't. I just needed to know some information about it. I didn't want this become, hey, he's interested in buying like a Harrier Jump Jet. It's like, so that's, that's when you fire up Tor, saying, I just want to know when was this manufactured? And like where. How much does these do these.
A
We hear you want to buy a Harrier Jump Jet. I. I once searched for a line of T type. We were talking, Jeff Jarvis and I were talking and he said you could still buy line of types. And I searched for it and now I get ads like, I'm going to buy a line of type. For years, ever since I've been getting ads for linotypes, they just emails and like, you know, are you still interested in line of type because we got some hell of a deal. No.
D
If I had an unused linotype in my storage unit, I would be desperate to unhole the two.
A
I think that's what's going on any port in a store. I beg you, please buy my line of. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy. Christina, Jason, we're so glad you're here.
C
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Valid to 527 while supplies last selection varies by location. See associate or lowe's.com for details. Let's talk about the iPhone a little bit. IPhone sales still going well? I guess we knew that from the quarterly results, but others are confirming it. Apple gained share across ATTT T Mobile and Verizon in the quarter. This is according to Counterpoint's US Monthly smartphone channel share tracker. Yeah. Oh, the C U M S C S T. Well, exactly. There you go.
D
It was big because their report says it was up 1.3% in the US but that in a world in which, in a country in which smartphones decline 5.7% year over year and Android fell
A
14.4% year over year.
D
But that, but that is just like the first quarter. That's a quarter in which like most of the flagship Android phones are in different quarters. But nonetheless it's kind of interesting.
A
Yeah.
C
So it's still interesting to see that and to be interesting to, you know, see especially I think like what else is really launched, I guess since Then I guess we had like the Pixel, the cheaper Pixel phone and the Samsung flagships, but I don't know how compelling any of those were. I think this goes back to what we were saying a couple of weeks ago, which is that like the base iPhone, they did such a good job with the iPhone 17 this year that I'm not surprised at all to see that the sales have been so good because they really did make, I think not only a good argument to upgrade if you had a phone that was three or four years old or older than that, but to even people who you know, would maybe have historically maybe been a iPhone, like you know, se or E user in general to say, okay, I'm going to spend that extra, you know, $200 and get the better screen and the better front facing camera and all the other features that just, I don't know, they knocked it out of the park this time with iPhones.
A
Yeah, nice. Just, I mean, kind of curious. The prepaid and low cost smartphone segments continued to weaken. They think it's because of course, higher gas prices and debt payments. Sales weakness particularly severe below the $100 smartphone tier where of course Apple doesn't compete at all. So really kind of a gloomy market except for the premium tier smartphone tier.
C
Well, and it's interesting too because I hang out on some of the subreddits where I guess people have the no contract stuff because, because I have a second line that I don't have on my main Verizon plan because it is actually like embarrassingly cheaper to just have it within mobile. But it's one of those things where you pay a year in advance and you pay the equivalent of $15 a month and then after that year you're going to need to find another carrier. So I'm like looking at, okay, who are these other carriers? And they are doing pretty good deals. I wonder if what's happening with that lower end market is that there had been, I think a window where people were almost kind of arbitraging and figuring out, out how long do I need to stay on this, you know, month to month carrier before I can have the phone unlocked and then sell it and do other things. And they've, they've put in more restrictions on that. And so I wonder if maybe that's part of why that, that $100 market is, is falling because it's, there's more constraints on what you all have, what you have to commit to to even get that $100 phone.
A
Right. So more rumors about the what we think is going to be called the Ultra. The folding iPhone. I still. Do we know if it's going to be a halfway decent camera or. That's my biggest concern about the whole thing.
C
I don't know.
D
I don't think anyone said anything about that.
A
Yeah, the rumors aren't clear. I mean for 2 grams. Well we assume not though because of the form factor. It's got to be thin. They will have. According to the rumor, 9to5Mac is reporting on two rear lenses plus two front facilities facing the 48 megapixel main and the 48 megapixel ultra wide. That means no telephoto which I've been using a lot. When I was in Hawaii. I used that 8x a lot and love it. I really love it. Like it's really good. Yeah, it's really good. Means I didn't need to bring a pro camera with me.
C
Right.
A
The reason of course for the two front facing cameras is there are two displays. There's one when it's closed and there's one when it's open. According to 9 to 5 Mac not much is known about these cameras. So there you go. I guess you could assume it'll be the same 18 megapixel center stage camera that's on the 17. And we have talked to Mark Gurman has talked extensively about the new software which will. I think it's going to be very interesting to see what they do with the fold. German says side by side apparently. So the left half and the right half can have separate apps and iPad like app layouts but not clear whether it'll be iPad OS or iPhone OS.
B
Well they're the same so it's just a semantic issue. They'll probably do a different tiling interface for it.
D
Yeah actually I don't know. Maybe they'll get rid of overlapping windows. But like Split view is a natural for this device. Slide over is a natural for this device. Like for a smaller screen screen. It seems as though if all they did was simply implement those two very well and handle the transition from hey I've got a phone in my hand to hey I've now got an iPad mini in my hand. I'm hoping and expecting and anticipating they'll do something very, very special with it.
B
It's all there for them to use. They just have to pick and choose. But saying iPad or iOS I was like it's the same OS so it's just what features do they want to make available?
A
How easy that's like put to have Kind of like an iPhone, but have center. Not center stage, just slide over on it and stuff. Like, is that an easy. Do we even know?
B
Probably not. I mean it's. It's literally in the code base. So I always hesitate to say how easy it is. They have to come up with an interaction model for it because they won't do the thing where you turn on multi window mode like you do on the iPad.
C
Right.
B
They will have to decide what that interaction model is and how it works. And that will be interesting to see. But all the functionality is there for the them to do and for app developers already supported and like it's. It's all just sitting there for them. So it's just a matter of how they choose to. It's like they've got all the ingredients, they just have to choose how they plate them.
C
Now I think the interesting thing will be what apps will you be able to install, right? Will it only take iPhone apps or. Because there, because there is still a demarcation where there are some apps that are still only designed for iPhone and some that are only designed for iPad. Will that go away? Will it only be doable in a certain mode? I'm not really sure. Sure. And I feel like that's in some ways kind of a problem of Apple's own making to a certain extent. Like, I don't begrudge just having the iPhone mode per se. I do think a little bit that there is. It's a little weird, I think. And I guess I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna. While I'm saying this, I'm gonna disagree with myself. The point I was gonna make, I was like, oh, you know, you should just. If it's on the iPad, it should also be on the phone. I can understand there's scenarios where you might not want that either, but I think that'll be the interesting demarcation. I have a feeling they'll probably just do like, if it runs on the iPhone, then it's there. But if it has a tablet view, then maybe it can do that for slide over or for multi window if, if they do that, but I'm not really sure. But that'll be the interesting thing to see if, if you know, they'll make any, any, I guess, concessions there because for some app developers it is completely different apps. And, and that would be, I think it. The only thing I would think about that might be challenging from your developer story, which is, okay, how do you maybe like think about what, what app you want people to use in what scenario?
A
There's been a lot of talk in the world about Mythos which is an anthropic model. People are saying we'll be so good at finding security flaws. Well, anthropic saying we're not going to release it to the public but only to 50 companies I think. I don't know if Apple's in that list. I know Microsoft is.
D
I think they were.
A
Yeah, they. So that they can find the flaws before the bad guys get access to this model and find it for them. And apparently two researchers with a company called Calif have in fact used Mythos to find a flaw, a very rare flaw in Apple's very locked down operating system. And it used a technique that Mythos seems to have exclusively compared to other frontiers models, the ability to link exploits together. This is what real hackers do often to get these zero click exploits and others. The software they wrote links together two bugs and a handful of techniques to corrupt Mac's memory, then gain access to parts of the device that should be inaccessible. It's a privilege escalation exploit. So this is certainly proof that Bugmageddon is a coming.
D
Yeah, there was a. I don't have in front of me but a couple of weeks ago when this first like was when they first announced that hey we got this thing Mythos, we're putting in the hands of just some people to test it out because it's too dangerous to put out in the field. There's a company that or there's a source that does like benchmark testing for exploits and they were able to give it a challenge of it was able to do a 30 step exploit and figure out all of its own just like you said, chaining together multiple different techniques, putting together a game plan. For a start here end here with fully owning the device.
A
Researchers, the Wall Street Journal says were so excited about their discovery they drove down to Apple.
D
Yeah, there's a cute picture on their blog.
A
Present their 55 page report to Apple. They're very, very proud of themselves. That's Bruce Deng and Tai Duong of Calif. They're waiting for Apple to patch it before they release details and Duong says the bugs will probably be fixed pretty quickly. But still a big deal that this AI was able to find a way into a Mac, one of the world's most secure operating system.
B
And Apple has, they've done, they've ratcheted up what they pay on their bug bounties. You know obviously they're, you know you're never going to beat a State actor or someone who sells to state actors for bounties. But if we talk about people who are kind of like on the good side, they are paying more now, which is a good sign of their focus on this. And you know, I love that, you know, they're out in Cupertino and seem excited to be there. That's kind of fun. Those guys get to come and present this to Apple and take their own. Yeah, take a picture and all of that stuff. That's a. That's kind of a. Because remember, I mean, Apple could approach this as being like, we don't want to talk about it. That I feel. I get the sense that Apple has changed its approach with security stuff where they used to basically say if we talk about security, it makes people worry about our security, so we'll just never say anything. And I feel like they've now come around to the idea that they need to communicate that they are an entity that lives in the world and has attackers and gets attacked and actually is more comfortable. Like, I, I've literally been on three calls with people from Apple Security on background, but like telling me how they feel about approaching security challenges and like, they never would have done that before, but they're so they're opening up and I think it's a good thing.
D
They used to make that as a marketing thing where they say, hey, oh, using Windows, enjoy all of your hacks and malware and stuff like that. Of course, that doesn't happen at all on Macs. Like actually it did a lot. Just not a whole lot. It's just that you're piddling little operating system that nobody cares about. And now it's like, yeah, actually people care about. People sort Bitcoin on the most piddling operating system. So yes, it's a concerned.
B
It's a, It's a badge of honor that the Mac is doing so well, that it's also an attack.
C
It's also an attack.
B
Yeah, but. But I think they realize that there's a conversation that's happening and to ignore it and not. Not talk, explain about what they're doing. I think they finally realize that they actually need to come and set. We are making an effort to make, you know, the Mac not just iOS, where it's a little bit easier for them, but the Mac more secure and that they're increasing their bug bounties and they're doing all of that stuff that instead of pretending like I don't know what you're talking about.
D
The thing is, the great thing about Mike Town is that it's a simple old fashioned. We don't even lock our doors at night. Like that's okay. That's no longer something to brag about. It's no. We.
A
We should also mention that Foxconn has apparently been ransomware. Bad guys say they exfilter traded 8 terabytes of information from Foxconn's North American factories. Foxconn of course makes iPhone and I don't know, a lot of other Apple stuff. This isn't the first time Fox Foxconn has been ransomware, but this, you know, is the latest. Couple other stories before we get our picks of the week. Epic Games Fortnite back in the App Store finally Worldwide.
D
Yeah, they were in the Apple US App Store I think last year, but they had a very, very proud blog post. Oh with the. Oh God. What was the actual headline? But it was like, yes, now we're finally back in the App Store. Absolutely everywhere. And yeah, Fortnite is back on the App Store around the world as the final battle approaches. And I don't know know what they're. So there was also Apple and Epic like filed like a joint proffer to the court because now Apple is in, is kind of in a bed now that they've had their, their, their contempt citations basically upheld by Everywhere. Now they are, now they acknowledge that we have to come up with a pay a new payment system. Excuse me, a, A percentage of how much is. How much would it charge developers for outbound links that, that installation stuff. And no, it can't be 27%. So basically they basically have the two of them have an agreement that they gave to the judge not to solve the problem. But we've agreed that Apple in 45 days is going to give us a number. Not only are they going to give us a number, but they're going to give us an explanation of how they came to the number. And they're also going to give us documentation and internal documents that support that number. We will then respond to that as a, as a pretext to. We are going to have, we're going to solve this problem so that Apple can, you know, get back to making money off the App Store, which now they, because of the injunction, they really can't.
A
Meta has a new app on the App Store called Instance and an Instagram feature for ephemeral sharing of photos. Kind of like Snap, I guess, where the photos disappear after a while. Meta says it's a new way to share photos.
C
You can also save them. Yeah, you can also save them if you want to like, I guess put in your stories and things like that later. So there is a way if you want to, you know, hold onto them or whatever, whatnot. I don't know. This is an interesting thing for me because this is an app and I saw a lot of people in my feed downloading it and using it and I was just kind of like, why? No, I don't, I don't really have any.
A
Why are you doing that?
C
Well, I don't know. Maybe it just says maybe about like where I am in my life or maybe it just is more estate on like the, the meta of it all. But I'm kind of like if I wanted to send ephemeral photos, I'm not going to do it through Instagram. I have other ways of talking to people if I just wanted to send them photos in the moment, you know,
A
you just put them. I put them in messages.
C
I was that. That's what I mean. So much of my social media has moved from being public to being just in group chats in various messaging apps and Signal and imessage and you know, wherever.
A
Yep. I use Signal, WhatsApp, Apple's messages. And if I'm going to put in a photo, send a photo, somebody, I'm just gonna send it there. But you can now do it with instance, it starts in the camera when you use the app. It's. And it's free and it's already got 4.8 out of 5 stars on the app store. So I guess people, people like it. What else? I think that's, oh, Spotify is going to support Apple's HLS streaming, which initially they only for video, which they only did on the Apple app. Now Spotify doing it means I think more and more podcasts will probably support HLS stream. As far as I can tell, the only advantage we're looking at it. We weren't going to do it if it was just Apple, but maybe if it becomes the standard format for video. I think one of the main virtues is you could be watching the video and then just go to audio only.
C
Right.
A
Or vice versa.
C
Yeah, I think that's one of the minutes. Isn't it supposed to also be more efficient? I think that's supposed to be one of the promise that the standards. It's supposed to be more efficient from a broadband perspective, which is obviously I think probably why Apple initially supported it and why Spotify now that they're serving so much video content is probably looking at it too. And they're like, oh, okay, if we can cut our own bandwidth bills from all of this. That might be a good thing.
A
Right? All right, let's take a little break and then your picks of the week coming up next. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Our greatest, deepest thanks, of course, to our club members who make this show and all the shows we do possible. If you're not yet a member of the club, let me just pitch it to you. You get a lot of benefits. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the club Twit Discord. We do special pro. I don't paywalls. The only time we have exclusive programming in the club is these keynotes like today's Google I O because we don't want to get taken down or get strikes Against Us on YouTube and Apple has threatened that in the past. So the WWDC keynote, for instance, will be in the club only on June 8th. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the club Twitter Discord, which is a great hang. It turns out if you make people pay for access to social media, they're much nicer. So it's a really great place to be be. And we do a lot of extra programming for the club thanks to the club, which we often, most often stream live. I'm going to do an event with Jeff Atwood of Coding the Coding Horror Blog on Friday at 2pm Pacific. Micah does his crafting corner. We do the AI user group every month. There's a lot of things like that. Stacy's book club. Actually, Micah and Stacy have agreed because Stacy was only doing the book club every other month or every third month. The Micah is going to in the intervening months. Well, we'll have a show every month now Micah will do media. So if you're in the club, you can now vote on the next topic for the Micah and Stacy's Media Club, I guess we'll. We'll call it for want of a better name. And Micah's picked a few things that we could all watch together or talk about together. And Stacy's picked some books. So that's a lot of fun. Anyway, the real point of it is you're supporting independent not owned by anybody, not beholden to any big company. Independent, high quality journalism through your club membership. And we appreciate it. Twit TV Club. Twit. Wait a minute. This just in from our engineer, Patrick Delahanty. Club members get chapter markers if you're using a chapter compatible podcast app. Start starting today, rolling out last week to video and this week to audio. So a lot of people are saying we want chapter markers. There are some technical reasons we didn't do it in the past, but we can now do it in the club. And it's maybe just another way to get you to join Twit TV club. Twit. Thank you. Ten bucks a month. Thank you for your support. We appreciate it.
B
Some follow the noise.
D
Bloomberg follows the money.
C
Whether it's the funds fueling AI AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story.
D
Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
C
this podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list, not one more. With Carvana, it is just go to Carvana.com Enter your license plate or VIN and get a real offer down to the penny. No backing, no surprises. Just an experience you can trust. Like your offer. Accept it, schedule pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Delivery fees and terms may apply.
A
Pick of the week time. Let's start with Christina Warren.
C
Yeah, so this is, this is an app called Sentinel and it's by a guy whose name is Alex, uh, Alan, although his, his GitHub A L I N is his name and his website is, it's Alan A L I n dot com. Um, but if you search a Sentinel macOS, you should be able to find the GitHub link to this. And what it basically is is it's a GUI app that basically configures Gatekeeper. And this is, I'm going to be honest, from a security standpoint, you want to be careful when you're using this. You want to make sure that you, you're only using this for files that you know you can trust. But if you've ever run into that instance where you've downloaded an app that isn't signed by the App Store, isn't notarized, the Gatekeeper comes up and says, or you have a file that says, I can't access this. The way that you would normally remove that from Gatekeeper would be to open up the terminal, type in XATTR D, then like the, you know, file name, and then, you know, basically remove it from quarantine. This will do that for you, where you can just drag an app or a file onto the GUI that the app has, which basically will basically let you access it. So you can allow the unsigned app to launch and then you can even sign the app with either your own certificate or with no certificate if you want to make sure that it'll open in the future. And so this is one that I just, I actually recommended it to a colleague earlier today and it reminded me of that and I was like, this is actually a really great app. It's free. And the developer, he also makes a really nice app called Pear Cleaner, which is an open source app cleaner that, that is, you know, has, that has privacy mining features involved. But yeah, Sentinel, if you've ever had to deal with, you know, especially downloading apps, you know, from independent developers who might not have them signed all the times or binaries that might come in other ways. Again, know what you're doing first. But I think this is a great way of not having to have the terminal open and know exactly what commands you need to type into the file.
A
Every time I have X attribute in my fingers, I type it so often I download so much stuff that I have to take out of quarantine. This will be a nice way. Just drag it to it. That's a great idea. Thank you, Christina. You can find it on the web or in our famous website mbwpicks. You're looking for Sentinel, the Gatekeeper gui. I am going to create a sacrilege, a terrible, terrible pick.
B
Boo.
A
If you hate the Mac doc, wouldn't it be nice to turn it into the Windows XP or 98 menu?
B
Oh, boos.
A
Boo. I'm not going to do it, but
B
I just need to revealed the villain of the show.
A
I just think hysterical. It's from a guy named Peng. Peng. It's called Retro. Bring the classic Windows taskbar back on Mac os. There are some, I think probably useful reasons for this. And you can choose. This is the Windows 98 version. This is the Windows XP version, the
C
Vista version or the Windows 7.
A
I guess it was Windows 7 version. There is no Windows 11 version, so don't get your hopes up kids. He actually really kind of wrote it, which is cool. It's not just a skin, but it is free. I believe it is Retro Win on Windows 98 XP7 taskbar. If the dock is driving you crazy, suffer no longer.
D
Well also because there are a lot of people who are buying their parents and their grandparents replacing their old Windows machines with.
A
There you go difference.
D
It's just, just like the old crime.
A
I know how to use this. Andy. Pick of the week.
D
My pick is this common thing. This is of course an LED light bulb. Ah, but it's a special light bulb because it is actually rechargeable.
A
Wait a minute, you're. It's not even plugged in and it's working.
D
It has a USB C charging port.
A
That's hysterical.
D
And also see the bottom is actually, actually just. This is a dummy thing. It's just magnetically connected.
A
So it gets no power from the socket.
D
Exactly. No power from the socket. This is just like a dummy. The point of this little fixture is that if you have like an old lamp that you actually really, really like, but you want to put it in a place where there isn't an outlet and you don't use it, you can basically screw this into the same like fixture or screw it into the wall. But also that's kind of cool. It's magnetic. So it also comes with like peel and stick little metal tabs so that I've got a couple of them of these tabs under, under, under a shelf that again I access a lot. It's not worth running power to. There's also the. If you want, if you want to like flaunt it. There's also like a little strap that
A
hang it around your neck.
D
Yeah, hang on Christmas tree or whatever.
B
It's.
D
It's the thing. This is a just a nice little like again no name sort of thing. It has multiple modes, different colors. You can also set the brightness level. It comes with a remote so you can do it via ir. And again, it's not an immensely wonderful piece of technology.
A
How long does the battery last?
D
I've been finding it lasts about five to six hours.
A
That's pretty good because.
D
So for me it is. Again, there's a closet. There's a closet. It's not worth running power to. I've got a bookshelf that again, not worth running power to or snaking up like LEDs up there. I just put again little self stick piece of metal there. I've got, got this clapped up there and I can simply flick it on, get what I would need and then flick it back off again. And they're cheap. They're like on Amazon again you can get these from all kinds of different sources. This happens to be called the Brighttown E26 rechargeable light bulb. But they're two for 20 bucks. As a matter of fact, after I got my first two, I actually bought like four more because I just found them so useful. It would be terrible if it only lasted like an hour and a half, two hours. It'd be terrible if they didn't throw off very much light. It's about as bright as about a 40 watt light bulb. But they're very, very useful. And it's not micro USB. It is again, USB 3. And for all those reasons, again, a nice tidy solution to a problem that was not worth solving until I could solve it for just 10 bucks and so easily.
A
It's waterproof. That's cool. I have not tried that yet, but that's really cool. All right, very cool. Bright town. $19 for $20 for two of them.
D
Probably good for cosplay too.
A
Yeah, yeah.
D
Nice dramatic storytelling.
A
Just. Yes. Put them down your pants and everybody will wonder.
D
And they're on the. Hanging on the head.
B
It was his own face.
C
What?
A
Jason Snell, Wrap it up with your pick of the week.
B
I have a free Mac utility Vive coded by our friend Glenn Fleischmann because he saw a need. And it comes after a bunch of how to articles about how people sometimes let their Mac hard drive fill up too far. And there is such a thing as too close to full. And the Mac starts to freak out when your hard drive is too full. And so he created this little app. It is called Mr. Plimsoul. You can get it at Mr. Plimsoul.
A
What's the name?
B
Well, if you scroll down to the bottom Leo, you will see Plimsoll mark is the load line painted on ship's a hull the limit past which you can't safely add more weight without risking the boat because there is such a thing as too full. What Mr. Plimsoll does is it sits in your menu bar and you, you
C
can say the most Glenn name ever.
B
It is, it is the most Glenn name. But it's great. I mean names are hard edit. It warns you when your hard drive, any of the hard drives you choose to monitor is too full and you choose how close to two full it is. Well, like I have this on my, my raid because when my raid gets above like 90% I probably should rethink my life about why I'm saving all of those old videos, right? So and it will. How does it notify you? Because like if it's on a server, that's not very helpful. If it just puts up a push notification or whatever, it will send you an email. It will send you. If it's on a. It will send you an imessage. It will send you something via pushover. I think he's working on a web hook version of it. So there's lots of ways to let you know, hey, this hard drive is filling up which is a real thing that you don't want to have happen or just let it live in your menu bar and look up there and you can click and it'll say, oh, you know, you're only at 70%, you're okay. It actually serves a very simple need with a very simple thing. And then the text messaging thing is really amazing. So since it runs on the Mac, if you put it on a server, it'll open messages and send you from you a little text that says Mr. Plimsol says this hard drive is filling up. Really great idea, Mr. Plimson. It's not really. It's project managed by Glenn and coded by Claude I believe. But it works great. I actually have it on my server now.
A
Nothing wrong with that. And that makes it free.
B
It's free. It will not track you. It will not track you. It will not ask for money. It is just to help you. And that's pretty cool.
A
Mrplimsel app for the free Mr. Plimsol. Let's see. Launch menu. Yes, launch it, show it in doc. No critical override at 95% yes. There you go. And then you can choose the notifications. This is great.
B
And it just lives up there and says hey, right now Macintosh HD 68% I'm doing great. I don't have to about worry about it.
A
Very cool. Thank you, Jason. Jason snell6colors.com and if you want to know what podcasts he does, he does a lot of them. 6colors.com Jason Yep. Any incomparables coming up?
B
There's always one, I would say over at the Incomparable network. Dan Moran and I are continuing to talk about the current just about to end fifth season of For All Mankind on Apple TV on a podcast we call NASA Vending Machine Machine for reasons. And the fun thing is next week it rolls straight into Star City, which is their new show that's a spinoff. It's set in the Soviet Union in the late 60s and early 70s. The Soviet space program has landed the first man on the moon because it's set in the for all mankind universe. What will they do next? And also like there's lots of KGB spy stuff in it. And I can tell you having seen the first four episodes of that show, it's great. So check that out. And NASA Vending Machine is a place to get all your For All Mankind and Star City podcast thoughts.
A
Very nice. Thank you Jason, Andy and Ako.
D
I, I have two things to clear the backlog and I have to clear the backlog. There are people There are people that I owe a debt of gratitude to that have to be attended to. And I did not finish over the weekend.
A
Did you turn the lights off in the library? It seems like it's dark for effect.
D
Exactly. So you can see the, you know, the bulb to the light bulbs.
A
Yes. Look at that. That, that's Mrs. Plimsoll. She's excited. Thank you, Andrew. And of course, the wonderful Christina Warren. She's FilmGirl, Film Girl Developer Relations at GitHub. Anything you would like to mention? Do you do other podcasts?
C
I do. So I have a show that we don't do it as frequently as we should called Overtired. Overtiredpod.com I love that. That I do with Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severance Gunzel and yeah, that's, that's, that's the other, the only other thing I'm doing right now. I used to do more. Maybe I'll. I'll bring another one back someday that's more culture related. We'll see.
A
We thought we were watching Google I O and they talked about how you could have your agent Spark notify you when there's a new sneaker drop. And I thought of you.
C
Oh, yes, I thought of you.
A
Do you still do the sneakers?
C
Not so much. I got to the point, I got. I kind of realized was like, I think I have enough shoes. But if there is a there. But if there is like a.
A
You only have two feet, young lady.
C
Right. And, and, and when I looked and I was like, I have like 20 pairs that I have like in storage because I don't have room for the boxes that I've never worn, I was like, maybe, maybe it's a little bit too much. But, but when really cool, you know, sneakers come out, I'm obviously always have too many shoes. I mean, I don't know. Carrie Radshaw would disagree with, she would agree with you. She, she would disagree with me. But I, I think I did get to the point where I was like, maybe I. Too many sneakers.
A
Yeah, yeah, that happens. You know, you, you outgrow your hobbies for new ones.
C
Well, you know, and you, but you also never know when the hyper fixation is going to come back. Right? So I'm always, I'm always open to that because the hyper fixation can always just grab you back when you were least expecting it.
A
I know all about that. Trust me. Well, that wraps it up for Mac Break Weekly Security now just around the corner. I appreciate those of you watching live your patience. We started a little late due to Google Google IO, but I think we got you all out of here in a prompt fashion. Normally we'll do Mac Break Weekly on a Tuesday around 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live if you're in the club. In the club TWIT Discord. Of course everybody's welcome to watch on YouTube, Twitch X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik after the fact on demand versions of the show at TWiT TV MBW. And we do have audio and video so you can check choose your platform. Of course club members can also get chapter markers. Now isn't that exciting? There is a YouTube channel dedicated to Mac Break Weekly and of course the best way to get it is to subscribe. You'll get it automatically the minute it's available and then you don't have to think about it. You just know I've got a Mac Break Weekly to listen to of a Tuesday evening. Thanks for being here everybody. Now I'm sorry to say it is my sad son duty to tell you get back to work because break time is over. See you next week.
MacBreak Weekly #1025: Below the Plimsoll Line
Recorded: May 19, 2026
Host: Leo Laporte
Panel: Andy Ihnatko, Christina Warren (GitHub), Jason Snell (Six Colors)
This week, the MacBreak team gathers following a feature-packed Google I/O, digging deep into Google’s latest advances in AI—especially Gemini and its agentic ecosystem. With Apple’s WWDC around the corner, the panel debates how Apple could (or should) respond, particularly regarding Siri, device integration, and Apple's classic tension between privacy, security, and feature innovation. They analyze leaks about iOS 27, discuss browser wars, Apple’s “family-unfriendly” approach, and touch on broad themes: AI's impact, privacy, accessibility, and tech industry culture. Rounding out the show are diverse, practical picks.
[00:35–23:38]
Gemini Upgrades and Ecosystem Strategy:
Agentic Tech and Search Demos:
Contrast with Apple’s (expected) AI Integration:
[10:41–12:32]
[14:55–25:33]
[31:31–36:09]
[42:37–53:57]
Should Siri know the family unit? Google is pushing for “collective knowledge”; Apple’s approach still prioritizes privacy, limiting such features.
Cultural Blind Spots: Apple’s “single-user device” mindset (e.g., iPads have no multi-user support). Family sharing features are “afterthoughts.”
Design Bias, Lack of Broader Perspectives:
[77:10–84:52]
Christina & Andy prefer Chrome—cross-platform bookmarks, improved performance, vertical tabs, split view.
Jason sticks with Safari—integration, “velvet trap” of Apple ecosystem, but acknowledges its lack of support for modern web standards (e.g., WebRTC).
Consensus: Everyone should have at least two browsers for compatibility and privacy reasons.
[64:02–95:35]
[108:17]
Fun, candid, and occasionally irreverent; the panel engages in good-humored ribbing, detailed technical breakdowns, and broader cultural critique. There's excitement about new features but also skepticism and a willingness to call out shortcomings across the industry, notably in interface design, privacy, and inclusivity.
Bottom Line:
This episode navigates the cross-currents of Apple and Google's AI ambitions, with a sharp eye on user benefit versus buzzword fatigue. Expect major WWDC AI reveals, but the panel cautions that success—especially for Apple—will come from solving real problems, not chasing hype or copying Google’s ecosystem play. Apple’s historic emphasis on privacy and carefully abstracted features sets it apart, for better or worse, but old cultural blind spots remain. Other topics include rumblings in the browser market, family-sharing frustrations, and practical utilities for Mac users.
Next up:
WWDC, where Apple finally shows its hand in the new AI era.