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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Alex, Andy and Jason are all here. Jason calls this show the Upside down because we're starting with the Vision Pro segment. Then we'll talk a little bit about Apple's woes in government. And actually, Jason has, I think, a very sensible way to move Forward with the iOS app store. I wonder if you agree. I don't think Alex does, but you'll get to hear that whole conversation in just a little bit. And why there will not be a sequel to the George Clooney and Brad Pitt Wolf's movie. All of that more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 949, recorded Tuesday, November 26, 2024. Glicked. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show where we talk about the latest news from Apple. We have, of course, as always, our wonderful panel here. Jason Snell from six colors.com Congratulations on once again gaining the ax.
- [01:12]
Jason Snell
We got the ax. We got the ax. We kept, we kept the axe. Here's my. I have my replica ax. That, that's not the real one. Again, I mean it's all a matter of perspective. I may be, it may be very large and I'm hold holding it far.
- [01:25]
Leo Laporte
Away but regardless date into each of those little.
- [01:31]
Jason Snell
Unfortunately the replica has just little lines there, but you can, I could put a new line with like a marker if I wanted to, just to extend it further down. But yes, thank you. College football rivalries are fun and they're more fun when you win them.
- [01:43]
Leo Laporte
I like, I really like shows where they do inside stuff like that and they don't ever explain it and it's like know you're either in or you're out. So just saying, did you get the ax? And you say yes, we got the ax. That's all we have to say.
- [01:56]
Jason Snell
We got the axe.
- [01:57]
Leo Laporte
And of course, so is Andy Anako. He's here. Did you get the three seashells?
- [02:02]
Andy Ihnatko
Ah, boy, I get three. Three street. Three seashells.
- [02:07]
Leo Laporte
Say it fast.
- [02:07]
Andy Ihnatko
You're a rotten bastard. I get the three seashells a good three hours after I get up. At least it depends. I take supplements because, you know, lower GI health is very, very important.
- [02:20]
Leo Laporte
As you skid inatco.com coming soon to a web browser near you. He's also weekly or semi weekly on WGBH in Boston. Good to see you, Andrew. Just on the library and from his little fortress of solitude there in the beautiful Office Hours Studios. Mr. Alex Lindsay.
- [02:42]
Alex Lindsay
Hello. Hello.
- [02:43]
Leo Laporte
Good to see you. You watched the. The new Vision Pro surround sound. I guess I should play the Vision Pro jingle. Dare we start the show with the Vision Pro jingle? Go ahead, do it. Let's do it. It's time to talk the Vision Pro. I don't know how many stories we all did.
- [03:11]
Jason Snell
The Snoopy dance.
- [03:12]
Alex Lindsay
So Apple. Apple keeps on, you know, they seem to be getting into more of a pace where they start. They're. Feels like they're releasing something maybe almost every week. You know, there's. There's. It feels like there's some little piece that they're putting out. They're not very long. So you keep on. I keep on thinking, oh, I got to get around to this. I got to get around to this. Then you open it up and it's like seven minutes or three minutes or four minutes, which is fine. That's. That's fine. Especially when you're kind of experimenting. The one that came out last week was the. I think it was concert for one, which is. So Ray was the artist and she.
- [03:43]
Leo Laporte
Has a rather large band. And we were asking last week, we were wondering if they were going to shoot it as the. From the best seat in the house or if they were going to do the, you know, cutting in and out.
- [03:53]
Alex Lindsay
Well, the funny thing is, is that. Is that, yeah, I was pretty excited about it because this is something I work a lot on, is this kind of experience. And so I was excited to see what Apple's going to do. I have to admit. You know, I think sometimes Apple has this approach of like, we don't pay attention to what anybody else is doing. We're going to find our own way. And they're still working on it. So anyway, you know, there's a bunch of rules that a lot of us have kind of grown up to believe in. And maybe Apple's breaking those and maybe they're. I haven't been sold on what Apple did was better than what we've already learned not to do. And I felt like this was a pretty good example of almost all the things not to do, you know, so they pack almost everything that I wouldn't do into one piece. So part of the problem was. So there's a couple things when you're doing 3D and specifically 180 that I think that we all do the same things the wrong way first. And then we all go, okay, let's not do that again. You're like, did it and then published it. So anyway, so there's a couple things. One is that you have all of these people that are on the edge.
- [04:55]
Leo Laporte
Oh, we learn. There we go. I pushed the wrong button. What's that?
- [05:00]
Alex Lindsay
This is like the 180 view.
- [05:01]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [05:01]
Alex Lindsay
And so they put around the 180 view.
- [05:04]
Leo Laporte
That's like the proscenium arch.
- [05:05]
Alex Lindsay
Right. And so what happens is that as a three person doing 180 or 360, you're tempted to put people everywhere so that you force people to look around so you can see that it's whatever.
- [05:15]
Leo Laporte
It fill the view, in other words.
- [05:17]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. The problem with that is that when my field of view goes this way, I see the edge and that takes me out of the experience. And so you don't want to see the edge ever. Like, ever. And so what we learned.
- [05:28]
Leo Laporte
So you should really be doing like 90 degrees.
- [05:30]
Alex Lindsay
Exactly. So what we learned to do is you can go a little bit more like a 120. This is your area of action. Maybe a little bit leaks over here and here. But you don't ever want people to look and look sideways. Because the idea is this is the ambient that keeps you feeling like you're in the event and not what. But Apple built this thing where people are literally on the edge. Like, if you turn over, there's still more people over there. And so they did that. And again, it's not a natural experience. The other thing is that then they have an artist here by themselves and they have a flat wall back here. And the long distance in between artists.
- [06:02]
Leo Laporte
Represented by Green Dot.
- [06:06]
Alex Lindsay
The problem is with this. Is that a big drop off? Yeah, it looks fine. But what really makes 3D look good is lots of things that are creating vanishing points in that back area. And so what they didn't do, if they had stacked the band the way you would have seen it on a stage, it would have looked very 3D. It would have felt very immersive. And you would have felt like you were just sitting there watching this band play and you didn't. And I think you probably could have gotten away with even a single camera. Um, but you could have played around with if you wanted to. When they cut, they go the opposite direction, which is they get so close that it's uncomfortable. And even for me, who I pretty thick skin about it, I was like, wow, that's really close. Like, that's too. Too much, you know, And. And so they did a little bit of this in a. In. They did a little bit of this in the submerged. They did a fair amount of it in the weekend, which I don't think I would have released if I had finished. Looked at the finished product. And then they, and then they did a lot of it in this one where they're doing close ups on the singers and they're doing close ups on the main singer. But. And they're. I think that they. It just, it feels like I'm curious to see how this, how this goes. Like, you know, it's. I'm very much. I think if anything it just made me more excited to get a hold of the blackmagic camera so that a lot of us who, you know, are, have done this for a long time, get access to a camera and can kind of take on the stuff we've already learned. I think the challenge that Apple probably is having, and I don't know this for any kind of fact, but the thing that ruins VR is typically filmmakers. You know, filmmakers ruin VR because they, they want to take their old ways of doing things and immediately just apply them to VR, you know. And like I still want, I still have to have these cuts and I have to have these close ups and I have to have the over the shoulder and I have to do this thing. And you know, you may not need to, like, you may not need to do all those things to make this work. It's a different platform. And so I think that handing it to really, you know, people who are very good in the 2D world and expecting them to suddenly make it great in the 3D world hasn't been successful. That in a way that we've seen for a decade. You know, the only, per. The only filmmaker that's really good at this is James Cameron.
- [08:08]
Andy Ihnatko
You know, Alex, I, But I have one question. Like, what if Kendrick Bourne is on the injured reserve this weekend? How will that affect the Patriots offense against the Colts this weekend? That's a special joke for people watching on YouTube who saw Alex writing all those diagrams about.
- [08:26]
Alex Lindsay
Oh, right, right, right.
- [08:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh, he was doing his John Madden. I get it now.
- [08:29]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, no, that's. But it's, but disconnect.
- [08:33]
Leo Laporte
I mean, surely there are people like you who are telling Apple, don't go 180 degrees, go 20. Put, put stuff in the, in the distant background. I mean, why are they not doing it Now?
- [08:47]
Alex Lindsay
I will admit there's probably, and I don't mean to overstate my background, but there's probably 20 of us that have done stuff with budget in the last 10 years. Like, you know, like that's why Cameron.
- [08:59]
Leo Laporte
Knows how to do it. Because he's been doing it for a long time.
- [09:01]
Alex Lindsay
He had all the budget, you know, and he. And what you see is someone who took filmmaking and then had all the budget. And you look at how he designs the shots, the length of the shots, the framing of the shots, everything. It's still a film and you can watch it in 2D. There are things that I think he's back to. I think he even has backed away a little bit so that people don't push back too hard on it. Like he. He does the 48 frame underwater. But when it comes back up, you very quickly realize you can see 24 really clearly after you've seen 48, you know, so anybody with high. That are used to high frame rate or higher frame rate is something there. And so I think that that's, you know, Cameron really knows how to build that, and he really built it with a true experience and understanding of that. There are a lot of people, and I think that most people that are. That know how to do this really well. A lot of them got out of the business. I mean, they moved on to other things when things, you know, they're not doing that anymore, so they're into something else. There are a handful of them, like Radiant Images down in la, that still are doing, you know, bits and pieces, but a lot of them are working for Meta. So Meta has been doing way more of this for the last. They've been continually doing this production for the last bit. And if you're working for Meta, you're probably not working for Apple. I think Apple probably would be sensitive to that. So I think that Meta has probably half of the people that know how to do it working on a variety of things. And the problem there is that for a lot of the Meta solutions, they don't have the leverage or they're not using the leverage to say, hey, we want to just do it perfectly for the online audience. Because that online audience is still pretty small. So there's hundreds of people or low thousands of people watching. Metta has this challenge that the people who have the headsets are in the 28 to 50 range in age group. All the music that they do concerts for are 18 to 25. Doesn't know what shows up because it's like. It's like the people who own the headsets don't know who these artists are, you know, like. And so. And so there's this weird thing where they're desperate to kind of grab onto a younger audience, but, you know, and trying to use the headset but the people who are buying the headsets are not 18 years old. You know, typically most of them are older geeks than the younger ones. And so, so Meta's got one problem where they're just, they're trying to be something that they're not. But they have a lot of people with experience working on it and they're freelancing and so on and so forth. It feels like again, Apple eventually will maybe get to a point where they, you know, they. And again, I think it's not important for Apple to do, to get good at this. It's important for that camera to come out, you know, and for all of us to have access to the tools that we need to produce.
- [11:40]
Leo Laporte
You don't even have access to the cameras yet?
- [11:42]
Alex Lindsay
No, no, that camera, I don't know if they're done with it yet. You know, like they announced it in June, but it hasn't been released yet. And so I.
- [11:48]
Leo Laporte
So you can't use the Canon or.
- [11:50]
Alex Lindsay
Some other, you know, we're talking about. I mean, yeah, the Canon you can use and you can get something. But to get to the level that Apple. The problem is that the new we. The Canon is only going to be at a lower frame rate, lower resolution, you know, per eye. It's 4k per eye, you know, when it's, when it's bound together. And then, and so the difference is that the Blackmagic will be 8K per eye at 90 frames a second. That's a much different. Those frame rates and that resolution makes a huge difference in how it goes. And then, and then when you have a variety of people that really understand how to build this, I think you're going to end up with much better content. You know, when you take that, when you kind of unleash the folks that really have done this for the last five to 10 years.
- [12:33]
Leo Laporte
So are you saying Meta is doing a good job or that they can't do a good job because they have a mass audience and they have two problems.
- [12:40]
Alex Lindsay
One is, again, they're trying to go after an audience. Most of the work that they do is that they're trying to produce content for an audience that doesn't use their product. The people who buy the quests are older. And so if you did the kind of stuff that I've been doing, like the Toads pockets and the, and folks from the aughts and so on and so forth, you probably have a lot more people watching. But that's not the people that they're interested in. They're trying to get back to them. And so they would use the Doors Jimi Hendrix. But if you did it, if you went to the 90s and the aughts, you'd probably have a better chance. The other side of that is that the Quest is dramatically lower quality than the Vision Pro. So you can't do the kind of things that are possible on the Vision Pro because the processor isn't there. That's why the Vision Pro so expensive is because that's the cheapest you could build that quality for right now. And so I think that there's. That's the challenge. And you know, I think meta getting in early sometimes the move fast, break things lead creates a lot of spaghetti, you know. And so I think there's a guy.
- [13:43]
Leo Laporte
In our Discord Clarkson who says there is a blog post from Mike Swanson. I don't know if you've seen this. Immersive Video Production Tips.
- [13:53]
Alex Lindsay
I haven't seen that last. I know who Mike Swanson is. I haven't seen the.
- [13:57]
Leo Laporte
He's doing it for the Oculus, right?
- [13:59]
Alex Lindsay
So, yeah. And so, you know, and again, Apple broke some of those rules in a way that I will say to Apple's credit, in some submerged. Pushing the camera that hard in some of those shots was something that most of us would not do. I mean, we had versions of that. But it worked. It worked. I think. Well, some people said they took their headset off and never watched it again. So maybe it didn't work for everyone.
- [14:20]
Leo Laporte
This is the problem with the Vision Pro. It's not for everyone, but for me.
- [14:25]
Alex Lindsay
Like, I felt like I was like, wow, I have never seen a camera move that had as much physical impact on me as I saw with those moves. And so I was like, okay, I can see how a lot of people.
- [14:36]
Leo Laporte
Are agreeing with you. J. Ware in Discord says the weekend video, he said, I don't want to be that close that it's like someone invading your personal space.
- [14:44]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and there was then just a lot of shots that are fine for 2D. You just tell that someone who normally does 2D shot that video like it wasn't.
- [14:51]
Leo Laporte
Apple just says to people, go ahead, do it. Here's the camera. And doesn't say anything else.
- [14:57]
Alex Lindsay
I think they, I don't know how Apple does it.
- [14:59]
Leo Laporte
It might be that they want these directors to experiment so they could find what works and doesn't work.
- [15:03]
Alex Lindsay
And that could be the case. It, you know, they shouldn't put it out then, though. But I, you know, well, if you don't put it out, then the directors are upset. So, so the, you know, you can't, you can't shoot something with the weekend and not release it. Like, you know, like the weekend won't come back. So the, and then it's all weekdays, all the time. And so if the weekend doesn't come back to the show. So. But I think that again, I think that the thing that the most common thing for all of these companies, whether it was Google or Facebook or Apple, is you take people who you feel like already have a lot of experience in production and you hand them the camera and you probably have people that are giving them input. I mean this is what other platforms have done.
- [15:42]
Leo Laporte
If Mike Swanson could put this in a blog post, you could give them a little booklet that says, hey, here's what we've learned so far.
- [15:49]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I mean they probably read all of those things. I just think that they still have this opinion that well, let's try this and let's push this thing. And I, and I feel like those are, it feels like a lot, again, a lot of things that a lot of us have been like, well, we already, you know, we already knew that that didn't work, you know, and, and, and so the clock is ticking though, Alex.
- [16:06]
Leo Laporte
If, if, if, if Apple can't put out a product, an immersive video that gets people to say, ah, this is it.
- [16:12]
Alex Lindsay
I think that, but I think that different people now again in, in, in the difference for me, I mean like, or the, or the owner of 090, Mark Mark east, loved the weekend video and said he was much more likely. He said after the submerged, he didn't really feel like he needed to watch more of that. After the weekend he was like, I want to see everything immersive. And so it's not my opinion is one opinion of what those things are. And so there are definitely people who have. It's not everybody hated that video. I think that people who have done immersive for a long time also probably are more sensitive to those things. But, but I think that that's so, so anyway, so I think that there's, I think that what Apple has done, which is work with blackmagic to make sure that they have a camera that can do that is one of the more important things to do, you know, is, is to make sure that lots of people have access to the hardware to shoot it.
- [17:07]
Leo Laporte
And I think it's black magic making this camera.
- [17:09]
Alex Lindsay
Is that blackmagic's making the camera? Yeah, okay, but it's, but it definitely. It appears that, I mean, Apple announced it, that they're working with them on it, that they worked with them on. On those things. And so.
- [17:19]
Leo Laporte
So, yeah, so we know of any time frame. I mean, Mark Gurman's not exactly leaking this week.
- [17:23]
Alex Lindsay
We think that. That Black Magic will not want to show up at NAB without a camera.
- [17:28]
Leo Laporte
Okay. So we think it's next spring, right?
- [17:31]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. So we think that late May, March is the most likely time for the blackmagic camera to be released, maybe even the week of. Very first week of April. So. So those. That's the most likely time. We think that. But we think Black Magic doesn't. Blackmagic doesn't. Like in the past, blackmagic would release things. It would go more than a year after they released it. And we have learned that we've seen over time that blackmagic would very much prefer not to be at the huge booth where they spend millions and millions of dollars on the booth, having every person come to them and say, where's this product? Why didn't you release it? You announced it a year ago kind of thing. So they usually get things done by then. Sometimes they're not perfect when they get out, but they get out.
- [18:09]
Leo Laporte
I have seen or have heard of anyway, the killer app that I would get actually probably buy a Vision Pro to use. Unfortunately, the test flight has been paused. It's an F1 spatial viewer called LAPS. La P? Z. What a great. So if you're a Formula One fan, you know that one of the things F1TV, which is a paid subscription streams, is you could see a camera from every car. You can see multiple views, you get multiple soundtracks. There's a lot of information. F1 is very highly digitized. There's a lot of information. And this is a really interesting way to look at an F1 race. I'm already using an F1 viewer that opens multiple windows. But this is. This is like you're immersed.
- [18:55]
Alex Lindsay
I didn't quite real understand. I looked at the article.
- [18:57]
Leo Laporte
It looked like a licensing thing because. So the viewer I use, you log into your F1TV subscription and then it takes what. What you're getting and puts it up on the screen. This is how Laps worked. It's made by a VFX artist named John Lepore. But apparently they're saying this is from a story in Upload, which is a VR magazine that Laps says it's working to secure digital life. Upping laps sounds like F1, which I'm sure is extremely proprietary to put the nicks on it, which is too bad.
- [19:34]
Andy Ihnatko
Even though it was just in test flight, so it wasn't on the App Store or anything. They were just trying to get this thing going. The developers, they started off by just doing a concept video that blew so many minds that, oh, there's a. There's a market for this. I should actually start building this. And he started building it. And if you look at this demo video, whether you're looking at what he's actually got going in Test, Test flight, or what. What he was conceiving of both of them are, you're right. It's like, if you're an F1 fan, it's like, what do I need to buy to get.
- [19:59]
Alex Lindsay
A lot of my clients are asking, what would make.
- [20:01]
Leo Laporte
I would buy this right away. Literally spend 3,500 bucks.
- [20:06]
Andy Ihnatko
So. So, like, on the desktop, and so you've got a virtual screen in front of you that has, like, the basic, like, TV view of where they switch for you. On the desk, there's a virtual version of the race route, like, on the map with all the cars, like, in real time animated around them. That's what he's got going right now in test flight. In the demo.
- [20:24]
Leo Laporte
Andy, there's also. But I don't hear him. Oh, is that me?
- [20:27]
Andy Ihnatko
Am I.
- [20:27]
Jason Snell
That's you.
- [20:28]
Andy Ihnatko
Yep, I hear him.
- [20:31]
Leo Laporte
But. But.
- [20:33]
Andy Ihnatko
But the. But the idea. But in the. In the demo version, that isn't real. It's like, I also want to see cockpit views from this driver and this driver. I want to see, like, another view, just like the standings, because F1 is one of the most. You don't have to really care much about the sport to think that it's a really entertaining thing to watch because, boy, what great work they did to make sure. If we wire up all these cars so that not only are you getting live video from each car, but you're also getting live telemetry, and not just for the pit crews.
- [21:02]
Leo Laporte
So much data. There's terabytes a second. Yeah.
- [21:04]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. I mean, it is one hell of a demo. If I were at Apple and part of my fortunes were tied into the fortunes of Vision Pro, I would be volunteering myself as a go between.
- [21:17]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know, Apple is producing this f. F1 movie. Yeah. With Brad Pitt that's coming out next year. It's it. And Tim Cook was at an F1 race last year in Austin, so there's definitely something going on. F1 is owned by an American company called Liberty Media. You might know the name. And I You know, I wonder if there's some sort of. I'm sure negotiations have been ongoing for the last couple of years. This is such a natural use of the Vision Pro. I think it may also be that Apple said, no, wait a minute, we want to do that. Who knows? Who knows? You know, Apple might have said, we've got a tie in coming up with F1, and we don't want this app to be.
- [21:58]
Andy Ihnatko
But it shows you what a great platform this could be for watching live sports. Baseball, same thing. You have the diamond in front of you. You have, again, the network sort of coverage so that you don't have to do switching yourself, but you also want. I want a static view of third base because I'm concerned. I'm interested in. I'm interested in, like, the fourth. The play of the plate coming up. And have these. Have all the stats that are not going to simply overlay and interrupt you, but are there for you because these are things you're actually interested in while you're actually looking at, like, the two other games that you're betting on that decide whether you go to work tomorrow, you retire, or you go on the run. It's a good app. Killer app.
- [22:36]
Leo Laporte
All right. And that was our Vision Pro segment. How about that?
- [22:40]
Jason Snell
Now you see, now you know, we're done talking.
- [22:43]
Leo Laporte
The Vision Pro.
- [22:46]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [22:48]
Leo Laporte
Wow. That's. We've never begun a show with a Vision Pro segment since. Well, maybe when the Vision Pro came out, but that's it.
- [22:54]
Jason Snell
That was before we had the cool theme song, though, so.
- [22:57]
Alex Lindsay
Yes.
- [22:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, man. To start with that. That's just wonderful. Take a little break. Is it too early? No, it's not too early. Let's take a little break. When we come back, there is lots more to talk about. Actually, I was joking before the show that we were light, but no, we are not light. We're going to get into the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar in just a moment.
- [23:21]
Andy Ihnatko
I might be having mic problems during that section of the show.
- [23:24]
Leo Laporte
Hello?
- [23:25]
Andy Ihnatko
Hello? I can hear you. Me.
- [23:27]
Leo Laporte
I know. He left. He left. He actually left. Well, they're pulling Drake is pulling Tim Cook into this. So we have to talk about it. That and more coming. There's a lot more coming up. Just a little bit. Andy and Ako, Jason Snell and of course, Alex Lindsay on the show today. Our show brought to you by literally, quite literally brought to you by our friends at Cash Fly Boy. I remember, like it was yesterday. It was almost 20 years ago. We were trying to get these shows out. I started by putting them on a web page that crashed the web server almost immediately. Then I went, hat in hand to AOL Radio, was streaming it for us for a while. A lot of different places where you would go to get your Mac break weekly or this week in tech or your security now. And the funny thing is, at one point I actually went out and said, could everybody just seed the BitTorrent and we'll just use BitTorrent? That didn't work either. Thankfully, a guy named Matt Levine, one of the founders of Cash Fly, called me and solved the problem. And we've been using Cash Fly ever since. Almost 20 years now. We've literally been brought to you by Cash Fly. Cash Fly has been around for over 20 years. They've held the track record for there is there. I should explain what they are. They're a content delivery network. They are, when you download the show, when you watch the video on our website, you're getting it from Cash Fly, not us, but from our content delivery network. And they have held the track record for 20 years now for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery. They serve over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries and we're one of those 5,000. We love the lag free video loading, the hyper fast downloads, the friction free site interactions. But really number one for us, we don't ever hear from you, our listeners, because Cash Fly always delivers. It's, it's a, it's a great thing. Boy, in the early days people would complain like crazy, I can't. The show won't download it. Download half of it. Cashflow just solved it. Because it's the only CDN built for throughput. They do, as an example, ultra low latency video streaming. They can deliver video to over a million concurrent users with less than one second latency. Wow. Lightning fast gaming delivers downloads faster with zero lag, zero glitches, zero outages. It's not just for podcasters. Mobile content optimization, you got images on your site, offers automatic and simple image optimization so your site loads faster on any size screen. Now the thing we really needed with Cash Fly at the beginning because it was so new, even podcasting was new at the time. We weren't sure where the, you know, it's very spiky bandwidth. Like everybody download MacBreak weekly the minute it came out and then it would slow down through the rest of the week and then it would spike again. And we were, we didn't want to pay for the maximum bandwidth we'd ever use. Cash Fly worked with us and they'll work with you with flexible month to month billing as long as you need it so you could figure out exactly the right way to pay for this. And then once you do, you get a discount for fixed terms for us and for you. The main point was you design your own contract. When you switch to Cash flow, Cash Fly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content. We I didn't realize this, but I guess we were a beta tester because we've been doing this for years. Our podcasts aren't uploaded to our site and then cached by Cash Fly. We upload them directly to Cash Fly so they hold our content in their cloud, which means there's never a cash miss. It's 100% cash hit ratio and that makes a big difference too. You can get that now too. It's called sos and with Cash Flies Elite managed packages, of course you get the VIP treatment we always do. You'll have a dedicated account manager who will be with you from day one, making sure you get a smooth implementation and whenever you need it. Reliable 247 support. I have to say, in the almost 20 years we've been using Cash Fly, we've really never needed support. They just. It always. They're always there. It's great. Learn how you can get your first month free@cash fly cashflow.com Twitter. You've been hearing me say it for many, many years. Bandwidth for Mac Break Weekly is provided by cash fly@c a c h e fly.com twit thank you cash Fly. You've heard of Gray Key, right? Oh, wait a minute. I was going to do. When Jason gets back from the bathroom, I'm going to do Kendrick Lamar and Drake because I know you really care.
- [27:59]
Jason Snell
I'm sitting right here. Although if you would like, I'll go to the bathroom while you talk about it.
- [28:04]
Alex Lindsay
That would be appropriate.
- [28:05]
Leo Laporte
I saw you run out the door when I.
- [28:07]
Jason Snell
When I slid my chair away from my microphone so I couldn't say something that I.
- [28:12]
Leo Laporte
So I don't know anything about this, but there are a couple of well known. Do we Andy, you. You probably know you're our. You're our ticket into the younger generation. Is it hip hop or rap? I don't know.
- [28:29]
Andy Ihnatko
Depends on whether you're going east coast or west coast.
- [28:32]
Leo Laporte
Okay, well, Drake's Canadian. What do you. How did. What does that count as he's bundled.
- [28:38]
Andy Ihnatko
Up very, very securely. A lot of hats, a lot of puffer jackets.
- [28:42]
Leo Laporte
So Apparently Drake and Kendrick. Kendrick Lamar is kind of. I, he's, I'm on his side. I'm team Kendrick. I gotta say, he's amazing. But his lyrics are incredible. But he and Drake are, I don't know. This is very common in the rap world having some sort of beef. And in fact Kendrick and Drake each made songs dissing the other. Okay. Now Drake says that Apple is. Has trained Siri. Siri has been bribed to pay to play Kendrick Lamar's not like us, even if you ask for Drake's certified lover boy.
- [29:24]
Andy Ihnatko
Okay.
- [29:24]
Leo Laporte
Drake says it's Paola. In fact, he went after and sued Universal Music Group. I believe he lost on that one. And now apparently he's. He's decided to take aim at Apple on information and belief. UMG paid or approved payments to Apple to have its voice activated digital assistant. This is the court filing. Siri purposely misdirect users to not like us online sources reported. Ah, it's the old online sources that when users asked Siri to play the album Certified Loverboy by recording artist Aubrey Drake Graham doing business as Drake, Siri instead played not like Us, which contains the lyric certified pedophile as an allegation against Drake. So what's going on? Is, is it anyway? I don't, I don't know what's going on either. I have had Apple's Siri misplace stuff, you know, as long as I've had.
- [30:30]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, that's the hard part is it's so inaccurate. It's like, it's like a, you know, like it. I always, every time I ask for a song and Siri decides to play me either the wrong song or more importantly the live version of the song, I'm like, when would I ever want to listen to the live version of the song if I didn't ask for the live version of the song? So my, my opinion about Siri's accuracy is very low. If they could maybe if they saw it consistently. But it just seems like it small beans for Apple. Like why would they do that? Like why would they. You know, there's a little bit of.
- [30:58]
Leo Laporte
Payola is a very, very big crime. Ever since the 50s when there was a big scandal. Payola scandal that DJs were being paid as. You know. Alex, you were a music director and no one ever gave you cocaine.
- [31:12]
Alex Lindsay
No, but they bought me so much sushi.
- [31:14]
Leo Laporte
You know, I think there are. It's within the, that's within the scope.
- [31:18]
Alex Lindsay
They're not in the scope of general. I never got any cocaine I got cocaine in it. I got a lot of sushi passes.
- [31:24]
Leo Laporte
That's.
- [31:24]
Alex Lindsay
That's all I got out of the whole thing. But.
- [31:26]
Andy Ihnatko
But it is. But it does point to a problem that, like, you have all across, like, the online experience. Whenever you search for something, is it going to give you the thing specifically you asked for? Is it going to give you the thing that is related to what you asked for? But they paid Google Search or Spotify or Apple Music to say, whenever someone asks for this, make sure you throw this thing that we've sponsored into the mix. Or is it an organization that's gaming the system to make sure that if we tag this to the wazoo, we can figure out how to make sure that people do not people specifically ask for coke. They get directed. Absolutely. They get directed straight to moxie instead. That's not what they asked for. But we give you the system.
- [32:06]
Leo Laporte
An example of this. President Eisenhower called payola a issue of public morality. That's how long this has been going on, since February 1960. Anyway, laws were passed. It became a big issue in the late 50s, and a number of DJs lost their careers or paid big fines.
- [32:29]
Andy Ihnatko
There was a time when morning DJs were like the Village Priests. That was. He was the voice of authority, the voice of morality. You came to him with your problems. He kept the community together. And then when that all blew apart like a. Like a. Like a wax.
- [32:42]
Jason Snell
Hey, everybody. This is Father Wolfman. Jack. Be seated.
- [32:48]
Leo Laporte
Alan Freed, the legendary Cleveland disc jockey who gave rock and roll its names. Career was destroyed in the. In the payola scandals. Dick Clark, almost, by the way.
- [32:59]
Alex Lindsay
Almost.
- [32:59]
Leo Laporte
He got away with it. So Paola has a long story.
- [33:03]
Alex Lindsay
I just don't know music, but in a big, giant tech company with a thing. I mean, it just.
- [33:07]
Leo Laporte
Why would Apple take.
- [33:08]
Alex Lindsay
Why would you do that?
- [33:09]
Leo Laporte
Like, they don't. Yeah.
- [33:10]
Jason Snell
This is so clearly the whole. You see a conspiracy when it's actually incompetence. I mean, the stuff that Siri plays for me, that is not what I asked for. It's. I mean, come on. It's a miracle when it works, right? So for them to have, like, a nefarious conspiracy. I'm skeptical. I'm. I'm deeply skeptical of that.
- [33:31]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it just, you know, it's kind of like. Like Google. There's places that it shows you things because you paid for them. Once you get below that line, they're just doing the best they can to give you what they. What you asked for.
- [33:42]
Jason Snell
You know, I mean, I don't think Apple would ever design something to override your choice and play something else that they got paid for? Because I said, I'm not sure that's illegal.
- [33:50]
Alex Lindsay
But the damage to their brand would be illegal, regardless of legality or not the damage to their brand. If they actually, actually did that. Like, if anybody saw that anywhere at Apple, I mean, even folks that just got to Apple would be like, oh, that's.
- [34:02]
Leo Laporte
It wouldn't be money anyway. It would be something like, you know, Drake saying, or Kendrick Lamar saying, I'll give you an exclusive concert.
- [34:09]
Jason Snell
Kendrick gets an immersive video.
- [34:10]
Leo Laporte
Immersive video on Vision Pro.
- [34:12]
Jason Snell
Oh, there you go. That's why the weekend's not involved in any of this is because he's just rising. Rising above it in his. His ambulance, on his stretcher and whatever that was in that. That video. I mean, whatever.
- [34:25]
Andy Ihnatko
How about a free set of Mac Pro feet, huh? How would that subtle thing make you happy?
- [34:31]
Leo Laporte
Hey, don't knock it. Those are hundreds of dollars on retail. I'm ready for the prices. Wouldn't it be funny if the prices right. Put those wheels up to had people guess. Oh, that's got to be 39.99. Right?
- [34:45]
Andy Ihnatko
Back when. Back when I used to watch Prices, right. It's like I realized that I would be absolutely insufferable if there was an. Okay, is that DDR3 or DDR5? RAM? It says here it has.
- [34:57]
Leo Laporte
They had RAM. They would actually have RAM on the prices. Right? Wow.
- [35:00]
Andy Ihnatko
I don't know. Again, there were a couple times where there were like a Mac system, and I would be like, thinking, okay, let's get really careful here.
- [35:10]
Leo Laporte
I need to know the specs. Speaking of things that we will. Not that I did see, by the way, because it wasn't immersive and I don't have a Vision Pro, but I enjoyed. Was the. The George Clooney and Brad Pitt vehicle Wolves, which was an Apple tv. Well, it was going to be a theatrical release.
- [35:30]
Jason Snell
Yes, it was.
- [35:31]
Andy Ihnatko
It was.
- [35:32]
Leo Laporte
And Apple decided. Yikes. After Fly Me to the Moon did not fly to the moon, they decided, you know, maybe we shouldn't put Wolves out in the theaters. We're just going to stream it directly. To which Brad Pitt and George Clooney said something unprintable because their compensation was tied to theatrical revenue. Theatrical take.
- [35:57]
Jason Snell
Yeah. Apple presumably paid them off. And I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of payout. If there wasn't a theatrical, it'd be a suit.
- [36:04]
Leo Laporte
Remember Scarlett Johansson?
- [36:06]
Jason Snell
Exactly. So there'd be a suit. There would almost certainly be a payout in that scenario. I think the problem here is how Apple like reading all the coverage of this. I don't think anybody's questioning Apple's decision to not release it in theaters. I think the problem is they did it last minute. It was like a week before, I think is what John Watts, the director writer said that he heard about it. So it happened last minute. It obviously was a blow to them because there is prestige involved with doing a theatrical release and you're working with creative people. Apple handled this more like canceling a product. Right. Which I, I'm sorry. It really does feel like they don't understand the relationship issues in Hollywood, that you need to have good relationships with the creative people who generate the content. The money is good and they'll take your money, but they, if all the things being equal, they'll work with somebody they're more comfortable with. And then.
- [36:57]
Leo Laporte
Well, that interesting twist on this is not only releasing it only on Apple tv, not in the theaters. Apple also put out a press release saying, and a sequel is in the works. Wolves 2. To which John won. Watts said, no, it was, yeah, a.
- [37:14]
Jason Snell
Sequel was in the works though. That's the thing. But when they killed the theatrical release, John Watts said, take the, take the sequel. Please don't mention the sequel in your press release because I don't want to do it. I'm unhappy with you. And they, and they said it anyway, which is also a betrayal. And clearly there as a face saving measure, I think they probably figured they were also saving face for John Watts and everybody else involved say, no, no, we like it creatively. This is a business decision. But when the guy tells you not to mention it because he doesn't intend on doing it and you do it anyway, I think that's worse. That is a worse sign of disrespect for the creatives in Hollywood than the one week's notice to pull it from theaters. Again. I don't think it's a bad business decision. Apple's movie business is being completely realigned because it's been a disaster. They're going to make a whole bunch of different decisions about how they do movies going forward. But like, you gotta, you gotta take care of the talent and you gotta be aware of the relationships.
- [38:14]
Alex Lindsay
It wasn't just Apple either. I mean, Disney, Warner Brothers, they've all got locked horns with.
- [38:19]
Jason Snell
There have been hyperbolic stories about how Apple has burned its bridges in Hollywood over this. And I'm like, guys, every Studio does things that make everybody angry at them. They all have. It's like saying, I'm never going to fly this airline. And you run out of airlines at some point.
- [38:34]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and again, you know, Disney did the about face. Warner Brothers did an about face. Many of them have done these about faces where at the last minute they switch over to streaming because they don't. Because the problem, the real problem is that we all have pretty big screens at home and we all have a ton of content. And if you don't knock it out of the park, like this is worth seeing on a big screen. People just go. Everyone just goes. I'll just wait until it comes out. You know, like, they don't. There's not. The drive that I have to go see it in the theater is not like. Part of what drove an incredible weekend for Wicked was the camaraderie. People being so excited about it and talk. Talking about it and making it. But that's a very unusual thing to have happen. You saw it with Barbie Heimer last year. And so the.
- [39:16]
Leo Laporte
But I think that the pronounced Barbenheimer.
- [39:19]
Alex Lindsay
Barbenheimer. Yeah, there you go. Barbie Barbenheimer. This one was supposed to be. I thought it was like. What was it? It was Glick.
- [39:27]
Leo Laporte
Something like Jiminy Glick. What?
- [39:29]
Alex Lindsay
Gladiator they were trying to make.
- [39:30]
Leo Laporte
They were trying to Gladiator PR Their Glick.
- [39:32]
Alex Lindsay
It looked. They're trying to get the Gladiator thing.
- [39:36]
Leo Laporte
Together or else Gladiator, which maybe not the right image.
- [39:40]
Alex Lindsay
We. So anyway, the problem is, is that if films like now, like for instance, I think Wolves was great. I think it was a great movie. It was really fun. I would never have done.
- [39:50]
Leo Laporte
I would have never gone to the movie. There's ever.
- [39:52]
Jason Snell
No.
- [39:52]
Leo Laporte
Me neither.
- [39:53]
Alex Lindsay
And that's the math. The math problem is. And if I had gone to the theater, I probably wouldn't have loved it as much because I enjoy as a free film that had Brad Pitt and George Clooney and had a reasonably good thing, it was fine. It was like a good. It was a good ride. But that's not good enough to go to the theaters anymore. And that's the problem that a lot of folks. And that' what the reality is starting to set in. And then the problem is that even though the primary use is streaming and you release it to the theatrical and you're just offsetting some costs and you're getting pr. What you get is a bunch of bad press. This was, you know, Napoleon was a disaster and this was a disaster. You didn't get any because they're. Because the press, the Hollywood Reporter and Variety are only comparing you to other film releases. Not, not, oh, this is a streaming thing that we also put out on Theatrical. We don't really care if it makes money. It doesn't have to. We offset some of the costs. We get a bunch of PR out of it, blah, blah, blah. And so that's flipped.
- [40:46]
Leo Laporte
Right, but what's happening? You don't make money in the Theatrical. You make it in the streaming now?
- [40:50]
Alex Lindsay
Well, they, I don't know, international. That's the theory. That's the theory. The theory is. The theory is, is that. That you, you know, you're going to supply this feed of people that are constantly paying that subscription, and you got to figure out how to, how to rationalize the cost of the film. The bottom line is, is that it's going to be really interesting to see whether Theatrical survives this because it, you know, for these streamers. I don't think that, like, the math doesn't make any sense for the. I mean, the problem is, is that the big tent poles are not. They're not consistent anymore. And so no one knows where that's going. Anything less than those big tent poles are generally not doing well in the movie theaters.
- [41:27]
Leo Laporte
Even Marvel is doing all that.
- [41:28]
Alex Lindsay
No, because the, because, you know, I think a lot of people don't really like the multiverse.
- [41:34]
Leo Laporte
So much money marketing Wicked. I mean, there, there were Wicked tie at Target. They had to spend so much money on Wicked to market it because they.
- [41:43]
Alex Lindsay
Have another one that they, they. They have Part two that has to succeed, you know, like, like, and, and, and so, but that's a big deal. Like, it's like you, you've already, you know, gone down this path and shot another one. And it has to.
- [41:52]
Leo Laporte
I was a kid, the Thanksgiving movie was Mary Poppins, and there were lines around the block to go see Mary Poppins. So I guess there's a, there's a Hollywood tradition of, oh, you got to have a kid movie for Thanksgiving. That is box.
- [42:06]
Alex Lindsay
Box office, you know, and, and, and I think that the reason they put that kind of marketing in is because it's a good movie. Like, I haven't seen it yet.
- [42:12]
Leo Laporte
Is it good? Did you see it?
- [42:12]
Alex Lindsay
I haven't seen it yet, but every person I've talked to said that Wicked is really. I mean, Andy's probably more of a. More of a theatrical person than most. More of a theater person than most of us who you've seen. I'm sure Andy Wicked in the theater. Right?
- [42:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [42:25]
Andy Ihnatko
And like live in theater. I haven't seen this movie.
- [42:28]
Leo Laporte
I saw it in theater. I saw it on Broadway.
- [42:29]
Alex Lindsay
It was quite good.
- [42:30]
Jason Snell
Great.
- [42:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [42:31]
Jason Snell
Great show.
- [42:31]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. So I think, I think, well, the.
- [42:33]
Leo Laporte
First two acts, the third act flopped. But anyway, that's neither here nor there since, in fact, the. The two and a half hour theater experience is being stretched to two different movies over two different years.
- [42:45]
Alex Lindsay
Yes, Right.
- [42:45]
Leo Laporte
Which doesn't.
- [42:46]
Alex Lindsay
But they have to have, like. It's a big. You know. But they wouldn't have put the. What. What you see in Hollywood a lot of times is if they don't think it has legs, they would have. They would have dumped it. Like, they would have done something quietly just let it die. They saw a film that was really good. They have a. They have a sequel that's already good. They were like, we gotta make the first one successful or the second one's gonna, you know, this is gonna be a real problem. So you see a lot of marketing in it. And it's, again, a good film, it's a good property. It's good, you know, has all the right things, you know, in that area.
- [43:13]
Leo Laporte
And so it's got green and it's got pink. So you're set, man.
- [43:16]
Alex Lindsay
But no red, because red would be a copyright infringement on the wizard of Oz, the movie. While silver is not a copyright infringement.
- [43:25]
Andy Ihnatko
Against the original wizard of Oz. She wore silver shoes, not ruby slippers. Ruby slippers was an invention of the MGM movie.
- [43:33]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. So that they could show off.
- [43:35]
Leo Laporte
Is it still trade copyrighted? It's like 1939 movie is still.
- [43:41]
Alex Lindsay
I think it's. Until now, they're not there yet.
- [43:42]
Andy Ihnatko
2034, they made sure that paperwork was up to date. And also there's an original set of ruby slippers up for auction at Heritage Auctions right now.
- [43:54]
Alex Lindsay
There you go.
- [43:54]
Andy Ihnatko
If you want to see them in like, absolutely. Like 8,000 pixels by 12,000 pixels, you can go to Heritage auctions and like, download these pictures. They're quite amazing.
- [44:03]
Leo Laporte
But I wonder. So I don't think it's just John Watts. He returned his money after the press release and said, I don't trust Apple anymore. But I wonder if he also realized George Clooney and Brad Pitt were in the same boat. I mean.
- [44:16]
Jason Snell
Yeah. I think the truth is that what's happening here is that creatives are being taught that when you take money from a streamer to make your movie and you get to put in that swimming pool or whatever you're going to do, buy that another house on Lake Como, whatever you want to do that.
- [44:38]
Leo Laporte
You sold that house, by the way.
- [44:39]
Jason Snell
You don't. Well, that's why he's got to buy a new one. That when you do that, you're taking money from a streamer, you are going to give up. They might make noises about theatrical, but unless it tests well or the schedule looks right, you may not get theatrical with it. And you just have to accept that or you're going to need to take less money from somebody who really is going to give you an ironclad guarantee. And I think we've been in an era where everybody's been a little mealy mouthed about it and they're like, well, yeah, we'll do it. To Netflix's credit, they're just like, no, we're not interested in theatrical at all. Whereas Apple's like, sure, Ridley Scott, we'll let you put, put Napoleon in a few places and all of that. And I think we'll get over it. I think this is a period in time where there are going to be a lot of these kind of harsh lessons and the streamers are going to firm up what their deals are going to be and there will be a more clearly defined thing where creative types are going to have to say, and I love them, I'm one, I'm a creative type in a different area. But we love actors and directors and writers, but they're going to end up probably having to choose. Do you want the ego boo of being in a theater? And how many millions of dollars are you willing to take off of the top line in order to get it? And when you're like, oh yeah, I mean, I love the theater, but $10 million more sounds pretty good. We'll stream that baby. Right? Like, I feel like that's where we're headed there. But we're going to have a series of these incidents where I think Apple behaved badly in the standpoint from a relationship management perspective. But also it's also the cold hard facts of the business and I think it will resolve itself. I do think there's a future for theatrical. There are a bunch of movies that have made billions of dollars this year and that will continue. But a lot of these movies that are getting these kind of obligatory releases with these huge budgets, you're already seeing the retrenchment where Apple might do a couple of big movies a year, but they're not going to do eight big movies a year with big budgets. They, it doesn't make any sense for anyone.
- [46:43]
Alex Lindsay
And the thing Is that what I will say is that most of the streamers are looking really, really hard at series and you're going to see more and more of these series. It's a much better math for them to do these. And so the thing is that they went into features because that's how they attract all these actors. But where they're really kind of leaning more and more towards is building less and less features, spending less on them, figuring out how to make them more transactional because they're really high risk. Two hours of something is a super high risk thing unless you just absolute know it's gonna work. You look at Red one, they put a lot of time and money into Red one and it was a disaster. I don't know.
- [47:17]
Leo Laporte
Was it really?
- [47:18]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, money wise? Oh yeah, they. They took a bath and. So awful. To be honest, with Red one, I didn't see it. I haven't seen it yet. That's the problem is I haven't seen it yet. You know, like we're not.
- [47:27]
Jason Snell
I.
- [47:27]
Alex Lindsay
But I mean, are people just saying.
- [47:29]
Leo Laporte
Unless it's something that, like Oppenheimer, where you really want to see it in the theater, I'll just wait, let's see.
- [47:34]
Alex Lindsay
I mean, the problem is, is there's only about five to eight directors right now that are making films that are worth going to see in the film in the theater. I mean that. That are taking advantage of that medium at that scale because there are dumb, you know, so, you know, Denny, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan. These are the folks that think in very large visual, you know, like. So they're thinking in really big. Because what's interesting is as I do a lot of work where I. I do stuff for the phone, I do stuff for theaters, I do stuff for. And each one of those mediums actually looks. There's a. The way you shoot it changes it. Like things that work really, really well on a big screen don't always work on a TV as well and definitely don't work on the phone because they're too wide. And so the thing is, is there's some people that think of in epic proportions. And in those. When I see an Oppenheimer come out or a dune come out or those types of things, I think, oh, I gotta go see that in the theater. Because that's going to be an experience like Interstellar. They're doing the 1570 release of Interstellar again, I think next weekend, next Friday.
- [48:40]
Leo Laporte
I'd like to see that.
- [48:41]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it was on sale for three hours and the Metreon was sold Every seat.
- [48:46]
Leo Laporte
Like it was like, because 70 millimeter film.
- [48:49]
Jason Snell
There is a future theatrical. It's just not the future that is going to have a kind of a shambly movie like Wolf's in it, right? Like that. And I love those movies. I love, like there's never going to be a big blockbuster release of something like out of Sight or some of those other Steven Soderbergs or Ocean's Eleven or like, I feel like those days are over. And if you look at the charts for this year, you can see it, right? Danny Villeneuve is there. Doom part two is number four. And gross like 700 bill or 700 million, but like inside out. So there's a Pixar there, there's a Marvel, Deadpool and Wolverine was the highest grossing R rated movie of all time. You know, Inside out and Despicable Me. So you have. And Kung Fu Panda 5 is in the top 10. I mean there are for kids and action and certain directors and certain franchises and like even Oppenheimer, a serious drama, a serious adult drama, rated R. And it was a hit. It's just that it will happen. It will happen. But it's not like it was. Not like it was.
- [49:49]
Alex Lindsay
And the problem is that it's. Can you keep selling enough popcorn to keep the theaters, you know, going those. There's not enough. There's just not, I don't know.
- [49:57]
Jason Snell
Marin county update, right? All our theaters are basically disappearing because they just can't fill them. And so they're all just sort of vanishing now. And we're down to a smaller and smaller number. I think that will happen. Something you said there, Alex, about TV series, I was thinking about this. I think that in the streaming era, one of the things that needs to change, in addition to sort of like this trade off between you want to get more money or do you want to be in a movie theater? I think is we are seeing the very slow erosion of the movie star as being like, I don't do that. I only do movies. And I think there was a headline this week that really put a knife in it about how Wolf's is the most expensive TV movie ever made. Which like, hey, congratulations, Brett and George Clooney, you're in a TV movie. I mean, it's not, but it is. And I do believe it means a.
- [50:44]
Leo Laporte
Very different thing than it did back in the day.
- [50:46]
Jason Snell
It does, but I think so, like, novels are more successful and popular than short stories. Movies are short stories. It's always been interesting that movies have been so successful, but I think in the streaming era, I think there are some things that really should be movies, but there are also probably a lot of things that are not only good, but you could spend that money and do a six hour miniseries or an eight hour miniseries or something you call a series instead of a movie with the same budget and the same stars and people might like it better.
- [51:15]
Leo Laporte
Interestingly, pair Apple's Dune series with this villain of Dune.
- [51:20]
Alex Lindsay
You mean, you mean Disney's Disney series?
- [51:23]
Jason Snell
Yeah, no, it's hbo.
- [51:25]
Alex Lindsay
So hborn that's the problem.
- [51:29]
Leo Laporte
In any event, I wonder how long it is before creatives go. Well, you know, the thing about this long form multi episodic TV is we can really stretch our legs. Alfonso Cuaron decided after reading disclaimer to make it an eight part series instead of a two hour movie. And I think as a viewer I'd hate to see Game of Thrones the movie. I think it was, you know, much better. Spread out over seven seasons.
- [52:00]
Alex Lindsay
Over four, at least four seasons. It slowly wound out.
- [52:07]
Leo Laporte
I mean that's, you know, that's what, that's the thing they're going to have to learn there is a natural length to these things. Don't, don't do, you know, the seventh season. Because it's a mistake. Well, I think that there's a new and, and for us as viewers, we have much better screens now. We have much better sound at home. I think. And I think that people are happy watching stuff at home.
- [52:29]
Alex Lindsay
If the hardest part for series is for, is for I think writers to not lean on things that are easy, like relationships. Because the number one reason that people in my family stop watching things is because a quote unquote got so, you know, like, like it started off as there's a, there's a thing and then suddenly everybody's in real life.
- [52:45]
Leo Laporte
Well, they have to learn just as they have to learn, you know, immersive video. They have to learn this new medium.
- [52:51]
Alex Lindsay
I mean, and I think that like a perfect example one is doing it well is Slow Horses, which I just think is just one of the incredibles.
- [52:58]
Leo Laporte
Incredible.
- [52:58]
Alex Lindsay
And they just keep, they. I'd watch that every, you know, and Silo just came out again with the first two episodes which I, I love Silo. So I might.
- [53:06]
Leo Laporte
You prove my point that and I think creatives, people like Scorsese and others are going to eventually say yeah, this is probably, this is the future. Economics is forcing us in that direction, but this is the future. It's sad because Apple has an opportunity to be the HBO of The next era where they creatives trust them, creatives love them, they have lots of money, they get to do what they want. And it seems like this was a.
- [53:31]
Alex Lindsay
Fumble, an understory again. I think that they've all fumbled in that area. You know, they've all had that, that problem. And it's because this is a fast moving market. Everyone's trying to put Covid put a huge wrench into the whole system and things are still flying around. Like, we think that it's all over because we can't, you know, we're all able to go out again, but people's behavior has changed dramatically and they haven't gone back and they're not probably going to go back. And it wasn't because of COVID It was because streaming happened to be ramping up at the same time Covid hit. So suddenly all this stuff got flown into that. People got used to that, and then they don't want to go back to where they were. And I think that that's the. And the problem is that the theatrical business is too risky right now, you know, and to do big films. And I think that, you know, especially what scares people is not that Ocean's Eleven might not be able to be released or whatever. What terrifies people is if Marvel puts something out that doesn't make a lot of money, it means there's no automatic money anymore, you know, and so they did really well in Deadpool, obviously, but they, but some of the other Marvel products haven't done as well. And that terrifies people because it just means that there's not. Oh, if we go to action, adventure, that type of thing we can make, we can always come back with a paycheck that makes everything less stable. And so I think that that's the thing that'll be really interesting to see what happens next. But I think that streaming is the future of some kind. We're going to see more and more of that. And I think that I do agree that there'll be still some theatrical, but I think that you're going to see less and less and less of it. And the theaters are, I think, going to probably find other things to do with their screens.
- [55:00]
Leo Laporte
Well, I think we want to take a break here because Jason Snell is now so bored. He's talking about Marin Real State.
- [55:07]
Jason Snell
And I am cultivating an online community. Leo, you leave me alone.
- [55:14]
Leo Laporte
The problem is I also live in west, in this area, and I want to contribute. I want to get. Participate in this.
- [55:19]
Jason Snell
I see, yes, yes.
- [55:21]
Leo Laporte
One of our One of our good friends in the Discord has been living. His family's been living in West Marin since 1862.
- [55:28]
Jason Snell
I mean, okay, wow, that's way out there. I come from a long line of abalone farmers series.
- [55:37]
Leo Laporte
He could do 1862, the whole family.
- [55:40]
Jason Snell
Record the whole thing.
- [55:43]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. All right, you're watching. Seriously, we have some news, actually. I want to talk about Brendan Carr's letter to Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and one Tim Cook saying that Big Tech is exercising a cartel, a censorship cartel. Given that he's going to be the new chairman of the fcc, this probably is something they should pay attention to. We'll talk about that in just a bit. You're listening and watching to MacBreak weekly, the show we cover weekly Apple news and sometimes the media stories too, and things like that. If you like what you're hearing, I hope you will support our show. As you may notice, there was one ad today and that's it to keep the show on the air because it's more expensive than one ass worth of revenue. We need your help. We need you to join Club Twit. I've always thought the best way to do this, to do a podcast network to be supported by the listeners. In fact, when we first started twit in 2005, that was the plan. I said, boldly said no advertising. That was a mistake. But anyway, we couldn't grow to the level that we wanted to. But then again, there wasn't Patreon, there wasn't this whole infrastructure of crowdfunding and so forth. And I think things have changed. So we're trying this again, partly out of a long term desire to have a listener funded network and partly out of necessity, if you think this is the kind of programming you want to hear, if you like the shows we do on Twit, it's easy to support us, to let us know, to send us a signal to vote, if you will, by going to Twit TV Club Wit. It's only seven bucks a month you get. Well, I know I do five shows. Micah does. I don't know, two. That's seven. And then we have a bunch of shows in the club. There's at least 10 shows for seven bucks a month, all of them ad free. The shows that we do in the club, you get video as well as audio. We put out audio in the public, but the. But the club members get the video for Hands On Macintosh. That's Micah's show, Hands on Windows with Paul Thoreau. And on and on and on. There's also great stuff in the club, like Micah's crafting corner. He just did this last week. Stacy's book club's coming up in a couple of weeks. We have Chris Marquardt, our photo guy does a photography show every and we do a coffee show. We're doing more and more in the club and I would love to have you in the club with us. Plus you get to hang out in the Discord with great people like retcon5, who's been living in Marin since 1862. Just think of the stories he's telling in the Discord right now. I think it's worth seven bucks a month and it sure makes a difference to us. If you haven't done it yet, please twit. Go to Twit TV Club. Twitter, scan the QR code in the upper left hand corner. Two weeks free if you want. So you could try before you buy. And we've added a referral program which means you'll get a code when you sign up. You can put that in your socials, put that everywhere, send it to your family and if they join, you get a month free. So that's another way to kind of support your habit. Twit TV Club. Twit. We thank you in advance and to all our club members who are seeing this if they're watching live, thanks a lot. We appreciate it. We watch. We now stream and this is again because of the club on eight different platforms. There's Discord for the club members. YouTube, Twitch, we're on X.com, facebook, LinkedIn. I have to use my fingers to count like a dwell like an 8 year old because I can't. I can't remember them all. Kick and tick tock. There you go. All eight. You can watch us do this show live every Tuesday if you wish. But club members, you will get the ads in the live show. We take them out after the fact. Black Friday week is here and so.
- [59:31]
Andy Ihnatko
Are amazing deals at Amazon. You'll save so much on early holiday.
- [59:35]
Leo Laporte
Fashion gifts like cozy fits and stylish shirts.
- [59:38]
Andy Ihnatko
You'll have money left over for the matching sweaters everyone definitely wants to wear.
- [59:41]
Alex Lindsay
For the holiday car cheese.
- [59:45]
Leo Laporte
Or that ugly holiday sweater that's like really ugly.
- [59:49]
Andy Ihnatko
Omg.
- [59:49]
Jason Snell
That's like really ugly.
- [59:52]
Andy Ihnatko
Oh, what fun it is to save. Black Friday week is here with deals.
- [59:55]
Leo Laporte
Up to 35% off. It's better over here. ATT customers, customers switching to T Mobile has never been easier. We'll pay off your existing phone and give you a new one free. All on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com carrierfreedom to switch today. Pay off up to $650 via virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days. Free phone up to $830 via 24.
- [60:21]
Andy Ihnatko
Monthly bill credits plus tax qualifying port.
- [60:22]
Leo Laporte
In trade and service on go 5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance and required finance agreement is do. All right. On we go with Mac break weekly. This letter from.
- [60:36]
Jason Snell
Oh, are we in a letter segment? That's exciting.
- [60:38]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, letters. Let's get letters open.
- [60:40]
Andy Ihnatko
The Mac break mail day, please.
- [60:44]
Jason Snell
It's a weird show.
- [60:45]
Leo Laporte
You said it was upside down. We should have started with the picks.
- [60:48]
Jason Snell
Pics of the week should have been first. Then the Vision Pro segment. We missed that one a little bit.
- [60:51]
Leo Laporte
But like it is working our way backwards.
- [60:54]
Jason Snell
It's the old.
- [60:56]
Leo Laporte
Is that what you're building?
- [60:57]
Andy Ihnatko
A pyramid?
- [60:58]
Jason Snell
Yes, it's a non inverted pyramid. It's just a pyramid. That's just. We start with the narrow stuff and we widen as we go.
- [61:04]
Leo Laporte
There's a reason for that. I'm trying desperately to not get too political to give people some fun in their lives. Right. We want. We need fun.
- [61:13]
Jason Snell
I appreciate that.
- [61:14]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. We have. Trying to a respite.
- [61:17]
Jason Snell
What's more fun than Vision Pro and rapper feuds? I say nothing.
- [61:21]
Leo Laporte
We talked about media. Yeah. I mean I think we're. We did.
- [61:24]
Andy Ihnatko
And multimillionaire celebrities being upset. Yeah.
- [61:28]
Leo Laporte
Did. I mean, there is a debate over whether George Clooney is selling that Lake Como house. He bought it in 2002 from the Hines family for $10 million. It was rumored last fall that he was going to sell it for $107 million, a nice tidy little profit. But he's denied that. So we'll just have to wait and see. How about that? Now you like it? All right. Letter from the Brendan Carr who is currently a commissioner and will be the chairman of the fcc. No confirmation needed because he's already been confirmed as a commissioner over the past few years. To Pachai, Zuckerberg, Nadella and Cook. Over the past few years, Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship. Your company's played significant roles in this. Improper conduct sucked. I'm going to use this voice for him. I don't know what he sounds like, but I hope you don't mind. Big tech companies silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights. They targeted core political, religious and scientific speech. And they worked often in concert with so called, quote, media monitors, end quote, and others to defund, demonetize and otherwise put out of business news outlets and organizations that dared to deviate from an approved narrative. He calls it a censorship cartel.
- [62:45]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [62:46]
Leo Laporte
Should they be shivering in their boobs or is this red?
- [62:49]
Andy Ihnatko
No, they should. They, they should be worried. This guy is a piece of work.
- [62:54]
Alex Lindsay
I just want to agree with Andy, whatever Andy's about to say, because I'm going to say that I think that a lot of the big companies thought that when Trump came in, things were going to get easier. And what they, what they're mostly, what it looks like they're mostly going to get is exactly what they had before with a dash of crazy.
- [63:10]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, like being nuts. These people are subjecting bleach wasn't crazy enough, ladies and gentlemen, we're really going out.
- [63:19]
Andy Ihnatko
He's a piece of work. We're thinking about how bad, quote, unquote, it was, relatively speaking with Ajit Pai, Trump's previous FCC commission head, chief, Commission chief of the fcc.
- [63:30]
Leo Laporte
I feel like. Did he inherit Ajit Pai or was Ajit Pai Trump's nominee? I think he inherited him. He was a. I'm not sure.
- [63:38]
Andy Ihnatko
He didn't. Well, yeah, Traditionally the FCC is usually keeps a 3 to 2 balance with the majority on the side of whatever political party owns the white. Owns the White House at the time. Traditionally, whoever is the chief of the fcc, when a new president comes in, resigns and then the new president, Ajit.
- [63:59]
Leo Laporte
Pai, was chairman in 2017 through 2021. So he predated Trump.
- [64:04]
Andy Ihnatko
Right. And then. Yeah. And traditionally they promote from within, whoever the rep.
- [64:09]
Leo Laporte
So he was terrible, by the way.
- [64:11]
Andy Ihnatko
But he was terrible. But the thing is now here's. Here's some perspective on exactly how bad Brendan Carr is. So you look near the end of Trump's first term, he issued an executive order that basically intended to do away with section 230 of the Communications Decency act by saying that doesn't qualify anymore. That Twitter and YouTube and everybody, they're censoring conservative speech and religious speech on the basis that conservative speech and his own speech that was violating user policies was being removed because of stated user policies. Even Ajit Pai was like, yeah, we're not going to be doing that. Because that's actually.
- [64:53]
Leo Laporte
You're right. Pai was Trump. It was 2017. That was Trump's guy.
- [64:58]
Andy Ihnatko
But Brendan Carr was the one saying, no, absolutely, this is exactly what needs to be done. And when you look at everything. We talked about this on GBH NPR last week. So I spent like two days reading all of his letters and all of his dissenting opinions. And it's not just, just that he's been on this kick about hyper being hyper, hyper, hyper, hyperpartisan, but it's also that even when he says something, he issues a dissent. That's kind of sensible where he's making the case that actually this is not in the domain of the fcc. What is this policy is being proposed. This is the FTC's domain and we shouldn't be stepping over the line. It'll be preceded by 800 words about what a bunch of jerks, ineffective enemies to democracy the Biden administration is. And it will end with. And this is how horrible the tech industry is at silencing dissent and silencing opinion. He will not find, he will not pass up any opportunity to dis both technology companies and the Biden administration. Which means that he's not really thinking. And if anybody. And he also wrote, he also wrote the FCC chapter on the on Project 2025 outlining exactly what he intended to do with four priorities. And number one priority was not make sure that the underserved in America get access to affordable and speedy broadband. Number four was essentially getting after tech companies. His plan has always been, as stated, to basically defang section 230. What he's homing in on is the idea of, of It's a section 230 is under the control of the FCC. So he's in this letter and elsewhere, he's warning the tech companies that, by the way, we don't need an act of Congress. This is basically, you are subject to my authority as the commissioner of the fcc. He's also saying, which is specious, by the way, I believe, which is there are limits to what he can do. But what he's trying to say, he's also trying to say he doesn't have to get Congress or an executive order. There is the shield. The shield Provision of Section 30 is based on, quote, good faith operations by the tech companies. So he's declaring that if in his opinion, as commissioner of the fcc, they are not acting in good faith, he can do whatever they want and the shield provision does not apply. This is terrible, terrible stuff. The more, you know, there's First Amendment.
- [67:27]
Leo Laporte
I mean, what's ironic is Republicans used to say, let's keep, let's reduce regulation to keep government out of people's lives. And this is the exact opposite.
- [67:37]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. Before Jason jumps in, can I Just say. That's another thing that you get from reading his dissenting opinions. Anything that the FCC is thinking about doing that he doesn't like. It's a blatant overreach of FCC authority. Anything that he wants the FCC to do that he likes is exactly within their remit and they don't even need authority from anybody else to do it. This is, he's not right.
- [67:58]
Jason Snell
The guy that's modern politics and modern Republican politics. This guy, you know, it is very troubling. I mean, this guy's a clown, but unfortunately he's a clown with power. And I just want to zero in on that letter for a moment because just to be clear, we are not talking about a letter that is about a systemic censoring by the government of the populace. This letter is about a browser plugin from a company that's an independent company that has decided to rate news sources based on their trustworthiness. News Orwellian name NewsGuard. In the end, this guy is making the boo boo kitty hurt face about the fact that some right wing things are marked as being right wing and not truthful. Now what's chilling about that is I think the end result here is that he wants to threaten everybody. That you can't call a right winger a right winger. You can't call a lie a lie. You have to pretend that every opinion from every orifice should be taken at face value. You and the fact that he's rattling his saber at Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai because an independent company wrote a plugin for their open browser plugin specification shows you how bananas this is. This is just a pretense, just a pretext to warn them that you do what we want or we will make your life uneasy because it's silly on its face. This letter is ludicrous.
- [69:29]
Leo Laporte
But, well, and it's not the only threat to Apple's business. President Elect Trump has also said he is going to on day one and there is again some question about his ability to do this. But he has to declare a public emergency to do this. Add a 25% tariff to Canada and Mexico and a 60% tariff to products brought in from China. This is problematic for Apple. What's interesting is the Wall Street Journal has an article that came out today how Tim Cook cracked the code on working with Trump.
- [70:01]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, we shall see.
- [70:04]
Jason Snell
Read this on MacBreak weekly a few years ago. We've been talking about this for a while now.
- [70:07]
Andy Ihnatko
We had this and remember, we've gone through this before, or rather Apple's gone through this before. Tariffs where? And the Wall Street Journal puts a lot of like past reporting into really good context of how good Tim Cook at playing diplomacy. And it's not just about, hey Trump, why don't you come in and have a photo op at our big factory so you can see how well your Made in America product is going. It's like not only is not only he's close enough that he gets a private dinners with Trump, but also again, the reporting of the Wall Street Journal is that he is focused. It's as if he knows he's dealing with someone who does not have a big attention span. He keeps it focused on exactly one topic and exactly on things that will benefit him as opposed to here's why we have problems with a certain tariff.
- [70:54]
Leo Laporte
Here's the example the Journal gives. Cook's biggest win took place in 2019. Yeah, when Apple was facing down a potential 10% tariff on all imports from China, where Apple still overwhelmingly produces its devices. Cook personally lobbied Trump, explaining how tariffs would increase phone iPhone prices and help foreign rivals like Samsung. Days later, the administration announced it would scale back its tariff plan, giving exceptions to a range of electronics, including the iPhone. Can he do it again?
- [71:25]
Andy Ihnatko
And the thing is, and the Apple watch as well, that's one silver tongued CEO.
- [71:30]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and I think that part of it is that I don't think that. I think the one thing that Tim Cook has that a lot of other CEOs have trouble with is that he doesn't have a big ego about what he needs to do. He is focused on what needs to get done, whether he should have to do it, whether like Steve Jobs would be just like, screw that guy, I'm not going to talk to him and everything else. And Tim Cook is like, he just, all he cares about is moving the ball forward and he is looking at what are the options there. I'm sure that there are tons of meetings at Apple and tons of like, how do we frame this and what do we look for? And, and they're not based on what it should be. Right. Or what should it be or how it should. You know, there's no shoulda, coulda, woulda. There's just like, okay, how do we interact with this leader so that he understands why it's important for us to have this, you know, and they're not. And I think that Apple's discipline in that area is a big reason why he's able to execute his discipline as well. And again, his own personalness getting out of the way of like, I don't care what it, what it takes. I've got a bunch of employees and a bunch of customers and I'm going to try to make sure that they're taken care of and I'm going to stay out of that process. I'm just going to sit there and talk to him. And I think that he probably can't. I think that Apple, Apple has a lot to gain from a change in regime here and it'll be interesting to see what like, number one, they have a lot to lose if they can't figure out the tariffs. But they also. So Trump on their side as a big stick telling the European Union to go stuff it or we're going to start putting. I can give you some tariffs, but I can show you what real tariffs look like. If you keep on messing with Apple, that's a whole nother layer of. I'm sure that those conversations are going to happen.
- [73:04]
Andy Ihnatko
A lot of Apple's problems will start to go away. Again. The DOJ antitrust suit against Apple, Biden was not willing to give him any help. When, when they lost the trade suit about importing Apple Watch with O2 sensors, Biden could have stepped in and said, okay, well this is no good for America, so thank you for judging on this, but we're going to let Apple import this stuff. No help from Biden. All that stuff can come back away. There's. And the more you look at what's going on again, we'll try, I'll try not to keep this like hyper political, but just stating some facts. There really is never, there's never been a sharper divide between you are either a friend of Trump in a corporate way or you are an enemy. And there is no in between. Getting back to Brendan Carr. So Elon Musk, there's no secret exactly how cozy he is with Trump. But so here's something that happened a couple of years ago where starLink got about $900 million in subsidies to use Starlink satellites to bring broadband to underserved areas. This is part of a 12 billion dol. The Biden administration, excuse me, that had been approved. There was basically the FCC provisionally awarded them $900 million. Then there was a second part of the application process where Starlink had to basically demonstrate that you have to prove that you are capable of delivering exactly what you said you would be able to deliver exactly what the FCC has asked you to deliver on that basis. They failed to do that. And so that $900 million was withdrawn and there was protest about it. Again, this is Elon Musk and went through a second review of the process to make sure that was done fairly. And it was decided that no, this was a fair call. It was because Starlink failed to do. Failed to do the second long form application they were supposed to do. It's all done and dusted. And so there's a dissenting opinion from Brendan Carr saying that not just was this wrong, but it would be within his purview to say that, look, the Biden administration has not been doing enough to bring mobile broadband to underserved areas. This would have solved a whole bunch of problems. They're being a stick in the mud about looking for fiber optic when they could have been looking at satellite services. But there's also proceeded by two paragraphs about how the Biden administration has it in for Elon Musk because he bought Twitter and started using it as a way to suddenly revive. Revive long censored debate and discussion about how awful the Biden administration is. And they wouldn't. And that's the reason why they took away this $900 million because Biden wanted to punish Elon Musk personally. Again, he is not right. This is going to be a very, very rough ride for the next four years unless basically Congress and the Senate decides that this Congress has always had sort of an adversarial little bit of a relationship with the FCC and that if they're doing things that that support party policy, that's great, but Congress as a beast does not want to give up regulatory authority. So a good tactic is to basically approach Congress saying, hey, FCC is trying to do away with section 230. They're not allowed to do that. That's the congressional authority. Are you going to stick by and have the FCC steal away some of your authority? And that's a way for them to attack back. But it's going to be a rough.
- [76:32]
Alex Lindsay
Right and the teeth are there because the Chevron, because of the Chevron agreement. There are limitations to what all these bureaus can do without Congress congressional oversight.
- [76:42]
Jason Snell
The Back to Apple for a second. I want to talk about Tim Cook and Trump and just say that. I think we'll see how they play this. But yes, I want to agree. The status of Apple as one of America's great companies I think gives Tim Cook a lot of latitude. And the fact that they are also not, despite being the fourth mentioned company in this letter from Brendan Carr, they're not a gatekeeper. They have not built up a lot of conservative ire. About their content decisions. Right. And they are perceived as being one of America's great companies and great assets and an encryption.
- [77:21]
Leo Laporte
The FBI is not a law enforcement.
- [77:23]
Jason Snell
We'll see. But I would say that that's not a culture war thing and therefore is less important because I think that most of the stuff they're focused on is culture war stuff. And when you talk about one of like, I think it's going to be a more broad question with the big tech stuff, which is these are American companies that dominate around the world, and do you as an American administration want to harm the American companies that are dominant around the world, or do you just want to change their behavior and bring them to heel? But I do think that's going to be difficult, and I think it's going to be very difficult with Apple. And we saw in the first Trump administration exactly this, which is Tim Cook was able to say, for example, all you're doing is benefiting Samsung by making us weaker that had legs. I think that there's a lot of. Even though Apple does make a lot of stuff in China and this incoming administration is going to be hostile to China, I think that in the end it gets laundered through the fact that it's an Apple product and it comes from one of America's great companies. I think you have to do some politicking and you have to have a relationship with Donald Trump in order to make it work. And that's where Tim Cook is working. But it's a fascinating dynamic. Right. Because some of the things that this incoming group is opposed to are things that are happening at dominant American companies. And traditionally in politics, what you don't do is hurt your guys because that helps the other guys. You want to boost your guys. So we'll see when push comes to show of how much they're willing to do to harm American companies. I'm a little skeptical about, especially for a company like Apple or Microsoft that is not playing in this sort of like, content moderation, culture war space.
- [79:06]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, both things can be true. For instance, looking at Google, they're facing a potential breakup because of name any of the, any of the antitrust issues they're facing. Trump has said in the past, maybe it's not such a good idea to break up, go Google specifically because China is terrified of Google. At the same time, they are absolutely in the crosshairs for, quote, censorship, censorship, unquote, of certain political and religious content. And they're concerned. One of the reasons why they're concerned about NewsGuard is that it's not just a plugin for a browser, although I think that's one of the specifics that's addressed by the letter. They offer services to a wide range of clients, including as a user, you can subscribe to the service and get their plugin and it will basically tag as you navigate the web like a trustworthiness score for every site that you visit. And we won't get into it, but there's a very, very long nine point metric that they go into. It's owned and run by editors and journalists. And so it's not as though this is politically motivated, but they also sell those services to again, companies like Google who will introduce some of that. They also track, they do live tracking, fingerprinting of misinformation, violence, that sort of stuff. And so a lot of services also use that as a metric to decide is this something that we should, that violates our terms of service, should we get rid of it? And thirdly, again, going back into Trump, having the ear of Elon Musk, advertisers are also using it to basically as they're deciding where to put their ad buys to decide, here is a site that we're not, that we kind of want to, we kind of want to advertise on, what is their score for disinformation? How squirrely are there, Are we going to look horrible by having our ads placed on this site? And that's the sort of thing that they're coming after about saying, oh, this is the Orwellian name News guard, a third party that is deciding what should and shouldn't be read and censored across the Internet. When again, it's just an independent company, a third party service that does things and what is generally accepted to be a pretty above board nature.
- [81:13]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and I think that, I think also that a lot of the companies 2020, 2021, 2022 were very complicated years and a lot of the decisions that they were made were considered life and death and they didn't always make the right decision. They might have been a little heavy handed in some areas. And it definitely created a lot of upset when people were just turned off from saying anything that was related to anything. And I think that, but I think that at the time, I think that's the hard part, is that when you look back when those decisions were being made and how they were being made, it was an imperfect situation and they're making imperfect responses to it made a bunch of people upset. And I think that now those hens are coming home to roost in that area. I think that Apple probably has less to do with this. I don't even know. I guess it's the plugin for Safari that they would have to be part. But I think the focus on, on this kind of thing, Apple has kind of skirted a lot of the social, you know, people posting things socially, so they have a lot less to worry about related to filtering than others. But there is some, I guess, tangentially connected things to Safari, but that's about it. I mean, Apple hasn't really gotten into the mix of this in the way that Google and Facebook and X and many others all have to kind of juggle. And it's a complicated problem because there's a lot of misinformation.
- [82:32]
Leo Laporte
I don't think X has to juggle anything at all. That's another matter.
- [82:37]
Alex Lindsay
I realized because I have so many filters on X, I still don't see, don't see it. To me it's fine because I have like 150 terms that I, that I block out. And so all I see is, is the stuff that I'm interested in. And so I guess it doesn't, it doesn't show up for me like that because I don't see any of it.
- [82:51]
Leo Laporte
You're never going to see Brennan Carr writing a letter to Elon Musk saying, you need to tell me what you're up to. By the way, Tim Cook is in China as we speak. He flew there yesterday. See, he's really all the left lovers. The, the term is he'd rather be effective than right. And that was the exact opposite of Steve Jobs. Jobs said, I'd rather be right than effective. And that's why the board said, and you'd probably not work here anymore.
- [83:18]
Alex Lindsay
And I think that a lot of CEOs, when they're running it, have a little bit of the indignation of I'm doing the right thing or I'm doing the thing or whatever, and they're mad about it and they, and they, and that shows up. And I think you can't even feel that when you're talking to Trump right and expect to go down the right direction. I, I think that Tim is able to steel himself to, I'm just looking for this outcome and I'm just going to keep on, I'm going to stay focused.
- [83:38]
Leo Laporte
You've got to be a poker player. You got to focus on the outcome. So he's in China apparently because of one of the issues with Apple intelligence in China is that China doesn't allow offshore LLMs AIs to operate in the country. So he's trying to find a way to get Apple intelligence into the devices sold in China. China by talking to Chinese tech companies who have LLMs. A top Chinese tech regulator told the Financial Times. Is a Financial Times story that foreign groups, foreign groups like Apple would face a lengthy and complex approval process to run their own models. That's why they're going to focus on a local option. A high ranking official at the Cyberspace Administration of China said it would be a comparatively simple and straightforward approval process process if they use already vetted LLMs from Chinese groups. I'm sure that's what Tim Cook is planning to do.
- [84:32]
Andy Ihnatko
And the other problem is they probably prohibited because of trade sanctions to use Apple's own LLMs in China because China would require them to basically turn over all the secrets so they can punitively so they can figure out exactly how it works and make sure that if someone asks about a certain date event happening in central Beijing in 40 years ago that they get the approved answer.
- [84:54]
Leo Laporte
That's of stuff Apple's 17% of, I mean China is 17% of Apple's revenue. So it's a big, a big part of, of their financial, financial structure. Tim Cook has been there three times this year. This is third visit this year but.
- [85:13]
Jason Snell
One of my favorites.
- [85:14]
Leo Laporte
It's difficult to understand how Apple intelligence can be modified though to not use Apple's own models because these are on device models.
- [85:24]
Jason Snell
Well I mean there's a question on how they, on how they work it and do they ship an alternate model in China? Do they use a third party model that they turn on and then let you use in China because they're working, you know the OpenAI announcement and they've said look others also but they only have been working on open AI. It feels very much like they're, they're going to get the API right with open AI and then they'll probably add and so they've got ways to do that where maybe that's a Chinese approval.
- [85:49]
Leo Laporte
But that's the, but that's, but that's, that's when it goes off device. Yeah remember when you're on device iPhone it's doing it on, on device with its own model.
- [85:57]
Jason Snell
Yes but in China maybe, maybe they put a different model on the device or maybe they do less on the.
- [86:03]
Leo Laporte
Device servers there or maybe they just don't do as much.
- [86:06]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah I think they could just shunt it past the, the server farm and the, and the device and just Go straight to the the Chinese ll as Jason was pointing towards. And I think that would be the easiest way for them to get out of the middle of that or just.
- [86:20]
Leo Laporte
Not offer Apple intelligence. I don't think it's going to. How important is that in China? I don't know. Yeah, Tim Cook is trying to find.
- [86:26]
Andy Ihnatko
Out, especially because it's not a homegrown solution. I got to wonder if part of the calculus that Tim Cook and the rest of Apple are figuring on is that how much longer can Apple compete with Huawei and other Chinese born companies who are not necessarily government owned, but they are government controlled. They're blessed by the Chinese government as here is a homegrown company that's moving year after year closer towards hey now we can design our own chips. Hey now we're manufacturing our own chips. Hey we're using. They're even moving. Huawei's even creating a new operating system with actually the very first truly new mobile operating system. And in an eternity most of the OS is that the honor OS that was running on Huawei devices was based on open open source Android. Their new operating system is built from the ground up, does not even use the Linux kernel. So it's entirely homegrown, has its own app store. It's possible that in five years, maybe 10 years, that China will basically succeed in completely locking Apple out. Because at some point what is the advantage of letting a foreign company sell foreign cell phones in their country when they could essentially get the entire population using entirely stuff that's being domestically made, which is great economically, but also which the government can absolutely 100% control. And they know that they don't have the ability, they don't have to have dinner with a CEO to discuss a change that they would like to make either something that the company wants to do that the government does not want them to do, or a surveillance technique that they would like to have embedded in all devices? At some point, point I think Apple is going to outgrow and outlive their usefulness to China and at that point it's going to be rough. I'll just finish by saying that the sales data are back out from I think the singles day, which is like a big, big purchasing day, gift purchasing day in China. And sales of iPhones during that holiday were down double digits. Huawei was also down, but not by nearly as much. They're having trouble competing, leading. It's not a crisis yet, still very, very valuable. And also they also can dangle the idea of, well, here's how much money we're spending on manufacturing inside China. Do you really want to make us pick up our tools and go to India with them? 100%. Go to Vietnam with 100%. But nonetheless, that's got to be part of the calculus. At some point it's going to be a law of diminishing returns.
- [88:59]
Alex Lindsay
It's a good idea for Apple to get disconnected from the Chinese economy over the next decade because. Because most of the foundation is washing away. Like you mean it. Like, you know, the thing is that China's got a whole bunch of bigger problems is we assume that China will be here in 10 or 20 years in the same government structure that it has. But there's a lot of things that point towards the fact that it may not, like it may not survive the next 20 years because, you know, in the current structure, because they have all kinds of population problems, they have all kinds of financial problems, you know, the way that they built this up is, you know, is a house of cards. And that's.
- [89:33]
Leo Laporte
I'm sure they're saying the same thing about us, by the way.
- [89:36]
Alex Lindsay
Sure, sure.
- [89:37]
Leo Laporte
Except that with maybe some more merit to it. I don't.
- [89:40]
Andy Ihnatko
Opportunity for Canada.
- [89:41]
Alex Lindsay
I mean there's, there's an awful lot of, you know, things are spread out in a way in the United States that is hard to reproduce. You know, and I think that that's the Chinese. As you centralize economies, they tend to become less stable. Like that, that just happened. That tends to be the way. And because we've got basically 50 countries that are, that don't really 50 countries inside of one United States that all kind of have their own way of doing things. It does that. That heterogeneous nature tends to make it more stable. And so I think that the, you know, the United States has got a lot of problems that it has to deal with, but China's got some trillion dollar problems that are, that are, you know, you know, and they're. If they actually decided to be dumb enough to go into Taiwan, all those problems will come to the, to the surface really quickly, you know, and so I think that that's going to. Because I don't think Apple can produce anything in China if they invade Taiwan. Like it's the.
- [90:34]
Jason Snell
No, that, that'd be catastrophic for Apple, but you know, it'd be catastrophic for the world too.
- [90:39]
Andy Ihnatko
So.
- [90:39]
Alex Lindsay
Well, but I'm saying that, that they, I think that the. But you're seeing Apple and many other companies slowly trying to get out before that potentially would happen. You know, like so they're all, they're moving to India. They got Brazil. And some of those have laws that are pushing Indonesia once more. But, but all of those things are.
- [90:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, Indonesia, by the way, turned down the $100 million offer. They're holding out for more.
- [91:00]
Alex Lindsay
They want because they know they got it. They know Apple's got it. They're like, you're going to give me 150 million, give me 2 million.
- [91:06]
Leo Laporte
You know what's cool?
- [91:07]
Andy Ihnatko
Go ahead.
- [91:07]
Leo Laporte
Not 100 million, 100 billion. That's cool.
- [91:11]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and the thing is that they just roll another bill off of that wad that you're holding on to. That's what we want, is one more bill.
- [91:19]
Leo Laporte
You know, like actually the trouble ahead in Brazil. The Brazilian antitrust body Cade has ruled Apple has to lift restrictions on in app payments limits.
- [91:28]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [91:29]
Leo Laporte
This is yet another country that's saying to Apple, hey, the App Store is not working and you're gonna have to change something. You. I want to take a break because you have an interesting article. Jason Snell, A plan for Apple that's controversial, But I agree 100% with Nice.
- [91:43]
Jason Snell
I love it.
- [91:44]
Leo Laporte
And we will talk about that in just a moment. You're watching or listening or consuming in any other way possible. Sipping with a straw at On YOUR Vision Pro on your vision Pro at Mac Break weekly with Jason Snell from Six Colors.com Andy Anako from WGBH in Boston and office hours global maven Mr. Alex Lindsay now at T Mobile. Get four 5G phones on us and four lines for $25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with autopay discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due. Bill credits end if you pay off devices early. Ctmobile.com the flavor, the tradition and the spirit of Carne Asada lives on at Del Taco. Join the Asada today with Delta Taco's new limited time half pound Chipotle Carne Asada steak burrito. Packed with sweet, spicy and smoky flavor.
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Jason Snell
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Leo Laporte
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- [92:59]
Jason Snell
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- [93:07]
Leo Laporte
Once again, the only way forward is the Mex. Says Jason Snell. Yeah, I love this idea. I think the model for the way the Mac App Store works and the way you can sideload apps on the Mac works great. How does that work on iOS?
- [93:24]
Jason Snell
Yeah. So I wrote this piece because I just had that moment where I remember that all the computers that I used to use, I could do whatever I wanted with them. I bought them and then I used them. And I feel like we have gotten kind of beaten down by the App Store model, that the only thing you.
- [93:38]
Leo Laporte
Could ever do, you could edit programs from magazines if you were so inclined.
- [93:42]
Jason Snell
And like. And I had. So I had that moment where it's like, I understand how we got to the App Store approach, but I do think that what happened is Apple did it for a lot of expedient reasons and then over time realized that there was a lot of money to be made to exert complete control over a market. And here's the thing. I'm not saying there shouldn't be an App Store, and I'm not saying that Apple shouldn't curate it, because I think there are a lot of people, including Alex, who feel very strongly like, I don't want anything that isn't sort of like, doesn't have the boxes checked. And I think that that is a strong, strong argument. It's one of the strongest cases for the Apps Store. However, what I get, I don't like the idea that it stops there, because first off, I think it tempts Apple to behave badly and seek rent for just your presence and tell developers what to do. And that there's a chilling effect where apps don't get developed on iOS because if you do all that work and Apple doesn't like it, you can't do anything else with it. It's over at that point because there's no alternative. And the funny thing about this, and I hear from people who say, oh, but Jason, you don't understand the iPhone. It's very important. It's got to be secure, blah, blah, blah. And the thing is, the Mac is old. That's the old school. Forget about it. But here's the thing. Apple invented that App Store market in whatever, 2008, 2009, in there, 2010, adding the app Store and in app purchases and all that stuff. In 2017, 2018, Apple introduced an entirely new model on the Mac because they wanted to secure the Mac. On the Mac, the model is, you start with the App Store and it's at the center of trust. And then they layered this notarization system on the outside where you have to be a registered developer, you have to sign your app. Apple has to scan it. Apple signs it too. It can't be tampered with after that, which will reduce malware. And there's a broader sense of trust. And that gets you the ability to put your app on the platform without having to pass through Apple's very specific filters that they set up. And then on the outside is all the crazy stuff that doesn't get notarized all by Apple. And you have to jump through some hoops to launch it. But you can launch it. I have, you know, would you allow.
- [95:47]
Leo Laporte
That on the, on the iPhone?
- [95:49]
Jason Snell
I mean, would I? Yeah, I think I. This is, what I'm saying is I think you should ultimately be able to do whatever you want with your thousand dollar plus computer that you bought that can run arbitrary software from arbitrary groups, you know, third party developers and all that. I think you should ultimately be able to run anything. I don't have a problem with Apple putting up barriers because I know that a lot of social engineering goes on by people who are doing mal malware to get people to turn off all of those restrictions, which is why Apple has added more of them. But it's a beautiful system that allows nanny.
- [96:21]
Leo Laporte
It's a little nanny, isn't it?
- [96:23]
Jason Snell
I think, I think so. And I think they do it too much. But what I will say is I also understand the counterargument, which is people get you on the phone and you think that they're an authority and they talk you through clicking on things and then the malware is installed. I've had people in my family that this has happened to, so I get why they want to put up a lot. I do think it's a little too much and that they've taken away some of the steps for expert users. But as a whole, more recently than the App Store, Apple invented a system that allows some user choice, allows developers to not only do what Apple says, and if your administrator or you as the person who owns your device don't want to do that, you don't have to. And what you're seeing in Europe and other places like that is Apple is already kind of like stealing from this system in order to create things like notarization for iOS apps under the DMA and Europe. They're doing it in a little bit different way, but it's a very similar kind of thing. I just wanted to put it down there that if I'm thinking about the future of our computing devices going into the rest of the 21st century, I don't like the idea that when you buy a computing device, the maker of it can basically say, look, there's software we don't want and all the developers who write software for our platforms really work for us and we tell them what to do and if they don't like it, they don't have a product and there's no way out for anybody. I think that there's already a better model that allows that level of security and safety and then lets you gradually step out of it. And guess who built that model? Apple built that model. It's an Apple designed and built model. They built it for the Mac because they had to or because they really wanted to. And it's a good, it's a good system. And I would much rather live in a world where we had the right to step outside and developers had the right to step outside a curated store and where Apple had to compete with other platforms and other developers on its platform, rather than Apple sort of taking a thing that was built for expediency's sake, which is the App Store, and turning it into what it is, which is, you know, it's about power and control and not competing so that you can maximize your revenue. And I just, I don't want to live in that world. And I think it's really unfortunate that people think, There are a lot of people who think, well, but Apple can't do that. It's too complicated. Like, and this is my argument, Apple did it. They did it on the Mac. They already did it. They did that after they invented the App Store. This is Apple's most recent attempt to come up with a gradual system of security for software running on arbitrary devices. So in the long run, I think it's the right answer. I think a graduated set of these concentric circles of trust are a better approach that we could all use on all of our devices. So I hope it happens eventually. It won't happen until App Apple is pushed into it.
- [99:06]
Leo Laporte
They'll be forced to by governments to do so. Why doesn't Apple do it now?
- [99:11]
Jason Snell
Well, I had somebody say, ask me, well, like why, why doesn't Apple want to compete? Isn't it, it doesn't have a lot of good self esteem and I think it does. But, but here's the thing.
- [99:22]
Leo Laporte
It's not a self esteem issue, friends, right? It's a profit issue.
- [99:26]
Jason Snell
I'm a, I'M a right. I'm a college football team. I'm a blue chip. I'm Michigan and I'm paying a million dollars for Appalachian State to come play because I'm going to sell a lot of tickets and it's an easy win. And then App State beats me. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens. It happened to Michigan. It happens. You know what's better than weak competition is no competition. What's better than advantage competition? Where you're the platform owner, you know where the platform is going, you have all these advantages. Most people are going to want to still use your baked in app Store. All of these things, things that's good. But what's better is everybody has to do what you say and there's no competition. Right. That's better. And so unless forced, why would you even risk it? And I think that's the, that's what's behind all of it.
- [100:10]
Leo Laporte
And Apple has a good argument which they will use, which is security. But the real truth is it's money.
- [100:18]
Jason Snell
And the notarization system is, is an added level of security and trust.
- [100:23]
Alex Lindsay
So it's an ad level at a level security. But I mean it's also, I don't think Apple's only reason, I think money is a big part of it, but I think that there is, it is going to always be more secure inside that sandbox. I mean when they say it will be less secure, they are telling the truth. It will be less secure.
- [100:39]
Jason Snell
That's why you should have a default that allows people to be, to remain secure. Right? I think that's true.
- [100:44]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. And the problem, I have the same.
- [100:46]
Leo Laporte
Argument for having parental controls on a device, but you don't become the nanny. Apple doesn't say, well this has adult content, but you put parental controls in so that the user, user has control of what they see and what they can't see. Apple made a huge error, probably was good for profits, but it was a terrible tactical error to decide to lock this thing down.
- [101:09]
Alex Lindsay
And again, as what I, what I will say is that as a user I don't want to be forced to buy your app outside of the App Store. So that's what, that's the other side.
- [101:17]
Leo Laporte
Don't buy it. No one's forcing you to buy it.
- [101:19]
Alex Lindsay
Okay, so if Netflix moves their app, if an app that I've been using.
- [101:22]
Leo Laporte
So you don't use it.
- [101:24]
Alex Lindsay
I know. Okay. So the point is as Apple users, there's a lower level of satisfaction for an Apple user.
- [101:33]
Leo Laporte
But there are apps you cannot use. Because Apple says no.
- [101:37]
Jason Snell
Alex, I really disagree with that point because if I am going to Netflix's website and they have a link that just downloads the Netflix app like I would do on a Mac, and it's not a authorized. Approved by Apple in all of those ways. It's just not in the App Store.
- [101:53]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, but I don't want to deal with Netflix. Like, you know, the thing is, is that I don't want to deal with their stupid membership stuff. I don't want to deal with.
- [101:59]
Jason Snell
You want to watch Netflix but not deal with Netflix.
- [102:03]
Alex Lindsay
I'm happy to pay them. You know, the thing is, is that. The thing is I'm happy.
- [102:06]
Leo Laporte
Are you on. You want the Mac to be that locked down too?
- [102:09]
Alex Lindsay
I mean, the reason that I.
- [102:10]
Leo Laporte
Shouldn't the Mac be equally secure? Alex.
- [102:13]
Alex Lindsay
No, I think that it's too late for that. I mean, it's too like. But the thing is, let's say you.
- [102:16]
Leo Laporte
Could, let's say in the future, would.
- [102:19]
Alex Lindsay
You like, you would lock the Mac down that way? You know, because the thing is that, is that the thing is I believe that the Apple tv there was a goal to have apps on the Apple TV that has been a complete disaster because every, because they left it open that, oh, you can sign up any way you want because they had to deal with all these cable networks and so they left the whole thing open and you open it up and there's some janky, weird idiot's idea of how to log into an app.
- [102:41]
Jason Snell
So here's the thing, Alex. I know you bring this up every time we talk about this, which is you don't like all the different logins and I think that I hate. Right? But this is where this is.
- [102:49]
Alex Lindsay
Because I care about time.
- [102:51]
Jason Snell
So this is what I'm not saying. What I'm saying is Apple providing an easy login system and letting. And having different companies opt out of it. Like, again, I get what you're saying there and that that's potentially junky, but that's also competition. And like, they're all idiots.
- [103:10]
Alex Lindsay
I mean, every, every login other than Apples is idiotic. Like, you just, you open it up and you're like, okay, you people are dumb.
- [103:15]
Leo Laporte
You know, like, you like, like you're.
- [103:17]
Alex Lindsay
Just like, you're like, why are you doing this In a world where Apple.
- [103:20]
Jason Snell
Does it right, everybody else does it wrong. Got it?
- [103:21]
Leo Laporte
If you live in a world where only Apple does it right, of course.
- [103:25]
Alex Lindsay
You want everything down and all this weird.
- [103:27]
Leo Laporte
I live in a world where I want Choice on my thousand dollar device, then buying a. I don't think Apple's the only one that can do things right.
- [103:36]
Alex Lindsay
I think you're right. And if you want all that choice, there's a whole platform that lets you do it any way you want called Android. You know, and the thing is that's.
- [103:43]
Jason Snell
A love it or leave it argument. That's a. But I think that there's argument.
- [103:46]
Alex Lindsay
I think 90% to 95% of the users we are in this tiny percentage that is talking about choice. And I think 90 to 95% of the users of the people who buy an iPhone, they just want it to work. Like they don't.
- [103:57]
Jason Snell
That is the effect of it being a closed platform. What's the percentage of Mac users that only ever use something from the Mac App store? It's probably 70% or 75%. It's probably very large. But it's not 90 or 95% because iPhone users are using a completely closed platform. They don't know any better.
- [104:13]
Alex Lindsay
But I don't think they care. Like, I don't think we don't see people like, other than the 1% are like, hey, we got to swing this.
- [104:18]
Jason Snell
How could they care?
- [104:19]
Alex Lindsay
But the thing is that they got a bunch of apps. It just works. I think that it will. I think when, if it's when they'll care is when, when they care because they've had. This is when a big company like Facebook or Netflix or Disney takes their app out of the App Store and now they have to, you know, deal with their idiot, idiot, idiotic logins and rules and hard to subscribe and everything. Then people will be really mad. Like they're going to be really mad that they, that you took that away from them.
- [104:45]
Jason Snell
You know that and that's part of your competition and your risk that you have to choose whether it's worth.
- [104:49]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, but then.
- [104:50]
Andy Ihnatko
And Mike, really hard to put that.
- [104:52]
Alex Lindsay
Cat back in the bag. And 90% of the population will want to put the cat back in the bag. Like, they'll just be like, hey, this was not, this is not a good idea. And we've. Well, that's ruined all the time this way.
- [105:00]
Andy Ihnatko
My question is, when they're, when they get upset about that, are they going to be upset about with Netflix or are they going to be upset properly with Apple for creating a circumstance in which that is simply the only sane business decision to make? We are already stuck in an insane situation in which I can open the Kindle app or any other kind of digital content app and I have to leave the app and go to the web to buy a book. That's stupid. And I don't blame Kindle or Comixology for doing that. I blame Apple for having this insane idea that if there's a dollar spent on the App Store, that dollar would, that customer would only exist because of Apple. But I think customer would only be buying a comic book because Apple blessed this platform and helped them out. When none of that is actually true. I think Apple has taken some responsibility for this.
- [105:52]
Alex Lindsay
Part of the reason that people spend so much money on it though, is that it has been easy and it has been seamless and it has been all these things. And I think that the average user, for the average user that's out there, I buy it, it's going to work. I don't have to, you know, there's a bunch of things I don't have to worry about in that, in that environment. And I think that that ease of use or that ease of purchase has made billions and billions of dollars for Apple and for a lot of developers. You know, I think that they, I think it does make sense when you're providing and I think that, you know, developers want to do this. They should have to, you know, when they get outside of that, they can pay for those downloads, you know, but for the, for a small user, for a small developer being able to have the accessibility, and I have been a small developer, the 15% is not a bad deal. When you're talking about it being able to be downloaded, it being able to be secured, it being able to be updated. Like there's a bunch of tools there that are available, but people want that.
- [106:48]
Leo Laporte
You don't. Jason's proposal doesn't.
- [106:51]
Alex Lindsay
What happens is it just makes it messy.
- [106:52]
Jason Snell
Apple just has to compete or it doesn't. I mean, that's the thing, that 15% becomes a value, a value choice where I would actually argue, argue that if you're on like, I think I know a bunch of indie app developers and I would say that most of them say that if they had the option of using something other than Apple's in app purchase system, that would save them a little money. They'd still use Apple's in app purchase system because it's so convenient and that's the home field advantage. I do think that if you're Netflix, you might try it, but you might end up saying, oh yeah, actually it's really hurting our uptake on iOS. We need to change this and maybe offer that as an option and that's a business decision that they, that they could have the option of making, but right now they can't because the rules are so specific and they can't link out or they can only go to one website. I mean, it's so very specific at this point.
- [107:38]
Leo Laporte
The real issue at this point is lack of competition. It's really a duopoly. It's Apple or Android. Android basically does it similarly, with a little bit of a loophole in the back end. It would be sure. I mean, it's not going to happen. It sure would be nice if there were three or four different phone platforms to choose from, then somebody could go the way Apple could go. And if there were some competition, Apple might even consider it. But there isn't. And Apple's got a credible story. Oh, it's for security. And so they're never going to change.
- [108:07]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not a coincidence that the one thing that every government regulator across the globe is hammering Apple for is how they run the App Store. Like the UK is looking at how the fairness of the Safari browser. Because one of and one of the complaints is that the Safari browser doesn't support progressive web apps as well as other browsers, which makes it difficult for an app developer to create a progressive web app that can be used through the Safari browser outside the App Store that could potentially, who knows, provide a better user experience for the end user. And Apple is now going to be taking the task to say, explain why Safari is not a great platform for running progressive web apps. When Steve Jobs himself said that, hey, look, if you don't want to run through the App Store, do it through the web because we've got a really nice sophisticated browser that supports all modern technologies. It means that this house is a mess and they have to address it. And the only ways that they ever address these problems, like the only times when independent developers start Getting to spend 15% or 0% on sales of their apps instead of 30% across the board, is when people start applying pressure to them, saying that why are you getting 30% off of someone who's selling 110 copies of a certain app every quarter and earning maybe $500. That's a huge amount of money for someone who's the kitchen table developer of this app. Only when you apply pressure to them do they start to argue back, saying, maybe there is some leeway here. And given that this is the one area in which I've said it before, before, the way that Apple runs the App Store is the single probably the only truly un Apple thing that Apple does. It's the sort of stuff that we make fun of other companies for doing. Okay? There is no justification for it. They can have excuses for it, but they don't adequately explain what those that the facts behind those excuses. And I just want to see them continue to feel pressure about how they run the App Store because it's just nuts. Remember, remember that the developers are also their customers. Not just the people who are buying apps, but the developers who contribute to the App Store who are paying money to be on the App Store are also customers too, and they deserve to be treated just as well as all other Apple customers.
- [110:30]
Leo Laporte
You said it very well, Jason, in the article. Once again, the only way forward is the Macintosh. Macworld.com I felt this way for a long time. I don't think anything is going to change unless the EU or Brazil or.
- [110:43]
Jason Snell
Somebody makes a change. I just wanted to point out the reason that this came to mind and why I wanted to write about it is very much that I appreciate how the Mac provides that level of security, lets you choose and I think gives you an outlet.
- [110:58]
Leo Laporte
I use the App Store on the Mac almost all the time because of the updates and everything. It's just a great way to go.
- [111:02]
Jason Snell
It's a chilling effect. Apple has so many advantages. The chill effect of having a platform that if you don't do what Apple wants you to do, your product can't exist has led. It's very hard to see opportunity costs sometimes, but it has led developers to not develop software that might have been great because they can't take the risk. It has led to a position where it's like the golden handcuffs a little bit, where if you're a developer of Apple software and your expertise is in Apple's platforms and Apple decides that whatever you're doing is something it doesn't like, you have very little recourse other than running to the press and hoping that some press coverage will change Apple's ruling. Because there's nowhere else to go on iOS and iPados if they don't like what you're doing, you either have to change or you have to disappear and your business disappears with it. And that's again, I just. How do we. How do we get here? I know like the technical reasons why and I know the reasons why Apple does it, but I find it unpleasant and I feel like the Mac's approach is better because it offers people a variety of choice. So I hope that one day. The good news here is as Apple has Gotten pressured by regulators in various places, especially you. Guess what they do. Guess what they do. They have built their fallback system, right?
- [112:27]
Leo Laporte
Already have it.
- [112:28]
Jason Snell
Notarization is already sitting there. This is if Apple is forced to completely open up their platform in a region, in a market, wherever we know what it's going to look like.
- [112:39]
Leo Laporte
I just want Emacs on the iPhone. I don't think it's a lot to ask.
- [112:43]
Jason Snell
I mean the moment that this would happen, you would get parallels in VMware and who knows who else running emulators that would let you run Windows and macOS on an iPad too.
- [112:53]
Leo Laporte
Maybe that's why they're not doing it. You also had a great article and I hope to influence you on this. You have like I did a Mac Studio M1 Max and you're looking as I did with lust at the Mac Mini, especially at the benchmarks.
- [113:11]
Jason Snell
I compared my M1 Max Mac studio to those M4 pros and well actually the story is that yes, it's like twice as fast as CPU or something. It's ridiculous. But a GPU, because there's so many GPUs in a Mac's chip, it is actually only like a 7% boost. Which made me realize I probably don't want to buy a high end Mac Mini. Because if I'm going to buy a new computer for the first time in three years or whatever, I should expect more than a 7% GPU boost. Right? Like I should. That. That is. That is pretty. The CPU boosts are great, but I do a lot of stuff that uses the GPUs too. Which means yes, I fall into yet another conundrum. Especially since I'm often using two different rooms in my house in the winter to do my work. Which is I had a couple of very evil friends of mine say, well, what you should do is just go ahead and buy the MacBook Pro as an M4 Max and then just take it between the rooms and you don't have to worry about your files syncing anymore. I was like, you know I did not need to hear that. I just, I did. You're not helping. Even though if I am really working in a couple different locations on a regular basis, it does stink sync to have to sync your files and stuff back and forth. It's. It's totally true. Even now with all the cloud stuff.
- [114:23]
Leo Laporte
I use sync thing, it works perfectly well. I have an M2 MacBook Air is the one I carry around. I replaced the M1 Mac Studio with the Mac Mini high end couldn't be happier. Love it. It's a beautiful thing. It's cute, it's elegant. I don't know if it's faster, I can't tell. But just come on in. The water's I don't know.
- [114:42]
Jason Snell
I so I'm giving the laptop thing at least a thought because I used to be a laptop only person who docked it but that was in the intel days and Apple's the laptop experience back then was really not very good. Things would not sleep. Attaching to monitors and peripherals got weird. All that stuff is way better now. And actually the computer I use in the back of my house is my laptop. So I'm already doing it there and it works pretty well. And I did have that moment where I thought, oh, what happens when I go to an app that does not have a cloud sync for their stuff and I realize that this key thing that I need is on the other computer. I hate that. It would be really interesting to just embrace the idea that I have one computer, put it wherever I want and when I travel at that point, even though it would be heavier than my MacBook Air, it would be the same computer still. What an idea.
- [115:32]
Leo Laporte
An M4 Max Mac Studio. That's probably what you want, right?
- [115:37]
Jason Snell
Well, it probably would be the base model M4 Max Mac Studio which is probably going to be several hundred dollars cheaper than an M4 Mac's MacBook Pro.
- [115:44]
Leo Laporte
Right?
- [115:45]
Jason Snell
But you know, if I could have replaced all my other computers, right, maybe that would be.
- [115:50]
Leo Laporte
I'm sitting here with an M3 Max MacBook Air MacBook Pro rather that I got last year. Very happy. It's I. It's the centerpiece of the streaming studio. I don't actually ever undock it, so I should probably just replace it with the Mac Mini. But that's not a bad way to go. And I again sync things, syncs it up to all of my machines, Mac, PC and Linux beautifully. And I never have a problem with that. So I just would recommend that. Let's take a break. Let's take a break. It's free, it's open source, you'll like it. Sync thing. When we come back, it's going to be pick of the week time. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Anako, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell and moi. Stay tuned. If you're hearing a terrible ad next, you should join the club. So you don't hear any ads? I shouldn't say that, should I?
- [116:43]
Alex Lindsay
That was a little over.
- [116:44]
Jason Snell
Sniff that one right out.
- [116:46]
Leo Laporte
I shouldn't admit that if you're super.
- [116:48]
Andy Ihnatko
Excited to get to the picks and don't want to wait even for a wonderful advertiser to sports the show, that.
- [116:52]
Alex Lindsay
Advertise will be crying themselves to sleep. Another huge pillar.
- [116:56]
Leo Laporte
Well, I don't care. We didn't sell that out anyway. That's the, that's, that's Libsyn up the bat.
- [117:03]
Andy Ihnatko
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Leo Laporte
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Andy Ihnatko
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- [117:14]
Leo Laporte
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- [117:47]
Jason Snell
Wrapped up and grilled to perfection, the.
- [117:49]
Leo Laporte
Whole carne asada steak menu delivers the bold flavors you crave with epic burritos.
- [117:54]
Jason Snell
Loaded fries and street Taco starting at just 299. Only at Del Taco.
- [118:01]
Leo Laporte
Hey, guess what. Guess what everybody. Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the United States of America. Okay, Canadians, I know you already had yours, but we got ours coming. You know how I avoided the whole family issue because there's three different families. It could be a nightmare. Actually four. And then there's my mom in Rhode Island Island. Lisa and I are going to go out to eat. There's a hotel in Sonoma, has a lovely Thanksgiving. We've been there before. They've got a caviar bar, a cheese bar. They've got turkey, but they also have prime rib. We're going there. Solved. Problem solved. However, Jason Snell, you are going to be cooking.
- [118:45]
Jason Snell
I am. I am. And also this is going to be great because you're going to see me and Alex at opposing sort of opposing views again in our turkey picks. I'm going to do a roast turkey this year with a wet brine. I my so my traditional my first half of the pick is the good eats roast turkey. The recipes at the Food Network. This is from Alton Brown.
- [119:09]
Leo Laporte
I think Alex would agree. He's an Alton Brown fan.
- [119:11]
Jason Snell
Yeah, absolutely. And you're going to see the you're going to see the turkey Derek pretty soon for the fried version. But this, this is the. If you are afraid of deep frying a turkey because it will burn you to death or whatever like I am, you just get a five gallon bucket from the Home Depot and you build a. And you build a little brine rig that you put in your garage or whatever overnight, and then you cook that turkey and it's juicy. I've done this for like 15 years now.
- [119:35]
Leo Laporte
If you have a big sous vide, you could put it in the sous vide pot that you use.
- [119:39]
Jason Snell
You could do that too, right? You just need a big container. Five gallon bucket is cheap and easy at your hardware store too. That's what I usually use.
- [119:45]
Leo Laporte
What do you do? What kind of brine? What's in the brine? Not just.
- [119:48]
Jason Snell
Well, it's in that recipe. There's a bunch of stuff in there. There's stock and there's various spices and stuff and a lot of salt. And the way a brine works for people who care about the science of it is by elevating the salinity of the liquid. What happens is that it's an osmosis thing where now there's free movement from the liquid side to the meat side, which means that the spices and stuff flow into the meat of the bird. So when you cook it, it's juicy and tasty. It's science people. And then.
- [120:18]
Leo Laporte
And really isn't Thanksgiving Day about free movement after all?
- [120:22]
Jason Snell
I think it could be if you want it to be about. It's about osmosis. Leo. And then secondarily last Thanksgiving, we were visiting my brother in law and he did a smoked turkey in his Traeger Backyard Smoker.
- [120:37]
Leo Laporte
I have done that as well.
- [120:39]
Jason Snell
And it was so good that I started thinking, I think I'm going to have to get one of those.
- [120:43]
Leo Laporte
So combine the two.
- [120:44]
Jason Snell
So my second pick, instead of using. Well, you wouldn't use a brine on that. You just. But anyway, my second pick is a traeger. Yes. Traeger 650, I guess. So I guess you do a dry brine, maybe Traeger 650, which is what I. This is the Christmas present for the Snell family, by the way. So we're going to get this. So for Christmas this year, I think I will have a smoked turkey, but for Thanksgiving, it will be the roast turkey using the Good eats brine method.
- [121:12]
Leo Laporte
Alex, we have a traer that we love and I have used and I brought it with me everywhere I go and it Is it is definitely.
- [121:19]
Jason Snell
I'm looking forward to playing with it. Yeah.
- [121:21]
Leo Laporte
Low and slow.
- [121:22]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I love it.
- [121:22]
Leo Laporte
It's easy because it's pellet. You know a tr. A true turkey fan like my brother in law, I'm a true smoker fan like my brother in law. Insist that you have to take a barrel, cut it.
- [121:33]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I'm not going to do any.
- [121:34]
Leo Laporte
Of that with a welding iron.
- [121:36]
Jason Snell
I want the computer operated, wi fi enabled pellet based wood smoker.
- [121:41]
Leo Laporte
He burned the turkey last year. He actually burned it. And I said, well, don't you have a thermometer? He said, no, no, I only use the thermometer on the barrel. Dude, you need the thermometer in the.
- [121:51]
Jason Snell
Turkey probe thermometer, please.
- [121:53]
Leo Laporte
I will recommend. Actually I'm going to add a pick of the week. I'll recommend what thermometer I wish I could get my brother in law to use, but refuses to. But next up, Alex Lindsey with a.
- [122:03]
Alex Lindsay
Better idea, dueling the Dueling Alton Brown specials. So the I saw Jason's and I was like, so this is season 10, episode 6 Fry Turkey Fry. And it is in my opinion, I don't think that's the one, but is that. I don't think that's.
- [122:22]
Leo Laporte
It says deep fried turkey. Okay, don't do it in the house though, please.
- [122:25]
Jason Snell
So what I will say is do it outside. He builds a Derek he's got on his YouTube channel right now. There's a whole series of like various terrible ways of making a turkey. And then you can use his method.
- [122:34]
Leo Laporte
Which is the deep fry fried is very good. And it's very, very good.
- [122:38]
Alex Lindsay
And I don't know if this is still the original one because I think that that was. Anyway, so this is 14 years ago.
- [122:44]
Jason Snell
I think that was mine is the one that they were showing the video from. Whereas then he was like, okay, I'll show you how to deep fry one, right? And it's safe.
- [122:52]
Alex Lindsay
The, the, the, the fried turkey fry one that I think that is the. It's the Thanksgiving turkey fry that he showed, in my opinion is one of the best training videos ever made. Like just it's up there very close to connections. It's funny, I think I went back and forth with Alton Brown one time on Twitter and talking about. About how close good eats was to connections. And he said, oh, I just watched a lot of connections and thought about it like it was definitely not by accident, but it's it that one episode. When I think about how I want to build training, I think about that Episode. It's just so well done.
- [123:24]
Leo Laporte
I have found the video. Here's the video from Alton Brown. Here's the Derek deep frying the turkey. He's dropping it in the air.
- [123:32]
Jason Snell
No, no.
- [123:32]
Leo Laporte
And oh, my God, it's caught.
- [123:34]
Jason Snell
He has you construct a Derek with a leather.
- [123:37]
Alex Lindsay
No, but that's part of that episode. That one's part of that episode. He goes, burn unit.
- [123:42]
Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah.
- [123:43]
Alex Lindsay
He's talking about not using water being second degree, folks. Yeah, this is. This is that. That. That video is the buildup towards how to build the turkey Derek. And anyway, it's just really, really well done camera work. Everything is so well done. And it's. And. And now I. I admit, and I have. I have built. I built the turkey Derek that Alton Brown put in to the te, like everything he said to buy, and it worked perfectly. I will say that today, these days, I cut the turkey into pieces and I sous vide it. Call today because it's.
- [124:11]
Leo Laporte
Because it. Because no matter how good the. No, that's what my friend does. It comes out really well. Because the problem. The whole issue with turkey is the dark meat and the light meat don't. They don't cook at the same time.
- [124:22]
Jason Snell
Alton Brown's method there is that he puts a. He folds aluminum foil into like a breastplate triangle and puts it on the breast. So it retards the cooking of the Brussels little bit. My thing is that works really well. But. And sous vide is a great option that will. Again, you can. You can brine it and then sous vide it. And that works too.
- [124:39]
Leo Laporte
Here's another. Women.
- [124:40]
Jason Snell
I've got.
- [124:40]
Leo Laporte
I got it. I think this is the video with the. With the Derek. Let's just. Let's just check and see.
- [124:45]
Alex Lindsay
Still not.
- [124:46]
Leo Laporte
Oh, God, no, no.
- [124:48]
Alex Lindsay
That's the one not to do on your porch. Such a great idea.
- [124:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [124:51]
Jason Snell
His method, by the way, one of the key pieces that you can see in all of these disaster videos is what you do is you put the turkey in and put the oil in together before it's heated. So you make sure that it doesn't overflow. And then you take the turkey out and let it wait while you heat up the oil. That is a very important step.
- [125:09]
Alex Lindsay
That's the. That's the key to the operation.
- [125:11]
Leo Laporte
Deep frying turkey is the overflow.
- [125:13]
Jason Snell
Exactly.
- [125:13]
Alex Lindsay
Because when the oil comes, you get.
- [125:15]
Jason Snell
An oil fire and then have a. Get a fire extinguisher and make sure it's right next to there.
- [125:19]
Leo Laporte
Because I just bought a fire blanket and I Saw it on TikTok.
- [125:24]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and, And, And. And the thing is, all I got to say is Turkey at 145 degrees, as soon as you have that, you never go back to cooking in an oven. Like, it's just. It's like you let it.
- [125:33]
Leo Laporte
You.
- [125:34]
Alex Lindsay
Like, like, it's just once you've had. I mean, turkey. My complaint with turkey growing up, well, for the first 50 years of my life was turkey was dry. Like, I just didn't. I just always felt like it was everybody's complaint.
- [125:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [125:45]
Alex Lindsay
And. And once you sous vide a turkey at a hundred, like, you just. You. I just cut it up into pieces, put them in different bags.
- [125:52]
Jason Snell
I.
- [125:52]
Alex Lindsay
Now I have a bunch of sous vides. I have like four of them sitting there.
- [125:56]
Leo Laporte
And you do it to 145.
- [125:57]
Alex Lindsay
Is that your 145 degrees? Because remember, 165 is a peak. 170 is a peak of where it needs to be for food safety. But if it stays there for an hour, it has the same effect. Right? So. So if it stays at that once, if it gets to that heat and stays for a long period of time, it's going to kill everything off anyway. But the meat. And if you go below 145, it's still, I think, safe until 137. But it doesn't change color. But what weird everybody out. I think 145 tastes the best. I mean, I think that it's so good.
- [126:23]
Leo Laporte
It's also a texture issue. I know this with ch. Chicken, because we are used to chicken being kind of a little stringy.
- [126:30]
Alex Lindsay
So the issue that I have.
- [126:31]
Leo Laporte
And that's a little higher temperature for.
- [126:32]
Alex Lindsay
The sous vide, what I tend to do is go. And now with the turkey, I go a little longer to like 90 minutes on it. On chicken, I do an hour. Now, if you leave it. The problem with sous vide in general is if you leave it in too long, it just continues to denature the. And so it just comes protein. I once forgot. I had. I had my. My first sous vide. Didn't make any noise. It was just a box.
- [126:52]
Leo Laporte
Don't forget the sous vide.
- [126:53]
Jason Snell
I left.
- [126:54]
Alex Lindsay
I left for Europe and came back and my state. Leaving it on, it just sat there, and I came back two weeks later. It was liquid.
- [127:02]
Jason Snell
Like the whole just bouillon is all that's left there after all that. Guys, let's do a cooking show. Can we. Can we? Like our Christmas episode.
- [127:10]
Leo Laporte
Let's do a crock in our. In our discord he says stuffing is the key. It tastes the best. I'm going to give you one more thing to make your turkey day better. I thought when I bought this. This is the most expensive thermometer I've ever bought. I'm probably a nut. Again, an Instagram purchase. It's the combustion.
- [127:30]
Jason Snell
This was a, this was my pick like a couple months ago. Yeah.
- [127:33]
Leo Laporte
Well, let me throw it, throw it back in the pot because this is. And they have a new. A second generation out. The idea is it has eight, eight sensors. So it doesn't just measure one temperature. It tells you the temperature all the way from the outside to all the way the inside and figures out based on the coldest temperature when it's going to be done. It predicts when it'll be done and it, it does a fantastic job. You still like your, your combustion?
- [127:57]
Jason Snell
Yeah. Mine. Mine bet. Met its demise on my grill. The new version has a higher temperature max.
- [128:04]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [128:05]
Jason Snell
And that's good.
- [128:06]
Leo Laporte
900 degree max.
- [128:07]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [128:07]
Leo Laporte
You don't want to melt it cuz.
- [128:09]
Jason Snell
Cuz, cuz it goes to a high temperature like in an oven. But when you're on a grill and there's flames coming up, it, it got very angry with me. So yeah, they replaced it. It was nice of them.
- [128:17]
Leo Laporte
All right. It is $200. Highly. Actually, if you don't, you don't need display because you can use your phone. So skip $150 version and just remember to keep it charged because the worst thing which happened to me last time I did a brisket is if it's dead and then you can't use it.
- [128:32]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [128:32]
Jason Snell
Then you can use it.
- [128:33]
Leo Laporte
Then you're in trouble. All right. Annie Inako is not going to do a cooking tip.
- [128:38]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, well, I want, well, I want to be part of the fun. So I will add two other things about sous vide that make it a star, particularly on Thanksgiving. Yes. It's true that if you leave it in the sous vide for upwards of five days, you're not going to be happy with the texture of the results product. But, but the great thing about it is that you can't because the bath is being held at that 142, 145 degrees, you can't overcook it. It's not possible. So that means that whereas historically you're really running like, you're running like a maniac inside the, inside the inside the kitchen knowing that I don't know when the, when the turkey is going to be ready, but that's when we need to have everything else ready and sit down to eat. You can actually plan ahead. There's like at least like an hour or two of latitude. So that's so long as the. As soon, as soon as the turkey is deemed to be done, which is probably about an hour, that usually means great. So now I've got one hour to like prepare all the sides that need to be done like immediately. And you can get everything hot and perfect like on the, on the table at the same time, including again, perfectly juicy, perfectly seasoned turkey. And the other, and the other part about it is, is that oven space is always at a premium. Stovetop space is always at a premium. This as long as, so long as you've got a someplace inside the house that can support a bucket and has access to an outlet, you can sous vide all of your turkey like inside your office. And basically you've got the rest of your oven completely unoccupied, all your burners completely unoccupied. Again. I, it's. Try it once in a non combat situation like you know, with a chicken and do it like in February or March or April just to prove to yourself how well it works and then you'll be a convert forever. Okay, so. But my pick of the week. I intend proudly to set a record for the most number of Alexes for a pick of the week. Coming in at 1,714 Alexes, it's Judy Garland's ruby slippers screen matched to the actual wizard of Oz current. But the current bidding is up at the. You have to to beat the current bid. You need to get get up $1.2 million. The auction still has a couple weeks to go, so you can expect to go up from there. The ruby slippers are a vintage pair of Innis Shoe company red sick fall heel silk fall heels with uppers and heels covered with hand sequined silk georgette lined in white leather and the leather soles are painted red.
- [131:06]
Leo Laporte
How do we know these are the actual rubies? Weren't there mixed ruby slippers?
- [131:10]
Andy Ihnatko
There were several actually. There's a really interesting book about how the ruby slippers were like recovered back when in the early 70s, like 1970 when MGM was selling off its backlot. They prepared this huge auction of like all of their costumes, all of their props and they just wanted to empty out everything. There was one person who kind of volunteered his time given that and his and his deal was all I got. If I find a pair of ruby slip, if I fire more than one pair of ruby slippers I get to keep us at. And we're not talking about. Oh, well, they went to this file cabinet that was marked wizard of Oz, Judy Garland precious ruby slippers. Open this drawer. It was like stacks and stacks and stacks of shelves in a warehouse. And they found like three or four.
- [131:53]
Leo Laporte
If you've ever been to a Hollywood prop warehouse.
- [131:55]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean they were just, they were just stuck somewhere and moved somewhere.
- [131:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [131:58]
Andy Ihnatko
But this is. And so there are three or four pairs. This is like one of two that are considered, like there's one pair in the Smithsonian and then there's this pair that are considered, considered like the top of the mark.
- [132:07]
Leo Laporte
Andy, why is there never a giant bid for the blue ankle socks that go with the ruby slippers? You don't see people, you know, going crazy over the blue ankle socks.
- [132:18]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, because Judy Garland had enough. A lot of troubles in her childhood. One of the most stinky feet. It was things that nobody, the PR department could cover up a lot of stuff, but they couldn't cover up that. But yeah, this. And there, there's a, and there's a great story behind this one too. So it was. So again, they're great. Fair ruby slippers. They were loaned by the owner to a Judy Garland museum. And in a movie that has to be a comedy starring Paul Giamatti as the thief, there was like a 70 year old thief who was enticed into one last job because someone told them that, oh yeah, these ruby slippers from the wizard of Oz, they're in this museum and gosh, they must. And they're worth like a million dollars or something, which means, well, they must be covered with genuine rubies to be worth that much, he figured. So he broke in and stole the slippers, intending to like pull off these million dollars worth of rubies when you find out that no, they're sequins and they're like little shiny things and took the FBI like five or ten years to find them and return them. But, and in case. And I would suggest that, like, if you're looking, if you think that's a lot of money, if you pay for it with your American Express card, you'll get miles. Maybe, maybe they'll be there you go, cash back on your Apple card. But the other thing, the other thing is that it's on the heritage auction site, entertainment ha.com. this is one of the sites that I visit all the time. I sometimes buy comic art from the site, but mostly it's because I'm not going to spend $20,000 for an original piece of Jack Kirby like Fantastic Four art from the 60s. But they put up super high resolution scans in this case, super high resolution photos from every angle of the ruby slippers. So I'm there like right clicking like.
- [133:59]
Leo Laporte
A, like oh, and this has Judy Garland's name in it sewn in them.
- [134:02]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. The provenance is absolutely spot on. Again, it's also matched to screen match crayon. Also matched to the pair that's the exact same make and model of shoes that are in the Smithsonian. So yeah, this is going to be, this is like the Mona Lisa coming up for auction. There's going to be. I'm keen to see where they turn up and I hope it's not just yeah, Daddy, I want the pair of ruby slippers. Daddy, I want to wear them at the Met Gala. Daddy, buy me the slippers. Daddy, I hope it's like some nice museum that wants to put them and display them and treat them nicely.
- [134:32]
Leo Laporte
I do hope Elon Musk doesn't buy them. But you never know.
- [134:37]
Andy Ihnatko
There's nothing he can't ruin. So he's aiming high this time.
- [134:41]
Leo Laporte
If you haven't, if you haven't seen Wicked, go see the wizard of Oz. Now there's a movie. And look for the ruby slippers. Thank you, Andy Yanako. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
- [134:52]
Andy Ihnatko
Back at you and everyone listening to.
- [134:54]
Leo Laporte
Enjoy the pizza and the Thin Man. I think that sounds like a perfect combination.
- [134:58]
Andy Ihnatko
Cozy Thanksgiving.
- [134:59]
Leo Laporte
When will you be on GBH next?
- [135:02]
Andy Ihnatko
I was just on last week so go to gbhnews.org to stream that live or later. I think my next one is not next week but the week after that also on a Thursday at 12:45 Eastern Time.
- [135:12]
Leo Laporte
Awesome. Awesome. Mr. Jason Snell is at 6colors.com his podcast at 6colors.com Jason, I hope you have a wonderful time in where, where are you? You said Arizona, Louisiana.
- [135:25]
Jason Snell
Orange County, Louisiana. Yeah, my, my wife's family so. All right, yeah, we'll have a good time and and I'll report back about turkey business.
- [135:33]
Leo Laporte
Do they watch football in this family?
- [135:36]
Jason Snell
When I started going there 30 years ago they were basically a non sports household and I was the one sports but my brother in law turned out to be a sports person and his wife is a sports person and I converted my wife into be a sports person and my so we've my in laws are they're out of luck. Football will be on.
- [135:58]
Leo Laporte
Yes. It's a glorious day for football.
- [136:02]
Jason Snell
It is.
- [136:03]
Leo Laporte
Get your turducken and your touring Bus and enjoy it with the tv.
- [136:09]
Jason Snell
All Madden all the time.
- [136:12]
Leo Laporte
I miss John Madden. Apparently they're going to have the Madden CR at one of the games.
- [136:17]
Jason Snell
Yeah. And they put his face basically as the logo of the Thanksgiving games. These days they honor him every Thanksgiving, which is sweet.
- [136:23]
Leo Laporte
And then they always have that big spread on the field with turkey and.
- [136:29]
Jason Snell
The game with six turkey legs.
- [136:30]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, six turkey legs. And then the winning team, those look, they're probably cold, dry. They're probably awful.
- [136:37]
Jason Snell
I don't know. I mean, they may keep them warm for those guys, but they love them. It's like the super bowl. If the super bowl bowl trophy was a turkey leg. It's such a great idea. I've done that.
- [136:46]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it is brilliant. Mr. Alex Lindsay, Office Hours Global. What you talking about these days?
- [136:52]
Alex Lindsay
I am mostly we're answering people's questions. And so that's our primary focus right now. We're doing a lot of. If you watch it, you're going to see, you know, a lot of changes. Things yesterday was nuclear color as we tested a certain format for if you're watching in. And if you're watching in sdr, in hdr, it looks amazing. In sdr it looks a little bright. So. And you're going to see us constantly experimenting with that. So we're testing new encoders, we're testing bunch of other things. But the bottom line is what we do every day is we're answering people's questions. We get questions every day about whatever someone's working on today and we're answering those questions for that day. And so we get through about 25 questions a day. And it's. So it's a wide range of what people are working on in audio and video. So we're going to, we're doing that every, every morning. We're sticking to that right now because we're making so many changes to the back end at the moment. We're pushing a lot of envelopes. There's a lot of engineering teams watching what we're doing because of, you know, for a variety of companies, because we're doing some. We're kind of going at a level 4k 60 HDR 5.1. How far can we push this and really understand, you know, how to make it work? So that's what we're, that's what we're doing every day right now.
- [138:06]
Leo Laporte
Office Hours Global, you can watch every morning or watch on YouTube after the fact and Gray Matter show, the Michael Krasny program that you produce.
- [138:16]
Alex Lindsay
Always such great conversations. If you haven't heard Gray Matter, there's just so many great conversations that are, that are going on. Just go to the website Gray Matter show and look at the number of people. I think everybody on this panel has been on Gray Matter, but lots of other, lots of other folks as well from a very, very wide range of expertise. So definitely check it out.
- [138:36]
Leo Laporte
Krasny's quite the legend and has a very extensive Rolodex, so you get to see some really interesting people.
- [138:43]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and I think that one of the reasons that so many people come on is they've all been on. And he just has a unique way of interviewing folks that really we get to the end and so many times people walk out and go, wow, that was great interview like that was a great like conversation, you know, that we had.
- [138:57]
Leo Laporte
Yep. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Jason. Thanks to all of you for joining us. Mac Break Weekly Records Tuesdays, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC so you can watch us live, as I mentioned, on those eight different streams, including YouTube. But after the fact, you can always get a copy of the show at our website, TWiT TV MBW. There is a link at that page to our YouTube channel you can watch there. But it's even better for, I think, clipping and sharing little bits and pieces. If you, for instance, have a family member who's debating how to cook the turkey on Thursday, you could just clip that little segment and send it off to them. And of course, the best way to get is subscribe in your favorite podcast client, whether it's Apple Podcast, Overcasts, Pocket Cast, just Spotify, we're everywhere. Subscribe to my MacBreak weekly and that way you will not miss an episode. Thanks to John Ashley, our producer and editor and technical director, for putting the show together this week. I hope you all have a wonderful if you're celebrating a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. And we and I guess that means Black Friday and Cyber Monday too between now and the next episode. So good luck shopping and hunting. Hunting for great deals and we will see you next Tuesday on MacBreak Weekly now. And I'm sorry to say it is my sad but solemn duty tell you get back to work. Break time is over. Bye bye.
- [140:37]
Alex Lindsay
Now. AT T Mobile get four 5G phones.
- [140:40]
Leo Laporte
On us and four lines for $25.
- [140:42]
Alex Lindsay
A line per month when you switch.
- [140:43]
Leo Laporte
With eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with autopay discount using debit or bank account $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement. Due bill credits end if you pay off devices early. Ctmobile.com Imagine relying on a dozen different.
- [141:08]
Jason Snell
Software programs to run your business, none.
- [141:10]
Leo Laporte
Of which are connected, and each one more expensive and more complicated than the last.
- [141:15]
Jason Snell
It can be pretty stressful.
- [141:17]
Leo Laporte
Now imagine Odoo.
- [141:19]
Jason Snell
Odoo has all the programs you'll ever.
- [141:21]
Leo Laporte
Need, and they're all connected on one platform.
- [141:24]
Jason Snell
Doesn't Odoo sound amazing?
- [141:26]
Leo Laporte
Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price.
- [141:33]
Jason Snell
Sign up today@odoo.com that's odoo.com how do.
- [141:37]
Leo Laporte
You feel when you switch to GEICO and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says Happy Friday. Then you check your phone quickly and.
- [141:52]
Alex Lindsay
Discover today is actually Friday.
- [141:55]
Andy Ihnatko
So yes, Happy Friday.
- [141:57]
Leo Laporte
Random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with GEICO feels just like that. Get more with GEICO.