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MacBreak Weekly 950: Whacking on the Soccer Wall
02:27:46
App Store Awards, visionOS 2.2, Apple Music Replay
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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Alex, and Jason are all here and we've got lots of fun things to talk about. We'll take a look at the 45 best apps and games for the App Store awards. Review a few of them. I'll tell you the day that I'm going to die thanks to my favorite app. We also have a game that all of us played 30 years ago that's back now for your iPad. That and a whole lot more. Coming up next on macragge Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is Mac Break Weekly, episode 950, recorded Tuesday, December 3, 2024. Whacking on the soccer wall. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show where we get together and talk about Apple Snooze. With the Apple Snooze team. Joining us right now, Andy Anako from the library. Hi, Andrew.
- [01:05]
Andy Anako
Hello. I got a question that it's a light week, so maybe later on we can discuss this as a panel. When you're hanging a wreath on the front door, are you a bow at the top family or a bow at the bottom family?
- [01:18]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a really interesting question because.
- [01:20]
Andy Anako
I always put mine at the top. And as I was adjusting it, I'm like, why do it seems like this is a demographic. This is a thing that, like Google and Facebook ads, they will figure out which one you are and our ad targeting decisions based on it. Because there was something that tells us about you on where if you put a, if you have a holiday wreath, where you put the bow. We won't discuss side bow people because those people been reading too many design magazines.
- [01:45]
Leo Laporte
Honestly, I think it's pretty clear that you should put the bow at the top. Now, Patrick Delahanty says put the bow at the bottom. But we're going to get into that in greater detail.
- [01:56]
Andy Anako
Yes.
- [01:57]
Leo Laporte
That's likely going to be like the clip that goes on all the socials and all of that stuff. The bow. Because that's what people care about. Alex Lindsey is also here from Office Hours Global. He has deeper issues to think about.
- [02:12]
Alex Lindsay
Hdr, HLG versus pq. This is what we talked about.
- [02:15]
Leo Laporte
There you go. That's what counts. That's what matters.
- [02:19]
Alex Lindsay
Exactly. It's a religious issue, so we try to go very quickly. Some people are like, hlg. And I'm like, the HLG curve just isn't as good as the PQ curve.
- [02:27]
Leo Laporte
So, you know, sometimes I wish I lived in Alex's head just to understand some of the things that he says. Also with from 6colors.com Mr. Jason Snell.
- [02:40]
Jason Snell
Just happy to be part of the Apple news team. Big storm coming in, but then it's going to be clearing up. I'll be back later with the Apple weather.
- [02:48]
Leo Laporte
And now with the traffic report, Captain Leo in the skies. No, we're not going to do that to you today because you tuned in a podcast so you didn't have to listen to radio. I'm sad to say that the many of the staff at the radio station I used to work for, KFI in Los Angeles, have been laid off as radio continues its death spiral.
- [03:10]
Jason Snell
Terrestrial radio has been replaced by extraterrestrial radio.
- [03:14]
Leo Laporte
Well, and I have to say, unless you're Joe Rogan or call her daddy, podcasts ain't doing all that well either. There is a, there is a, a chill in the air with advertisers. I think they're very nervous. I don't, I don't know if it's us. Is it us, Jason Snell? You sell advertising. Is it.
- [03:35]
Jason Snell
I don't sell advertising. I have people who do that for me because I don't want to do it because I've never wanted to do it. But they don't tell you how Jason is going to be.
- [03:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it seems like it's slow.
- [03:44]
Jason Snell
It's a tough market. I mean, my, like, my big podcast over at Relay is doing okay. But even, even there, you know, you can feel it. And it's, it's, it's a tougher, tougher sledding than it has been.
- [03:55]
Leo Laporte
But, you know, when I say, oh, podcasts are struggling, people go, oh, no, they're bigger than better than ever. And it's true, if you're a celebrity or you have one of the big.
- [04:03]
Jason Snell
Yeah, if you got smart lists, you're doing it okay. Right.
- [04:05]
Andy Anako
Or if you enjoy talking about murder and the misery of other families that.
- [04:10]
Leo Laporte
Are left behind, if you talk about Apple, a little tougher.
- [04:15]
Alex Lindsay
I think that the, one of the things that you kind of see when you start to see this kind of stratification of that process is I think this is one of the things that Twitter did early on that was kind of a, I think a lot of people lost interest in Twitter or didn't have the same verve for Twitter when they just started really dumping to, you know, really making sure that the, that celebrities that joined Twitter did really, really well. And so, you know, there was a point where, I think, Leo, you were number one or two on Twitter when we when we were getting started back.
- [04:43]
Leo Laporte
In the old days, I was number.
- [04:45]
Alex Lindsay
I was number 99. At one point. I was 99. You know, like, I think I might have taken a screen capture of that. Like, I'm on the top 100. And then, you know, then they started basically really pandering to all the celebrities that came in, and everyone else just kind of dropped away, and you kind of felt like it was like this cool little club, and then they just hung out with popular kids and dropped us all into the deep. And I think that that is, in some cases, this kind of. And I personally think that Spotify did a lot of the work on this is to really jam up. There's a couple of things that Spotify did. I think number one is to really press down on the really popular ones and throw lots of money at it. But also the specificity of the data, you know, didn't take into account some of the effect. The effectiveness that you can't measure in podcasts, you know, that they're. And they, you know, they want to know every minute that you listen to it and every little bit. And I get that that's important data, but what happens is that you can't really have a CPM that properly represents that level of specificity. So one got really accurate and the other one's not. And I think that mismatch has been pretty damaging.
- [05:52]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Well, anyway, we're going to soldier on. Thanks to our club members who help us keep the lights on. And as long as people want to hear about technology news, I hope we can find a little place, a little small place in your heart, right next to mom and apple pie. Apple has announced, revealed and shown the 45 app and game finalists for the big App Store Awards. Actually, this happened right after the show last week, so I missed it. But we will do it now because it's. It's a good time filler. It's going to go right. Right through the first hour of the show. Here are the finalists in the App of the Year. I. They haven't announced the winners yet, have they? Am I that far behind?
- [06:37]
Andy Anako
No, there's the Podcast of the Year announcement, but not the App of the Year.
- [06:41]
Leo Laporte
What was. Okay, this. I don't want to hear. What was the podcast of the year? Oh, hysterical, hysterical, hysterical.
- [06:49]
Jason Snell
It's a wandering podcast about Dan Taberski. Reflects serious illness that spreads among a group of high school girls.
- [06:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, see, that's. Yeah, but the problem is that's. I mean, you can't do that for 20 years. Can you.
- [07:05]
Jason Snell
That's a miniseries.
- [07:06]
Leo Laporte
That's a miniseries. That's the problem, you know. Well, good for. Good for Dan. Congratulations. It starts episode one, Outbreak Spasms. Oh, I don't know if I would. Why do people want to listen to this? I wonder. Anyway, Hysterical. Congratulations. The podcast of the year. Is that because it had the most downloads of every other show? No, it's just. It rose to number one in July 2024 and end of the year is number nine.
- [07:39]
Jason Snell
It's. Yeah, it's a demonstrating quality and innovation podcast. And so again, it's Apple choosing. I just want to point out all these things that we talk about here, these are all decided by Apple. They are essentially Apple. Yeah, it's editorial. Well, it's marketing though, because, I mean, it's Apple, so it is editorial in the sense. But like, they have a podcast app and they have an app Store. And so really what they're doing is, it is people doing content, but they're also, you know, are they choosing based on completely objective criteria? Are they choosing based on relationships with developers and things like that? I mean, I think that there's a lot that goes into this. So just keep your eyes open. It's always nice to see Apple recognize developers for their good work. But it is marketing for the App Store.
- [08:25]
Andy Anako
And the good news is it isn't necessarily a popularity contest. So sometimes they do lift up apps that are well made. That oftentimes the unifying factor is that this is a good example of Mac or iPhone or vision OS or IPados design. It's the sort of things that Apple wants to put more eyes on. And a lot of it is promotional. A lot of it is what's going to sell very, very well. I wasn't the first person to notice this, but it's like it was. It is kind of interesting that, like, there are no AI apps on this list, like, ever. Given that AI apps are some of the most interesting and transformative mobile apps that are on the App Store right now. I don't think there's anything weird about it, but it is to note that whatever metric they're going for, it's not about the number of downloads. It's not about necessarily stylistic impact. There is a lot of arguments, I'm guessing, between a lot of different factions. Just like on a lot of Jason's podcasts, there are a lot of arguments about when we do. When we do our own. When we do our own picks of holiday movies involving bears, it's like, oh, I can't believe you Chose the Revenant. It's not a Christmas movie, but it is a Christmas movie when you think about it.
- [09:39]
Leo Laporte
As is Die Hard when you don't think about it. App of the Year finalists are. Drumroll, please. Kino. I think we've talked about that, haven't we, Alex? Kino is a movie making.
- [09:52]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it's a great. It's from the folks that brought you Halide, so.
- [09:59]
Leo Laporte
Well, there you go.
- [09:59]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. So really, really, it's kind of. It splits the difference between the Apple Photos app and blackmagic app, you know, where it's not quite as complicated as blackmagic, but not quite as simplistic as the Apple Photos one or as simplified. I don't even know if it's simplistic.
- [10:18]
Leo Laporte
Every. Every I think American, Proud American wants to do, which is grade log movies with L.
- [10:25]
Alex Lindsay
In my world, that's super important.
- [10:27]
Leo Laporte
I know. I bet they have an opinion on HLG versus hdr, but I don't pandering to the office.
- [10:32]
Alex Lindsay
They would know that PQ is better. They would know PQ is better than hlg. So the HLG is easy, but we do better. But for people listening. For people listening, the LUT means that you can shoot in log, but you can watch it in, you know, in what you want to, you know, in. In the regular linear color space so that you kind of understand what you're looking at while you're shooting. So that's why the light is important to a camera.
- [11:04]
Leo Laporte
Clear as mud, Mr. Lindsay. No, actually, I know what you're talking about, but I am speaking for the everyman now. There you go, Kino. And you do recommend it, right? Or would you rather use the blackmagic?
- [11:17]
Alex Lindsay
So I admit that I recommend it for anyone where the blackmagic one feels too deep and the, and the, and the Apple Photos makes you crazy because all the tools are kind of hidden in weird ways. So if you're kind of in that, so you open up the blackmagic go, whoa, that's too much. Or you go into the Photos app and you go, oh, that's not enough, or I can't find anything, then Kino is perfect for you. It's got a clean interface, it gives you a lot of control. I'm still using.
- [11:43]
Leo Laporte
Why would you use it over the built in camera app?
- [11:49]
Alex Lindsay
The built in one is just a lot of the features that are available that the camera has available to you are kind of either hidden or not available available to you. Apple tries to make it easy for everyone. They have a lot of great tools that they put in. You look at all this. Like they shot the weekend music video with it and they shot this with it. When they're doing that, they're not using the Apple Photos app like they're using the phone. It's a shot with an iPhone. It doesn't say shot.
- [12:11]
Andy Anako
Oh.
- [12:11]
Leo Laporte
But they're using something that is much.
- [12:13]
Alex Lindsay
More capable like Kino or blackmagic. Opens up every bell and whistle that you could possibly have that the camera is capable of delivering, except maybe spatial and so opens up all of those options. But there's a lot of interface to it now. There's rows and rows and rows of settings and all these things. And it's easy for you to take bad footage. You know, you can get the settings wrong. Kino is kind of, in my opinion, kind of halfway between.
- [12:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [12:40]
Alex Lindsay
So it's really.
- [12:40]
Leo Laporte
So when you shoot in log, you're shooting to get all of the data, but it doesn't look right initially because it looks very flat color graded before it actually looks normal. And so what this does is allows you to shoot in log, gives you an instant grading. So you can at least see something that looks sort of like what you want. And then at this, at some point you could either use another tool or use it to.
- [13:02]
Alex Lindsay
Because you might go out like a.
- [13:03]
Leo Laporte
Lut, which is a lookup table that tells you what colors should really look like.
- [13:08]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. And the lookup table just says instead of this color, go to this color. Instead of this color, go to this color. It's just a curve. You know, it's like if you think of Photoshop curves, just do that in 3D and you end up with a LUT. And so the. But the.
- [13:21]
Leo Laporte
It comes with built in color grades. Are they pretty good? I mean.
- [13:26]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, they're good. They're. No, no, they are. Mine are very specific. Like, like we have discussions about are you using the NBC HLG LUT or the PQ LUT or using their specific ones. And a lot of times as you get going, we don't really use kind of pre built luts. Like a lot of times we would go out and shoot a test footage and then we take it into resolve, you let it and we, and we make it look the way we want it to look. Or I actually get a colorist that I know to make it look the way he wants it to look and then he sends me back a lut.
- [13:55]
Leo Laporte
So you could derive a LUT from an image that you've got it to look exactly as you want. You can then derive the LUT from that in Resolve. You don't derive the original. Here's B what I want it to look like. Please give me a lookup table that maps.
- [14:10]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And typically that A is a log, you know, shot or raw, you know raw and more log that's shot. And so the colorist will go in and set up the nodes inside of the color window, inside of Resolve and then you just literally select the image and right click on it and say export a 33 point lock or a 6.65point LUT.
- [14:31]
Leo Laporte
And for people who do still photography is somewhat analog to shooting in raw. You have to process it afterwards to get exactly. It looks normal. All right, so we've really gone deep into keynote. What is runners. Anybody here actually exercise just to.
- [14:43]
Jason Snell
Oh, I actually do run, but I've never used run, so I can't. I can't really.
- [14:48]
Leo Laporte
It has an opportunity. Strava, excuse me, which is a very popular runners app, has just disabled its API for most third party tools, which is probably disappointing to people with Apple watches and so forth. You like to get that stuff into Apple Health, for instance.
- [15:02]
Jason Snell
Yeah, well, there are a couple running apps on here because there's also a couch to 5K app and the best Apple Watch nominees. So they're definitely leaning into that. And it's. I have used apps, I haven't used this app, but I've definitely used catch to 5K apps and other run tracking apps on the Apple Watch to do that. And it's pretty great. But I can't speak to Runa other than that it's got tailored training plans, which is great because that's actually the thing. I ended up doing a lot of manual timing using an app called Intervals Pro because I couldn't find an app that would set my training plan properly. So I ended up inputting it on my phone manually and syncing it to my watch and having that training plan write up for you is it's better.
- [15:41]
Leo Laporte
Right, to do it that way 5k, 10k half marathon and ultra. So if you want to run one of these, you could get a train. It would generate a training plan for.
- [15:50]
Jason Snell
You and it's really nice because it knows when you're running, it's not just like telling you, okay, now run it. It. It like will tell you what your paces are, but it'll also tell you like some of them do interval training. I know that's how I did it with my 5.5k training is, you know, it Tells you to run for a while, then it tells you to take a break and then it tells you to run again and it gives you your stats and that can be really helpful to have basically a coach who to you in your ears as you're running.
- [16:13]
Leo Laporte
It's interesting Apple picked this because it only has five reviews. Of the five reviews there are. There most mostly are five star and then there's a whole bunch of one stars. There really seems to be no agreement.
- [16:26]
Andy Anako
You know, you know how I feel about one star reviews. They're garbage. You throw them all away. You throw them away.
- [16:29]
Leo Laporte
Throw them away. Okay, yeah. If you throw the top or bottom away, you have no reviews. So there you go.
- [16:35]
Andy Anako
Run on the mean is no opinion whatsoever.
- [16:39]
Leo Laporte
The median, rather the median runa is a finalist. We should mention these are not winners. And then the last one in the finalist for iPhone app of the year is tripsy, the travel planner.
- [16:57]
Jason Snell
I have used this one and it is good. The idea there is you're taking a trip and you can load it up with information. It'll give you weather per day, which I really like. That is a winning feature. There aren't too many apps that do that. When I went to New Zealand last year, that was one of the things I really wanted is I wanted to see we were in different cities in different days and I wanted an idea of what the weather was going to be like. Tripsy will do that. It's got a bunch of other things.
- [17:22]
Leo Laporte
Oh, this is really nice.
- [17:24]
Jason Snell
Activity list, itinerary planners, flight updates, things with your calendar. Like it is if you want to be like, have an app that works with you on like every day of your trip and what you're going to do and all of that. Tripsy does that. It's actually. It's a very impressive app in that category.
- [17:39]
Leo Laporte
I do most of this by hand in Notion. I just kind of create a Notion page.
- [17:43]
Jason Snell
I do Apple notes for a lot of this stuff too.
- [17:45]
Leo Laporte
But yeah, the reason I use Notion is I could share it with my partner or other people so they kind of know what we're doing and so forth. Does Tripsy have that kind of capability? Can you.
- [17:54]
Jason Snell
I don't know if I, I didn't try that out. I tried this a while ago when they were still developing it.
- [18:00]
Leo Laporte
It's very cool.
- [18:01]
Jason Snell
But it's a. It's. It's a nice idea. Yeah. You can share your itinerary with family and friends.
- [18:06]
Leo Laporte
Okay. Because that's really key. Right. You want to do all this planning but you don't want to have be the only one who knows what's going on.
- [18:10]
Jason Snell
Exactly.
- [18:12]
Leo Laporte
That's kind of ugly.
- [18:13]
Jason Snell
What happens when you get hit by a truck while on your vacation? Then nobody will know where to go next.
- [18:18]
Leo Laporte
By the way, some of these run off for sure. And Tripsy also run on the iPad at Tripsy runs on the Mac as well. So they're. And the Apple watch. So there you go. There's your three. You want to keep going. Are we good?
- [18:30]
Jason Snell
IPhone apps of the year.
- [18:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, those are the apps of the year. Now we have game finalists. I'm not going to go into as much detail. AFK journey from building enchanting fantasy worlds with striking battles, the wear cleaner for delivering comical gameplay and Zenless Zone 0. You know, I'm starting to feel like the iPhone games are really pretty crappy. Am I wrong on that?
- [18:56]
Andy Anako
They're just. They're just of the sameness. I think they're of the sameness. Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I really still enjoy my playdate because so many of the games are just one very, very strange lone game developer who didn't have to bounce any ideas off of anybody. They just thought this is a weirder. I just want to see this game happen. You really have to dig to find like the stuff that really gets my attention on. On any kind of a mobile game.
- [19:26]
Leo Laporte
Those are for iPhones. For iPad. The app of the year finalists. Bluey. Let's play. I know a lot of kids like Bluey. Oh, you got to love Bluey for lovable characters, friendly, fun.
- [19:38]
Alex Lindsay
We were talking the other day about the most view things on YouTube. Half of them are for kids.
- [19:47]
Leo Laporte
You know why, Alex? Because a kid will watch the same video a thousand times. Right?
- [19:51]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. And I think maybe not your kids.
- [19:53]
Leo Laporte
Your kids are smart. You.
- [19:55]
Alex Lindsay
Well, they still sometimes watch it pretty often, but they're usually trying to figure.
- [19:58]
Leo Laporte
Out baby shark wouldn't exist if only adults were in the world. Because you hear it once, you go, huh, that's cute. And that's it. You don't want to hear it again.
- [20:05]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [20:06]
Leo Laporte
But a kid wants to hear it over and over and over. And. And so I think when you see all those kids with iPhones and iPads in the restaurant, they're playing Bluey Moises. Interesting.
- [20:17]
Alex Lindsay
Moises is incredible.
- [20:18]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [20:19]
Alex Lindsay
Really incredible app. I mean I just. It's like, it's magical. Like it's a magical app.
- [20:24]
Leo Laporte
So it's.
- [20:25]
Alex Lindsay
It's listed as iPad, but it's also a.
- [20:28]
Leo Laporte
It's iPhone as well.
- [20:30]
Alex Lindsay
It's iPhone as well. And so my daughter uses this heavily.
- [20:33]
Leo Laporte
Oh, interesting.
- [20:34]
Alex Lindsay
And so what she does with it is that, you know, she's got electronic drums. And so when she's trying to learn the electronic drums, learn a new drum riff for one of the bands she's in a couple of bands and she, she can take this, she can take a song and she usually downloads it from YouTube or whatever, throws it into Moises and it will separate all of the instruments. So it just pulls out all the instruments and it gives you a levels control over each instrument. Does it job does incredible. Like, it does a job. Like, I don't even know how that's possible. Like, it's, it is, it's. I don't understand it, to be honest. Like, it is so good at pulling these apart and doing them so cleanly. And then. And then what?
- [21:14]
Leo Laporte
It can actually separate the rhythm and the lead guitar?
- [21:18]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it gets better. You keep on saying, I can't do that. Yeah, exactly. It is. And it didn't do that when we bought it, but now it does it and it keeps on adding more and more tracks that are available. And so the interesting thing is then what she does is she takes that and mixes it in with her drums so that she can turn just the drums up and play with the drums until she gets it and then turn the drums down, be the drummer and everything else is playing around. And it's just transformation. Like, it's just like sometimes it's one of those apps that I just go, I don't think I might have used it. I might have recommended it a year ago or whenever. But it's just like, this is, you know, we're living in the future and.
- [21:56]
Leo Laporte
I should, with this app, this is remarkable. I should apologize to Micah and Rosemary because of course, iOS today has already done all this and talked about and if you like apps, this is. That's the show to listen to. But I thought we should bring this up since we're so light on mature.
- [22:12]
Andy Anako
I also thought it was kind of interesting that so many of the pics were like, wow, Adobe Lightroom, what's that? In the Mac apps, Both of them are two productivity apps that we know well, Omnifocus and Lightroom. The third one is a pipeline feature for 3D production.
- [22:32]
Alex Lindsay
It's a 3D modeling package.
- [22:34]
Andy Anako
Okay, thank you.
- [22:35]
Leo Laporte
Shaper 3D.
- [22:37]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. It's relatively affordable.
- [22:39]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So these are big. So the first two are big name products. I mean, I guess Omnifocus isn't. Except anybody who's been in Apple space for a while. Knows very well the Omni Group.
- [22:48]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [22:50]
Leo Laporte
And I think omnifocus has probably been an App of the Year finalist for a long from many times before.
- [22:56]
Andy Anako
Again, I mean that's that company. Like they are like they were writing Mac apps before there was Mac app development because they were writing these Mac apps as next step apps. So you can't get like a more tighter pedigree or understanding of the philosophy of a Mac oriented app. And I was pleased to see Lightroom in there because my God, the leaps that that has made in the past three years. This year too, the not just the desktop app, but the mobile app where things that were like, I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to wait until I get home to edit a photo because there are so many advanced features on the mobile app for doing things like, oh, but I only want this to affect the face or this object inside the frame. And oh, you will automatically detect objects for me and I can. Or even with people in the frame. You can just say please identify all the people in this image not by name but by which shapes that represent people and be able to say, okay, I want these edits to affect only person three and only their clothing. And it's like, it's why I keep saying that one of the reasons why I've never got into mobile gaming on my phone is that Lightroom Mobile is like my entertainment app when I'm, when I've got spare time, 10 minutes waiting for a bus or like an hour waiting in an airline airplane or something like that. It's just so much fun to work with. So I not. I'm surprised to see them name someone so important by the way, particularly because like, okay, so if they're buying their own competitor to Photoshop and to take it in house and maybe release as a free app, you're choosing to give it all to Adobe, which is great. It means that they're being honest. But it's like, oh boy, that's going to be fun. Next year.
- [24:46]
Leo Laporte
We jumped ahead a little bit. I'll make this quick iPad app of the Year finalist. I just don't want to leave out Procreate Dreams because the people at Procreate saying, you mentioned Bluey and Moises. What about us? Procreate Dreams is I guess from the Procreate team, Savage Interactive.
- [25:02]
Alex Lindsay
It lets you build animations with what you're drawing, layers and so on and so forth. It's really cool.
- [25:07]
Leo Laporte
Nice.
- [25:07]
Jason Snell
A lot of these apps appear. You will not be Surprised to believe in various Apple keynotes over the course of time, which is again, a sign that they are apps that are liked by people, especially I think in developer relations within Apple. And I think those are the people who drive and I think awards as well.
- [25:22]
Leo Laporte
That's probably who decides this, right? Is.
- [25:24]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I would think, I don't know, but that's my guess. And it's all of a kind. Right. And I mean, you talked about iPhone apps sometimes feeling kind of samey that again, I don't want to be too down on these awards because I really love that they're recognizing third party apps, but they're recognizing it and for reasons that make Apple happy. Right. So one of the reasons that a lot of iPhone apps especially get recognized is because Apple likes to show off apps that have heavy graphics use, because they want to use it to show off their GPUs when they release new iPhones. And so they're really into that. When, you know, are the, are the, is the market into that or is it really that Apple's into that? And you see that, you know, if it's adopting Apple technologies, they really love it because that's what they're trying to promote. It's just something to keep in mind. Also, you know, they're going to prefer apps that are working with them as partners and that are in the App Store and all of those other things. For Mac apps, for example, I did notice that in their press release they linked to the mobile version of Lightroom in the Mac App of the Year category, which is Oops. But anyway, it's, it's a great, not Mac app, but it was nominated for Mac App of the Year. So I'll give you an example. The Mac Game of the Year, one of the nominees is Stray, which is an amazing game. But like, what they're really happy about is that that's a fairly high profile game that came to the Mac this year.
- [26:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's a double A title. You get to play a cat wandering around.
- [26:48]
Jason Snell
It's a, it's a great game. But yes, it is somewhere between cute indie game and AAA game. Well, so is thank Goodness yous're Here, which was published by Panax.
- [26:56]
Leo Laporte
I actually loved thank Goodness yous're Here.
- [26:58]
Jason Snell
It was so much fun and I'm glad that they gave it promotion. Right.
- [27:03]
Leo Laporte
Like I played it on the Nintendo Switch. So I apologize.
- [27:05]
Jason Snell
But for any developer, for any developer getting the marketing muscle, even a little, the weakest and flabbiest of marketing muscles of Apple behind your app, in any way it's a big deal. It's really important.
- [27:18]
Alex Lindsay
I was talking to a developer. This is years ago, so I don't know if it's the same now, but they were, they, their app was in one of the commercials, you know, it just, it just flew by. It was like logo, logo. And they showed they, someone actually used it for like a second. It was like a second or two seconds that you saw someone actually using their app. Quarter million dollars a month, sure.
- [27:38]
Leo Laporte
They've done that with songs, right?
- [27:39]
Alex Lindsay
They were just like, it was just like suddenly they didn't have to work anymore. Like it was just, it was, it just turned the whole switch on. They didn't know how long it was going to last. When I was talking to them, they're like, eventually it's going to fade away but you know, like we're going to enjoy it while it lasts. And you know, but that was it. That paid off. Their house paid off everything else. Just the two seconds on an Apple ad. So these, these recommendations and I don't think that, I don't think, I look at these and go that they ring wrong. Like, you know, it's like they're there. These are strong apps. Like for instance, I do think that in the Apple Vision pro they have JigSpace listed as the number one. I think it's the most impressive app other than playing movies. The not the most impressive non movie app in the Apple vision Pro is JigSpace.
- [28:18]
Jason Snell
Like you said, I think you're right. I think it comes from a point of view because of course it does. It comes from Apple's point of view. I think it's telling. Like when I saw JigSpace listed I thought, well of course, I literally got a Vision Pro demo from Apple at Apple with JigSpace. Right? Like I know they like that app.
- [28:35]
Alex Lindsay
And when I show it, when I show it to someone, I'm like, you gotta go into JigSpace and take a look at this. Like you can see where the. And I think this is to your point, it shows you where the Apple Vision Pro could go. Like it's actually not a very practical app because the development process is really expensive and painful and all kinds of other things. You don't see that many new things. But it's the best example, I think a lot of these moises and jigspaces an example of showing you what the technology could do and kind of from a vision perspective.
- [29:04]
Leo Laporte
Well, anyway, it's also useful for us as users to get some discovery in here. So that's nice, but it's much like the editorial function that highlights these things in the app store itself. It's.
- [29:16]
Andy Anako
Yeah, that's self serving but it's useful. It's not garbage app, so it's a good place to start. I do wish that the app store itself were a little bit more discoverable and a little bit more fun to just say I'm kind of dissatisfied with the image viewer apps that I have right now. I want to sort of browse and explore or even. I don't know, I haven't really looked at new apps of any kind because all my tools seem to be kind of. I just want to see what's new. I want to see what's interesting. I think there even used to be like RSS feeds you could subscribe to. I mean back when the influx of apps was somewhat manageable, the firehose was at least something that you could keep on top of if you were so bizarre as to want to take a look at it. I do still feel like it's hard to know if I just want to see. I just want to really know a lot about the breadth of text editor tools that are available for the Mac. And it just doesn't seem like there's an easy way to do that unless you're just interested in editorially picked content, featured content or the bestsellers.
- [30:16]
Leo Laporte
All right, geeking. Tom has asked a question that I'm afraid I must ask Alex. Did you try to deep fry your turkey this year?
- [30:23]
Alex Lindsay
I did not. I sous vided I so I.
- [30:27]
Leo Laporte
How did you injure your thumbs is the question.
- [30:32]
Alex Lindsay
Funny story.
- [30:32]
Jason Snell
Don't deep fry your turkey with windows.
- [30:36]
Leo Laporte
Never manually drop your turkey into the fryer. I guess would be the lesson when.
- [30:41]
Alex Lindsay
You work in shipping and receiving when you're 18 years old and there's a two chemical process to do packing materials. It's a two chemical that turns into foam.
- [30:48]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [30:48]
Alex Lindsay
All over the packages it says to put gloves on. Don't let it touch your skin.
- [30:52]
Leo Laporte
Oh.
- [30:53]
Alex Lindsay
At 18 years old you don't pay attention to that and so that when it gets cold, your skin cracks.
- [30:57]
Leo Laporte
Oh, wow. So this is an injury from your youth.
- [31:00]
Alex Lindsay
It's. It's a 30. 30 year old. I just. So every once in a while I put these on to it just. Just lets them heal back up again. It happens hard for life.
- [31:08]
Andy Anako
That's hardcore, man. Yeah.
- [31:10]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. So anyway, it's just different.
- [31:11]
Leo Laporte
You'll see different days in retail.
- [31:12]
Alex Lindsay
In the winter you'll see different fingers covered with and usually I Remember to take them off before. I usually remember to take them off before the show, so.
- [31:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that sounds unpleasant.
- [31:21]
Alex Lindsay
Just follow the instructions. That's the only lesson it hasn't hurt my life too much. Just follow the instructions.
- [31:27]
Leo Laporte
Just follow the instructions.
- [31:29]
Alex Lindsay
Especially the ones with the big circle that has like the evil sign on it, you know, And I used to use it for everything to send people like cassettes. And I'd be like, I'll put it in a phone package because I can do that custom and you know, it's what.
- [31:42]
Leo Laporte
Anyway, one more app. It's going to be Leo's App Pick. It's actually not my app Pick because they end up charging you money in three days and you really shouldn't have to pay money for this. It's called Death Clock. I showed this on Sunday on Twitt. I just want to let you know that I will be dying March 17, 2041, according to Death Clock. And just thought I'd warn you ahead of time. They do actually give you a little graphic that says save the date. But since I didn't want to pay $40 for this information, well, to be.
- [32:12]
Andy Anako
Fair, they got to make sure they get that money out of you early. True.
- [32:17]
Leo Laporte
They give you a three day. A three day trial, which is enough time to get your actual. It's so funny because you. It's a questionnaire. You go through the whole thing and then it says if you want to know when you're going to die, you should give us some money. That's like why I ought to. Fortunately, they have a three day trial which is free. You can find out when you're going to die and then I don't know why you'd pay $40 a year for this, but I guess the idea is they tell you when you're going to die based on what your current habits are and then how much longer you could live if you changed your habits. And since changing my habits, things like eating vegetables would only add six years to my life. I'm just going to.
- [32:56]
Jason Snell
Don't bother.
- [32:56]
Leo Laporte
Shine it on.
- [32:57]
Andy Anako
Now, the operative question, of course, has to be, have you read the privacy policy?
- [33:02]
Leo Laporte
Oh, my God, yeah. Because I told it a lot of stuff.
- [33:05]
Andy Anako
Yeah.
- [33:06]
Alex Lindsay
How long you will live, but how long?
- [33:08]
Andy Anako
It's actually reassuring to see. Oh, good, they're charging a lot of money for this. That's how they want to monetize this, hopefully.
- [33:14]
Leo Laporte
Yikes. There is actually a website that does pretty much the same thing. It says I'm going to live to 90, so I don't know. I trust that one better. I think it's more accurate. Just thought I'd let you know that the last Mac Break Weekly will be March 17, 2041.
- [33:32]
Andy Anako
Well, that's, that's, that's useful because it's.
- [33:34]
Alex Lindsay
Like Leo on March 15.
- [33:36]
Andy Anako
Part, part, part of it is like, maybe I'm not going to binge watch seasons three and four of only Murders in the Building. I need to save something, so I'm gonna have to fill like another 15 years. I didn't think I'd have.
- [33:46]
Alex Lindsay
I think, I think just Leo's gonna have a lot of fun on St. Patty's Day. It's just like.
- [33:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's right. Obviously. Drink myself to death. Right.
- [33:54]
Alex Lindsay
That's not going to be. Yes, yes.
- [33:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Uh, let's take a break. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Alex, Lindsay, Andy Anako, Jason Snell and me talking about the latest Apple news. There is not much, but we have some more. I don't know if we're going to have an occasion to play the Vision Pro theme, but we'll. Let's see. Oh, yes, Andy, you found a story.
- [34:17]
Andy Anako
Actually an interesting one that I think Alex is going to love.
- [34:20]
Leo Laporte
All right, there you go. See, we work hard to keep you entertained. Our show today, brought to you by Experts Exchange. This is a. You listen to our shows partly for entertainment, but I think also partly because you want information. You want to know more about technology. Experts Exchange is a website you can go to any time and get answers from a network of trustworthy and talented tech professionals. They can give you industry insights and advice. And this is people who are actually using the products in your stack. If you're an IT professional, this will save you money. You don't have to pay for expensive enterprise level tech support. You ask real people who are using the product, same products you are, without any snark. There's no like, oh, well, I would never do it that way kind of thing, or that question's been asked before. No, these are great people and there's no AI involved. And I think there's another, another reason to like Experts Exchange. It's the tech community. For people tired of the AI sellout, Experts Exchange is ready to help carry the fight for the future of human intelligence. Access to professionals in over 400 different fields. I'm talking coding, Microsoft AWS, Azure, DevOps, Cisco, and on and on and on. I mean everything in the tech stack. And unlike other places, as I said, there's no snark. Duplicate questions are encouraged and the reason is it's people like you who are on Experts Exchange. Experts in a particular field, they're tech junkies. They love answering questions because they understand that one of the best payoffs for being an expert in a field is being able to pay it forward to answer somebody's question and say, yeah, well, let me tell you how you solve that. I know that from when I from doing the tech guy for so many years. It's a nice feeling when you can help somebody with their tech problems. And that's what Experts Exchange is there said too. One member said, I've never had ChatGPT stop and ask me a question before. That happens all the time on Experts Exchange. Experts Exchange is a human community. They're proudly committed to fostering a community where human collaboration is fundamental. In fact, many of the experts in there listen to some of our shows. Rodney Barnhart is a VMware V expert. He listens to Security now and Twit. There's Edward van Biljon, who is a Microsoft MVP and ethical hacker. There's Cisco Design Professionals. There's a. There's even a C suite and you know, executive level IT directors and so forth who can help you with not just like the nitty gritty technical questions, but even administrative questions or, you know, HR problems, things like that. Other platforms. And the list keeps growing. It started with Reddit x does it? LinkedIn announced that they're doing this. They betray their contributors by selling the content. The content you put there to train AI models, not Experts Exchange. Your privacy is not for sale. There they stand against the betrayal of contributors worldwide. They have never and will never sell your data or your content or your likeness. Not only that, they strictly prohibit AI companies. They block them from scraping content from the site, which these AI companies are sneaky. They try to do this all the time. They block them every time. And moderators say no LLM content in the threads. We want human ass answers. I think that's one of the reasons. But there are many to love Experts Exchange. Experts deserve a place where they can confidently share their knowledge without, you know, worrying that some company is going to steal it to increase their value. Right? And humanity deserves a safe haven from AI. A place where humans can gather and have a community and help each other. That's Experts Exchange. Now it isn't free, but they are offering a three month free trial and you don't need to give them a credit card. So I think this is the time to check it out and see if this is what you need. I think you'll love it. In fact, it's, I should warn you, it's addictive. You want to get in there, ask questions, but also answer questions. Experts exchange 90 days free. No credit card required. Go to e-e.com twit Nice address, right? E-e.com twit to learn more. Thank you, Experts Exchange for supporting the show. And of course you support us when you go to that special address. That way they know you saw it. Here, e-e.com/twit all right, let's see here. What else is going on? I thought we were talking about privacy and I think it's really good news. It's not specifically Mac news, but it's very good news. The FTC now is looking into banning or restricting what data brokers can sell of your information, including your Social Security number. And if they do sell that information, can you believe they're actually allowed to do that? They will be viewed as a credit reporting agency, not as a, as a, as a privacy invading data broker, which means they have even more regulation. This is a very small step. It is just a first step and it isn't even a step yet. It's just proposal. But, but I've said for a long time I'm not going to really credit Congress with doing anything for our privacy by banning TikTok unless they go east a step further and ban data brokers. I mean, who cares about TikTok if China and anybody else can buy the same information completely legally online, in fact better information because the data brokers collect it from all the apps. But Congress has yet to do anything. Maybe the FTC will. We'll see. Oh, actually it's not the FTC, it's the CFPB, which means they're trying to do this before January 20th because it will. That that agency will probably disappear. Yeah.
- [40:06]
Andy Anako
And it's especially important because a lot of law enforcement agencies are using these, these resources to get around, to get around, like being able to get, having to get warrants for certain information. Because if they can just buy information instead of having to go through a court and convince a judge. That's been happening a lot and we need to put brakes on it. Basically a lot of it is that it will give you, if this rule goes into effect, it means that they would have to go ask you for explicit permission before they move. They sell on your Social Security number. Why is that already not illegal?
- [40:38]
Leo Laporte
That was the stunning thing in this story. Yeah, wait a minute. They're allowed to sell your social.
- [40:43]
Andy Anako
That's legal if they got it.
- [40:46]
Leo Laporte
And they're not even banning it, by the way. They're just saying, well, that's going to put you under more regulation. And I guess we should probably give you the bad News, which is January 20th, it's all over.
- [40:57]
Andy Anako
Well, maybe the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been all over the news, even the Apple news for the past few months. They've been doing such great work. There was a story just a couple of weeks ago, I don't know if we talked about it or not, where they decided first. They were the agency that said that, okay, the Apple card and banking organization that runs it. You basically screwed up a whole bunch of way things.
- [41:18]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, Goldman Sachs.
- [41:19]
Andy Anako
Sorry, Goldman Sachs. You haven't been responding to user complaints in a timely fashion. You haven't been doing chargebacks fast enough. All this sort of stuff. And so they got hit by. Hit by fines and stuff like that. And then a couple of weeks ago they went ahead and said, okay, guess what? We've decided that there are so many new. Like Google has their own financial financial movement system. Apple has their own financial movement system for consumers. We've now decided that you now have to be regulated. You have to now have to follow the same rules that a credit card company or a bank does in those circumstances. So you can't just simply decide that these don't apply to us. We're just two hippies in a garage. Again, they've been doing such wonderful, wonderful work. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, there are four letters that a lot. I mean, I wasn't really terribly aware of it until eight or nine months ago, until the first time there was a news item that referred to. I started hitting its website and then I bookmarked the hell out of that website. Because the actions that they take are always meaningful and not vague in their intent or their purpose. They move swiftly and accurately. They're a great organization. I hope they stick around.
- [42:25]
Leo Laporte
It's Elizabeth Warren created and I have a feeling it will be one of the first things that disappears.
- [42:35]
Andy Anako
Well, as Elon says, there's a lot of waste and duplex.
- [42:37]
Leo Laporte
There's a lot of waste.
- [42:39]
Andy Anako
I don't see the need of. Yeah, that's.
- [42:41]
Leo Laporte
He actually wants to delete. Literally use the word delete. The cfpb.
- [42:47]
Andy Anako
Yeah, he's a smart guy.
- [42:49]
Leo Laporte
You know, we should really just delete it.
- [42:51]
Andy Anako
Yeah.
- [42:54]
Leo Laporte
Think of all the money we'll save, probably. All right. I don't want to get into politics. We'll stop. We'll stop. Here's A happy go lucky story. Gronk made some money on his Apple stock. William Gallagher writing the Apple Insider. So Gronk, who is an NFL player.
- [43:16]
Alex Lindsay
Rob Gronk, we'd like to think of him as the NFL thinker.
- [43:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, he's. I don't. I bet you he isn't dumb, but he sure plays dumb on tv, let's.
- [43:26]
Andy Anako
Put it that way. Can I say that as, as a New Englander who's been like, when, when he was playing, like every single week there'd be a story he was like our Yogi Berra. Or he was. Or he was like the, those really great old timey football players from the 60s when they were giving interviews in the 70s and 80s where you know.
- [43:43]
Leo Laporte
They'Re just like, he's a dick Butkiss for our times, ladies and gentlemen.
- [43:47]
Andy Anako
He's talented, he knows what, he knows what he's about and he's a good storyteller. And he thank for now we haven't heard any bad stories about him, so we can still think of him as a lovable one.
- [43:57]
Leo Laporte
He's now an NFL play by play guy. And he also is of course very rich from his years at the Patriots.
- [44:04]
Andy Anako
Also, Gronkowski. How can we a. How.
- [44:07]
Leo Laporte
What a great name.
- [44:08]
Andy Anako
It would be a sin if he didn't turn out to be a football player because Gronk is too good a nickname to weigh.
- [44:14]
Leo Laporte
According to Fortune magazine, Gronk in 2014 was building a house. And the guy building it would not stop talking about Apple stock. Every time I saw him when we were building the house, he kept saying, get Apple, get Apple. So after the 50th time I got it and let me tell you, it's the best investment I ever had in my life. Gronk, you should have bought. He says, by the way, I never been involved in stocks. I really don't know how stocks work. So I called up my financial advisor, put $69,000 in Apple, says Gronk.
- [44:46]
Jason Snell
Nice.
- [44:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that was when Apple was just about to take off. Right. 2014.
- [44:52]
Andy Anako
It was depressed kind of artificially. And he chose, he happened to pick a moment when everyone was on a sell mode and yeah, he did very well.
- [45:01]
Leo Laporte
Go ahead. To this day, I have over $600,000 in Apple stock, all because of that investment I made in 2014. Having no idea what I was doing, but just listening to the guy who built my house.
- [45:12]
Andy Anako
Yeah, it was a terrific story. He says he did. He just, he, like, because he's, he's got money, he can say he just called his broker or whatever, said, yeah, give me $60,000 in that apple thing. Forgot all about it until like another meeting. Oh, by the way, your stuff, your. Your Apple stock has quadrupled in the past two years.
- [45:29]
Leo Laporte
Funny story. That's just a funny story. A little amuse bouche to move on from what would otherwise be kind of unpleasant news. Vision. Let's do our Vision Pro segment. John Ashley, are you ready for. To press the button? You know what? I'm just gonna give some time. I was gonna give you time. I was gonna take a break and then let you get. Find it and get the button ready.
- [45:54]
Jason Snell
I. I am ready to go.
- [45:56]
Leo Laporte
Right on top of it. John Ashley. It's like I do this for a living. Leo, do you. Do we pay you? You're not a volunteer.
- [46:03]
Alex Lindsay
Wait, hold on. I need to check my account real quick.
- [46:05]
Leo Laporte
We should talk because. Well, anyway, as you know, podcasting is not doing very well. No, we love. John Ashley. Vision OS 2.2 according to 9 to 5. Mac is bringing some upgrades. Three upgrades that make the Vision Pro actually a huge boost. A huge. Now we've talked about Mac virtual display.
- [46:29]
Jason Snell
They overstate it a little bit.
- [46:30]
Leo Laporte
Are they overstating it?
- [46:32]
Jason Snell
It's three and it's not really. Three is basically it because it's really one, which is the stuff the Mac display modes and the fact that the basic mode is also clearer than it was before. And then what's their third item?
- [46:45]
Leo Laporte
Routing audio to the right place.
- [46:48]
Jason Snell
It fixes a bug involving sound. Okay, well, wow. You convinced me.
- [46:55]
Leo Laporte
Wow. Let's all buy a Vision Pro, kids. They say it truly makes the Vision Pro a next gen computer, not the strongest.
- [47:03]
Jason Snell
I mean, that headline cannot be backed up by the story.
- [47:06]
Andy Anako
It's great that Apple's adding value to the product. I don't think that when we were hopeful last year before the debut, we thought that by this time there would be a big update that everybody loves and appreciates and agrees is a great thing for the system. And it's like, yeah, the feature that allows you to use it as a display for, for the computer you do actual work on. It's a bigger display and it's better detail.
- [47:33]
Jason Snell
Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's true, but if you go back to when this product was announced and people were talking about features of the Vision Pro, I'd say even back then people said that Mac display thing might be the killer app. Like, I think that actually very early on people were like, whoa, that might be really interesting to use this. And I think it is. Of course, we're still talking about it, this extended version of it being in beta. So, you know, we're coming up on 18 months since they first announced this product and that killer feature still hasn't shipped. But maybe now is the time. Maybe, yeah.
- [48:07]
Andy Anako
I mean, what I'm getting at is that just that like, if Apple had decided that we like virtual reality, we think VR goggles and VR hardware from Meta and whatever are interesting products, we think there's only one use case, really great use case for it, and that is as a floating display that goes wherever you go. And they decided that all we're going to do is do a VR headset that acts as an external display for your iPad or your Mac. How much less money would it have cost?
- [48:37]
Leo Laporte
I don't know.
- [48:39]
Andy Anako
When you consider how much a really good display, like people will spend 500 to $1,000 on a decent, like gaming display. And so if you use that as a benchmark and say, Apple, what could you have done if you just. Yes, if you. Yes, we'll put some other stuff in it too. But primarily you're selling this as an external display. And the budget, the retail budget is $1000 or $1200.
- [49:00]
Jason Snell
But I think the killer sense, sorry, Apple's display, Apple's cheapest display doesn't cost $1,000.
- [49:05]
Andy Anako
So it's a bargain.
- [49:07]
Alex Lindsay
Well, so the problem is that to deliver to me, there's a few killer apps that are in there. I think that the movie, if I'm not with my family, I watch movies on Map of Vision Pro. Like, it is the best screen I've ever owned. You know, like as far as watching a film that's there, I mean it's, it just really is. It's sharper, it sounds better, all those things. And I think that the immersive, even though I think Apple's making a lot of missteps with the stuff that they're publishing, I think that, that eventually that, you know, there's a lot of people that someone sees something and you see a couple minutes of it and there's some motion of that, you're like, oh, this is going to be great. When people actually have cameras and do it bit more the. I do think that the screen, I pooed because I have so many screens at home. But now that I'm traveling, when I'm in a plane, it's a pretty big deal. It's like, it's a pretty, it's a pretty amazing experience to have that big screen in front of me and be able to actually get stuff done in coach, you know, So I think that that is there. My. My newest thing right now has been, you know, I'm getting to the age where you have to start paying attention to blood pressure. And so I take my blood pressure pretty often now. And. And I tested the meditation app. I was like, you know, I turn everything into a research project. Six minutes with the meditation app, and my systolic and Diastolic dropped over 10 points. So, you know, and I. And I. And I suddenly got into, like, I have to admit, I turned it on. I was like, that's cute. But once you get into five or ten minutes of it, it's actually a pretty amazing experience, you know, to kind of, like. It seems like a silly thing from the surface that I actually am starting to really enjoy. So the. So that. That's. You know, those types of things I think are pretty interesting. I think Jigspace is. We talked about it earlier. It's a great app. Apple just needs to make it accessible. Like. Like they need to either buy the company and do something with it or Sherlock them and do something and make Keynote able to do those things. But something has to happen where you're able to build that kind of experience less expensively and more easily if. And. Or Jigspace figures it out. Like how to build a business model that actually makes sense. But. But there is an. You know, you just see this huge goldmine of how to put things together, how to build things, how to build IKEA furniture where you use all the screws, you know, like, how to do all those things are things that I think that would be really. That's the thing that I look at.
- [51:34]
Leo Laporte
I need to buy a $3,500 headset so I can figure out how to put together a $200 side table. That's a good use of my mind.
- [51:41]
Alex Lindsay
With half the swear words. With half the swear words, you know?
- [51:44]
Leo Laporte
You know, like, words can add up. I have to say.
- [51:47]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. So. So, you know, it's all the stress, you know, so. No, but I'm. But I think that there are many complex things that. That. That I'm pretty excited about again. I think that I am. I'm personally wish that Apple hadn't cut as many corners as they did. I would have paid $6,000 if they had done 120 frames a second.
- [52:04]
Leo Laporte
So the.
- [52:05]
Alex Lindsay
So the. Because you need to have. You need to be able to develop for that far end, and you can't develop for that far end if it doesn't exist. And it's easier to go back and say, okay, now we're going to do a cheaper one that does all things. But I think that the problem is, is delivering those movies to the screen at that, at the frame rate and the resolution that they're doing. It required probably almost all the processing power that you're looking at there like, so there's not that much. If you're able to see through it and be able to see the environment around you and then put up a screen, you're probably looking at three or $4,000. Like, it's not that I don't think it would have saved a lot to say, I just want to play a 4K image in there. There are companies that do 10, 80 per eye, but they're cheap and weird and it's not the same.
- [52:51]
Leo Laporte
I have to say though, all the ads Meta's putting out this holiday season to get the Meta Quest are probably good for the Vision Pro. They're good for the category anyway. They show people using it to do all the things that you would expect a nerd helmet would do. And I think that's probably good for.
- [53:07]
Alex Lindsay
The Quest is great. I mean, Supernatural is the best app on the Quest, in my opinion.
- [53:12]
Leo Laporte
I like the boxing games, I like the, the music games and so forth. But so here's an interesting idea and I hope it comes true that the president of Real Madrid, the big soccer team in Spain, is upgrading their stadium and they apparently are thinking of making it possible to attend a game in the Vision Pro. This is reported by Marca. He says everybody wants to come to Santiago Bernabeu. And that's why we're negotiating with Apple to be able to wear glasses and watch the match as if you were at the stadium. It would be the infinite Santiago. I think that's kind of interesting.
- [53:53]
Alex Lindsay
I actually know a lot about this kind of coverage.
- [53:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Because in the 9 to 5 max story they say they, they don't go into what it would take to do that. What would it take to do?
- [54:04]
Andy Anako
Also just, just, just, just parenthetically to add a little context. It's not as though you'd be really suspicious of this if this was a VR company that has said, oh, we're in negotiations with Apple to create technology for this. Oftentimes it's self promotional. This was just something that in the context of we're building this new stadium. Yeah, we know we've got. Addressing an actual complaint. Well, one of the ways we're Trying to address this is that we're actually talking to Apple about allowing people to visit the stadium and VR. So. Interesting. Early, but interesting.
- [54:32]
Alex Lindsay
So soccer games are really hard to do in VR. I've done a lot of them because.
- [54:36]
Leo Laporte
They use the whole stadium right.
- [54:39]
Alex Lindsay
Is too big. And so what happens is that the resolution breaks down or you don't. You're in the wrong place most of the time. So where we put cameras in the past or midfield, we put cameras at the goal. The goal is obviously really cool. And the reason the goal is cool is because you have something in the foreground that tells you you're in 3D. You see a lot of dimension. The problem is no one's there most of the time. Then you put it in the middle of the pitch and then you, and then you, you know, everyone's too far away. It's just 2D. And then it's low resolution. And then you put it in the crowd and it doesn't make any sense. It's really low resolution. And even though these are really high resolution cameras and screens and everything else, it is a. It's really hard to find a place in a soccer. I mean, I, I kind of gave up on it. Like, I just have to say that it's like, I, I feel like this is like we, we thought of this eight years ago and then, and then we did a bunch of it and then we were like, like, this is. Things that work exceptionally well in VR are close quarter. So mma, boxing, that type of thing. Like, if they had done, they, they had done an immersive record of the, the boxing matches that Netflix did, that would be something that people would want to watch. Because when it's close up, remember that the active area that really makes sense in VR is 5 to 20ft. Like, that's, the world is 5 to 20ft. And anything longer than 20ft away is okay. You know, and so, and you'll see that if you look at all the examples that they show. If anyone has a headset, you put them on. The stuff that's 5 to 20ft away looks amazing. Everything else is just kind of like, okay, it's fine. And so, and it's, and what Apple proved is if you get really close, it's really uncomfortable. So the, so the. So I think that.
- [56:13]
Leo Laporte
So is it foolish to say let's, let's, let's do this, Make a virtual stadium, knock themselves.
- [56:20]
Alex Lindsay
Maybe they'll figure out something that we didn't figure out eight years ago. You know, like, like, but, but all of many people.
- [56:25]
Leo Laporte
Because what it sounds like is he's not trying to do the. Oh, that was cool. I'm at the goal line or I'm on the ball or whatever. He wants to make it so you're there at the stadium. I don't know if that's doable.
- [56:35]
Alex Lindsay
I don't, I don't know if it. Again, it's, it's, it just, you gotta. Maybe. I'm always looking forward to being proven wrong on a production pipeline. Like I would not move the cameras the way Apple moved and submerged. There's a couple shots there that I was like, I would have never done that. And it totally worked. And then there's a bunch of stuff that they did in the weekend that I would never do and I would still never do. I'm only more sure of it now. So I think that. But soccer just, I can say a lot of people have dulled their swords whacking on the soccer wall. You know, like, you know, with, you know, like with VR, like this is.
- [57:13]
Andy Anako
Like whacking on the VR wall show title.
- [57:22]
Alex Lindsay
It's a really. It's not the right venue for this at the current resolution and technology that we have right now. It's just not the right place for this. And there's so many places that are.
- [57:31]
Leo Laporte
Is there a sport that would be better shot put?
- [57:34]
Alex Lindsay
Boxing.
- [57:34]
Leo Laporte
Boxing. There you go.
- [57:36]
Alex Lindsay
Boxing, mma, wrestling. Anything that's quarter, you know, is anything that's going to all happen mostly 20ft away where the most of the actions be 20ft from the camera. It's going to be. It looks great, you know, and so, so those things are, are the. And you know, it's. And things that go wide. There's this temptation, you saw this with concert for one is there's this temptation to try to fill the whole space. But you don't actually want the person to look to the side. You want them to feel the side. You want them to look at what's in front of them. And because they see the black, it takes them out of the experience. And so, so the, so those are the. So I think that. But again I think that there's. There are sports that really lend themselves to it and concerts and all kinds of other things. It's just that we're often going after people often go after the ones that are harder.
- [58:28]
Andy Anako
But, but I think that like we talked last week about that really cool looking F1 app. VR app for the Vision Pro that was pulled while they discussed rights to the F with F1 for the footage of it. And. And I don't necessarily. A couple years ago, I might have thought that, oh, well, great. I can actually be in the cockpit and I can feel like I'm actually there when actually that's such a great example of, like, to be able to watch baseball or basketball or even soccer or football or anything. Where in front of me is the entire field, like a game version, a video game version of the field that I've got a God's eye view on things whether it's real or whether it's something that's being simulated. Remember that? I think. Was it next week that the Simpsons. They're doing a special Simpsons simulcast of an NFL game where in real time, they're replacing all of the players with Simpsons characters.
- [59:17]
Leo Laporte
Is that what they do? I saw the ad for that. They're going to actually. It'll be the game as Simpson characters playing it.
- [59:23]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [59:24]
Andy Anako
And they did that with toy story characters last season, I think.
- [59:27]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's wild.
- [59:28]
Jason Snell
Yeah, it's. It's.
- [59:28]
Alex Lindsay
It's. What happens is they, you know, you can build the characters out, and it depends on how much detail that they want to do it. But you're basically building every player, and then you're using a variety of algorithms. And people call them AI of course, because that's cool. But they're just using a bunch of things that are going to track that information. It's going to extrapolate it. It gets a little complicated when they get into a. Obviously into a bundle. So. But when they're in a pile, it's hard. But when they're running, it's able to do a pretty good job of figuring out where they're moving. It's not actually. And then what it does, you take. You create a. What's a skeleton? That is just what we call the rigid bodies. The rigid bodies in someone's body are things that normally won't change in relationship to each other unless something horrible happens. And so. So usually like playing football.
- [60:14]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [60:14]
Alex Lindsay
Well, there's parts of it. So rigid bodies are your forearm, your upper arm, your, you know, your chest cavity, your hips, your. Those types of things. You track those, and you turn those into a skeleton. And you take that skeleton, you apply it to the cg, and you can do that these days in real time. You know, that's not a. And it's. And so then. And then you can track their position. And I mean, it's. There's a lot. People are trying to get to a point where you could actually stand on the field. And have VR versions of the football players. And you could watch from where the referee is, or you could watch from where you know, and. And they're. And that stuff's close.
- [60:46]
Andy Anako
What. What I'm getting is I don't necessarily want to place myself on the field. I want this. This basic setup of. In front of me on a table, whether real or virtual, I have the entire field in front of me. So let's get into baseball, where when there's a hit into left field, I want to follow where the ball's going, like, where the play is going. I can go there, but I can also select virtual displays around it that are live video feeds. Because there are times when, like, right in front of me would be the big screen, which would be like, the conventional TV coverage of it, where the director is calling all the shots. But, like, when I'm at a real ball game, I love looking at the interactions between the catcher and the home plate umpire. I would want, like, a fixed position on that, and I want a fixed position on the pitcher, and I want a fixed position on this so that. But after the. After the thing's been hit into the midfield, I want to see how the catcher is setting up the play. I want to see if he's doing those wonderful Jedi mind tricks that catchers sometimes try to play against the umpire, like making them think that the strike zone is bigger than it is, or intentionally shielding their view of something that they don't want them to see at the plate so that they will get a better chance of getting a good call. The ability to interpret this as. Because exactly how I specifically want to be able to see it, given that there's so many video feeds happening at the same time as. Excuse me, during the airing of the shooting of a live game. The ability to at least give me a menu of viewpoints to choose from. Again, not in an immersive 3D way, but basically be able to see. Oh, I really want to see what's happening at the plate. Like, as. Is he signaling for cutoff, or is he actually preparing for a play at the plate? You know, that's the worst stuff. Yeah, I think that creative stuff like that is a little bit lateral, but I think it's a really, really interesting. It would make me a lot more interested not in a $3,000 headset, but maybe $1,000 headset.
- [62:35]
Jason Snell
One of Apple's Vision Pro app nominees was the NBA app, and that's an example where it's not quite the annotated single game, but they've got the multi view where you can place, you know, different games in a, you know, Ozymandias and Watchmen kind of view. If you want. I can see all the NBA at once, but it speaks. And the MLB app, they've been experimenting with this too, where you're sort of watching the game on the Jumbotron, but there's also like a 3D field because they've got sensors on every player or they've got. They got cameras that can measure all the spaces that every player is moving through at any given time and where the ball is. And I do wonder. Yeah. If one. I think maybe there are multiple aspects of this, but like Alex said, some sports might. Might actually be improved by being, you know, by being annotated a little bit more than being immersive. And. And that's. That's okay. As somebody who has been to a lot of baseball and football games live, you know, the live stadium experience can be kind of annotated too, by the scoreboards and stuff like that. So I do wonder, like, I would. I would be really interested in getting a front row seat for, you know, at a. Like a front row seats courtside at an NBA game. I mean, that would be really interesting. It would be a very different experience. And that.
- [63:58]
Leo Laporte
Right, Alex, that's. Everything's within 20ft if you're in court side.
- [64:02]
Alex Lindsay
What we. What we've done is we've put them right at. Right at the. Right in the middle. Mid court. Yeah. Right at the scores table. Right. Set it right up in front of where the scores table is and. But still out of bounds, obviously. And then you look at it and it is. The problem we had when we did it, I don't know, four or five or six years ago, was that our frame rate wasn't high enough. So this gets into where the.
- [64:26]
Leo Laporte
Because they're moving pretty quick, those guys in the ball. Yeah.
- [64:29]
Alex Lindsay
So it's at 30 frames a second, which is where we were at when we were doing 4K per eye stereo, you know, 180. So you could turn all the way to the side or not 180, 360, you could go all the way around. But the problem we had was because.
- [64:43]
Leo Laporte
I want to see Jack Nicholson in the back there.
- [64:45]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, exactly. And so at 60, we felt at 60 frames a second to be better. But really where we wanted to get to is 120, because that action does make a difference. But it is. You suddenly realize why people pay $2,000 a seat when you get to court site. It's Amazing. It's just an amazing experience and people are coming by and again, there's enough action. That's a good example of where it does work. And there's other things you can do. Like we were talking about. Golf is the one that doesn't work in general. General golf is not a great experience for this. But what we did is we were able to put 360 cameras at different greens. So that's a place that it does make a difference.
- [65:22]
Leo Laporte
And so, and then maybe put it on the pin. Then you could see the ball coming at you.
- [65:27]
Alex Lindsay
We just put it to the side. They're still playing a game. I mean, it's just like their scores.
- [65:30]
Leo Laporte
And you know, I guess.
- [65:32]
Alex Lindsay
Anyway, so the, these are big cameras. I mean, these are a camera that's.
- [65:35]
Leo Laporte
Oh, okay.
- [65:35]
Alex Lindsay
It's like a basketball size camera.
- [65:37]
Leo Laporte
And so the pin easier to find.
- [65:40]
Alex Lindsay
But what was interesting is that if you took the content and just put the 16 by 9, the content you see on TV but without all of the data on it, so no lower thirds, none of that. You just put a big screen and you can make it as big as you want and then you have all the data on one side and your social stuff on the other side. It's a great experience. You're sitting in there and you're kind of in it. Like you're, you're seeing, you're seeing Twitter feeds, you're seeing all the data that you want when you want it. You're seeing a big screen. And then every once in a while you just transition to the, to the 360 experience. You know, when there's someone, something happening there and then you go back to it.
- [66:09]
Leo Laporte
That is the problem is. Can you do that live?
- [66:11]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, okay, I can do that live.
- [66:14]
Leo Laporte
Because that's the problem. If you have to do it in post. You know, the game's over, everybody knows the score, nobody really cares very much.
- [66:19]
Alex Lindsay
No, this is, I mean, there's a latency of 20 seconds, but same as.
- [66:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, that's, that's live enough.
- [66:23]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [66:25]
Leo Laporte
It strikes me the best thing would be chess. The World Chess Championships going on right now. Nobody watches just the game. You always watch the commentary and it's right there. It's close. You could look left, look right. That would be great.
- [66:37]
Alex Lindsay
Again, how do we not think of that? How did we not think of that?
- [66:40]
Leo Laporte
Doesn't move very fast, so the frame rate's not important.
- [66:43]
Alex Lindsay
Next year we're going to do that. Yeah, I think that has to be done.
- [66:47]
Andy Anako
Have you tried the New Google AI experiment where it will create. It will play, it's a chess game, but you give it an AI prompt and it will develop a set of chess pieces. Yeah. And it's funny, it's exactly what Google is meant to do, which is like, oh, wow, that's kind of cool, that's kind of fun. And then you think about it one level later and think, my God, the earth resources that are being consumed to make two sets of chess pieces that look like Brussels sprouts.
- [67:16]
Leo Laporte
It's just. And by the way, they. Whoever designed it doesn't really understand much about chess because the way the board is angled when you're playing makes it actually very unpleasant. And anyway, who wants to play chess with cheese pieces? Really? Right.
- [67:34]
Andy Anako
If they were edible and there are no. If you could get away. If you could get rid of like.
- [67:39]
Leo Laporte
The, the pawn after you take it.
- [67:44]
Andy Anako
That increases the stakes.
- [67:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So let's see. We're going to play cheese versus wine, which I think, you know, that's a natural.
- [67:52]
Andy Anako
I do like the fact that like you choose a prompt for one and then it will choose for you like an opposing thing to that concept. So that I think I did plumbing and it shows like architecture or electronics as actually very good.
- [68:08]
Alex Lindsay
It seems like there's. I realize there could be a. How have we not had candy chess that you just. If you get, take the person's candy, you eat it.
- [68:18]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I like. There are chess sets that are little vodka, like little alcohol bottles.
- [68:24]
Alex Lindsay
I was going to say.
- [68:25]
Leo Laporte
Actually that's a good way to do it because if you have to drink the person's piece after you take it.
- [68:33]
Andy Anako
Played a version of checkers like that on mash once. Shot glass checkers.
- [68:38]
Leo Laporte
Shot glass checkers, baby. Whoever designed this doesn't play chess because this is the worst possible angle to look at a chess game. It just really is. I can't even figure out.
- [68:50]
Andy Anako
My problem was that like they weren't. They should have to do the like. If there's a light colored set, there has to be a dark colored set and whatever happens to be light colored set has to go first. And that's when I played it on the phone. At least I got like the typical oh, you're sitting at a table across from another person view. So maybe that's just the desktop view.
- [69:10]
Leo Laporte
Right? Yeah. I can't. This is impossible. This is just awful. I can't even. That's why I'm losing to wine. I'm playing cheese right now.
- [69:20]
Andy Anako
I want Don Knott's characters versus.
- [69:26]
Leo Laporte
What the hell's going on? You can't even tell. It's so weird. Yeah. All right, let's. That was. Ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not. But you see, this is why I want Vision Pro Chess. The Vision Pro segment. Now you see. Now you know.
- [69:41]
Jason Snell
We're done talking.
- [69:42]
Leo Laporte
The Vision Pro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're watching Mac break weekly for a Tuesday. We do the show every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern Time, 1900 UTC. And we do now, thanks to the club. Thank you. Club member stream on eight count of eight platforms. I think Discord. I don't know if we're streaming on Discord. We're having some audio difficulty. But that would be the one for the club members. But there's not just Discord. I gotta use my fingers carefully here. I gotta count down properly. Let's do this. No, let's do this one. We do YouTube, Twitch, TikTok X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. All available during the live stream. Now after the stream, we then to obviously edit it up and make the show available as a download. Because it is a podcast, if you're a club member, you'll download a version that doesn't have any ads in it, including this plug for the club. Isn't that nice? You're not yet a club member. I invite you to join. Seven bucks a month. Right now we are at about one and a half percent of the total audience is a club member, which sounds low, but it's actually enough to pay half our payroll goal, half of John Ashley's salary. So that's nice. We'd like to make it 100%. That's. That would be my goal. None of that money goes to me. It goes to all of the people who make Twit possible, including our contributors. Our staff keeps the lights on all of that stuff and you get some benefits. 7 bucks a month gets you ad free versions of the show. Action access to the club Twit Discord, which is a great hang. Really great people. We were. I was solving the advent of code problems last night in the club Club with some of our club members are very accomplished programmers. They were helping me out. It was kind of fun. We've been streaming that every night. Just one of the many things we do. There's a Micah's crafting corner. Stacy's book club is coming up. Coffee time with the coffee geeks. And we will do a on Thursday at 5pm Pacific. Some of our top programmers who are club members and listeners, including Darren Oakey and Paul Holder and Syphaze will join me for a recap of the first week of the advent of Code Coding challenge, which will be a lot of fun. That's this Thursday. In the club. We do these things because it makes it fun, it's a great community and because we frankly we want to incent you to join. So please help us out. Be part of the of the 1%. If I could get to 5% we would be, you know, we could expand, we could add shows. At this point, with advertising dwindling and it really next year is very bleak, we might be going the other direction without your help. So please, twit TV club Twit. Enough said. I don't want to belabor the point.
- [72:33]
Andy Anako
After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network.
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Leo Laporte
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Andy Anako
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Leo Laporte
See how you can save on every plan versus variety@tmobile.com KeepAndSwitch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. Here's to the holidays. To the smell of grandma's fresh baked casseroles.
- [73:06]
Alex Lindsay
To bundling up by the fire with family and football. The Chinette brand wants you to savor all the joys of Turkey Day while.
- [73:13]
Leo Laporte
Skipping the hassle of cleanup with their Chinette Classic collection.
- [73:17]
Alex Lindsay
And since Chinette Classic plates and bowls are compostable, you're not only keeping the.
- [73:21]
Leo Laporte
Sink clean, you're helping leave less of.
- [73:23]
Alex Lindsay
A mess behind for future generations.
- [73:25]
Leo Laporte
So here's to being together.
- [73:27]
Jason Snell
Here's to us.
- [73:28]
Leo Laporte
All of us. Find a local retailer@mychainet.com Back we go to MacBreak weekly. Apple has decided to push home kit support for robot vacuums to next year.
- [73:46]
Jason Snell
Why don't they just tell the robot vacuum to go home?
- [73:49]
Leo Laporte
Go home robot. You're drunk. I don't even know why this is a story, but I could tell you that's what it's come to.
- [73:58]
Jason Snell
You know, I know we are all grateful when Apple actually talks in detail about their plan for future software releases. This sort of story is why they they don't want to do that is because then everybody says, oh, but Apple, you said by the end of the year you'd have robot support in HomeKit. And now it's going to come early next year. So you're a liar and your pants are on fire. I Was like, I don't know if anybody really cares. It's a little late. A few of the features they said would be the end of the year are going to get pushed to the next OS version sometime early next year. So I have a robot vacuum. I'd love for it to, you know, all my little things that are not in home kit. I would love to be able to get in home kit one way or another. So I'll wait. I've been waiting. I mean, that's the truth. Anybody who's got a robot vacuum already can't use it in home kit and. Or has figured out a way to use it in home kit. Either way, they're not waiting.
- [74:48]
Leo Laporte
You couldn't. You wouldn't give it instructions.
- [74:50]
Jason Snell
It's a. Well, it's a native. I mean, at the very least, you would be able to, like, tell it to go and possibly to tell it to run a particular routine or tell it to go home. Stuff like that. Using Siri.
- [75:02]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. You know what I did with. When I used to have a robot, I had a Roomba and it would wake up in the middle of the night. It plays a little song when it wakes up.
- [75:14]
Jason Snell
Starts going, I have a Roomba. I know it.
- [75:16]
Leo Laporte
And then every night it would get stuck under a piece of furniture and go. And so you know how I said, go home? I got up in the middle of the night, picked it up by its little robot handle and put it back on the station. After the third time of that, I put it back at a special station under Lisa's tire in the garage. Unfortunately, she noticed it before running it over, but we don't have that Roomba anymore. What one do you use, Jason?
- [75:46]
Jason Snell
It's a roomba. I forget. I4 or something like that with a collector.
- [75:49]
Leo Laporte
You like it?
- [75:50]
Jason Snell
It's the kind that doesn't walk randomly, but actually has a camera and knows where all the rooms are and maps itself and all of that. I do like the big problem with it because I do not like to sweep or. Or mop or anything like that. What? I don't.
- [76:02]
Leo Laporte
You still have to, though.
- [76:03]
Jason Snell
Well, yeah. I mean, a lot less. And I have three pets, so there's a lot of hair. Yeah. And having it run every day is fine. The problem is I do work at home. These products are best for people who aren't at home when they run.
- [76:17]
Leo Laporte
So you can say, go to work. When I'm at work every day at.
- [76:20]
Jason Snell
2Pm the thing goes off and it's noisy in the house. And I have to hide. Well, I mean it's a vacuum cleaner. I mean it's little and all but like it's a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner is never going to be silent. But yes, I do find it valuable. It really picks up a lot of stuff just running, you know. And then when we're out of the house, I have it set to run when we leave the house as well. And that is pretty great too. So yeah, I mean it's a, it's a supplement but with three animals in this house plus two people, it is, it definitely does its job. Job. It's, I, I, I like it.
- [76:52]
Leo Laporte
I'm glad I have you like the iRobot. There are many competitors now. It's become very. Did Amazon end up buying iRobot? They tried and they didn't, I think is what happened because the, the, the hue and cry was.
- [77:03]
Jason Snell
Yeah, that might be. So there are some others other competitors out there, but yeah, I have a Roomba and I like it.
- [77:09]
Leo Laporte
I didn't know this, but Apple's headquarters in the UK are in London's Battersea Power Station.
- [77:14]
Andy Anako
I didn't know that either.
- [77:15]
Jason Snell
It's beautiful. My friend Mike Hurley has been there multiple times and he says that it's the most, he says it's more impressive than Apple park to him what they've done.
- [77:23]
Leo Laporte
It definitely has that industrial feel with the two smokestacks. Yeah, like Apple really churning out. We're, we're coal powered now. So apparently from today until New Year's Eve, according to Apple, you can watch Wallace and Gromit decorate giant Christmas trees in a stop motion installation shot on iPhone 16 Pro Max and projected on the Battersea Power Station. Smart smoke stacks which are no longer in use, of course.
- [77:53]
Andy Anako
What a great idea. That's like, that's cool looking because it is like one of the classic things you kind of want to see like when you visit London, particularly taking a boat tour. And to have this, these both of those smokestacks creatively turned into like Wallace is on one side, Gromit is on the other. The stack is like a tiny, is like really, really thin tree with hijinks and merriments aplenty. What goodwill they're creating for everybody by doing something that cool. And also by the way, oh, of course the, the, they would have, of course, you know, the Aardman animation was happy to use the iPhone 616 Pro because they were planning on using them anyway for the stop motion project.
- [78:29]
Leo Laporte
Of course we were.
- [78:30]
Andy Anako
But nonetheless, like it is impressive that like it is good enough For. And sturdy enough for that sort of thing.
- [78:35]
Leo Laporte
Well, yeah, especially because it's getting blown up to a giant size. Right.
- [78:39]
Andy Anako
Well, I mean. And projected on like rough. So that's pretty. But nonetheless, what impressed me was that like you sometimes see these behind the scenes. Oh, you believe this behind the scenes movie. They made a video and.
- [78:52]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [78:52]
Andy Anako
And you see the behind the scenes and it's like it's in this Robocop huge like refrigerator size enclosure with a million cables running in and out of it. This is just. No, we just sort of put it in an aluminum thing and aimed it at the. We have a remote activation.
- [79:09]
Leo Laporte
Frames of stop motion. It looks like some of it was done in hand by hand. I don't know. That can't possibly.
- [79:16]
Alex Lindsay
I think a lot of it was. I mean it's all done by hand.
- [79:19]
Leo Laporte
The motion was. But the camera's not. I mean he was hand holding a camera.
- [79:23]
Alex Lindsay
Oh. I think that handheld was like figuring out framing. I don't think that they did any of that by hand. I don't. I don't think you do motion with handheld shots. Is really hard.
- [79:32]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [79:33]
Alex Lindsay
So they had like the. That's the kind of the larger small rig cage that they use there. And it looks like the only thing they added to it was power. And then there is a couple shots in the behind the scenes where they show a motion control system that the camera was put on to do pans. Like that's how you kind of do. In some cases, you're using motion control to change the camera position over time so that it's. So that someone's animated. If you want to see a pan, it's complicated because you're moving the person's. You're moving the clay armature a little.
- [80:04]
Leo Laporte
Bit at the same time as moving the camera.
- [80:06]
Alex Lindsay
The camera. So what they do is they. A lot of those are built around a motion control head that just moves one. What you've decided is one frame, you know, for that. For that movement while you're doing the other parts that are in front of it. I think that. I think this is a great integration. I think they could take it a lot further that they could be doing Aardman could be. So Aardman released has an app, the Aardman animation stop motion app that of course they're promoting in some of the behind the scenes as well. I think it's the second behind the scenes video is them actually showing. This is how you could do it yourself. You could build a little clay thing that would hold your phone. That's a horrible idea. But we're going to show you how to do it that way. Anyway, I was like, put your camera in clay.
- [80:45]
Leo Laporte
I was just like.
- [80:45]
Alex Lindsay
I was like, okay.
- [80:46]
Leo Laporte
Like, not okay.
- [80:48]
Alex Lindsay
So. So I didn't appreciate. I was like, just buy a tripod. It's $6, you know, like, so they're trying to make it.
- [80:53]
Leo Laporte
They actually show you putting your iPhone in. You can show this, right? Am I going to get tucked, taken down, secure it with tape, clay blocks, or board? I guess the real point is for kids, right?
- [81:04]
Alex Lindsay
I understand.
- [81:05]
Leo Laporte
You could. Don't use Sugru, though. You'll never get your phone out. Right?
- [81:09]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. I was like, if I came out, my kids had wrapped their phone with clay, I would not be happy. So I paid a lot of money for that camera, for that phone.
- [81:21]
Leo Laporte
So Aardman is the tool they're using? Aa.
- [81:23]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, they're using Aardman Animation. It's a little tool that's just designed to make it really easy to do. There's lots of them. I mean, Boinks software makes one. There's a bunch of other ones. There's lots of slow motion. Boinks is the one that I use probably the most.
- [81:41]
Leo Laporte
But I also, like, at the end of both of these how to behind the scenes videos, the Apple logo. Let me show you that you can show this. They're not going to take me down for showing the Apple logo. Does a little thing. I don't know what that is. It's got a little weird pin in it or something. Let me go back. Well, never mind. What's. I don't get that. What is that? Is that some stop motion thing or is that. Yeah, I did Wallace and Grommet thing.
- [82:10]
Andy Anako
It looks like a mechanical switch or something. That's. That's all I came up with.
- [82:13]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. They. They do it at the end of both of these videos. I don't know what it means. All right. I thought I'd just ask because you guys, as the experts, I like Wallace Gromit. All I know from that is cheese Grommet.
- [82:31]
Andy Anako
There's a new. And there's a new short coming out this month. I can't wait to see.
- [82:35]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [82:35]
Andy Anako
That's part of the. Part of his promotion. So.
- [82:37]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [82:37]
Leo Laporte
And you know, it's funny, we were watching the NFL AS. AS1 does pretty much constantly on Thanksgiving week and saw the Apple ad, which, when it starts out is a little weird because the guy is watching his family unwrap Christmas gifts, and it's all really. And then his wife says, honey, put in your AirPods and he goes into hearing aid mode and now he can hear everything.
- [83:03]
Alex Lindsay
Did you see the long version of the short version?
- [83:05]
Leo Laporte
I have. I just saw the one on tv.
- [83:07]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, the one on TV is barely makes sense. The long version, I guess it makes sense. It's kind of like there's a two.
- [83:14]
Leo Laporte
Minute version which you are not going to see on the NFL and it.
- [83:17]
Alex Lindsay
Is just a work of art.
- [83:19]
Leo Laporte
It's hard. I mean it is your heartstrings. Yeah, it's.
- [83:23]
Alex Lindsay
It. I was like, I was someone, someone posted it on, on something and said, you know, just try not to cry. And I was like, oh yeah.
- [83:32]
Leo Laporte
Because they leave in, in the long version the little girl playing her little instruments as she grows up.
- [83:40]
Alex Lindsay
You just have to watch. So there's the, if you get the whole experience, it's kind of one of those, it's. And for anybody who says they can't tell a story in two and a half minutes, I mean, and you know, it's, it's, it's kind of an up level. Not, maybe not quite the level of up, but it's like that I'm going to show you a bunch of pictures and by the end of it you're going to be like, so, yeah, so.
- [84:00]
Leo Laporte
And I have, I wear hearing aids normally, like professional, highly expensive hearing aids from Oticons. But I've. We're worn resounds and Starkeys too over the last decade. And there is a big difference between the AirPods 2. AirPods Pro 2 do have a hearing aid mode. My wife said maybe I should do the hearing test. And I thought, yeah, that's a good idea, go ahead and do that. That's built into the iOS 18. And then the hearing test gives you a curve which is then applied the AirPods. But as I mentioned before, there is a significant difference between what the AirPods do and what real hearing aids do there. I think the AirPods probably are as accurate, if not more accurate because they've got better speakers, better microphones and so forth. But they seal your ear, which real hearing aids do not. So with real hearing aids, you've got a little speaker in your ear, but you still hear around it. So you hear everything around it and the hearing aid is just amplifying the voice. When you put in the AirPods it's a little, at least it was for me as a hearing aid wearer, a little claustrophobic because suddenly I'm sealing out all these sounds and Relying entirely on the AirPods microphone and speakers for every. And it's a diff. That's a different experience for some people, especially if you've never worn hearing aids. It probably won't seem weird, but it isn't, I think necessarily a direct replacement for hearing aids. It's certainly a lot less expensive. I bought two so that I could get through the whole day because of course the battery life is not as long either.
- [85:28]
Andy Anako
Yeah, I had only one bad reaction to it. I'll keep it very, very short. Like as I'm. So I was watching it then I wanted to look for more information on it. So I was doing like a Google search on news. The number of, of like news articles and commentators that are like, you know what's great about it? Because it's anti woke like, hey, I got a compliment to Apple for doing a pro family ad. Like the revolution is here.
- [85:54]
Leo Laporte
Everything. Exactly.
- [85:55]
Andy Anako
It's like, what is wrong with you?
- [85:57]
Alex Lindsay
What I did notice is how many. It was a really fascinating thing within days. How many family members I talked to that talked about, oh, I think I'm thinking of getting the AirPod Pro. My wife was talking about it.
- [86:08]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's what I meant when I said. Lisa said, oh, I should do the hearing tip. That's really good.
- [86:13]
Alex Lindsay
I mean that ad just nailed it. Like it was, you know, like, you know, and Apple does that about once a year. They do something where you're going, oh, do I need that?
- [86:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [86:22]
Alex Lindsay
So really?
- [86:23]
Leo Laporte
Well, no, it was a, it was a beautiful ad. It did effectively. I thought it was interesting that they were making spending so much time and so much money promoting a fairly small feature. But I guess I was going to.
- [86:35]
Andy Anako
Say the exact same thing because they. Apple has done an enormous number of really cool holidays ads and of course they show off Apple technologies, but the Apple technology is more in the background. The foreground is again the teenage son who is maybe not quite connected to his family. And you think he's just moping off, doing his own thing, but actually what he was doing was shooting a holiday video that showed everyone in the family how much he loved them. I mean, the iPhone is incidental, it's prominent but incidental this one. And I'm not complaining about it, but this was unique in that it was a holiday ad that was also specifically a promotion for this specific piece of hardware in this specific feature.
- [87:16]
Alex Lindsay
And I think with the changes in the laws, I think one of the things is there's a lot of ground to be taken right now. Like, you know, and so I think that, that there's a huge market that people are going to get something and it's not going to people who don't have the money or don't have the insurance that can pay for the $5,000 version. They're looking for something under $300 that they can put in that helps them. And a lot of them are people who are borderline. Like, they think they can hear okay, but they're not ready to say they're not ready to buy a quote unquote. I think it's less about whether it competes with the hearing aid, but I have family members, I have, you know, that, I know that should be wearing hearing aids, but they're not going to buy a quote unquote hearing aid.
- [87:52]
Leo Laporte
That's the real selling, that's the real selling point. And I think real hearing aids are thousands of dollars.
- [87:56]
Alex Lindsay
Well, but not just the money. It's the, it's the, their mental stigma to it. And being able to just throw an AirPod in and be able to hear everything a little bit clearer I think is a, you know, is a real, you know, I think that that's pretty valuable to people. It's a lot less expensive. People can't afford it. But it's also a lot less stigma in their head. It shouldn't be, but it is. And so I don't want to get.
- [88:18]
Jason Snell
All existential here, but this is the post Thanksgiving episode, so we have the time. So I'm just going to say a lot. We talk about technology here, we love it, it's fun. But there is this question about, like, what if technology is a means to an end? What if technology makes people lives appreciably better and that Apple ad really encapsulates. And I think it's good for lots of strategic reasons and branding reasons and all of that. But I think most importantly, it's Apple saying this is our technology making your life better in a very relatable human, a common way. Right. So many people have various levels of hearing difficulty and it's not the only way they're doing it. And you know, and there are lots of other things you can get done with technology, whether it's productivity or personal stuff. But like, this one story lets them not only, yeah, look good and market their products and all of those things, but it tries to put down an explanation about like, how a product can actually make your life better. And honestly, that's refreshing in the year 2024 because a lot of the hottest product categories, these are solutions in Search of a problem. And this is not that.
- [89:34]
Alex Lindsay
And I think that what Apple does with these ads, these holiday ads specifically, is what they're really good at, is showing you something that has, you feel the value that their product adds to your life. Right. It's mostly visual. They're not telling you why it makes a difference. They're not telling you all the features. They're going to give you something that has very little, little, very, very little speech, you know, very little text. I mean, look at the script on this one. It's like, like four words. And then I'm going to show you a bunch of things. And as you watch it, you're going to feel something and you're going to feel something that, that, that is directly related to the value that the product adds to someone's life. And I think Apple does that probably better than anyone else that I've. I can't. I was trying to think while Jason was talking of other ads that I can think of that are that good at it. And I would go back to another Apple, like, I'd go back to another Apple ad. I'm not sure how many other ones make that kind of difference.
- [90:31]
Andy Anako
Yeah. And also it comes from such a good place. Like ordinarily, particularly as a Gen Xer, I would just like roll my eyes, go every time like a trillion dollar company says, we care about humanity, we care about people, our most important thing is. But when Apple talks about, when Tim Cook talks about how health is the most important mission that Apple has, they back it up and you absolutely believe it. And that's why I think that this commercial really is an outflow of not just, hey, this is going to be really good PR for us, or, hey, look, this could be an interesting way to sell more AirPods, but also really the promotion that we want to be able to do things that we are proud of. The famous phrase that Steve Jobs used to get John Scully to quit Pepsi and come to Apple. Do you want to continue selling sugar water to kids or do you want to change the world? And a lot of companies aspire to that, but they don't put in the work. This is an example of Apple, like absolutely believing in that. This is an example of them really believing and showing you that you're not a fool for thinking that they think that these things are important, that they want to do things that they could be proud of.
- [91:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I guess really that's the point. It's not really just advertising a feature, a small feature of AirPods. Don't you feel good about Apple? Aren't they doing good stuff? It's a good company.
- [91:50]
Andy Anako
I feel good in a world in which two or three years after you buy like a car, suddenly you're ashamed of it because of like what the company is known for. It's like, it's good to know that I just spent $2,000 on a Mac. I'm not going to be really, really upset by what the CEO does two years later.
- [92:07]
Leo Laporte
Right? Yeah. And they're not very. I mean, you're not going to see Lenovo do an ad for how Lenovo is making the world better place. You might see Google do it, you might see Microsoft do it. The big tech companies can do it, but that's their realm, that's their thing. You're watching Mac Break weekly and that's what we talk about. App Apple every Tuesday with Andy Anako, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell. We're glad you're here now. At T Mobile get four 5G phones on us and four lines for 25.
- [92:37]
Andy Anako
A line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5G network.
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Leo Laporte
Minimum of 4 lines for 25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account. $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes, 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. CT mobile.com here's to the holidays. To the smell of grandma's fresh baked casseroles.
- [93:05]
Alex Lindsay
To bundling up by the fire with family and football. The Chinette brand wants you to savor all the joys of Turkey Day while.
- [93:13]
Leo Laporte
Skipping the hassle of cleanup with their Chinet Cloud Classic collection.
- [93:16]
Alex Lindsay
And since Chinat Classic plates and bowls are compostable, you're not only keeping the.
- [93:21]
Leo Laporte
Sink clean, you're helping leave less of.
- [93:23]
Alex Lindsay
A mess behind for future generations.
- [93:25]
Leo Laporte
So here's to being together.
- [93:26]
Jason Snell
Here's to us.
- [93:28]
Leo Laporte
All of us. Find a local retailer@mychinet.com Apple Replay 24 is live in Apple Music. So if you it's that wonderful, magical time of the year. So if you listen to a lot of Apple music music, you can listen to the same songs again. Is that the idea? What is the deal?
- [93:48]
Jason Snell
Well, it's. Everybody loves it. It's the quantified self. Right? It's telling you what music you listen to this year. And they added a they've got like a video that is generated for you with a montage of what you've, you know, listened to during the year. It's, you know, it's. I find it interesting. It's skewed for me because, like, there are the playlists I listen to while I'm writing. And so those are always high on the list. But it's kind of fun to see. Like this year they were like, this is your number one artist for by month, number one song by month. And, you know, if you, if you like those kind of stats. I do Spotify does it. So Apple's sort of following them and it can be fun.
- [94:29]
Leo Laporte
Well, let me just go right into my Apple Music and replay and share my year in music. Are we excited? Let's jump. I'm turning the sound down because I can't. Obviously we'll get taken down the minute we play any of this stuff, but let's just see. By the way, I'm using that great iPhone mirroring. Oh, stop it. Never mind.
- [94:53]
Andy Anako
It anticipated you were about to do a content match and the Internet said, nope, Leo, not just don't do it tomorrow. Not ever.
- [95:01]
Leo Laporte
Not you, Leo. No, no. Know. Apparently I have to log in to my Apple Music in order to do this, which I am logged in.
- [95:09]
Jason Snell
Also interesting. Apple still does this on the web. You actually can't do it inside the music app. It takes you to a web page that they've built, which I still think is weird.
- [95:18]
Leo Laporte
Now I've done it and I had to get pick up my iPhone. I couldn't do it in mirroring because it needs the camera and all that. So now I've done it. Here's my replay. This is your life. What is this? It's thinking again while you're doing that.
- [95:34]
Alex Lindsay
My top artists are. It's kind of cool, Will.
- [95:37]
Leo Laporte
Okay. How much music do you. I listen to 31,448 minutes of music.
- [95:41]
Alex Lindsay
I didn't say that. I don't know where I said that.
- [95:42]
Leo Laporte
That was the first thing. My longest listening streak. 18 days in a row between Mel Torme, baroque music and Katy Perry. Oh, oh, here's this. I could. This could be embarrassing. Out of 602 artists, one stood out. Peter Gabriel. Yeah, I've listened to him quite a bit. 570 minutes.
- [95:59]
Alex Lindsay
Understandable.
- [96:00]
Jason Snell
That was my top album of the year, actually, in terms of menace listened was IO, but I listened to a lot of. As an album. Right. Because I listened to that as an album. But I believe for like the sixth straight year, my number one artist is the 1975. What can I say? I like them. They're good.
- [96:15]
Leo Laporte
You've told me about them. Yeah, boy. Peter was my top artist two months in a row. So this is kind of fun. You're right. This is fun. This is. I thought it would just be a playlist. You played 1,130 songs, but one was my anthem. Now I want to know what your anthem was. My anthem was Cracks in the Wall by Amant Cove. No, it's not my anthem. I promise you.
- [96:37]
Jason Snell
That's 27,950 minutes of music listened to. That is a lot. I do listen to a lot.
- [96:44]
Leo Laporte
I listen to more than you did though. I had 31,000.
- [96:46]
Alex Lindsay
What is that? I don't see it.
- [96:48]
Jason Snell
It's in the video. Actually. The first video that you generate. I had a 27 day listening streak. I didn't know I was doing doing streaks in Apple music, but apparently I was.
- [96:57]
Leo Laporte
They should put that on the watch. I see.
- [96:58]
Andy Anako
That's streaking. Okay, that. Can we say that like after spending so much time talking about how nice Apple is to like care so much about health. I don't like the idea of any social media companies praising you for wow, you just, you just completed your 12 day Reddit streak. Or wow, you've been listening to Apple music every single day for like keep.
- [97:16]
Jason Snell
It up like carrot weather. Every time I open carrot Weather, it yells at me because I have haven't opened it in a while.
- [97:23]
Andy Anako
Yeah, you buy it for a shut up product. That's the product I like.
- [97:28]
Jason Snell
It's got one one stat. That's fascinating. Is. Are you one of the hundred most an artist's hundred top listeners? Oh, you know, so like I am in Bob Mold's top 100 listeners, which is kind of fun. He's my number two artist. I listen when I'm writing my Bob Mole playlist is my number one play playlist. So. But that's kind of funny, right? Because that's within all of Apple music. And my anthem is. I think there's something you should know by the 1975. Of course it is. Right? Because it just, that's why I listen to that on repeat all the time forever. And that's just how it is, I guess. I don't know. It's fun. I think it's fun. And that's why Apple is doing it is because Spotify did it and they're like, oh no. People are having fun with Spotify. We can't let that stand. We have to have Fun with Apple music, too. And so they threw it in there, and it's fine. A bunch of apps do this. Overcast, actually a popular podcasting app by Marco Arment just added this feature as well. And I've. I've had a lot of people sending me the. Their overcast list where my podcasts appear third or fourth in their list of favorite podcasts. It's like, thanks, but not too much.
- [98:36]
Leo Laporte
I'm just happy to know that the top genres I like to listen to are. Can you show my screen? Rock, hard rock, arena rock, rock, pop, and pop rock.
- [98:47]
Jason Snell
All right, well, we get you my tattoo. Genres are alternative and adult alternatives.
- [98:52]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, you're older than me.
- [98:54]
Jason Snell
Mine is.
- [98:55]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, mine's an alternative rock, alternative rock, pop rock, pop rock, and then pop.
- [99:01]
Jason Snell
Yeah, Story checks out.
- [99:02]
Leo Laporte
Fun. You know what? Okay, I take it back.
- [99:04]
Jason Snell
Take it back.
- [99:05]
Leo Laporte
It's fun. I did enjoy that. I can definitely see my memory lane.
- [99:10]
Alex Lindsay
I can definitely see my daughter's. You know, I've been hanging out with my daughter a lot, and we travel, trade playlists, the two of us trade playlists. And I can definitely see the influence on my playlist. You know, it's like Wilt Noah Khan, the luminaires, Ella Jane, Haley Hendricks, like, some stuff that. She's got great taste.
- [99:27]
Leo Laporte
Isabelle has excellent taste.
- [99:28]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [99:31]
Leo Laporte
Let's see. I thought I had some good gift ideas in here. Oh, yes. Thank you, Andy Yanako. You can now wear the Apple running shoe emoji. Designer Jose Wong's shoe. $1 $219. Does that look like an emoji? I guess that's the emoji on the left. Yeah, I guess it's the same. I thought it was going to look like a clown shoe or something. It's just a regular, everyday running shoe.
- [100:03]
Andy Anako
It's interesting because it's a double rip off. Not only are they ripping off Apple's original art for the emoji, but he's also ripping off the New Balance shoe that the emoji was based on.
- [100:13]
Leo Laporte
The emojis look like the New Balance shoe. You're right. Oh, yeah. Okay.
- [100:18]
Andy Anako
I was. I was trying to figure out if this was, like, for real, but it turns out that these, this guy, he is one of those designers that, like, will do, like, a limited drop over and over again. So if you do a search for, like, you will find that, oh, here's a shirt from him. Here's a whatever from him. However, if you go to the site that's linked to from the, like, Verge article that I found, it from the page has gone 404. So I don't know whether he has ceased. Either they sold out or. Exactly. Or was ceased and desisted.
- [100:43]
Leo Laporte
Ceased and desisted.
- [100:44]
Andy Anako
But if he. And if I. So that's what that caused me to want to go to his Instagram Stories feed and say, okay, it's not as though that was just like a parody. He has like dozens and dozens and dozens of shoe boxes stacked behind him, but there is like at least like four or five actual pairs of these shoes, like in evidence, like in the shot. So it's not as though he had one made up just for this joke.
- [101:08]
Leo Laporte
But the lucky child of Nigeria is going to have a whole bunch of running shoes pretty soon. Not the only copyright issue. A Brazilian company says, hey, dudes, we own the iPhone trademark. A little late, but they are going to trial on this thing.
- [101:26]
Andy Anako
Yep. I don't know. I don't know why. I mean, this is legitimate. Like, it's not as though they're pointing out that they had their paperwork filed long before, just like Cisco also had an iPhone product, just like a lot of other companies had an iPhone product. And Steve just simply said, you know what, we're just going to go ahead. We're going to figure out that it's going to cost us more money to do this.
- [101:46]
Leo Laporte
That's right.
- [101:48]
Andy Anako
We figured that they're going to go away in time or with encouragement of money or with threats of how much money we can spend on.
- [101:54]
Alex Lindsay
Seems like there's some. I guess Brazil may not have the same statute of limitations that the United States. So.
- [102:01]
Leo Laporte
The Gradiente iPhone was launched in Brazil in 2007 years before the iPhone, they had leaflets that they used to promote the phone. In 2000, we sold 30,000 units in a few months. However, due to dispute between Gradiente and another Brazilian company, the iPhone trademark was only granted to Gradiente in 2008. Oh, this is going to be a little sticky. Wicked. A year after the iPhone was introduced. By that time they were no longer selling phones. So Apple has decided to. Yeah, they may. This may not actually work, although it is in Brazil, so you never know. They've been battling in court since 2013.
- [102:43]
Andy Anako
Yeah, there's a quote from the company that basically saying that, oh, well, we just don't want people continuing to say that we've ripped off this idea from Apple.
- [102:50]
Alex Lindsay
Ah, yeah.
- [102:51]
Andy Anako
It's probably not just that, though.
- [102:53]
Leo Laporte
That is, though, I know this because of my dispute with Twitter.
- [102:57]
Andy Anako
Right.
- [102:58]
Leo Laporte
There is something called reverse confusion where. Where people assume that Twit named itself after Twitter even though Twitter came later and our trademark predated the existence of Twitter. And so that's actually the biggest. My lawyer told me this. The biggest payouts in lawsuits have come from reverse confusion where a small company people assume, oh, you ripped off the big company because you copied there and it wasn't the case. So it could go. That's in the U.S. i don't know what Brazil's laws are. But anyway, interesting. When are we going to get a new iPhone SE? It's over a thousand days old, says MacRumors Spring.
- [103:41]
Jason Snell
Right. Is that a spring release?
- [103:43]
Leo Laporte
Oh, this is. Is that the skinny one with the.
- [103:46]
Jason Snell
No, this is a spring release, but rumored to be Apple's first modem. Apple built modem in.
- [103:50]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, in an iPhone Ses. Yeah.
- [103:54]
Andy Anako
Also interesting in that part of the, the part of the room that got my attention was that, yeah, it's an se, which means that you can expect it to be like a sub $500 phone, but it also will run Apple Intelligence, which implies that it won't run an older processor if nothing else. I mean, yeah, it has been like almost three years, which means that this is the only current iPhone, the se that actually, that still has that thick, like bezel at the top and the bottom. Like, it doesn't look, it looks like an old iPhone. It does not look like a modern thing. It's been getting my attention because I've been. This year I changed a lot of the tools that I use for, for what I do and a lot of my workflows. And so many times I've thought, oh my God, if only I had Ulysses for on my Android phone, like at this moment, my life would be so much easier. And so like the wheels in my brain are thinking that, well, you know, you don't actually own an iPhone that does Apple Intelligence. So what if you were to buy the iPhone SE and write a bit about it and then sort of carry it with you just as a host for like iOS apps or the iOS versions of Mac apps that you use. Because the idea of running Apple Intelligence on an inexpensive phone would A, be very, very interesting and B, but also sort of encourage people to not think of Apple Intelligence as just something that you get if you spend 800 to $1,000 for a phone. Because remember Gemini and OpenAI, they will run on nearly anything with a pulse. Because although Gemini does have a run on device aspect to it, it can go run to Mama up in the. Up in the cloud if it doesn't have enough compute power on the device to actually do it. It would not be good to have a digital divide of that kind where you don't get any AI features unless you spend top whack for a phone. So I'm glad that I hope this rumor pans out because that would be a really interesting version of the se.
- [105:44]
Jason Snell
I wonder if this is where they're going to dump that processor that's also in the iPad mini, the. What is it? A 17 Pro from last year and it's on the old 3 nanometer process. But they appear a big bucket of those processors that have been made that they need to put in products and so they might stuff it in there as the base to get it over the hump to being Apple intelligence on the phone.
- [106:07]
Alex Lindsay
A lot of times those processes are almost free because they're the ones that didn't perform. They didn't perform at the level that the ones that needed to go into something else. And so they're just kind of, as Jason said, I don't know if they're.
- [106:16]
Leo Laporte
Sitting in a, in a buffet from the bin.
- [106:19]
Andy Anako
Yeah.
- [106:19]
Jason Snell
The question is just if that process is still running because it was a dead end process for TSMC and if they want to retask that factory into doing something else. And I don't know enough of about chips to know what plausible thing that is, but it's possible that they literally ran off a bunch of these and Apple has collected them and basically binned them from other products and they're going to use the excess on these smaller selling products like an iPhone SE and an iPad mini. Well, I, I don't know, you know, I don't know the details there but that seems to be what's happening. So it wouldn't surprise me if that's what they do.
- [106:50]
Leo Laporte
Does the SE sell that much more poorly than the Big Brothers?
- [106:54]
Jason Snell
I think so.
- [106:55]
Leo Laporte
I would think it would sell better.
- [106:57]
Andy Anako
Because it's less expensive, particularly internationally where Apple's marketing is competing with Android phones. Yeah. And the iPhone's not the de facto phone for kids. For instance.
- [107:07]
Alex Lindsay
I think they do want something that's available for parents to buy for their kids if they don't want to spend a lot of money on something that they're going to break. So I think that makes sense. I think a lot of Apple users, you go in thinking you're going to buy something basic and then you're like oh well that's only a hundred dollars more and I'm going to use this for a long time. And next thing you know you spent sixteen hundred dollars on a phone, not.
- [107:29]
Leo Laporte
To mention donuts and the Simpsons tapped out. That didn't really add up. Speaking of chips, according to Mac Rumors app, or actually quarter according to the elec, but that's in Chinese, so they've translated. Apple has ordered M5 chips ahead of the 2025, late 2025 production. The next chip is already in order. And I bet you Apple said give us all the M5s you can make.
- [107:56]
Jason Snell
Yep, yep.
- [107:57]
Leo Laporte
Well, I guess they have to because no one else uses those.
- [108:00]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, well, they took up a lot of the factories to do it. And the thing is when people, this is a good example of a rumor that happened. I mean it probably is happening. But when people say Apple pivoted in fall, for a fall, you know, for a November release. Just remember this thing when we said takes years.
- [108:16]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, years.
- [108:16]
Alex Lindsay
I mean the design of that chair was done a year or two ago. And you know, it's, you know, and that's the, that's the length of this tale I had.
- [108:24]
Jason Snell
So the new Star wars show Skeleton Crew came out yesterday and my friend Todd Vaziri who works at ILM said, you know, it's funny when you work on a project in secret for a year and a half and then suddenly everybody can see it because he worked on Skeleton Crew. And I thought this is exactly what the people at Apple feel like where they are working. You know, depending on where you are in the funnel at Apple, you are working on the news of 2025 or 2026 or even 2027. Like not even in R and D. Like if you're a chip design, what are you on now? The M7, like it's a years long project. I know we talk about it here and that's why it's so frustrating when you see these articles that are like, ah, Apple turned on a dime and changed their strategy in two months. It's like that is not, I mean Apple Intelligence happened pretty fast. But to say that the chip that is driving Apple intelligence was designed for Apple intelligence is not true. Because you know, that chip had to have been in process for a very long time. I do think it's funny as Pat Gelsinger leaves Intel and I don't think Apple's prints are on the gun or anything like that. But when you think of the current state of intel, it is interesting to think that maybe the best chips in the world are being designed by Apple and fabbed by TSMC. When you consider that 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it was very clearly intel and intel, but we've come a long way. And these cutting edge fabs the TSMC is building and they're building them for Apple's chips and that's, that's the state of the art right now.
- [109:54]
Andy Anako
Yeah, I mean, that's a good point because there was a, there was an interview a couple of weeks ago with some of Apple's chip engineers on a podcast. I'm afraid I don't have the citation in front of me, but what I remember is how excited they were to talk about how like originally they were working like in 2016, 2017, of course they were working on AI, but they were working mostly on machine language for neural engine chips that were mostly there to power like computational photography on the iPhone. But they told a story about how like then in 2017, like Google Research published their. That paper on Transformers that totally changed everything. And they started to like, not, not like they were designing for a future product known as Apple Intelligence. But they thought, oh my God, this is really, really cool. Like when we're designing more new neural engine chips, let's design it to run so that it would be very, very capable of doing something like this or running these kind of models. And that was like the foundational research that led into Apple Intel. So, yeah, I mean, we're talking about. Apple only talked about Apple Intelligence chips this year. But even at a grassroots level, they've been thinking about it for the past seven years.
- [110:59]
Leo Laporte
Well, this article from MacRumors will actually presage a late 2025. Apple has pivoted from the 3 nanometer process or the 2 nanometer process back to the 3. Because in fact, that's what this M5 series is. It's a 3 nanometer chip. According to Matt Kappa, the 2 nanometer process for the M5 is due primarily to cost considerations, but the M5 will have a lot of new features. There's a, this is a good article talking about Those features, including TSMC's System on Integrated chip technology, which they Say is a 3D chip stacking approach that enhances thermal management, reduces electrical leakage. So there are some new features in the M5, even if it is not the 2 nanometer process. And watch for those articles in a year. They pivoted?
- [111:54]
Jason Snell
How dare they. They failed at the. Yeah, you know, you can't do a chip process shrink every year. I mean, it doesn't happen.
- [112:00]
Leo Laporte
Two is pretty small. I mean, I mean, two is one. You can't do zero nanometers.
- [112:05]
Jason Snell
I made A joke about going to picometers or whatever, but somebody told me they actually are going to Angstroms. They're going to go to Angstroms instead.
- [112:12]
Leo Laporte
Isn't that amaz?
- [112:14]
Alex Lindsay
A single nanometer is tens to low hundreds of molecules thick.
- [112:21]
Andy Anako
I still remember a conversation I was having with like a chip designer, like I think it was even 10 years ago, saying that they're starting to run into problems where electrons are too big and too slow for what they, for what they want to do with chip design and that they're having to do a lot of like, very creative problem solving to like package the sort of power and features that they want to have for the of tasks that they're being contracted to do.
- [112:44]
Leo Laporte
There are 10 Angstroms to every nanometer. So we are now going to the 30 Angstrom design. Everybody get ready. We've got plenty of headroom. I don't know what happens when you get the one angstrom, however, pretty close.
- [112:59]
Alex Lindsay
To molecule, a molecule thick. You know, you're a couple molecules thick at that point.
- [113:03]
Leo Laporte
What is the definition of an angstrom? It is, an Angstrom is 1/10 billionth of a meter, 100 millionth of a.
- [113:13]
Andy Anako
Centimeter, 6000 Angstroms as the wavelength of red light.
- [113:19]
Leo Laporte
The width of a hydrogen atom is 1.1 Angstroms. Oh my God. So we are basically at 20 hydrogen or 30 hydrogen atoms.
- [113:30]
Jason Snell
Atomic level stuff.
- [113:32]
Leo Laporte
And you know, I guess Moore's law is continuing. But at some point, don't you get down to the quantum level? You have all sorts of weird quantum effects.
- [113:41]
Jason Snell
Well, I mean, but a lot of the Moore's law stuff that what we've seen is that it's been things like they went to multicore designs and they broke the cores. And there's CPU cores and GPU cores and there's specialized cores, there's AI cores. There's like they, they. And now we've got this. They're talking about their 3D chip stacking. So you're being, you're, you know, be able to be more efficient. So the processes keep shrinking. But remember, Moore's law isn't just about processing of shrinks. It's about the speed of the chip.
- [114:07]
Leo Laporte
Number of transistors on it.
- [114:09]
Jason Snell
Yeah, the density and all that. So there's other things to do here. But it is amazing. I mean, I was reading a story about sort of where intel went wrong. And one of the things is that they held off on the UV lithography longer than they should. They were skeptical of it. But this is the amazing thing, like chips are made by projecting light because we don't have tools small enough to make chips. So we have to project, inject ultraviolet light and we have to use ultraviolet because we need the little frequencies that'll go right onto the. It's amazing just that this.
- [114:42]
Andy Anako
I think there's an episode of Connections years ago that basically talked about how essentially Gutenberg's printing press started the chip revolution. Because essentially making chips is all about how fine detail can you print on a surface.
- [114:56]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [114:57]
Andy Anako
And it's like that was one of those.
- [114:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [114:59]
Andy Anako
Ideas.
- [115:00]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So now in hindsight, Apple's move away from intel looks to be pretty prescient. Intel, in fact, continues its troubles. Pat Gelzinger, the CEO who was brought in to save intel, has announced he's retiring immediately. Yeah, next month.
- [115:18]
Jason Snell
Like you can take your retirement package or we'll fire you. And he's like, I'm retiring right now. I mean, it's not just, it's funny because we think about it in terms of Apple leaving Intel for Apple Silicon, but the real move was the founding of Apple Silicon because that was a case where arm. ARM processors were going to give mobile devices what they needed and intel processors weren't. And app and intel just missed it. Like they just, they just missed it. And it was. And I mean there are a lot, Ben Thompson has written about this a lot on stratechery, I think very intelligently, which is typical for Ben. Stupid Ben Thompson, so smart. But about how, you know, Pat Gelsinger should really not be blamed because like he wasn't there when they made, he, he. Maybe he was trying to solve the problem that was too late to be solved is possibly the case. But like the mistake that happened before, he was the person in charge at intel because they just, they just missed so badly. And now the question is, are they going to stay as one business? How do they deal with the fact that the US government has tried to give them a lot of money so that there's an American company making chips, but they're not really as good at making chips as they used to be? TSMC has eaten their lunch there and what's the board going to do? Who are they going to hire? And there were some rumors about like Johnny through G from Apple, but I.
- [116:35]
Leo Laporte
Think Johnny would be crazy.
- [116:37]
Jason Snell
He's already turned them down and I don't know why you would take that job. So it's an interesting question about the future of intel, but yeah, Apple good not to have any eggs in that basket.
- [116:47]
Leo Laporte
Right now, it turns out this has been a long time coming. Morris changing Chang, who's the founder of tsmc, he's written his autobiography. And according to the autobiography, Tim Cook met with Chang in 2011, already 13 years ago, kind of miffed at intel and said. And Chang said, yeah, we should talk about making chips for Apple. According to the book, Cook was left unimpressed by Intel's contract manufacturing capabilities. He told Chang that in a meeting. And that was the beginning of the Apple moving to TSMC back in 2011.
- [117:26]
Jason Snell
And that's Intel's fatal flaw. Right. Because, you know, the problem with intel is that they're fab and they're a chip designer. And so Apple came and said, we have an ARM chip that we designed and we want you to make it. And intel was like, nah, we're not into that. You can use our chip. And, and, and that's the. I mean, really, they should have. And Gelsinger fought against this, I think, for a while, but, like, they should have split into two businesses a while ago.
- [117:47]
Leo Laporte
Ben Thompson's been saying this for a while.
- [117:49]
Jason Snell
Yeah. And chip discovery designer.
- [117:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Intel's business model was integrated, where they would design and build. And in fact, that's exactly what Gelsinger said. We're going to split this into two parts, a foundry, and, you know, the designer and the manufacturer, the fab and the foundry. But it just was too little too late, I guess.
- [118:08]
Jason Snell
Too late, yeah. No, the real question is the American government. Right. Because the US Government, the CHIPS act and all of that. And so who knows what's going to happen in the Trump administration. But there's this feeling like we don't really want a Taiwanese company. And TSMC is great, but the fear is that China invades Taiwan and our chip making capacity is gone. Which is why, to be fair, TSMC is also building factories in the US as a part of that deal. So. But like intel, it's one of these stories.
- [118:34]
Leo Laporte
Got almost $8 billion under the Chips Act.
- [118:37]
Jason Snell
Yeah, but they have to. They have to follow the rules, is the thing, or they have to give it back. And that's one of the challenges is how are they going to invest in fabs as per the CHIPS act, in order to keep that money. If they're, if they're pivoting to design and not. And away from fabs, which is what Gelsinger was trying to do, the board pivots away from that. Do they give the money back? Do they try to spin it out? I believe there's a String attached where they can't actually divest themselves of their fab business. They have to keep ownership of a high percentage of it. Like, it's a. It's a mess, It's a mess.
- [119:07]
Andy Anako
And on top of everything else, I think the speculation is that it's going to take 20, 30 until there could be a meaningful chip production capability inside the US and that is like how many administrations between now and then. And it's going to have to be mature leadership that basically says, this is an important thing. It will not be done on any one administration's watch. We have to make investments and make assurances and make alliances to make sure this key strategic capability is within the United States by a certain timeline whenever it happens. Remember that China at some point was not a manufacturing powerhouse. They made it a government priority saying, we're going to make sure that we get manufacturing here. When sanctions basically cut them off from American chip design, they said, okay, this stinks, but we're going to have to learn how to design steel, manufacture our own chips. And now they're finally in the position where they can start making stuff that is completely homegrown. And now they don't have dependency on other countries necessarily for that manufacturer. So it's. You can't, you can't put people on the moon as an executive order and expect to be on the grandstand greeting people walking on the moon two or three years later. You basically have to design the cathedral, prove the cathedral, put in the infrastructure for the cathedral, and be pleased that 30 years after you've done the cathedral.
- [120:28]
Leo Laporte
On the moon, is that what you're doing?
- [120:30]
Andy Anako
Musk says he wants it on Mars first to prove the viability of it.
- [120:35]
Jason Snell
It's very small, though. It's only about 8, 80 angstroms.
- [120:40]
Andy Anako
Or 12 different shades of red as it would go. But you know what I mean. The people who basically decide, okay, a cathedral goes here knew that they will not live long enough to actually see this thing be built. But they have to realize that that's not my job here. My job here is to make sure that I set up the machine that is inexorable in its forward progress that will not be ended, ended like three, three years before it's done. It will be ended when it's actually finished.
- [121:08]
Leo Laporte
And of course, the United States has become the shortest term planning country ever. You know, I mean, we don't think more than three months.
- [121:15]
Andy Anako
We're kooky that way.
- [121:16]
Jason Snell
That's true. Although there are some examples like this, the space program stuff started, you know, Trump administration started it, Biden administration continued. And that's what I was going to say is this needs to be like that. There were little pockets in the government where, where there has been continuity between these various administrations. And if we, if, if we are serious about America's chip making capacity, this needs to be one of those areas where there's consistent behavior and we'll see whether it happens or not.
- [121:46]
Leo Laporte
It's that uncertainty that is causing all the angst.
- [121:50]
Andy Anako
This is like career government workers. They're the backbone of keeping every country working. The ones that they.
- [121:56]
Leo Laporte
There are 10 Angstroms in each angst, I believe.
- [121:58]
Jason Snell
Thank you.
- [121:59]
Alex Lindsay
It's also why sword, say sword rattling is not like China's making all this noise about the fact that they want that they may take Taiwan or they're not going to rule that out or whatever. It's just generating trillions of dollars of movement, you know, that around them. It just seems like such an unforced error. I mean, you know, just, it's a.
- [122:19]
Leo Laporte
Well, it's not unilateral. I mean, we're doing the same thing. We do the same thing.
- [122:23]
Alex Lindsay
But it's a good example of that, them going down this path of saying all the stuff that scares everybody. You have companies moving out of their countries and they're, you know, there's all this, you know, there's all this movement that they've created because of, you know, their threats. And, you know, it's just, it's a crazy thing to do.
- [122:40]
Leo Laporte
What a world. What a world. All right, let's take a little break. When we come back, your picks of the week. So, gentlemen, start your engines. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Anako from GBH in Boston. When are you going to be on GB next?
- [122:53]
Andy Anako
Not this week, but next Thursday at 12:45.
- [122:56]
Leo Laporte
I always ask you that question.
- [122:58]
Andy Anako
Thank you.
- [122:58]
Leo Laporte
Thank you, Andrew. I H N A T K O. I have no idea how to spell it. Alex Lindsay, Office Hours Global. Got something exciting going on this week, as always.
- [123:10]
Alex Lindsay
I'm having a chat with Matt Levine today right after the show.
- [123:13]
Leo Laporte
Oh, Mr. Cash Fly.
- [123:15]
Alex Lindsay
He's got a podcast that he's putting together.
- [123:17]
Leo Laporte
I'm going to be on it. You're going to be on it sooner than me, though. Though.
- [123:20]
Alex Lindsay
I'm the test case. He's just making sure it works with me and then he's ready for you.
- [123:25]
Leo Laporte
So I think I'm doing it in January, so that's exciting. Yeah. The Cash Fly podcast and office hours, anything to report you know you're going.
- [123:35]
Alex Lindsay
To continue to see us test. Right now we're testing hlg. We were talking about this HLG versus pq. It's a little bright right now because we're figuring out some color correction stuff so you're going to see. But we're still, every day we're just answering people's questions. And, and we've got of course an evening show on both Monday, that's the extra hours and on Thursdays, which is the rundown and but every morning for an hour we, we have some, you know, about 100 years, 150 years of expertise that sits down and answers random questions about media production, which is, and then one of the things we've gotten really good at is we have this great chat that is all tied into what we're doing and we're using it more because we realize there's all these experts that are in the chat, in our chat that are, you know, that really know a lot that are from all these broadcast companies and, and post companies and so on and so forth. So it's now Even though there's six or eight or 10 people in the panel, there's also another 50 to 100 that are doing stuff that we're kind of incorporating into that, into that conversation. So it's, it's, you're, you're going to see us keep on evolving that as we go forward.
- [124:38]
Leo Laporte
Quite exciting.
- [124:38]
Alex Lindsay
It's fun.
- [124:39]
Leo Laporte
And from 6colors.com J. Jason Snell, you said you took a little time off for Thanksgiving, but the Six Colors never sleeps.
- [124:48]
Jason Snell
Well, I mean we were a little sleepy. I was very happy to see that a couple articles got posted while I was away. It was a quiet week. But, you know, is it just you.
- [124:55]
Leo Laporte
And Dan Moran is, we have, we.
- [124:57]
Jason Snell
Have a weekly post from John Moltz. He writes a links, a kind of funny links column on Friday for our.
- [125:04]
Leo Laporte
Members do have his. Is it a secret what John used to be.
- [125:08]
Jason Snell
It's not. It's an open, it's an open secret. He's fine. We talk about it. John Moltz sometimes is the Macalope. There, I said it. But sometimes he's, he did the crazy Apple Rumor site for a long time. He writes under his name and the other name at Macworld now and he writes a nice fun thing. And then Shelley Brisbane and Joe Rosenstiel also write sort of occasional post for Six Colors, but it's primarily me and Dan. So it's a, you know, kind of a two person operation.
- [125:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. The latest episode upgrade 540 validation for shower Jason. I'm not sure I want to know.
- [125:37]
Jason Snell
It's a good episode. Well, I actually we had whole thing. And you. You all will understand this too. It's that troubleshooting brain that you have if you're a tech nerd, where you start, somebody has a problem and they come to you and you and you. We've seen so many mistakes, so many problems with tech. And you know this from your radio.
- [125:55]
Leo Laporte
Show that is actually 19 freaking years.
- [125:57]
Jason Snell
Example where you built a perfect troubleshooting machine. And there's, you know, turn it on and turn it off. Why don't you restart the computer? I did that over the Thanksgiving break. But it can be like Shower Jason is. I'm listening to a podcast in the shower. I can only listen to podcasts when I shower and when I walk my dog. Those are my listening times. And my friend Stephen Hacker was telling a story on this podcast about how he and his wife's Apple watches both suddenly had battery life problems, which is really weird, right? That they both had it simultaneously. And I knew that he changed his wifi network last week to a different set of hardware. And I literally reached out of the shower to the phone and sent him a text saying, have you checked the wifi? And he was the guest on Upgrade yesterday. And he. And he tells this story, and then he says, I think it is the WI fi. And that was my validation for Shower Jason that I was like, because. Because there was a little thing that ticked in my brain and we all have this where it's like, what changed? What changed? And I just thought, we all know that mobile devices, if they have trouble connecting to a network, whether it's WI fi or your cellular network, if you're out in the woods or something, your phone will get hot, like it is expending. It'll crank up the power on that radio to try and make a solid signal. And I thought, what if his new WI fi base stations, it's the watches are having trouble connecting, or they're not seeing one, but they're seeing the other. Or they have to crank up the power in order to compensate. And that's draining the battery essentially invisibly. And I think maybe that is actually the answer. So. But it. It's, you know, this happens. Like I was.
- [127:32]
Leo Laporte
Something about the shower. It's my theory that the heat is opening up blood vessels and making your brain work better. There's something.
- [127:40]
Jason Snell
It could be. Or, Or. Or even the, you know, the isolation or the focus. Like if I. If I'm not listening to anything in the shower, that's where I am brainstorming.
- [127:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [127:48]
Jason Snell
And. And if I am listening, it's because I want to focus on something other than the shower and just get through it. But anyway, so computer nerds know what I'm talking about. That we all get out. Thanksgiving is a perfect example. You all get told time to do some troubleshooting. And some of those problems are actually really like. My father in law had a whole problem where his mouse, he said sometimes was. Was giving a context menu when he clicked instead of a regular click. And like what? He didn't say context menu. Right. He was like a menu appears when.
- [128:15]
Leo Laporte
I'm the popup thing.
- [128:16]
Jason Snell
And, and I observed this and I thought about it for a while and I thought, you know what I think is actually happening is I think that as he's using his mouse gradually over time, his, his hand is just sort of sliding to the right and then he doesn't realize it, but he's right clicking when he thinks that he's left clicking. I think that's actually. But again, it's just because I've been doing this for so long now that I have. And then he said, jason, it's not working. The mail isn't opening right. And I did command Q on Apple mail and nothing happened. And I said, well, let's restart this computer. And then I walked away because I was super confident in that. And then a minute later he shouted from the other room, it's working now. Thank you. I was like, why don't we turn it off and turn it back on?
- [129:01]
Leo Laporte
There was how you get to be known as a miracle man in your family. Hey, a little programming note about our old friend Renee Richie. I watched a long video from him.
- [129:11]
Andy Anako
Me too.
- [129:12]
Leo Laporte
He has moved to San Francisco. And an even more exciting note, he's got a new girl who moved with him, better known Cali Lewis, better known as Luria Petrucci. Renee Richie and Luria are an item. Congratulations. It's so great to hear it and welcome to California. Renee Richie in San Francisco. We're going to have to figure out a way to get him up into our attic studio. I'm just really happy. So if you're a Renee Richie fan, he's still working at YouTube. In fact, probably that's why he's in San Francisco now. It's seems like that's a better place for him to be than Montreal for working at YouTube. And his channel is there@YouTube.com renericci and you can read his update or listen to his update, I should say there. So good on you, Renee and Callie. I'm very happy to hear two of.
- [130:05]
Alex Lindsay
My favorite people in the world.
- [130:06]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, aren't they one great that the two of them. It's like, wow, that's so cool. I was really happy to hear that I have my own little personal YouTube channel channel which isn't very active. You know, every once in a while I'll do some gaming. But it has been active in the month of December because we've been doing the advent of code and I have been live streaming, which is a crazy thing to do. Live streaming the coding. These start at 9pm Pacific, midnight Eastern, when the advent of Code Challenge comes out in the first 25 days of September. Get it? It's an adventure calendar and it's been a lot of fun. And three of our stalwart real programmers from the club Sci Fi, Paul Holder and Darren Oakey have been getting on saying leo. You might want to check that parenthesis there. It seems misplaced, shall we say. And it's been very helpful and a lot of fun. So we'll do that again. I guess I'll do it again tonight, 9pm Pacific. For day four of the advent of code, they get progressively more difficult. Difficult. Which means at some point in the next few days I'm going to hit an impossible wall. I'll be like that saber rattling against the soccer wall and I will have to go to bed before I actually solve that. But this is kind of fun. I do it in Emacs and Common Lisp and we get the chat going with it. And we also get some really fun people popping in a little bit. So just thought I'd mention that. YouTube.com LeoLAport Our picks of the week coming up. And Doc Rock, who is in the discord, says don't make it too expensive, guys. You just spent a lot of money on a 3D printer. All right, all right, Doc Rock, we're going to get you some inexpensive picks of the week. Well, maybe not. Maybe not. You're watching MacBreak weekly ATT 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 carrier freedom to switch today. Pay off up to 650 via virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days. Free phone up to 830 via 24.
- [132:30]
Andy Anako
Monthly bill credits plus tax, qualifying port.
- [132:32]
Leo Laporte
And trade and service on go 5G next and credit report required. Contact us before canceling entire account. To continue bill credits or credit stop and balance and required finance agreement is due. ATT 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 international $130 via.
- [133:00]
Andy Anako
24 monthly bill credits plus tax qualifying.
- [133:02]
Leo Laporte
Port and trade in 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 due. Jason Snell you, you're, you're, you. Yours isn't going to be expensive.
- [133:14]
Jason Snell
No, I mean, you got to have a Vision Pro, though. So I assume you've already spent that money and that's why your budget.
- [133:21]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [133:22]
Jason Snell
I just wanted to mention this. So simply, Piano has been out for a while. Like, it's a great iPad app to teach people how to play the piano piano. And they just announced a Vision Pro version and I got to try it. In fact, just this morning I tried it out and it's pretty amazing because it will like if you have a keyboard or a piano. I sat down on my piano and it has you like calibrate its piano to your piano, at which point as it's teaching you how to play the piano, it's lighting up the keys and actually it shows you the finger notation floating in your hand of like which finger is which finger for, for the like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
- [134:00]
Leo Laporte
Do you play the piano already or.
- [134:04]
Jason Snell
I want to make a, a joke, a Simpsons joke here and I'm not going to do it. Yes, I, I took, I took piano lessons as a kid and so I still sort of know how to play the piano, but I feel like I should.
- [134:16]
Leo Laporte
This is the next thing for me as an aging brain. They say it's very good to learn an instrument.
- [134:20]
Jason Snell
Well, simply piano, I mean even on the iPad, it's very clever because it uses the microphone so it'll have you play along and it knows when you're playing the right note. But with on the Vision Pro, it will, you know, it's marking up your hands and it's marking up the keyboard with the lighting it up. And if you don't have a keyboard, you can actually take a flat surface and play it like a keyboard. It'll lay down a virtual keyboard for you using The Vision Pro and then you can play those virtual keys and that will work too. Very clever. I just as an education app using a virtual overlay. It's a really interesting idea. Idea for an app that's already, I think a very successful iPad app. But I love that they're trying it on Vision pro. And my 20 minutes with it this morning, I was really impressed. It looks like a great way for people to learn how to play the piano.
- [135:07]
Leo Laporte
Very interesting. I do feel like that would be good for my brain to learn to play the. And I think if I were going to learn an instrument, it would be the piano because then you could play every other instrument.
- [135:17]
Jason Snell
Right.
- [135:17]
Leo Laporte
With a synthesis.
- [135:18]
Jason Snell
It's true. Get a USB keyboard and attach it to Logic or Garage Band and then you've got every instrument ever.
- [135:24]
Leo Laporte
Instrument. Yeah, maybe that's my project. After the advent of code. I'm a little busy right now. Andy and I go pick of the.
- [135:32]
Andy Anako
Week with holiday shopping in mind. One of my favorite little decorative items, Apple Mac related ornaments. There's a company called Classic Bot that makes these beautiful little like figures of classic like apples. They've got the Happy Classic Bot, which is like a Macintosh Classic, which comes with the ADB keyboard. It comes with a little font. Da Mover suitcase comes with a little mouse, the Iboy, which is amazing because it looks like a classic ipod, but it also has that magnetic attachment so that you have like you can put up legs on it, you have arms, you can like position earbuds, Potato Head for an ipod. Yeah, yeah. And I just, I just noticed that they just are taking pre orders on an Apple 2e and I'm like, oh, I kind of gotta have that one. I have, I have the Classic Bot and I have the ipod, the ipod one. And I can say that they're not dirt cheap. They're like 50 bucks each. But they're a small company that do small.
- [136:34]
Leo Laporte
What are they made out of?
- [136:36]
Andy Anako
Very, very hard, like plastic resin. It's very, very solid. The details that are carved in there are sharp and precise. When you get it, like you know that this is a very, very well made, well designed product. It's not just, oh well, we just made a 3D print of something and then we just throw these things out. No, no, these are professionally manufactured. They're nicely boxed. Like it's from a real design studio, real company. And I recently found out that it really is pretty much a one person operation. I think I was reminded of it because you posted on a Reddit forum with a discount Code for Christmas. If you use the code XMAS 2024 you will get a discount on your order. The problem is the only hitch is that they are. He is based in the uk so a I'm recommending it now because if you want to get it as a gift for somebody else and it is a really nice gift for, for an Apple friend, it will take a couple of weeks to arrive. Also maybe you're going to hit be hit with some shipping costs but don't be afraid of it. I again I ordered both of these like when they came out and I've been. It's every time, every time like I just did every time I dust that shelf and I put like the Mac in a different position or I have or I have like the ipod interacting with Alex's action figure from Star wars. You know, it gives me pleasure every single time. This has been a very good investment in joy.
- [137:57]
Leo Laporte
Very nice. Happy classic bot from classicbot.com designer toys, figures and geek culture. I guess it's more than just Apple stuff they do. Yeah.
- [138:07]
Andy Anako
They got other things. You can also get like a little display that has like 3D versions of like classic Mac like bitmap icons. Again it's worth checking out again. You can see the love and you can see like the determination to create a really great product and all this entire product line. I'm very happy to support.
- [138:22]
Leo Laporte
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you Andy. Alex, Lindsay. Excuse me. Your pick of the week.
- [138:27]
Alex Lindsay
So I didn't need this but I kept on looking at it going for a lot of the years, like oh, I really like to have something a desktop charger. I have a lot of devices that I'm charging and I just wanted something on the desktop that had a nice display and it told me what was still charging and how much is it actually pull cooling and so this is, this is from Oops. This is from Anchor. You can see I bought it on the 21st so they didn't send it to me and it went on sale. That's what turned the corner for me. So instead 169 I was like, no, that's too much for this. At 109 I was like, you know, I'm short some chargers, I gotta move some chargers around. It's really nice. So it's a, it is one. It's a gan charger. So it's, it's going to do things pretty quickly. It maxes out at 140 watts. So it really is able to charge just about anything you need. Need. It's not something you put in your bag. This is something wall. But it's also not a charger that you would go traveling with, which I kind of wanted. I very specifically wanted something that I wouldn't cannibalize.
- [139:29]
Leo Laporte
It's desk.
- [139:30]
Alex Lindsay
It's on the desk. It does. It does the thing it needs to do. It's very. I don't know what it is. The knob lets you. There's some selections that you can make so it'll change slow down. It lets you go through each one and see how much it's using and you know, so there's some data there to figure it out. It's anchor does over the top. But Anchor. Anchor's really just cornered the market of great chargers and great batteries. I use a lot of their stuff.
- [140:01]
Leo Laporte
We did years ago when we were still doing the new screensavers. We had somebody come on and talk about Gallium Arsenide technology and how it was going to be a revolution. And so far it's only been in chargers and Walworts and things like that. But still it's an interesting technology.
- [140:18]
Alex Lindsay
I won't buy a charger that isn't.
- [140:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, again, again.
- [140:22]
Alex Lindsay
It's like, why? No, there's no reason to live that way.
- [140:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So it's just like a savage. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Alex. I have a pick. Thanks to Scooter X. Thank you, Scooter X who posted in the Discord. You can now put Marathon on your iPhone. The classic Marathon games are available on the App Store. They have all three classic Marathon. Now there's a history of this because we played Marathon like crazy.
- [140:53]
Jason Snell
Oh man.
- [140:54]
Leo Laporte
Back in the middle 90s on the set of the site, which was the.
- [140:58]
Jason Snell
NMSNBC show, we played it at Matt at Mac user back in the day.
- [141:03]
Leo Laporte
Sure.
- [141:04]
Jason Snell
Multiplayer.
- [141:04]
Leo Laporte
And that's do a LAN party.
- [141:06]
Jason Snell
And so one of the best things about this, according to Bunch Bungie and this is all due to the people who've been keeping the code alive and porting it and all of these things. It is apparently cross play compatible. So if you've got iPads, Macs, anybody who can run, it's on Steam as well. Who can run these things. Apparently it is cross play compatible. So you could do these amazing. Some of the best network play maps ever made, especially Marathon Infinity just was mostly about the multiplayer maps.
- [141:39]
Leo Laporte
This was the multiplayer game we played like so good.
- [141:42]
Jason Snell
So good.
- [141:44]
Leo Laporte
I was told. Carsten Bondi, my producer for many years told me, yeah, we, we all got together behind the scenes and decided to gang up on Leo and Marathon and all fire our rocket launchers at him at the same time, which blew me straight up in the air.
- [141:59]
Alex Lindsay
We used to, when I worked at a game company, you know, you had to. In the early days of Marathon, you had to turn. You had to restart your computer and hold down the shift key to get rid of all the extensions because otherwise you wouldn't get full frame rate.
- [142:11]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [142:11]
Alex Lindsay
And so we get about 6 o'clock in the evening and we all be working and suddenly hear someone go dong. And then they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You start hearing around the thing.
- [142:22]
Leo Laporte
That's exactly what happened.
- [142:23]
Alex Lindsay
I'm compiling, I'm compiling. You gotta wait for me.
- [142:26]
Leo Laporte
I think they had to ban it, actually. Eventually it texted me because we had.
- [142:30]
Jason Snell
We would. We would use the conference call and speakerphone mode in the office so that all of us who were playing were on speaker with each other because it didn't do audio or something. And it was always great when you'd shoot somebody with a rocket launcher. And not only on the speakerphone, but you could actually hear them screaming out, that was me out in the cubicle somewhere. It was me, Roman Loyola, who is now my editor in macworld. Actually, we. Oh, man. Because we were. Mac user was in Foster City. We were right by the San Mateo Bridge and several of us lived in the East Bay. And for non bay area of people, trust me, commute, evening, eastbound on the San Mateo bridge. It just backed up and backed up and backed up.
- [143:12]
Leo Laporte
You didn't want to go.
- [143:13]
Jason Snell
So I had, for a while there, I had a. I had a window. We also had like a webcam. We would go check the traffic. Roman would go to one end and look at the, at the, at the backup. And then we would decide, okay, let's just play some more. Because we couldn't go home. Like, there was too much traffic. So we would just keep playing. Those are good times. And the Marathon map, legitimately. I mean, not only was this what led to Bungie getting bought by Microsoft and doing Halo and doing Destiny, but they were groundbreaking. They were Mac only, which was amazing, but the multiplayer with the maps, and there was a map editor that you could get. They put so much effort into those multiplayer maps being good. And they were so you could play Capture the Flag or so much Fun. Or King of the Hill, which was hilarious. Or my favorite, kill the guy with the ball, where you got a little. You got a little skull and then you ran around and they tried to kill you and you won by time. Literally. It was like first person to hold the ball for five minutes wins. Amazing. Just good. Just really good maps and good gaming. Great game for hours.
- [144:09]
Alex Lindsay
And the problem was we were all married at the time and we were. One of our wives would call and the goal was no one making noise. And so you'd be talking to your wife and be like, yeah, I'm just, I'm going to be on my way in a second. And then someone would, someone would fire or they'd fire or they'd fire a missile. And then it was like that in Uncle Baca. Like, how about.
- [144:34]
Leo Laporte
I mean, why do you stay so late every night? Are they really working you? Master Chief mode is 99 cents. HD mode is 2 bucks. Enhanced reticules a buck. It's free. Within that purchases you can get some tips and so forth. But I think basically playable for free.
- [144:50]
Alex Lindsay
They did a demo. They are Bungie. I think this is all an open source project because the coolest thing that Bungie did was they open sourced these before they were bought by Microsoft. And so I think this is all an open source project. But the. Yeah.
- [145:03]
Leo Laporte
By Destiny Wentz.
- [145:04]
Alex Lindsay
But Bungie is they have a. If you look for it, there's a, they did a, A trailer for the new, new marathon. I don't know when it's going to come out, but that was, that came out like a year ago or a year and a half ago.
- [145:16]
Jason Snell
And yeah, it's unclear. Yeah, I mean it's a, it's a. It's a different. It's an, it's an a console game. Although I think it's going to be on PC as well. But they're, they're reviving that marathon ip. But it's also great that they're embracing the classic stuff, which is awesome.
- [145:31]
Leo Laporte
And I will say that hey, to Wizardling, there is, he's passing along this information. There is a marathon server, so if you don't have friends, you can play.
- [145:40]
Alex Lindsay
We hammered that server one time. There was a Mac break where this is early on Mac break that where I said, hey, we're all going to go to the server and play. And these poor folks that play all the time, suddenly there was like 300 people that showed up out of nowhere and started playing and they were like, you're ruining our server. So.
- [145:57]
Leo Laporte
So don't do that.
- [145:58]
Alex Lindsay
No, it's good. But it's a good. But it's a good server and don't do it all at the same time. And don't tell everyone at MacBreak you're doing it at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And like, those are the things that.
- [146:07]
Leo Laporte
Cause L H o w o n.org yeah.
- [146:10]
Jason Snell
Using Marathon Infinity is. If you want to do multiplayer, that's the. That was. It's got a small one player campaign, but it was made for the multiplayer maps. It's the best experience for that. I think based on that they were. They were boasting like they. The frame rates are apparently really good. That they did some great work the. The whole team that. It's the LF1 team that kind of kept the flame going with the support of the people at Bungie. So it's awesome. Awesome.
- [146:34]
Leo Laporte
Really, really nice.
- [146:35]
Alex Lindsay
Thunder.
- [146:35]
Jason Snell
It really is like proto Halo, like right down to the fact that there are many, many, many, many things in Halo where if you play marathon, you'll be like, oh, like that. Oh, I see. That's where that came from. Yeah, yeah.
- [146:48]
Alex Lindsay
Search. Search for also some of the artwork. I can't think of his name right now. He's a map painter that did all these incredible concept art. So if you do marathon game concept art, you'll see these incredible paintings that he did that. That kind of also expanded. Anyway, we're really into marathon.
- [147:07]
Leo Laporte
I think I won the pick of the week this week. I'm Scooter X.
- [147:11]
Jason Snell
We just need to do an episode where we play marathon. Yeah, yeah, that. It needs to happen.
- [147:16]
Alex Lindsay
Hey, that's a. We should do that in. In a club. Yeah, we should do a club.
- [147:21]
Jason Snell
We should. We should. I'm in for that.
- [147:23]
Alex Lindsay
I'm in.
- [147:25]
Leo Laporte
You can't the rocket launchers at me, though. Okay.
- [147:28]
Alex Lindsay
Thunder Dome. That's what we need. No, we can.
- [147:30]
Leo Laporte
We're gonna do that, Leo.
- [147:31]
Andy Anako
It's gonna happen.
- [147:33]
Leo Laporte
Make it so awesome.
- [147:34]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [147:35]
Andy Anako
Do you need a water boy for those kind of military perfume games? Because that's probably what I'm talking about.
- [147:38]
Leo Laporte
Do you not play, Andy? Do you not.
- [147:40]
Jason Snell
Not really kill the guy with a ball? You can have the ball.
- [147:44]
Andy Anako
I could. I can be the. A person that's running and running the dis. Running the displays.
- [147:49]
Jason Snell
And it could be the cheerleader from the side.
- [147:51]
Leo Laporte
If you have the ball, you don't shoot right. You just run.
- [147:55]
Andy Anako
You know better than I would.
- [147:56]
Jason Snell
And you just run. Actually, you just walk when you have the ball. You don't get to run. You have to walk.
- [148:02]
Andy Anako
I'll tell you. I'll tell you this. Like, I've been. I've been writing like a thousand words every. At least a thousand words every day. Like since I was like 18 or 19. I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome. I don't have any, like, injuries or anything like that. I still type as well. Yeah. And so every, every time I try to play like a really fast action game, like my hands, my hand kills for like four minutes. I realize that.
- [148:25]
Leo Laporte
Okay.
- [148:25]
Andy Anako
If I keep doing that, maybe I won't be able to type without pain.
- [148:28]
Leo Laporte
No, no. You have to build up those muscles. Those. It's all. It's just the, it's weightlifting for your thumb.
- [148:33]
Andy Anako
You just want somebody in the game who's easy to kill.
- [148:35]
Leo Laporte
That's fine. Not me this time. Not me. Buddy boy. A lot of fun. All right, we will do that. If you're a club member, watch for an announcement because we will do a mirror marathon marathon. How about that? Jason Snell, six colors dot com. Thank you, my friend. Always great to see you. We'll see you back here next week.
- [148:57]
Jason Snell
Good to be here. Yeah. Great.
- [148:59]
Leo Laporte
Alex Lindsay, Office Hours Global. And of course, if you want to hire Office hours, the Office Hours Legend, 090.Media is his day job. Although I don't know when exactly he shows up for that, but. But no, you actually do. You're going to do a lot more travel with 090, right?
- [149:16]
Alex Lindsay
I am. I'm doing. We're doing some stuff we can talk about more somewhere in the future.
- [149:19]
Leo Laporte
So.
- [149:19]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [149:20]
Leo Laporte
Awesome.
- [149:20]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [149:21]
Leo Laporte
And thank you, andy & Co, WGBH Boston. It's great to see all three of you. We do Mac Break weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern Time, 1900 UTC. We stream it on those. Live on those platforms. But watching live, you know, requires you be there when we. And honestly, it's a podcast so that you don't have to do that. You can listen and watch whenever you want. Audio and video available at our website, TWiT TV, MBW. If you go there, you'll see a link to the YouTube channel. Great way to share little clips. If you've got a friend that maybe you played a little marathon with back in the day, a Roman Loyola, perhaps, just clip that, send it to them and say, game on, man.
- [150:01]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [150:01]
Leo Laporte
It's also a great way to share MacBreak weekly with friends after the fact. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player. And that's probably the best thing to do once we've edited it all up. Once John Ashley is cleaning it all up, he'll put it out on the feeds and you'll get an automatic download. Whether it's Pocket, Cast, Overcast, Apple Podcast, whatever you use. Make sure you subscribe audio or video. That way you'll get the latest MacBreak weekly the minute it's available. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll be back next Tuesday. But now it is my sorry duty to say get back to work. Break time is over. Or you could play some marathon if.
- [150:36]
Andy Anako
You.
- [150:49]
Leo Laporte
Now AT T Mobile get four.
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Andy Anako
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Leo Laporte
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