MacBreak Weekly 967: Breathy, But Not In a Ditch

Summary

MacBreak Weekly 967: Breathy, But Not In a Ditch Released April 8, 2025

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, Micah Sargent

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1. Impact of Tariffs on Apple and iPhone Buyers

The episode opens with a discussion on the recent tariffs imposed on Apple products, particularly focusing on their impact on Apple’s stock and the cost implications for iPhone buyers.

Leo Laporte [04:12]: "Which cost in Apple's market cap, $640 billion in the first three days."

Andy Ihnatko highlights that Apple was one of the three tech companies most severely affected by the tariffs, suggesting a potential lack of overall market confidence rather than an isolated issue.

Andy Ihnatko [04:53]: "Apple was really one of only three tech companies that got hit super, super hard."

2. Apple's Manufacturing Strategies Amid Tariffs

Jason Snell delves into Apple's strategic response to the tariffs by shifting production to countries like India and Brazil. However, the reliance on Chinese-manufactured parts complicates these efforts.

Jason Snell [05:42]: "Wall Street Journal already reported that one of Apple's first things that it was doing was redirecting iPhone."

The hosts discuss the challenges Apple faces due to the "just in time" manufacturing model, which leaves little room for stockpiling products ahead of tariff changes.

Andy Ihnatko [06:36]: "This is one of the things that Apple has been praised for is their ability to do basically just in time, manufacturing."

3. Potential Price Increases and Market Reactions

The conversation shifts to the possibility of Apple increasing product prices to offset the tariff costs. Jason Snell speculates that Apple might introduce higher-priced models or eliminate lower-spec options to maintain margins.

Jason Snell [09:58]: "They have some of that going on. So they've got some of that going on."

Andy expresses concern over the potential normalization of tariff-induced price hikes, emphasizing that consumers are effectively paying an unnecessary $200 tax on devices like iPhones.

Andy Ihnatko [13:25]: "You are paying an unnecessary $200 tax that's being applied to this that is unnecessary."

4. Broader Industry Impacts from Tariffs

The hosts note that Apple isn't the only company affected by the tariffs. Brands like Nintendo and Jaguar Land Rover have also halted sales in the U.S. market until the situation stabilizes.

Leo Laporte [07:24]: "It's not just Apple. Nintendo stopped its sale of the new Switch."

Andy draws parallels to World War II, suggesting that collective effort from consumers and manufacturers could mitigate some of the negative impacts.

Andy Ihnatko [07:48]: "It's like World War II when everybody was playing their victory gardens."

5. US-China Trade Conflict and Apple's Position

The discussion intensifies with insights into the escalating trade conflict between the U.S. and China. Andy quotes the Chinese Trade Minister’s firm stance against U.S. tariff measures, highlighting China's intent to resist until the end.

Andy Ihnatko [14:27]: "China intends to, quote, fight to the end."

The uncertainty surrounding the trade war poses significant challenges for Apple and other tech giants relying heavily on Chinese manufacturing.

6. Apple's EU Antitrust Challenges

Leo Laporte brings up the impending issues Apple faces in the European Union concerning the Digital Markets Act. Potential penalties could reach up to 10% of Apple's global revenue, posing a substantial threat.

Leo Laporte [48:24]: "Apple's Digital Markets act antitrust ruling within weeks. This could go very badly."

Andy emphasizes that the EU's approach is more about ensuring compliance rather than merely collecting penalties, indicating that Apple might face significant fines if found in violation.

Andy Ihnatko [48:36]: "We want them to do the right thing. So it's more about enforcement than collecting penalties."

7. Encryption Battles: Victory in the UK

A significant victory for Apple is recounted regarding their stance on encryption in the UK. The UK’s Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, attempted to impose measures requiring Apple to break its encryption, but the tribunal ruled against her, reinforcing Apple’s commitment to user privacy.

Andy Ihnatko [44:27]: "They lost, lost, lost at this point."

The judge emphasized the importance of open justice and the inability to demonstrate harm from lifting the gag order, thereby denying Cooper’s attempt to enforce secrecy.

Andy Ihnatko [44:27]: "They want them to respect that we have these laws. We want to end this in a way that we feel as though we came out with a win."

8. TikTok Legal Saga

The episode touches on the ongoing legal battles surrounding TikTok in the U.S. Despite the administration's initial threats to remove the app from the App Store, the Attorney General has granted Apple permission to retain TikTok, stabilizing its presence for now.

Andy Ihnatko [38:29]: "Apple has now been given official permission by the Attorney General Pam Bondi to keep the app in the App Store."

The uncertainty continues as future executive orders and political maneuvers could further impact TikTok’s status in the U.S. market.

9. Apple TV+ and Content Strategies

Jason Snell provides an analysis of Apple TV+'s content strategy, noting that while shows like "Severance" have gained traction, the platform still struggles to compete with established streaming giants like Netflix and Disney+.

Jason Snell [83:26]: "Oscar's goal is not domination. I think they're doing okay. It's been like five years."

The hosts discuss the challenge of producing high-quality, engaging content that can attract and retain subscribers in a crowded streaming landscape.

10. Vision Pro and Immersive Content

The conversation shifts to Apple's Vision Pro, focusing on the potential and current offerings of immersive video content. While some immersive experiences have been impressive, there is a desire for more interactive and timely content.

Jason Snell [67:09]: "And it's a long game kind of product. So you just want to keep on adding stuff and building it."

They highlight recent developments, such as the "Immersive VIP Yankee Stadium" video, but express a need for more dynamic and engaging applications to fully utilize Vision Pro's capabilities.

11. Z Wave Goes Open Source

Micah Sargent introduces the news that Z Wave, a long-standing protocol in home automation, is transitioning to an open-source model. This move aims to enhance interoperability within the burgeoning Matter ecosystem.

Micah Sargent [92:14]: "Z Wave has competed with zigbee for a long time."

Despite its strong presence in the builder market, Z Wave struggled to gain consumer recognition, making this shift a strategic attempt to remain relevant.

Micah Sargent [93:01]: "We're happy that Z Wave is hopefully going to be joining the fun by saying, look, we'll go open source."

12. Caldigit Thunderbolt Docks

The hosts review the new Caldigit Thunderbolt 5 docks, specifically the TS5 and TS5 Plus models, praising their extensive port offerings and seamless connectivity for modern Mac systems.

Leo Laporte [96:38]: "The TS5 plus 20 ports. 20 ports. But you pay for the, you pay for these."

Andy expresses enthusiasm over the docks' ability to simplify setups with a single Thunderbolt cable, eliminating the need for multiple peripherals.

Jason Snell [97:17]: "The dream here is single cable connection. So you plug one cable into your MacBook Pro, it's charged and powered and the hub is powering and sending that Thunderbolt up so that you get it to your display and all of your peripherals."

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the current challenges and strategic maneuvers within Apple's ecosystem amidst rising tariffs and geopolitical tensions. From manufacturing shifts to potential price hikes, and from legal battles in the UK to content strategies for Apple TV+ and Vision Pro, the hosts offer insightful perspectives on navigating the evolving tech landscape.

Notable Quotes:

• Leo Laporte [04:12]: "Which cost in Apple's market cap, $640 billion in the first three days."
• Andy Ihnatko [13:25]: "You are paying an unnecessary $200 tax that's being applied to this that is unnecessary."
• Jason Snell [67:09]: "It's a long game kind of product. So you just want to keep on adding stuff and building it."

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from MacBreak Weekly Episode 967, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't tuned in.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy and Jason are here. Alex has the day off, but Micah Sargent's joining us. We will talk about the tariffs. It's bad for Apple stock, but is it bad for iPhone buyers? And how much more will Apple gear cost? We'll also talk about a victory in the UK for Apple and imminent trouble, incoming in the EU. All that and more coming up on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Mac break weekly, episode 967, recorded Tuesday, April 8, 2025. Breathy, but not in a ditch. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news, or should I say day five of Apple stock held hostage. Joining us now, the only guy who laughed at that joke because he has no Apple stock, Andy and not co. Hello, Andrew.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, yeah. Suddenly the guy who was wasting all of his money on comic books instead of throwing it away in the stock market and investing as its future somehow. Now. Now who's laughing?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you were smart.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Okay, back to me after I'm 72 or 73, but for now, Mr. Smarty Pants, still enjoying those comic books.

[Leo Laporte]

Also with us, Mr. Jason Snell from Six Colors dot com. Hello, Jason.

[Jason Snell]

Hello, Leo. I don't want to turn off our audience, but I too, like Andy, also don't own any.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, 0 of us owned Apple stock. Yeah, it might be in my. In my retirement index.

[Jason Snell]

Possibly.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Jason Snell]

I wouldn't know, right?

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. Yeah, I'm in like some Vanguard 2025 Target retirement fund. But all I know is it's going down with everything else. We couldn't. There it is. Oh, geez. Don't. You didn't, could you? Oh, my God.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The Ulta Desert is very, very picturesque. Imagine glaciers carving through the butte, the sandstone.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But rock formations.

[Leo Laporte]

What day was that? Oh, April 2nd. It was Liberation Day. Got it. Also with this Micah Sargent filling in for Alex Lindsay. Hi, Micah.

[Micah Sargent]

Hello, Leo. Hello.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice to see you.

[Micah Sargent]

Good to see you as well, of course.

[Leo Laporte]

Micah Regular on iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and Tech News Weekly. And we are going to do, you and I are going to do something different for WWDC June 9th. Yeah. We are so skittish now about getting pulled down. Well, first it was just YouTube. So what we do, what we've always done, we've done for decades now, is kind of talk over the event, annotating it, if you will, as they speak, but also showing their video on the screen. But Apple took us down gave US strikes on YouTube for doing that. So we stopped doing it on YouTube, and last time we did it, Twitch did it. So while I think we're safe on X, Kik, Facebook, LinkedIn, who knows? So what we're gonna do is we're gonna do it, but we're gonna do it in private. We're gonna do it on the Discord Channel, which gives us two advantages. One, Apple's not a club member. I don't think Apple's lawyer probably isn't. But two, we can involve you. You'll get to participate, so that's good. We'll get to get the comments from something Alex has been doing for years, so that'll be a lot of fun. June 9th for WWDC. Looking forward to it. Plus, you and I don't get to work together very often, so it's nice. Is Kik safe for keynotes? Somebody named 60fps in Kik says, yes, I would expect so. I mean, obviously the story of the week is gonna be these tariffs. Right now it's a 54% tariff. There's threats of it going to 104%. Actually, maybe it is 104. I don't know. I don't have the latest on China.

[Andy Ihnatko]

There's been a threat from China with counterterroriffs, and then a threat from Trump saying, well, guess what, bubby? Your tariffs got doubled today on April 8.

[Leo Laporte]

Which cost in Apple's market cap, $640 billion in the first three days. I think Apple and the market in general are recovering a little bit because people seeing it as buying opportunity, probably.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. I think bank of America has put the rebound buy at like 250 a share, and it's not there yet. I think I also saw another financial report that said that Apple was really one of only three tech companies that got hit super, super hard.

[Leo Laporte]

They really did.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So maybe that doesn't mean an overall lack of confidence. Maybe it's just that, okay, we're afraid of these three, and then when things get a little less unpredictable, we'll buy back in.

[Leo Laporte]

It makes sense, though. Apple. Despite the fact that, well, Apple thought wisely. Oh, well, we'll make our phones in other places like Vietnam and India and Brazil, all of which got equally massive tariffs.

[Jason Snell]

Well, not. Not equally, though, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Almost equally.

[Jason Snell]

That's one of the stories here. Is. Is like Brazil's is. Is, I think, fairly low. But they make those phones in Brazil from Brazilian market. So you have this question of, like, what's more expensive to ship, pay whatever duty you need to in Brazil and ship the Brazilian phones to the U.S. likewise, India is not as bad as China, but Vietnam is bad.

[Leo Laporte]

Like Vietnam's where the laptops are made right now.

[Jason Snell]

So there's a lot of, a lot of consternation going on there. I think that's definitely one. Wall Street Journal already reported that one of Apple's first things that it was doing was redirecting iPhone. Because you can think about it like the phones that were meant to be shipped to the US can be shipped elsewhere and you can replace some of those with phones that were built in India or Brazil.

[Leo Laporte]

It's complicated though, because the parts almost all come from China, Right?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's complicated.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

And chips are, you know, chips seem to be right now at least carved out. So, you know, TSMC doesn't have to pay the Taiwanese tariffs on the chips it sells. Apple. According to the Times of India, Apple flew five flights full of iPhones from India and China in three days trying to beat the tariffs.

[Andy Ihnatko]

This is, oddly enough, one of the things that Apple has been praised for is their ability to do basically just in time, manufacturing. They don't keep warehouses full of unsold product. They manufacture what they need to sell in the immediate future. But now that means that no, we don't have millions, we don't have six months worth of product landed right now. We have maybe, I don't know what it is, but it's much. It's not a comfortable number. So they're going to have to start to source to give them at least enough room to not make decision about pricing and their reaction a week after the tariffs are put in. But to make that decision a month or two months or three months when things seem to have settled down a little bit. But yeah, the speculation is all over the map as to how prices are going to be affected once Apple can no longer sell stock that's already been landed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And of course, it's not just Apple. Nintendo stopped its sale of the new Switch.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Until it settles out. Jaguar and Land Rover have stopped shipping cars to the United States. Other manufacturers expect to do something similar. The good news is we can just build all of those here in the US and so this is all going to be a net positive.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, I mean, I think we're all supposed to, we're all should pitch in, just like, you know, World War II when everybody was playing their victory gardens. You'll be getting in the mail, some wiring, a few chips and a section of a board. If everybody could just like Do a little bit. All they're asking for is do a little bit of soldering. May manufacture maybe 11 VLSI Very Large Scale integrated systems on chips. Not a whole lot, just like 10 or 11. You can do it on the. Knock it off in a couple of weekends. We just pull together and support.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody does their part.

[Jason Snell]

Good.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Fight war.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple customers, I imagine the customers of a lot of things rushing to the stores. They say it's like Christmas at the Apple store buying iPhones before they're easy.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

I know some people who work in Apple retail who say that there is a lot of sale going on right now. Like literally they have their targets of how many phones they want to sell in a day and they're selling like two or three times as many per day just on iPhones and presumably other products too. So there's definitely. Remember how we talked about how Covid kicked off a buying cycle for Apple of iPads and Macs and all of that because people were at home. Feels like we got a tariff buying cycle here. Which is going to lead to some very interesting comments when they do their quarterly results where they're like oh man, we sold so many iPhones. Okay, that's the good news. Here's the bad news. Right. Like we'll see. But they are. A lot of people are jumping on it. Which I think is funny because I'm not sure Apple's going to do price increases for existing products. They don't want to. They never want to. It's very rare overseas when there are major currency fluctuations. Even then when they do a repricing of an existing product, it's. It's rare. It's more of an exception than a rule. So I don't think that's what they want to do here. They've got some margin to play with. They've got some stuff that they put in the channel that they brought over on all those flights. So they've got some of that going on. And then my guess is that that as new products come out they will all be priced higher. That's. That's my gut feeling about it is, is that they will do and they might even do that thing that they did with the iPhone 15 Pro Max didn't raise the price but they dropped the lowest spec off so that in the end you couldn't buy at 1099 Pro Max anymore. For with 128 you had to buy the 1199 one with 256 or 256 and 512. Whatever. You see my Point, I think that that is part of what the strategy is. They may give back some margin in the short run, especially right now, but I don't like in the long run.

[Leo Laporte]

They give margin to give back all of it though, do they?

[Jason Snell]

Well, I mean, their hardware margins are like 40, almost 40%. There is probably a limit. I mean, culturally, they're not going to give up their profit margins long term. That's why they are the most profitable company in the world. Right. But in the short run, it when things are uneasy and they don't have new products, they may be able to stave off like repricing everything in their product line now. But at some point, you know, if they can hold out, I think what they'd probably prefer is to wait until they release new products at new price points. We'll see if they can afford that. Also do, I mean, waiting game seems to be the best game to play right now to me, because if you can, would you want to make a permanent irrevocable strategy decision right now about this policy? You know, because it may be different tomorrow or later today or in a week or in a month. So I think that, I think that part of Apple's conservatism about things like pricing kind of kicks in here and they're like, we'll load up the market by bringing in all those airplanes full of devices and we're going to move some play the shell game where we're like, take those phones from India, bring them over here, but those phones from China, send them to India, you know, we'll do this whole thing going on there and then, you know, see what happens while planning in the background for, you know, my guess is price increases as. So like the new MacBook Pro comes out, the new iPhone comes out, the new iPad comes out all this fall. I would look, if you look at the difference in buying power from 2020 to 2025, you know, everything should be more expensive than it is. And Apple holds those low prices like a MacBook Air shouldn't be 999 because in terms of, of what it cost at 999 in 2020 today, it would cost like 1200 bucks. And they've held the line there. Right. So between inflation and tariffs, yeah, I do expect that they'll raise prices, but I don't think it's going to be if they can help it. I don't think they're going to do it next week or next month. I think they would rather just say, here is the new iPhone. And yeah, it costs 1199.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. I just hope that they don't. Apple, Apple as well as every other industry, I hope that they don't normalize the tariffs that they don't make, that they don't say, oh well, guess what, this phone, six months from now, this new phone costs eleven hundred dollars. We were planning on having a cost nine hundred dollars, but need to know that it's now cost $1,100. I think that the American public needs to be aware of you are paying $200 that you don't need to be paying for this, that there is a $200 tax that's being applied to this that is unnecessary. It's not that the phone has just gone up. It's not that the cost of manufacturing has gone up. It's not that they're adding $200 worth of features or $200 worth of fit and finish or $200 worth of support. You are paying an unnecessary $200 tax. I hope that we don't get normalized to this and simply say, oh well, this is just what things cost right now because it's artificial.

[Leo Laporte]

Car manufacturers are going to do because they have stickers in the window. So they're going to add a line that says import fees. So be very clear, if you go up to the gas tank, at least in California, they always break down. And by the way, the taxes on this are adding 80 cents to your gallon.

[Micah Sargent]

Same here in Oregon, right there on the sticker and a different color so it stands out.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't want people to think they're charging that much or they're even making that much. Apple insiders reporting that they saw a report last night from ubs, a big bank and of course investment bank, saying that Apple will probably offer smaller price hikes instead of, for instance, a $2,300 iPhone 16 Pro Max with 1 terabyte, it'll be closer to $2,000. Okay, big deal this. They also point out this only accounts for tariffs at 54%. Tomorrow the putative 104% tariffs go into effect. So, yeah, it's so unclear what's going to happen.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And we should mention that this is, I'm going to quote, hunt for it offtober, like, this is going to get out of hand. This is going to get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it. The Chinese trade Minister said, quote, that China intends to, quote, fight to the end, unquote, against the counter to Trump's counter threat, like bring it there. They're like Bring it on, dude. Where we've been chipping, we've had for the. China has had for the past many years the idea that we would like to get our citizens to buy fewer imported imported goods. We want the. We want Huawei to become the de facto phone supplier. Phone supplier for all of China. We want them to be running an operating system that was developed in China. We want them running computers and servers that were built in China. This works towards. It's not like they're, they're. It's not that they're going to have a problem with an. An in swelling of people saying, but we want an iPhone. We can't get an iPhone. Why are our iPhones costing so much money now? They'll say, oh, well, gosh. Well, these are. These Huawei phones are pretty nice. Wow, look at the camera array. That's really swell.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course, China, the Chinese market's always been kind of hot and cold for Apple anyway.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Ming Chi, it's getting worse and worse. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Ming Chi Kuo said that Apple doesn't raise its prices. Its overall gross profit margin would face a significant drop of 8 and a half to 9%. I think that's out of date.

[Jason Snell]

Now he's doing math.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. He did say there are five ways Apple can reduce the impact of the tariffs. And by the way, I can't read Chinese, so I'm. I'm quoting the article in MacRumors. Thank you, MacRumors. Apple can boost iPhone production in India.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

If India can secure trade tariff exemptions through new trading agreements. So Apple's gonna be eyeing. The problem is they have to build factories. So they've got factories now. And where? Vietnam, India, Brazil and China.

[Jason Snell]

Malaysia.

[Leo Laporte]

Malaysia. That's right.

[Jason Snell]

Thailand. They have been since especially Covid, they have been diversifying their manufacturing. The problem is, like you said, it takes years. It takes years to stand up a factory. And what is their capacity really? Like, that's the. In the background. Apple's been doing this, but they've got a, they got a. You know, there's a limit to what they can do playing that shell game. And you also don't know what the tariff is going to be because some of those countries that they move to, like, everybody in American manufacturing was like, ah, let's go to Vietnam. That gives us a Bulwark, you know, against 49 China. And they got a 49% tariff. So it's like, okay, never mind, forget it.

[Leo Laporte]

This is, of course, the thing business hates is uncertainty. Market hates is uncertainty. It's hard to plan.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, if we knew it's going to be this, Apple would plan and they could, you know, they could do stuff, but it's just completely unknown. Quo says they can raise prices. Of course.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And the reason I think this hit Apple hardest is because iPhones are half of Apple's revenue. Right, of course.

[Jason Snell]

But, but all of Apple's revenue is assembled outside the US in countries with high tariffs. But the iPhone is what service focused on.

[Leo Laporte]

Services are done right here in the U.S. yeah.

[Jason Snell]

There are no tariffs on service. Don't tell anybody.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Billion dollars of that. Oh well, yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And margins on tariffs are great, but you still have your hardware margins and I think that's the, that's, I mean he's, he's right. They can eat margin for a little while. There is a limit to, to their appetite for eating margin. Like I said, it's a cultural thing. Cutting margin is repelled in Apple's culture. Like a virus. Like it is. They seriously, they didn't get where they are by not having huge margins. They make huge margins. That's Apple's business. They, they don't play in areas where they can't make huge profits selling products. That's what they do. They think the while but not a.

[Leo Laporte]

Long time is going to be the perfectly predictable upshot of this is going to be we as users are not going to upgrade as often. We're not going to buy as much stuff.

[Jason Snell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple's in a tough position because unfortunately they're, all of their hardware is so good and so overpowered, there isn't much incentive to upgrade.

[Jason Snell]

You could, you can afford to wait. And also their, their low end stuff is great too. So another side effect of this is going to be, I think in the long run, assuming prices go up, that they're going to sell more MacBook Airs and a few, and some fewer MacBook Pros. They're going to sell more iPhone 16s or 16es and a few fewer Pro Maxs and pros and you'll see some. If they raise prices, you will get some downward pressure and the buying cycle will extend. I think both of those things will happen. And the fact is like that 16 came out and we're like, you know, it's nice. I was just with family buying new iPhones at an Apple store. We were taking a family trip and you know, it's one of those things. It's like, well, Jason's here, let's all go to the Apple Store. And I'm thinking, oh God, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Don'T don't put me to work.

[Jason Snell]

That's they did. I was literally ping ponging between two different tables as they would do that. Over here, Jason. Over here. Come over, over here.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm going to the iPhone.

[Jason Snell]

Did you meet me? But and I did tell my, my mother in law since she holds on her last phone was an iPhone SE first generation. Right. So I would like spring for the 16. Don't just get the 16E. Spring for the 16. You're going to keep this phone. You're 80. You may keep this phone the rest of your life. Just get the good phone. Okay. Get the better phone than the E. But the fact is that 16E, it's pretty nice. It is pretty nice. And if everything's in a raise, I think that it becomes more attractive to us buyers for sure.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. And the other thing part of this, what I was thinking about yesterday is that like every company but Apple particularly prides itself on thinking way, way in advance. And right now they've got a design, they've got design imperatives for like the iPhone 20 and the iPhone 19, the iPhone 21. Now that as we said before, one of the biggest difficulties of this for corporations is uncertainty. You can make a plan for. Here is where we want to be in five years. Here is the set of AR wearable glasses that we want to be selling in five or six years time. Here are the features that we want to deliver on the new iPhone like in five years time. But if you don't know what it's going to cost you to bring these devices into the United States, does that mean that now there have to be discussions inside Apple that we have to delete this feature, this feature and this feature from the iPhone 19 or the iPhone 20 or. We would want to think harder. We were already kind of on the bubble about whether we wanted to ship AR glasses now that we don't know if we can meet a price point that we thought was absolutely imperative. Should we just table that for another couple of years and come back to it? It's hard to know what the total sum effect of this tariff war is going to be. And of course we're talking about app because this is an Apple podcast. But this is happening to every store, every company. One of my favorite YouTubers is Baumgartner Restoration. He restores paintings and he did like a YouTube short or an Instagram video saying that today, like just today he got like contacts from all of his suppliers saying that the Belgian linen that he buys to like do interfacing things like that, that's going up 50%. The paints that he uses are going to go up 30. Not like in the future, but today, right now. So a lot of his expenses have gone up 30 to 50%. And now he has to decide, am I going to have to, you know, how are my customers going to respond to that? So we're talking. Just thank you for giving me a moment to make sure that we point out that this is going to hurt little people, individuals, small companies, in a way that could affect their actual survival. And it's correct for us to, in this context, also talk about, yes, Apple, how they're going to, what are they going to, what are they going to be doing in five years time? They will be around, they will weather this. But I wanted to say that before.

[Jason Snell]

I get back to Apple, our friend, friend of the show, Glenn Fleischman, he did a book project and it was printed in Canada and he had to do a mass sell off with big discounts to get those out and clear because of tariffs. Right. Because he could not afford to take a loss on those books sitting in a warehouse in Canada because that's where he happened to have them printed. And that's the thing, I think, yes, there's a huge human toll. It's going to, you're going to see it in small businesses first, then you will see it move up the chain. It's going to affect a lot of people. The fact is, and I know there are people out there who will say, and this is the argument, right? It's like, well, serves them right for not sourcing things from the United States. The problem with that is a lot of stuff, we don't make it anymore. We don't do it anymore. Or what it costs is so much that it would change the product price and then you wouldn't sell any product because somebody would buy it cheaper on Amazon coming from China anyway. And so the, the challenge here is that I think you will see people try to say, are there things I could do in the United States? But the balance is still the same, which is a lot of this stuff. Even if you can find an American supplier for it, it's going to cost a lot more than what you did. Because everybody's business assumptions are based on decades of relatively free international trade. And if it's over, it's going to take years for everybody to recalibrate and it's going to be ugly.

[Leo Laporte]

We have, you know, this mirrors our experience with the Internet. Everybody thought everything was free on the Internet. We've Had a kind of rude awakening that it isn't. None of it was free and it was monetized by selling our information to advertisers. We've been living in a relatively free trade system for a century. Elon posted. You know, Elon is totally pro free trade, like zero tariffs, which is bringing him into a little conflict with the White House. He posted a Milton Friedman video here. I'll just play the end of it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil. People who don't speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met. When you go down the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil. There was no commissar sending out offices from. Sending out orders from some central office. It was a magic of the price system, the impersonal operation of prices and free trade.

[Leo Laporte]

And I'm not a Milton Friedman fan by any stretch of the imagination, but he's absolutely right. The costs of goods were kept way down by the fact that we have free trade. And we are now going to be paying the real price, I guess, in effect, plus a little bit of backsheesh for the government. And it's going to cause a great change, just as it has caused great disruption on the Internet and it's going to take a while to shake out.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And also quickly, keep in mind that even stuff that you think, oh, well, a company like Google, company like Facebook, a company like Apple and creating its services, well, that's not going to be affected that much because they're just services. Well, they run on server servers, and servers are hardware that are also not manufactured.

[Leo Laporte]

It's turtles all the way down. Yeah.

[Micah Sargent]

Because they also have employees who need to be able to survive and they also need to attract talent. And so then they're going to need to offer more money to them. And so then the money needs to go there.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just going to hurt everybody. Our network, we're just waiting for advertisers to start canceling.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And I said to Lisa, well, don't worry, because they're all software companies. They're not selling physical goods. She said, yeah, but the people they're selling their services to are.

[Jason Snell]

Are selling the physical goods. That's why people, a lot of people are scratching their heads about Meta having problems. And it's like Meta's business is advertising and a lot of it is advertising goods that are from, you know, from other countries and imported and sold to Americans and like that business is going to get blown up. I wonder about like the impact of Amazon is a great example where so I mean Amazon viewed one way, Amazon is a giant pipe from China to the United States and then a truck takes it out of the pipe and puts it in your front, at your front door. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Like so there was a, there was a diminish miss exemption for goods under I think it was $800 which basically facilitated that trade with Temu and Alibaba and she in and all the Chinese manufacturers via Amazon among others that de minimis exemption was lifted. They pay a tariff on the first dollar. So this is, that's a dramatic change. All that cheap fast fashion people were buying, right? Not gonna be cheap.

[Jason Snell]

A lot of cheap tech too. A lot of cheap tech where there's little gadgets that you could get like I don't know the provenance of Andy's pick of the week from last week, but that little brilliant USB gadget that shows you, has a screen and it shows you how much power is passing through and all of that. Like that's awesome. That is almost certainly from a standard Chinese chipset put together by a no name company in China. I don't know that for sure but I'm just going to guess stuff like that that you can get on Amazon and you look, I looked when Andy was talking about his pick and it's like it costs almost nothing. It's like 10 bucks or something. And you know those, all that stuff's going to get blown up now maybe, yeah, maybe that will just cost 20 bucks going forward. But like this is the whole idea. That may not seem like a lot but it's a, it is a doubling in price and if every price doubles, that's bad. That's real bad. I already talk to people all the time already before any of this who I keep hearing from people who say you go to the grocery store and it and your bill is enormous and you didn't buy anything. And like that is kind of where we already are. Some might argue that that is a situation that facilitated the, the election of Donald Trump. And folks, the tariffs are not going to make that better.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a regressive tax as well, which is problematic because you know Donald Trump and his ilk can afford to pay twice as much. They've got surplus funds. But there are a lot of people.

[Micah Sargent]

Who are using things like Klarna to be able to pay for Their groceries.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Buy now, pay later for that burrito. Right.

[Micah Sargent]

Just to buy their groceries.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It's devastating.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, one of the other interesting things that came out I think was the Financial Times that got confirmation from the White House that Apple did not get any carve outs whatsoever.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm so surprised. What happened to Cook's diplomacy and his million doll that he gave to the inauguration where?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, Trump's, Trump's birthday parade, military parade is coming up in June. So maybe he's looking for another million bucks for that.

[Jason Snell]

See, what I was going to say is imagine how much worse it would be if they didn't give him a million dollars for his inauguration. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean in the past Tim Cook has managed to avoid all of this through diplomacy.

[Jason Snell]

I think that is, I mean I did a piece that will be on Mackerel tomorrow, but I was trying to come up with a list like Ming Chi Kuo of like ways Apple can deal with this. And number one on their priority list list is working the refs. It really is, it is, it is connections in the White House talking to Trump, it's finding ways. Because what Apple has in its favor is it is a great American company that dominates the world, that is powerful, that is good for the usa. And if you. And it's a weird situation to have the President of the United States beating up its own companies in the name of making America great again. So they have that on their side and then they have to have the relationships and they did this the last time, it's going to be harder this time because this is a very different Trump administration. I think we're all seeing that. But like I do think that fundamentally Apple does have the optics of, of favoring Samsung over Apple, for example, or laying waste to one of these great American companies so that it is, it is faltering and it's a perception in the economy. So I think that they have to work the reps and they have to, I don't know what form that takes. I don't know if that is carve outs for, for different parts of what they're doing or if it's facilitating conversations between the US and other countries to get deals involved because I know they keep vacillating between deals and no deals for this. But like in the end what politicians want, all politicians, is a win. They want to look good. And you could say, and you could use logic, which is a dangerous thing to do right now with anything that's going on. You can lose logic and say, well, wait a Second, why is it a win if they negotiate a resolution to the problem they themselves created? And all I would say is that's politics.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

So I think Apple has to work the refs, and they have been successful in the past. And that is one reason why you see Tim Cook show up at White House stuff, is because they are trying very hard to have a good relationship with the people who might be able to lessen their pain.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But it is a very, very dangerous game because let's step back for one moment and take a look at what the Trump administration is doing to education. They are basically saying, yeah, I know that we're supposed to give you half a billion dollars for your public school system, but we're gonna withhold that unless you agree to make ideological changes that we wish to inflict upon the school system. You're either in or you're out. If you are gonna support us in our ideological campaign, you can have the money that you're supposed to get. Otherwise, we're going to tie this up for years and years and years. Who's to say that that's not the game that the administration is playing with companies that, well, you thought that just because you gave me a million dollars and you had a chicken club sandwich at my resort a couple times with me that I'm going to cut you some slack. No, we are upset. We need to see from you that you support us not only politically, not only economically, but also ideologically, that if you don't want these tariffs to be double what they are right now. Here is a list of some apps that we would like to not have on the App Store anymore. Here's. You know how you do that DEI special band every June. We want you to stop doing that or stop. Or at least stop promoting it so much. And, you know, come back for another lunch and we'll talk about it after we see that you are supporting us because we want friends. We don't want enemies here. Why would we help our enemies? So this is part of that larger conversation about how there is almost complete uncertainty and fear, and uncertainty always plays into the hands of tyrants. I'm not saying that anybody's a tyrant here, but historically speaking, you don't hold on to power outside of the law by following rules and allowing people to make free choices. You have to put the pressure on them, put the handcuffs on them, put the hurt on them. And this administration has shown that it's very, very happy putting the hurt on anybody, including hospitals, including people who just want their Social Security benefits. People who are in this country legally, we'll put the hurt on them if ideologically this is a sound move for us to make. That's what scares the hell out of me about all of this.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there you have it. I don't know if there's anything more to say about it. Well said, Andy. We are entering into unknown territory.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they burned the ships. I'm thinking there's no return, but we shall see.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Second hunt, Red October. I almost made a third. We are pilgrims in an unholy land.

[Jason Snell]

You fool. You've murdered us.

[Leo Laporte]

That one would work, actually. Jason Calacanis, who is at some degrees has connections, let's say. I don't know if he's a friend of the administration, but certainly has connections. On Sunday, was on Twitter and said, don't worry, Trump is sensitive to public opinion and will lift to the tariffs. There has been no evidence of that, although I think the market really believes it, which is why it keeps struggling to.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They are applying logic that is their underling. That's how they undermine themselves.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what it really feels like at this point between China and the US is two bullies lined up nose to nose and we're going to be in a fight.

[Micah Sargent]

It's chicken, right?

[Leo Laporte]

It's chicken. I don't know if anybody's going to.

[Micah Sargent]

But no one's trying to get out of the way.

[Leo Laporte]

And on that cheery note, let us take a break. There are other things to talk about and we shall get to those in just a bit, including by the way, I'm very happy to say, for return after a two week absence of the Vision Pro segment. Just around the corner, Andy Inocco, Jason Snell, Micah Sargent filling in for Alex Lindsay. Great to have all three of you. Our show today brought to you by 1Password, a name I know. You know, I've got a rhetorical question about your security situation at work right now. This is for the, for the IT department, the security folks, the cybersecurity folks. Do your end users, you know, the employees always work on company owned devices. Do they stick with IT approved apps? They never vary, they never bring in their phone or their laptop, right? Wrong. So how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all those BYOD unmanaged apps and devices? Well, thank goodness there's one password to the rescue. They have an answer called extended access management. 1Password, extended access Management helps you secure every sign in for every app on every device because it solves the problem. Traditional IAM and MDM can't touch. If you imagine your company security like the quad of a college campus, you got your nice brick paths between the ivy covered buildings, the company owned devices, the IT approved apps, the managed employee identities. But then there are what they call the desire paths, the paths people actually use. The shortest paths between buildings worn through the grass, the muddy little paths. Those are the unmanaged devices, the shadow IT apps, the non employee identities. Like contractors, most security tools only work on those happy brick paths. But many, many if not most security problems occur on the little muddy shortcuts. 1 password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control and ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy and every App is visible. 1Password ISO 2S27 001 certified Very good. You know it's secure. With regular third party audits, it exceeds the standards set by all the authorities. Is a leader in security. It's security for the way we work today. Now generally available to companies that use Okta and Microsoft Entra and they are in beta for Google Workspace customers. Secure every app, device, every identity, even the unmanaged [e-mail] MacBreakalllower case that's 1p a s s w-o r d.com MacBreak we thank them so much for their support of Mac Break weekly. You support us too when you use that address. 1Password.com MacBreak The TikTok. The TikTok. Oh my God.

[Jason Snell]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just. The TikTok saga continues another 75 days. The President extended it. Apple has now been given official permission by the Attorney General Pam Bondi to keep the app in the App Store. Another letter to Google and Apple, this one from Friday requesting the company follow. Oh, now it's a request the new executive order and keep the apps in the store.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, that was super important because all they had going was the word of the administration saying yeah, this law is absolutely in effect. It stands. The penalties, which are enormous, absolutely stand. We have just agreed on a whim that we are not going to enforce it. We absolutely pinky swear we are not going to enforce it. And I'm surprised that Google And Apple put TikTok back on the stores on that basis. But now hopefully this letter basically says that, yeah, look, the Attorney General has said you have permission to do this. It's unlikely now. They're safe and it's amazing that people were allowed to download the app. Even before that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But isn't it crazy the number of people who are supposed. That are supposedly like trying to make a move on it, like Amazon is not surprising. But you have like youtubers who are trying to.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good way to get publicity, right?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, but it's. It's very weird.

[Leo Laporte]

It's very. It's very silly. Again, Jason Calacanis thought that Amazon was. Had the inside track. I think Oracle has the inside track. But we shall see.

[Micah Sargent]

I heard the opposite about Amazon. That the administration was not interested in.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Who knows? You know, it's all a great mystery.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And now there are. The administration's also saying that they basically had a deal for this for a US sale pretty much locked up until the tariff war came in. And that scotched the entire thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well China wants. Yeah. And that. And I hate even bringing this up, but Trump says we can make a deal with China if they let us have TikTok which makes. That's such a de minimis. There's such a tiny part anyway. I don't.

[Micah Sargent]

Also, isn't the whole. Yeah. The whole agreement here that it's just leasing the algorithm too? Does that not factor into. So we talked about this on Tech News Weekly. With Amazon being at the forefront of it and the idea that it would be mostly owned by the US but that the algorithm would just be leased. That doesn't really solve for the bigger initial concern with the algorithm. It's all very, very.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a very. Yeah, thank you. I don't know what to say about it anymore.

[Micah Sargent]

Hey.

[Leo Laporte]

But there is a victory for Apple. Congratulations in England. Remember this is actually a fascinating story. For a long time Apple couldn't say anything about a request by the English government, the British government, to remove end to end encryption not just in the UK but everywhere. Apple said. Well, no. In fact, not only. Well, Apple didn't say anything, but they did withdraw advanced data protection from the UK which everybody saw as a confirmation. And then we heard and we talked about it. I think last week that there was going to be a court hearing again, a secret court hearing. Apparently the secret court has now ruled against Yvette Cooper, who is the English regulator on Apple encryption. This is from the Telegraph. The Telegraph and nine other organizations successfully challenged an attempt to keep the secret. The details of Yvette Cooper's legal battle with an Apple. I guess in England the name Yvette Cooper is well known. It's not here in the US So I apologize to her American. I don't know who she is. Apple's challenging a technical capability notice. Now we know it's official. Issued by the Home Secretary. Is she the Home Secretary? Maybe that's it.

[Jason Snell]

Yes, she's the Home Secretary.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, there we go. Demanding that the tech giant break the advanced data protection feature that encrypts iPhone backups, Lawyers for the Home Secretary had applied for a gag order which would have prevented the bare details of the case from being made public. They augured revealing details would be damaging both to public interest. I'm not sure how that is. And national security. Well, I guess if it damages national security, it damages us all anyway. On Monday, the Lord Justice, President of the investigatory Powers Tribunal, dismissed the Home Secretary's application, saying, no, you don't get total secrecy. So now we know a lot more than we did before. We know, for instance, it's true that they did demand that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, the judgment is something like I've got in front of me right now. It's like nine pages long. And basically the judge patiently says that we acknowledge that it is possible for the claimant to correctly insist upon secrecy, but open justice is a very, very important principle, and you have not demonstrated the harm that will happen if this happened openly. It's also a murderer's row list of people who have, like, objected to this, to this action of decrypting icloud content, news providers, politicians on both sides of the. Both sides of the ocean, essentially citing that there is enormous amount of interest in people who are affected parties who want observation and participation in this process, and they will be denied participation in the process if this is not done openly. So that's also a timeline of all the actions that were taken. So it's good stuff. They lost, lost, lost at this point.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But Apple does have to take a little heat because it turns out it was Apple's fault that the editor in chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to that, not war plans signal messaging group. It was all the iPhone's fault.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, maybe. I think probably it has the ring of just being so. It does feel kind of dumb enough to be true.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think everybody in this conversation and listening have the same reaction, which is like, oh, come on, you're blaming the iPhones. Oh, they're saying that data detectors incorrectly flagged a phone number as an updated phone number or something and changed it. Like, yeah, that's happened to me like 11 times.

[Jason Snell]

Exactly.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Every time I can read the article before.

[Jason Snell]

The idea here is during. During the campaign, there was somebody who was forwarded a request from Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic to. For a comment. And a press officer in the communications group sent it to the guy who became national security adviser for him to comment. And therefore that person, the press, the communications person, sent texts containing Jeffrey Goldberg's phone number to Waltz. And Waltz, Waltz's iPhone, apparently was like, hey, communication person has a new phone number. Do you want me to add that to the contact? Fast forward many months, and he's in Signal, trying to add people to his we're going to bomb the Houthies chat. And he puts in that guy's name because he's in the communications group at the White House, but it's Jeffrey Goldberg's phone number. And that's how Signal works. And it goes, that's. And I know there are people out there are like, oh, this is all just a scam. What's really happening here is that he secretly was passing information to Jeffrey Goldberg and he's just trying to hide it. And I guess that could be true, but this feels right. This feels like it's the answer, which is it was bad metadata, bad data in your contacts. And we've all seen that, like, hey, I'm going to be helpful. Would you like to update this information? And it could go wrong that easily. Of course, the answer is to not use your phone and use the secure systems that the government provides for you. But we already kind of blew past that one.

[Andy Ihnatko]

This is like saying, it's not my fault. I had. I had the Canadian invasion plans, like, in the backseat of my car. I went into Walmart for 10 minutes and someone broke in and stole them. It's the fault of the person who broke into the car. Say, okay, Doncus, why did you have a copy of the battle plans in the back seat of your car?

[Leo Laporte]

It's a car's fault. Read. It's the car's fault.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You're gone from like, being this much an idiot to this much an idiot, which is good progress, but you're still this much an idiot.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe Apple will change how that works. Although it is a convenience when it works properly.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, but this is. It's. It's. Isn't that, like one of the most the. The things that technology and computers and software does that makes. That can really get me super, super angry is when it makes a decision that it thinks is in my best interests without being really transparent about what it's doing doing for me. And B, allow me to quickly, like, verify and undo it. It was true when my autoreverse cassette player would continue to reverse and Reverse and reverse and it' Every time I say, wait a minute, why did you delete. Change all of the. All of the markdown formatting of this document into rich text. Oh, because we want it to look pretty. I didn't ask you to do that. Because now I can't export this into the, into the next app.

[Leo Laporte]

She's trying to be helpful. Andy, you've got to accept help from.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Trust me, this is going to be better.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll just, Just trust us. We know what's best for you. EU will issue. Speaking of the eu, Apple's Digital Markets act antitrust ruling within weeks. This could go very badly. They could charge them as much as. This could be bad. They could charge as much as, I understand, as 10% of their global revenue.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, I think one of the EU ministers, though, did say that the point of these laws isn't to. We're not like a corrupt sheriff running a speed trap trying to generate revenue with speeding tickets. We want them to do the right thing. So it's more about enforcement than collecting penalties. If we will collect huge penalties, if we think that's the only way that we can get them to comply. But they've already indicated, both in this response and also earlier in kind of response of like, once the US started making ideas that, well, this is like a. Putting. Putting huge, huge penalties against US companies is an attack on US economy and we won't stand for it. They've already indicated that we might, might not be terribly interested in levying like $900 million penalties as we might have been a couple of years ago.

[Leo Laporte]

So, you know, if you ask for 10 million, Apple goes, yeah, fine, whatever. Yeah, so you got, you got to ask for enough to make it hurt.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Most of the problem is that, like, I admit that I was pretty ignorant about these kind of regulators and government agencies, both US and international, how they work. I was pretty ignorant until like six or seven years ago. And one of the first things that I learned that was like a solid gold fact is that they just want to have a win. And so they're not like, we have the power to bring you to your knees and hear the lamentation of your spouses and your children. Like, no, we want to make sure that you respect that we have these laws. We want to end this in a way that we feel as though we came out with a win and you felt a little bit of pain. That's why, although it's really dramatic, what the Department of Justice is proposing to do against Google for its first of two to Three major antitrust violations. It's more likely to end with a negotiated settlement, just like the Microsoft case did 25 years ago. That they want a win. They don't want a total win. After 15 years of litigation, they would much rather negotiate something that can wrap this up in the next 19 months that can say yes. See, we have. Our enforcement has some teeth. We strictly. We seriously inconvenience this company. It's not necessary for them to destroy a company with huge fines or by breaking them up. And that's probably what's going to happen here.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's hope. Let's hope not. I don't know. I don't. I don't really.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mean, I hope that I don't know what a lot of these laws are. Laws I really enforce. I really support so.

[Leo Laporte]

Because they're doing it where we. Our government doesn't really care.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So Visa is offering Apple $100 million. Maybe this will offset the fine. Apple, as you know, has kind of been like unhappy with Goldman Sachs over the Apple card. Maybe looking, maybe shopping it. Visa says we'll take over the credit card from MasterCard. It's a MasterCard right now and we'll give you some money now. I don't know if Visa would manage the whole thing. I think they just. The Apple card is up for grabs.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. They find a partner.

[Leo Laporte]

They find a partner.

[Jason Snell]

I think Goldman Sachs is getting out of Consumer.

[Leo Laporte]

Consumer. They lost so much money.

[Jason Snell]

It's not really about Apple dumping them. It's about them saying, we're not going to be in this business anymore. You need to find a new partner.

[Leo Laporte]

American Express also wants it, I think, but obviously it would be Visa if Amex gets it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, everyone's scooped for it.

[Leo Laporte]

Apparently Visa offered a similar payment to Costco, which is why you can't use a MasterCard at Costco. So it'll be interesting. You know, there's a bidden war. That's a good thing, right?

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's very, very. You want cardholders that can afford Apple products and boys, that's going to be worth whatever check you have to write for it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's so weird that Goldman lost billions on this. It still baffles me that you could lose money owning a credit card. I mean, having a credit card, but, you know, not as a buyer, as a supplier. Obviously those of us who have credit cards know perfectly well you can lose money with a credit card.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah. Where does the loss come from? Is it all about just people not paying?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Where.

[Micah Sargent]

Where else do you lose this a.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Lot A lot of it is that there. The credit. Credit card companies have been in business for 30, 40, 50 years. They have made the first 10 years worth of mistakes. They understand how to run this business and run it profitable, run it profitably and sustainably. Apple was. I don't know if this is entirely the reason for it, but Apple was famously saying, oh, we're going to make a better credit card because we're going to dispense with these really stupid, antiquated rules. Like we're going to. Everyone gets the. Everyone gets their bill on the same day. It's not like there's going to be every single day we're going. And we're going to process buybacks and things like. And in this fashion because it's simpler and it's more straightforward. It's better for the consumer. And someone who has been in this business for 30, 40 years saying, yeah, if you're processing all the bills for all your customers on the same day, that means that all of the customer service problems you're going to have are also going to come to you on the same day, and you are not going to be able to handle them correctly. And that means that's going to be inefficient and that's going to cost you lots of money. On and on and on and on. Sometimes you can't reinvent a business because the status quo is how that business can be run. Unless you've figured out something that these companies have not figured out in the last 40 years, which is definitely possible because dogma is a thing and it's the dream killer. But sometimes the reason why I always come back to what an aeronautical engineer told me about airplane design saying, the reason why all airplanes look the same is that anytime somebody builds an airplane that does not look exactly like that, it crashes. So it's okay if we're not going to be innovative, we need this airplane not to crash.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, There's a thing called expertise. And when you start to abandon expertise, that's when you get sometimes into trouble.

[Micah Sargent]

Then why did an expert company decide to hop on board with Apple? Was it just the.

[Leo Laporte]

They were. They wanted to get in the consumer business. And that's true.

[Micah Sargent]

So I guess it was their first.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple has a lot of. Remember Apple was able to convince Singular to sell the iPhone when others said, no way, are you kidding?

[Andy Ihnatko]

And allow you to run a real web browser. No, we can't allow you to design the hardware. Verizon was saying, no, you have to build the hardware that we specify for you. And we're not going to make adaptations to our network so that voicemail works better. No, we're not going to do that. But singular, soon to become ATT again said that we want the business. We are lagging way behind Verizon and we think that having the hottest phone that's going to happen, that's been happening the past five years will help us. We feel as if we can get another 2% of subscribers. And it worked out very well for them. It was a very good trade.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, sort of. The CEO now retired, Randall Stephenson, did say at one point the worst thing we ever did was give Apple iPhone users unlimited data. That was a very expensive deal for them. So it kind of worked out. Kind of worked out. Let's take a break. We do have our Vision Pro segment. So John, Ashley, prepare the singers. Let them know they take them off the cigarette break. They gotta come in. Not now, not now. Oh, they were so such a hurry.

[Micah Sargent]

Maybe they're practicing.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that was the rehearsal. Okay, we're gonna take a break. And when we come back, the Vision Probe. That's Andy Anatko throwing in German words there for you, Mr. Andy Inocco from anatko.com of course, Jason Snell, six colors.com and our very own beloved Micah Sargent from iOS today. You and Rosemary are so great. I just love you two together and it's such a great show and it makes me very jealous of Rosemary. She's a lucky, lucky person. And Tech News Weekly every Thursday, which is actually a really good time for it because it's kind of in between our shows when news is still breaking and you get a lot of good scoops.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah. Talking to the journalists who are writing the stories at the time, which is great.

[Leo Laporte]

You and I were on a call with the folks at Spaceship this week. Our sponsor for this segment of MacBreak Weekly, Spaceship. Well, it starts as a domain registrar, but it's so much more. Here's a big question for you. Why do we assume simple and affordable should mean basic and only for beginners? Tech professionals want to save time and money, too, Right? That's the idea behind Spaceship. This is a really very slick, pioneering domain and web platform. So it also does that. It takes the pain out of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products. Things like shared hosting, virtual machines, business email alongside below market prices for domain registration and renewal. Spaceship has some pretty fresh ways to deliver simplicity. There's. They call it Unbox for connecting your Spaceship products to your domain and configuring it all in just a few steps. And if at any point it gets a little confusing, you got your very own AI assistant there, Alf ready to help you. From domain transfers to updating DNS records. You don't have to do it by hand anymore. ALF loves this stuff. You probably don't. You just tell alf what to do and alpha do it. It's very cool. And you'll see. You're seeing it right now if you're watching the video roadmap. I love it when companies do this. Which shows you what they're planning on and gives you a chance to suggest and vote on new features and products. Because Spaceship's kind of new. So it's a chance for you as a customer to get what you really need. I want to just show you real quickly. I'm going to register a domain name. You just start typing, by the way, which is really awesome. I'm in beast mode.

[Jason Snell]

Beast right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Beast mode. I'm thinking I want a domain name. Don't tariff me, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder if I can get the.com of that. Let me just do a quick search. Oh, look at that. $8.88. Don't tariff me bro.comor.org. so it's very easy to do that. But then the DNS is so simple. The connection is so simple. Look at the launchpad and all the different products, all the different ways they can make your life easier. I am very impressed. This is the next generation of domain registration and website hosting. They got VPSs too. That's brand new. Visit Spaceship.comTwit to discover exclusive deals on domains and more. Spaceship.comTwit Mike and I are big domain.

[Micah Sargent]

Registration and during the call I was able to set up an entire website with WordPress while we were chatting these. It was that easy to do in just minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

Like ten minutes it took you. I was so. I was like, what? You did that? What already? It's very nice and I love the easy WordPress turbo. Did you use the turbo? That's $3.88 a month. Very easy to set up a WordPress site. 88 cents a month for their space mail, their email. It's really good. Spaceship.comTwit we thank them so much for supporting Mac Break weekly. And now bring the singers on in. Come on in, gang. It's time for the Vision Pro Series.

[Jason Snell]

I'm Dr.

[Leo Laporte]

Vision Pro. We also have dancers. Apparently.

[Micah Sargent]

There'S a new app.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a new app. There's a Mac and Vision Pro app for managing Your vast immersive content. Do you have a lot of immersive content? Then you need the Apple Immersive Video Utility. Wow, what a name this is for.

[Jason Snell]

If Alex were here, he would say this is for people who are shooting and producing immersive video so that they can check it out on the Vision Pro as part of that process. So it's a professional production tool, hence.

[Micah Sargent]

The really boring name.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Ah, that's disappointing. I really. One of the things I would have bet money on before the Vision Pro was released is that out of the box, it will have some sort of a tool for finding, acquiring, managing, and watching immersive videos. Because it's the one thing that is a lot simpler to make than a real Vision Pro app. And it's one of the most fun.

[Micah Sargent]

Things about having four Vision Pro immersion.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't even have a YouTube app. Right.

[Micah Sargent]

Well, wouldn't it be cool? I know, I know we've had bad experiences with Apple making social media networks, but if there was a live, like.

[Leo Laporte]

A public library, you could call it Ping.

[Jason Snell]

Well, here's the thing, though. There hasn't been a way for people to make immersive video until the Blackmagic camera.

[Micah Sargent]

Oh, yes, that's different.

[Jason Snell]

DaVinci resolve. Like, I mean, yeah, there's Spatial gallery and there's 3D stuff that can be in various places, but the immersive stuff is. Has not been available outside of basically Apple. The true immersive at that level of quality. And so now they built a tool for this. And it's very clear because this is NAB stuff. Right. So it's, it's Blackmagic and they're doing DaVinci Resolve. That'll be able to support immersive video as well. That's out there. Now that they made that announcement. Apple is doing this. It's, it's, this is the thing Alex has been prepping us on this show for, for the last few months, which is the opportunity for people outside of Apple to really start experimenting with what immersive video could bring on the Vis Pro.

[Micah Sargent]

That's why he's not here, because this launched and he wanted to play with.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He's immersed in something.

[Leo Laporte]

He's been in NAB video.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's nab. I mean, these announcements are coming from nab. That's, that's, that's why these announcements.

[Leo Laporte]

You're right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Totally forgot.

[Jason Snell]

So that's, that's what's going on.

[Leo Laporte]

Good point. Yeah. All right, I'm gonna take you back in time to 2017, when Apple decided it wanted to open its global flagship store in the heart of Melbourne, Australia, marking its first store in the Southern hemisphere. It was a beautiful glass flagship. But the project quickly met resistance from the Victoria Government, Heritage Group's architects and local residents because they deemed it unacceptable and an irreversible detriment to the square. And it was actually denied. In 2019, they scrapped the proposal Apple gave us. They opened other stores in Australia, but nothing in Federation Square. Well, now you can see the Federation Square store and your vision pro back to life. Designer Flip Chudzinski has created a 3D walkthrough reconstructing the proposal. The revised proposal. You can see it in 3D. It's hosted at storeteller.de. an immersive look at the store's imagined layout with wallpapers, renderings. Aw, isn't that, isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? You see, it lives on, ladies and gentlemen. It would have been pretty kind of like the Fifth Avenue store, but they say that really wasn't a historic looking place.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I love this sort of thing because there's so many places where you can't really appreciate what would have been or what something that is no longer there unless you have the ability to really like walk through it and look where you want to look. Like there's a project to rebuild the Titanic digitally to the smallest, tiniest, correct detail.

[Leo Laporte]

And then I'd love to get on the Titanic and walk around. Yeah, and just take me.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And it's so detailed that like there was a blog post a couple years ago. It's a long, long project. Because if they're not just trying to make like a game model that, hey, for these four rooms that the game takes place in. No, they want the engine room. Correct. They want, if you decide to go into the waiter's quarters in one of the restaurants, they want to make sure that the coat hooks, that the hooks are correct, are exactly what they would have been or as close as they can determine where they would have been. So you can just basically free explore. And as a matter of fact, some museums are actually, it's complete enough that museums often like contract them to produce an animation or produce photos of what this place would have looked like for other projects. But yeah, that's the sort of thing that's going to sell a lot of headsets. The ability to. Again, what was the Library of Alexandra like? What was it like to watch this sporting event? Just a free roam and free walk through an area and just go Wherever you want to go, places that never existed or places that no longer exist. That's part of the potential AR and VR technology.

[Leo Laporte]

This really is. I mean, it's a Vision Pro segment, but I don't think it's anything to get excited about. Though it is probably not the case. There will be a Vision Pro 2 released within the year despite a rumor site it home. I'm looking at a very poor translation of it says Apple Overweight xr. I don't know what that means. That's an interesting translation and I don't know what it meant. So Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has said, no, there's not gonna be anything.

[Andy Ihnatko]

A lot of news sites and commentators have been discussing this rumor that, okay, this site is not known for lots of really great insights and predictions, and the ones who are willing to support it at all are willing to say, okay, well 2026. That kind of hooks up with what Gurman and other people have been saying about not like a reinvention or Pro 2, more of a now Vision Pro with updated M5M whatever processor. Meaning we're building the 2026 model with components we didn't have in 2024, but are functionally identical to the same thing.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, this, most of the rumor.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Sites say, seems I'm really excited about not buying this one. Almost as excited as I was about not buying the current one.

[Leo Laporte]

I can promise you I'm not buying in this one. Let's see what else. Vision Pro will get a Vision OS 2.4 update this month. Have you been playing with that, Jason?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's been out there for a while. That's the thing that enables the Apple Watch, or Apple Watch, like Vision Pro app on the iPhone. And the Spatial Gallery is now out there. You know, it's been in beta. It's a funny thing too, because I hear. I often hear podcasters complaining about like, I can't believe they have haven't updated the Spatial Gallery in a few weeks. It's like it's a beta. Like technically it's not even. The curtain hasn't even come up yet. I think the truth is that so many Vision Pro users are on the betas because why else would you even have a Vision Pro if you weren't on the betas?

[Leo Laporte]

You're the kind of person.

[Jason Snell]

So it went final and it's got some nice stuff. I mean, again, one of my things that I've been impressed by over the year, plus that the Vision Pro has been out there, is they keep releasing new Features and updating the software. And there's going to be a vision OS3 that's going to, according to Gurman, that's going to have some interesting stuff in it. Like, like they keep rolling with the software, which is what they should be doing because this is a long game kind of product. So you just want to keep on adding stuff and building it. Because unlike so many products that Apple produces, this is a product they're building slowly in public instead of doing it behind the scenes and then launching it. So, yeah, they just keep rolling. I wanted to mention there was a new piece of immersive video last week which is Immersive VIP Yankee Stadium. Wow. Fun, fun video. Does exactly what, what you would say, I think we've said about all these immersive videos, which is you see it and you want more because it's only like 13 minutes long. Gets you out on the field, gets you up in the crowd. It's got scenes from the neighborhood which are really awesome. It's great to like stand on the, the platform of, of the train that, where you can look over in Yankee Stadium is right next to the platform. There's like a guy who has a shop right next to the stadium and you see him roll up the, you know, the corrugated metal door that's got Babe Ruth painted on it and he starts his day and goes through the game. It was a regular season. It's a Friday night baseball, so Apple TV game between the Dodgers and the Yankees last year. But at the same time, the moments of gameplay. Remember when they announced the Vision Pro almost two years ago? They had that one clip. It was one clip and it was a ground ball thrown wide of first from the camera. Well, at Fenway park. And it was one of those tantalizing clips of like, oh my God, can you imagine sports with this thing?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Well, this video has a bunch of those clips of things happening, but they're all real short. And so while I was super impressed and I really enjoyed it and it was as a baseball fan especially, it was really awesome to see everything from the, you know, groundskeepers and all of that before the game to actual game action, I also just came away thinking, again, why are they not trying more game experiences? Why am I watching brief highlights from a game that happened almost a year ago rather than something a little more timely? And it's one of the great mysteries of the Vision Pro is I feel like Apple being maybe a little too precious. I'd rather them release something like we were talking about with the Metallica Thing like, like, I'd rather they release something that they're not sure is good enough and let us see it than what they're doing, which is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just a taste, Just a taste. It's been like two years of just a taste. I would like the meal, please. I'd like to try the meal. And if the meal isn't good, at least we would know.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it, do you think, a statement on how hard it is to make this stuff?

[Jason Snell]

It's gotta be. I don't think that explains at all. I'm willing to buy somebody from Apple saying, look, I know you want immersive baseball game, but even a fixed camera immersive baseball game. The, the bit rate, the amount of data we're providing, we would have to compress it, we would have to stream it. It can't be done. Like, okay, give me a substantial highlight package of that game a few days later or a week later, just as a tech demo. And like, that hasn't happened.

[Leo Laporte]

So when the Ursa comes out, you think, do you think we'll start seeing that stuff? I mean, maybe there's a production chain.

[Jason Snell]

The, the issue is who's going to do it. It would be awesome if the NBA, let's say, decided to work with, with its partners to do a demo of a playoff game or something with it, even if it was after the fact. That would be awesome. But the thing is, Apple's got the clout, at least with MLS and MLB to do this and they haven't done it yet. So I don't know. I don't know. It's just, I feel like this is the story of the Vision Pro is I watch these videos, I'm blown away by how amazing they are. They make me want more. There's never more. It's been two years of teasers.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there might be more for the VIP because it does say season one, episode one.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they have all these TV shows that are 10 minute long episodes in various buckets and they keep adding more buckets, which is also kind of weird.

[Leo Laporte]

More buckets without more shows.

[Jason Snell]

But I mean, and they're, they're cool as, as it is. It just, they, they bring up more questions than they answer, I guess is what I'm saying here. But I, I will tell you, it was fun to watch. It was very impressive. Even the part where you're just out with the groundskeeper sweeping up the dirt on the infield during the day, like you get the chance. Like, I did a video Once for idg, where I got to go and stand on home plate at Oracle Park. And it's unbelievable, like, unreal experience to just be standing at home plate at the ballpark that you go to all the time. Most people don't get that opportunity. And. And this immersive video, like, you got that you were in a. You were in the upper deck behind a bunch of fans who are cheering for something. You're down on ground level when a fly ball is headed toward the warning track. Like, it's all really good, but seems.

[Leo Laporte]

Like a great promotional value for mlb, which is, I would imagine, struggling.

[Jason Snell]

I don't know. I don't think baseball isn't. Isn't really struggling. Their attendance is actually pretty high.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it good?

[Jason Snell]

They're doing fine. They're doing okay.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm surprised, to be honest with you. I know you're doing a fan. I'm a longtime baseball fan. It just feels very slow compared to.

[Jason Snell]

Baseball has been dying and not appealing to young people since the late 19th century.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, right. When you get old, you're going to want to sit in the sun, drink beer and eat a hot dog.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. There's literally writing from like 1895 that is like, these new players are not of interest and young ones are more interested in other games like Flippity Flu and Skippy Doe. And no one will watch the bases ball anymore.

[Andy Ihnatko]

When the catchers started insisting on wearing a glove, they have just ruined the game. I mean, what is. What am I watching?

[Leo Laporte]

Fourth ball before a walk.

[Jason Snell]

Why, that's outrageous.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you been. I know. The season started. The Giants had their opening day.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I went on Sunday.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you went.

[Jason Snell]

Great fun.

[Leo Laporte]

How fun?

[Jason Snell]

Yes, absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to be a good, good year for the Giants.

[Jason Snell]

I hope so.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. We're going a few weeks to see the. My son has decided he's only going to follow Wisconsin teams.

[Jason Snell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

So he's a Green Bay fan and we're gonna go see the Brewers Giants game.

[Jason Snell]

Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

Why not? Why not? Why not? He's got ferry tickets.

[Jason Snell]

When you don't live in Wisconsin and you decide to do that, it does help your budget of tickets.

[Leo Laporte]

It certainly does. It certainly does. Let's take a little break. When we come back, let's talk tv. Why not entertainment? The entertainment segment. But first, Leo, Nancy, now you know, we're done.

[Jason Snell]

I am not gonna let you end it without playing the Outro Sticklers.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, we managed to get a good 20 minutes out of that. That's great.

[Jason Snell]

You don't want to Spend all week with like a open parentheses hanging there.

[Leo Laporte]

Hanging, just hanging. Vision Pro people. You know, you joke, but we have for some reason some OCD fans would very much yell at me if we forgot to do that.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, we'd have, by the end of the show we would have had to play it or we would start next week and say, welcome to Mac Break. Let's close the Vision Pro theme from last week.

[Micah Sargent]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a week long Vision Pro segment it. Jason Snell, 6colors.com Wonderful to have you as always. Andy Yanako, how's the, how's the website going? Have you, are you getting close?

[Andy Ihnatko]

I'm getting close as I want to pressure you.

[Leo Laporte]

No pressure, dude.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No, no, no, I get it.

[Jason Snell]

I want to pressure him.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No, I think and actually I appreciate the pressure. As a matter of fact, I've been on, I've been on a daily posting jag for the past like week or so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, good. Just to get, get the chops going. Get the.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, just. Well, just to make sure that like you program your brain to say, no, you are not getting out of this bed until you've at least outlined what you're going to write today. That for the blog is not, you're not going to get breakfast and then mess around and then plan to get to it. One. No, no, no. This is the new rule. You have to have the ready to go before you get lunch.

[Leo Laporte]

If you want lunch.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You have to post or at least have the. Have the post outlined.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, can people log into it yet or is it, is it still.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Not yet. I don't, I don't. It's not going to be open wide until like, like there's stuff that you can, at least a few weeks worth of stuff you can actually see. So, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't want people to like check it out today and say, wow, he really loves writing about tariffs. Is that, I don't know. I don't want to read about like financial news every single day. No, no, no, I, I swear it's going to be still, there's going to.

[Leo Laporte]

Be something other stuff.

[Andy Ihnatko]

There will be your time. Absolutely. Coming around the bend.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. That's why we're lucky to have, you know, 966 previous shows so nobody will judge us based on 967. And Micah Sargent filling in for Alex. It's great to have you. Always a pleasure having you on. We appreciate it. You're watching Mac Break Weekly severance is over. I am now dodging all the posts. Because I don't want to. No spoilers. I'm only on, I think episode five or six. It's hard. Everybody wants to talk about the ending. Right. Not going to say anything.

[Jason Snell]

Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

There will be no spoilers here. Severance is a success. Yes. A big success.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Huge. Apple's probably Apple.

[Micah Sargent]

I mean, I think so.

[Jason Snell]

Arguably even bigger of a breakthrough than Ted Lasso.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They are definitely trying to capitalize on it. For instance, they're doing an ORT bow, which if you haven't seen episode four yet, this isn't really a spoiler. Just know there will be an outdoor retreat team building occurrence and apparently you can join the ORT bow. Here's the whole cast. Look at them. So great. Who's the tallest one there? It's Gwendolyn. Yes, indeed. She's great. And I hope the goats go well. I hope the goat raising goes well for her.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mean, that was huge. So Stephen Colbert hosted like a Q and A panel like that. So. And that's that they had. So they hosted like a big, huge fan event at the place where that. At the actual building in New Jersey that serves as like the corporate. Like.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, there is a Luma. There's an actual Lumon headquarters.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's a. Yeah. There's a building that actually a real building that serves.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And it's, I mean the fact that they, that they keep on, keep on, keep on promoting this, coming up with live things like, I mean, Jason and I are probably familiar with the idea of if we could get like fans to like start cosplaying as these characters and becoming an absolute menace to all of their friends and family about how awesome this is.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I want a selfie with Ms. Wong. I mean that is definitely. Look at this. Holy cow.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. You know what if, if they, if, if Lucasfilm had like an open house at the Rebel alliance base that I could get a picture taken in front of there, I would have flown out to see that too.

[Leo Laporte]

There's Gwendolyn Christie then with shears. Oh, wouldn't that be cool? This is like a live stage event.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's a technically a four year consideration event. So it's like for people who vote for awards.

[Leo Laporte]

So you have to be a voter, an Emmy voter.

[Jason Snell]

But they did it. Yeah, they did. It's Bell Labs, the, the, you know, in New Jersey where they, where they shoot all this. So it's.

[Leo Laporte]

So Bell Works is the old Bell Labs.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it still occupied or is it just a vacant building?

[Jason Snell]

I don't. That. I don't know. Obviously, they use it for filming with, but then you can never tell whether they're right. Yeah, I don't. I don't know that part, but it looks spectacular from the outside. And then.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they got Stephen Colbert, 60s brutalist architecture. And of course, it makes sense. It would have been Bell Labs.

[Jason Snell]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

In New Jersey.

[Jason Snell]

Wow. Generally, I think a lot of those things get labeled as for your consideration. And then they invite public and they invite people they know and all of that, and it creates a whole little event. That photo is kind of amazing that they put this panel together and it's just a huge audience.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And the huge audience. Yeah. Ben Stiller's there, the creator of the show, all the stars of the show, and even some of the minor characters in the show. That's pretty amazing. Pretty incredible.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. So they've had huge success with that, and they're keeping their foot on the gas. Right.

[Micah Sargent]

Also, yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Season three will happen faster than season two did because the strikes really slowed it down and they did a bunch of rewrites, but the season three production was already going on. We talked about this a couple weeks ago. They said, oh, we renewed it.

[Leo Laporte]

It.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, they. They knew more than a year ago, they were working on season three. It's not a surprise.

[Leo Laporte]

So Gwendolyn Christie was in Game of Thrones. She obviously was. Was Olaf or Dariofson also in Game of Thrones?

[Jason Snell]

I don't know that one.

[Leo Laporte]

He looks like he. He's the big guy who has voice, right? Yeah.

[Micah Sargent]

Oh, that guy.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. There they are. She's scary. I feel like they might know each other from. Can you imagine John Turturro, who is a legendary serious actor, getting the script, saying, yeah, I'll do that. And now he's like, part of this cultural thing.

[Jason Snell]

Well, he brought in his friend Christopher Walken, too, on top of that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Walken and he were great together. Yeah. It's amazing. All right. Well, anyway, it's a success. Although Cult of Mac says even the success is not enough to give Apple TV plus its. Its boost in subscribers that they were kind of hoping for. It's really just a tiny fraction of the Overall streaming market. 8%.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, they did.

[Leo Laporte]

They did.

[Micah Sargent]

I think it still exists in a. In a. In a. In its own little space that people. When they. When I think of everyday people thinking about the subscriptions they get, obviously Netflix is at the top. Right. And then maybe you have Disney plus and Hulu vying for second and third. I don't even know if Hulu even is. Is up there anymore. So Apple TV plus feels so far down the line on oh, I'm going to get this so that I can watch this show. So I really do think it's about. Yeah, they've got to really push as. As Jason was saying, foot on the gas to get these shows that people really want to see so that they end up subscribing to Apple TV Plus.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I will say a lot of these analysts are using. There's some dispute about how accurate it.

[Leo Laporte]

Is because Apple doesn't reveal exactly.

[Jason Snell]

And are they. Are they just the numbers of the people who are regular subscribers. Are the Apple One bundle people included in this and how does that work? And they're taking their best guess. But you know, Apple's goal, I can't believe it. It's almost like a market share argument. Like Apple's goal is not to have 15, 20, 30% of streaming market. That's not the point. Their goal is to be the HBO of streaming. To have lots of really high quality content. Quality want to see and we'll come to the service for and we'll keep it around and maybe not churn as much and just sort of keep it.

[Leo Laporte]

Around and creators will want to come to. That's where HBO really succeeded is that they got a reputation as a great place for people to create.

[Jason Snell]

Right. They don't need to be Netflix, they don't need to be Prime Video, they don't need to be Paramount plus, quite frankly. But they do need to have shows that will draw people to their platform, which is when you get anything with traction, you, you gotta push it. And Severance has had the most traction of, of anything, I think even more than Ted Lasso because Ted Lasso was different. It was like sort of comfort viewing in the pandemic. And it was a new service without as much catalog stuff. I wrote a piece last week on Six Colors about based on the Churn. I was like, okay, let's say you're churning through Apple TV Plus. I've seen a lot of TV plus stuff. What do I recommend? And I tried to come up with. So I, I decided to do a top 10 list of TV shows and I came up with 13 shows that I would recommend to people that I have seen personally. And I had to cut, you know, I have three cuts at the end of the list. Like they've built a catalog. So now you've got severance and you've got a much bigger catalog than you did when Ted Lasso hit. And it's another opportunity to make all those connections and get those people on podcasts and. And on YouTube and on Talk shows and just try to get more perception of severance to get you to tv, to get you to whatever else is there. Silo or shrinking.

[Micah Sargent]

Are any of you watching the studio? I found it hilarious.

[Leo Laporte]

It's pretty funny. I liked the. They've had now two very famous directors. Last week was Martin Scorsese, who Seth Rogen brought to tears, and this week it was Ron Howard, who Seth Rogen brought to Fisticuffs. The only thing I don't like about it, there's a couple of things that bug me. At first, I thought, oh, are they gonna. Cause it looks like that drum whiplash, right? Cause it's all one take, and there's a drum beat behind it. I thought, oh, maybe they're gonna kind of do an homage to different movie styles. But no, the whole thing. The whole thing is whiplash. So that bugs me a little bit. And the other thing is. And this is just a Seth Rogen issue, I have a lot of his comedy involves shouting. And I've always been taught in improv that shouting is this. But you know what? It works. It seems to work because Larry David does it too. And curb your enthusiasm. Shouting is, like the lowest form of improv. You shouldn't get to that point. But apparently it works.

[Andy Ihnatko]

My problem is, I don't dislike him, but I'm on, like, I'm really, really tense. Until how soon? Until he. Until he mentioned. Until he mentions that he smokes a lot of weed because he likes it.

[Jason Snell]

He.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Oh, my God, did I slip that out? That I smoke a lot of weed?

[Leo Laporte]

I think we know that. We know.

[Andy Ihnatko]

We know you smoke weed.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's pretty obvious. It's kind of a stoner. Anyway. It's a great. It's a great parody of Hollywood. Probably not as good as the Player, but, you know, it's in.

[Jason Snell]

It's in that.

[Micah Sargent]

Which I enjoy.

[Jason Snell]

Seth Rogen has really had some success as a producer. You know, you don't always see him. He appears in things, and I think he's fun. But keep in mind, he actually started as a writer. He's a writer first and a performer second. And now he's probably a producer first and a writer second and a performer third. But that show is really great. And he's one of the exec producers on Invincible on Prime Video, which is a spectacularly great adult animated superhero story for a show based on a great comic by Robert Kirkman, who did the Walking Dead. And now that it's him and his. And Evan Goldberg, his co producer, like, they are the people who made that show happen too. So he's building an empire there.

[Leo Laporte]

Jk, what's his name is the lead.

[Micah Sargent]

Simmons.

[Leo Laporte]

JK Simmons is the lead in Invincible. And Michael's watching. At least Michael and Leach watch it together. It's cute. Mother son moment. And I said, is that J.K. simmons?

[Jason Snell]

Well, the Voice. And this is just like the studio. Just like the studio that, that, you know, that Seth Rogen knows everybody. Invincible is the same way. You get these people and you're like, how is it that all of these famous people. There was a story about how Apple, when he went to Apple with what he was going to do with the studio, they're like, you can you really get all these people? And he's like, yeah, I got them. I got them, guys. I got him. And that. I mean, the main family unit in Invincible is Sandra oh, J.K. simmons and Steven Yeun.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, it's amazing.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

I loved Seth Rogen and Freaks and Geeks. It was one of my favorite shows when it was out. It was only a season or two.

[Jason Snell]

Hired as a writer and then they put him in the show.

[Leo Laporte]

He was so good in the show. Yeah. Anyway, so there is good stuff to. I think there's much better stuff to watch on Apple TV than there was at the beginning. I mean, you've got slow horses. They're doing a lot of really. I think you're right. Quality prestige programming.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And. And that's the. I think the goal is you get. You make a bunch of that. You hope some of it catches fire. And then you also hope that when people get there, you've got stuff for them to watch in the Ted Lasso era, maybe less so. But now you've got severance and you can bring them in and give them slow horses and like four seasons of for all mankind, two seasons of Silo, four seasons of Mythic Quest, two seasons of shrinking. Like, there's a lot of stuff there. So. So, yeah, I think their goal is not domination. I think they're doing okay. It's been like five years. Like, I can't believe how much good stuff that they've done. I would never have predicted this much actual good programming coming out of them, especially on the TV side.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm reading your article. They also done some good movies, and as you point out, Greyhound was really.

[Jason Snell]

Good and docs as well. So I Mean, they've got a nice spread of stuff. Stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Steve Martin documentary is actually fantastic.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, I love that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I haven't. At least I watched the Dynasty. I thought that was.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. I mean, nobody likes Tom Brady, I guess, but that was actually a really great sports doc and it had both Brady and Belichick in it, which is a dynamic that is special. And I would just say ESPN's Tom Brady produced story of the Life of Tom Brady did not have the same level of participation. So that made it kind of interesting as a different thing. And the Long Way Up Round down series with Ewan McGregor riding his motorcycle around is a great travelogue, great series. And they bought the old ones and fun. And they're making a fourth one apparently, of that too.

[Leo Laporte]

So, you know, after what Warner Discovery did to hbo, I really think we need something and Apple has the money to do it. That is just, you know, quality. Maybe it doesn't appeal to the mass audience, but it does enough to justify itself.

[Jason Snell]

Honestly. HBO is doing okay. Like HBO and Max. Casey Bloys, I was talking with Julie Alex Alexander, my downstream co host, about this. Casey Bloys, who runs HBO and now is also sort of like gets to do some Max Originals as well. He. He's programming that. I mean, HBO still got a lot of great content. They're very successful with it. And then if you look at the Max Originals, like the Pit with Noah Wiley, that's doing very well. That is a fantastic show. And it's basically like, what if we did a network procedural but did it for streaming and it's excellent. Hacks is coming back this week, which is a spectacularly good show. And that's a Max Original. So. But there's room. That's the thing is like in this era where like Netflix really does want to be more kind of like network TV most of the time, like, there is room for Apple to set it up and be like a little higher level and get some of these shows in. So. And they're playing a long game right there. They're not going to rise or fall based on how much money they charge for Apple tv. Plus, it's, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

I wonder also if there'll be a golden age now for streaming with these tariffs. The tariffs are a little bit like Covid in the sense that people might, might be belt tightening and might spend more time at home watching tv and.

[Jason Snell]

No tariffs on services. Apple likes that.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. So I'm wondering it might be an opportunity for streaming to recover. It's been a rough go, weirdly. I thought it would do very well. All right. Another break? Well, no. Should I do another break? I'm just checking here. Let me do a couple more stories, then we'll do a break and then we'll do picks. Is that right? Are we right on that, John? Ashley, do we need another break? I've done three. I need to do one more.

[Micah Sargent]

Let's do a couple more stories.

[Leo Laporte]

A couple more stories. Z Wave. I bet you talked to Jennifer Pattison Tuohy about this. Micah Sargent. Because it's her story from.

[Jason Snell]

She's the best.

[Leo Laporte]

The Verge. Yeah, I love jpt. Z Wave is now becoming an open source protocol. This is one way to find your way in the home automation market. Right?

[Micah Sargent]

This is the equivalent of have a dog rolling over onto its back so its stomach is exposed and saying, please.

[Leo Laporte]

I give up, I give up.

[Micah Sargent]

I just take me. That's. I mean, that's kind of what we're having here. Z Wave has competed with zigbee for a long time. Z Wave did a good job of convincing people who build houses that it was the necessary technology to have to do wireless connectivity. But when things started to shift, shift to the consumer space instead of the builder space, Z Wave kind of lagged behind. And the big thing with it too is that the, the you tended to have, if you had a hub in your home, it just kind of threw the Z Wave in there. But it didn't have that name recognition that zigbee did.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't in matter either.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, exactly. And that, that's, that's the part where the stomach roll, the stomach exposing happens is that Z Wave says, look, we can't do it on our own. We know that the, the zigbee alliance and all of y'all came together to make the csa. So we'll just say, if you can't beat them, join them. Please accept us into your, your holy space and let us be part of it. And yeah, I'm not surprised to see that this is happening, but I done forgot about Z Wave a long time ago because everything else does a fine job.

[Leo Laporte]

It's now open source.

[Andy Ihnatko]

All I know about this technology is there's some reason why my lights aren't responding to voice commands.

[Micah Sargent]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Z Wave Long range is a new version of the protocol that addresses one thing that people didn't like Z Wave about. It was too short range and it now will integrate with matter. But the problem is a lot of company, you know, you don't have a lot of Z Wave devices or do you people making Z Wave stuff?

[Micah Sargent]

So that's it's, it's few and far between. There are a lot of. Not a lot, but there are some inexpensive gadgets that are Z Wave mostly.

[Leo Laporte]

It's home security, it looks like, right?

[Micah Sargent]

Yes, exactly. So that was the thing, the builder space, the you. You go and you get the security system for the home. That's where Z Wave comes in sometimes the blinds in the home, if you've got that. So there is still Z Wave stuff. But I think that the writing has been on the wall for Z Wave Wave such that they're saying, okay, you know, we want to keep being a, an option, so let us join what you're doing so that we can continue to be an option. But yeah, I have not come across a popular consumer product in the past, I don't know, three, four years. That is Z Wave behind the scenes. The only times where I have seen it is a hub that's going okay. But we also do Z Wave. Ethioligarchs is saying Amazon Ring is Z Wave. But I don't know, under the hood maybe, perhaps.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I have. So my home assistant, I bought a zigbee dongle that I plug into it. I guess I could get a Z Wave dongle and then make ha be fully. I don't know or if they're in matters. That's the problem. Nobody wants multiple apps. Oh, the ring alarm is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so is SimpliSafe longtime sponsor. They use Z Wave. I guess ADT used Z Wave. Honeywell's use Z Wave.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Micah Sargent]

So again you, you go and you're gonna, you're gonna build a bunch of homes or a couple of homes and you are adding that alarm system as part of the package. Behind the scenes, Z Wave is part what's working there. But a lot of these have transferred over to different technologies because it there, there are better offerings that have gotten more frequent updates and play well in the space. So in that way, I guess I'm happy that Z Wave is hopefully going to be joining the fun by saying, look, we'll go open source, we'll do whatever we need to do. Just let us be part of the party.

[Leo Laporte]

So you can bridge Z Wave into matter or into your home kit, for instance. But you otherwise you need a Z Wave hub. And that's the, that's the thing people don't want is a bunch of different hubs and different software. Well, good luck to you, Z Wave. Yeah, God bless. Good luck. I hope you hope you do well. And finally there are new Caldigit I have. I love my Caldigit Thunderbolt dock. They have new Thunderbolt 5 docks. The TS5 has 15 ports.

[Jason Snell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

And the TS5 plus 20 ports. 20 ports. But you pay for the, you pay for these. They're 500 bucks for the TS5 Plus. But if you have a one of the new Mac Minis or a new Mac Studio with Thunderbolt 5, this might be the thing to look at. I don't know if anybody made it their pick. I should have checked. They're coming out next month. The TS5 will be a little less expensive. 370. I think 15 ports is enough for anybody.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. I mean, on principle I would like to want to still complain about buying computers that don't have expansion card slots, but that's because I'm an old person. Generation X and we see that. Wow. If I just plug this box into this one port, one of the three or four ports on this laptop or this desktop that support it, like, I will name a single thing, Andy, that you would want to use with this that you cannot connect through that port and through that box. Like, I'm thinking, wait, let me get back to you on that. It's just amazing like what a laptop can do with one of these boxes just sitting on your desk. It's one of the reasons why I've been delaying like replacing my Intel Mac Mini for, for so long. A, I'm a cheapskate. B, I'm a freelance journalist in a rapidly collapsing market. But also because, well, if I have a $200, $300 Caldigit box, I can't think of anything yet that I can't do with my M1 MacBook. Even my like three or four year old MacBook, that all the accessories are high speed, all the networking is high speed, and I plug in one cable and I've got it all on my desktop. It really has got me thinking. Maybe I shouldn't even forget about the Mac Mini and just get a really juicily specced Mac Pro and just use that as both if I need to.

[Leo Laporte]

Jason, which MacBook Pros have Thunderbolt 5?

[Jason Snell]

All of the modern M4 MacBook Pros have Thunderbolt 5.

[Leo Laporte]

M4 or later will have Thunderbolt 5.

[Jason Snell]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know if you need Thunderbolt 5, but I guess for the record.

[Jason Snell]

That'S my computer now is I have a M4 MacBook Pro and I use it at two different desks and just carry it around and I very rarely use it open. I'm almost always just carrying it between desks. But it does mean that when you switch locations, you don't have that moment of like, whoa, wait, I'm on the laptop now. Or I'm on this different computer and I don't have my stuff set up. Like all of a sudden everything I do, everywhere I go is on the same computer. It's pretty great.

[Leo Laporte]

You need multiple Caldigits though.

[Jason Snell]

Everywhere you go I have a caldigit doc at one of them. The other one I don't, for various reasons I don't. I don't need the same setup back there. Right. But it's great.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This looks really, really sweet. You get 140 watt charging on the upstream to your laptop and then plenty of other ports.

[Jason Snell]

The dream here, the dream and what this enables is single cable connection. So you plug one cable into your MacBook Pro, it's charged and powered and the hub is powering and sending that Thunderbolt up so that you get it to your display and all of your peripherals. And so it's all rolled together and all you do is roll in with your laptop, make one plug and you're done.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You've got three displays, you've got 10 gig Internet, you've got high speed. God, it's just amazing. You got a 10 terabyte high speed hard drive storage. It's like wow.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Micah Sargent]

And it's been my experience that this dream is a reality when it comes to the caldigidock. I've had some docs in the where I ended up having to. Oh no, I've got to plug this directly in or this isn't working.

[Leo Laporte]

And especially things like video and microphones and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[Micah Sargent]

So that's been good. I don't know if you saw the April. Their April Fool's prank was an update that made it possible for you to change the color of the LED light on the front of the Caldigit. And I thought, you know what, you should actually do that. That'd be great.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, good. And is T5 a worthy upgrade for people who are on T4 devices? No. Or T4 docks, I should say.

[Jason Snell]

I just bought a Thunderbolt 4 hub for mine because it felt like it was plenty fast.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. My caldigit is strapped to the desk here because that's what my laptop's connected to. So I guess if I want another one, I better get it. All right, now I'm gonna take a break because guess your picks of the week are Coming up next, you are watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inocco, Jason Snell filling in for Alex Lindsey, the wonderful Micah Sargent. Great to have all of you. Great also to have our club members. You guys are what make all this possible. And I know, you know, with that tough economic times ahead, it's probably everybody's got to think about their dollars, but that's why we keep the price low. $7 a month gives you access to all of our shows without ads, which is fantastic. You also get special content on our Discord channel. We have a very, I think a lovely Discord channel full of, you know, wonderful people. All of our. Not all, but most or many of our club members hang out in the Discord. It's become my social network of choice. Not just during the shows, of course. During the shows is great because you're chatting with us as we're doing the shows, but also all day long and we do events in there. We've got a home theater geeks recording coming up on Monday. IOS today will be next Tuesday. You're going to do a crafting corner. Micah, are you still doing the little mini succulent Lego succulents? That'll be April 16th.

[Micah Sargent]

There's a Jade plant and we'll continue building these.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, aren't those cute? All right. But the thing is, you don't have to be doing what Mike is doing.

[Micah Sargent]

Can you believe those little newspaper boy hats? No, yeah, you're right. The idea is that everybody brings their own little craft that they're working on and it's, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Which could be coding.

[Micah Sargent]

I always forget his name. It's tiny trees, little trees, big poofy hair. What is his name?

[Leo Laporte]

Bob Ross.

[Micah Sargent]

Always forget his name. It's Bob Ross event. We all, it's very chill, you know, we're quiet. We're all just listening to music in the background and we just build our things, we talk. It's a great time. I really enjoyed it with.

[Leo Laporte]

And if you want to get a little more energy, come to our coffee time two days later. April 18, coffee time with Mark Prince, our coffee geek. And Liz Happy Beans. I know that should be interesting. We'll be talking about beans. The AI User group is the fourth Friday of every month. Month. We do a lot of fun things. And of course we mentioned Mike and I will be doing the WWCDC keynote club only. So if you're not a member of the club, I would invite you. I would love for you to become a member. Seven bucks a month, lots of other benefits as well Twit TV Club Twit. To find out more, I have a testimonial from in our club Twit right now from a club Twit member. Let me see. It says the club is worth. This is Ed Coy. Hi Ed. The club is worth every penny. Thank you for all the years keeping me informed and entertained. Mac Fixer DK agrees the club worth every penny indeed. Here is Micah as Bob Ross painting in some Happy trees nightscape. I've been watching, listening from the very beginning. I owe you back pay at the point this point, no back pay necessary. But we definitely would love to, love to have you in the club. Join us, won't you? Twit TV Club Twit Pick of the week Tom I'm going to kick things off because I've been playing with a toy. So I store all. I've decided some time ago to stop using Lightroom and other technologies to keep my photos because I've got Apple Photos and Apple Photos understand the live FOMO, live FOMO photo formats that my cameras use, the RAW and so forth and its own formats. And I just really like it. So I've been using it. All my photos are in there, tens of thousands. But then I also worry when you just have one cloud. It's in the cloud. It's on my phone and my computer. But I worry. So I found a free open source, a tool called iCloud PD. You can download it. You can also run it on your synology. I'm running it here on my little arch server and it will store. It will download. Look, it's downloading all my photos. It actually is going through them all to see if any have already been downloaded. What's great, if this runs in the background as it does every time I take a picture on my iPhone, it not only goes to icloud but it then also goes to an independent server, an independent hard drive. Could be your. Could be your synology nas. I just, I think it's a really nice little piece of software. Let me give you the Link iCloud Photos downloader.GitHub.com free because it's open source. It has quite a bit of command stuff that you can use. I'm just very impressed by it. It's open source project that, that I have now been using to keep track, keep a backup. It does dedupe, it supports live photos. It keeps all the metadata as well. In fact it will even update the metadata if the metadata the photo is not updated on icloud but the metadata is. It will automatically update it. So I was looking for something like this for a long time. ICloud PD. It's on GitHub. Jason Snell, your pick of the week. Week.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's kind of weird. I'm going to do two picks in one. I need a tripod that is short enough to put on a desk but tall enough to put on the floor. And it needs to be able to either hold a standard sort of like screw mount for a camera or a microphone or hold an iPhone. And the answer is I couldn't find one that satisfied me, but I could find two and put them together and that's what I did. And I like so much that I'm going to recommend them both. And you might not need both, but you might. So one of them is from Insta360. The two in one invisible selfie stick plus tripod, which is this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I use that because if you have an Insta, you need to use that.

[Jason Snell]

Exactly. But it's also great as a regular tripod. It will start out short. It's got little collapsible legs. It's got this telescoping bit that is the selfie stick. But you know, at the top is a standard tripod mount. And so you can, you can put this on the floor and extend it way up, up and it's a perfectly usable mount. I use this for with my webcam for upgrade every week and it's very useful. But I also use it to do continuity camera when I do zoom chats with my wife's family every other week. And for that I added to the top of it the newer mini desk tripod which is a little cheap crappy tripod. But the top of it is a tilt head tripod mount that is perfectly normal pan and tilt head that you can screw on top of the selfie stick or anything else. It's got that standard head. It has its own standard head on it. But the best part is the handle that comes with it flips up and becomes a spring loaded phone mount. So this is like Andy and Natco Central. By the way, I'm watching Andy lean forward here. So what doesn't it do? It'll cut a tomato. No, it is so. So this is great because it means I can use this one setup floor or desktop and I can use it with phones or with any camera that will screw into a camera mount. All four at least get them while they last. About 55 in total. These are. One of them is 31 of them. Is 25. You may not need both if you've got a part of this that satisfies you. But I bought them separately, did not intend to use them together, and now it's like my go to tripod for everything I do around the house because it's lightweight, it's super flexible, and I love the fact that I can put a regular camera or an iPhone on this with just a quick flip up. It's super easy.

[Leo Laporte]

That's super cool.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I have a lot. I have, like, a drawer full of different tripod parts, and I have done very much the same kind of Frankensteining.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. The secret really is that moment where I realized, oh, this will mount a phone for continuity, camera and a standard, like, USB webcam or a camera. I'm like, oh, okay, now. Now we're cooking. And I had that moment where I said, wait a second, but this tripod is crappy, the one it comes with. But I've got that great insta360 thing, which I know they say it's a selfie stick, but it's also just a great tripod. It's a really great tripod.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's a great thing about having like that a. Having been like, podcasting and live streaming for enough years and not throwing things away. Like when I decided that, you know what, let's make it like a regular thing that we like. We stream, like, from the library conference room. Say what? I gosh, I wish somebody sold, like, a tabletop stand that could hold two lights side by side and a webcam adjusted to the height exactly above the height of my iPad that I use as a second monitor so well. Or I could, like, take out this box I've got on a shelf and say, put that on that, put that on that. Screw that. There. Done.

[Leo Laporte]

Brilliant. It's brilliant.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Never throw anything away. You'll never have a problem you can't see. Solved.

[Leo Laporte]

What about your pick, Mr. Andy and Ako?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Mine's kind of an esoteric one, but a really nice one for reasons that some people who are into comics will understand. A few months ago, I was doing a lot of Googling for Kindle Comic Book Converter.

[Leo Laporte]

As one does.

[Andy Ihnatko]

As one does. And I came across this really nice app that was not applicable to the solution I was actually looking for, but was a good tool. It's called the Shiromachi. The app is called Cir Macchia, and they chose that Italian name after they realized that calling it Kindle Comic Converter was descriptive, but doesn't actually describe what people are probably expecting it to do. What it is, is for people who have, like, ebook readers, like a Kindle, like a Kobo, like, you know, monochrome, usually monochrome E ink readers. And they have comic book files that are not encumbered by drm. But the thing is, like, if you take this, this public domain copy of a golden age comic book, that's like, the pages are huge in size and it's in color, and you try to put them on like a monochrome E ink reader, they're huge. They're going to take up too much space. The color is going to make it unreadable. All these other problems. What this app will do is it will take a lot of different comic book file formats and ebook formats. And these formats are all just like folders, compressed folders full of image files. And what this app will do is it'll simply convert all of them to. It'll make the images physically smaller so that they'll fit on the screen better without wasting space. You can adjust the gamma so that you won't just see like big blobs of black pixels as it's trying to reinterpret all these colors, all these other little things you can adjust as you go. It even has presets for a lot of very, very popular ebook readers, including modern color ones. Now, the bad news is that it is open source. So as a result, if you have any experience with open source, you're picturing a single window that is just basically stickered with buttons and checkboxes as opposed to a very, very comprehensively thought out interface. But it works. It works great. And it's regularly updated. Last update was just like a couple of months ago. And once again, if you have like a whole bunch of golden age Captain America comics that you want to. Want to read on your Kindle, and you don't want it to take up like half of your storage space, and you want it to be very, very readable. Drag it into this app, click a button, select your device, and it will spit out a CBZ file, an ePub, a Kindle book app, Kindle Book file. Exactly what you need. Really good, really handy, really simple.

[Leo Laporte]

Great stuff on GitHub, KCC or what did you say? What's the Italian?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Cirro Maccia C. Oh, Cirro Macchia is the guy.

[Leo Laporte]

He's the guy who wrote it. Ciro Maccia Gonan. He's a nicer guy, but it's called KCC. Okay, yes, he's from Rovigio. Rovigo. Yes, KCC.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. No, I understand your confusion because GitHub does make it look like that. Very Good. It's on GitHub. Just search for KCC and you're right, he probably was a little nervous. Amazon might not like him using that name.

[Micah Sargent]

The full Kindle comma converter is very obvious.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Micah Sergeant.

[Micah Sargent]

So I have a pick that is a little game, sort of if you need something that's just like a. I will listen to audiobooks while I play this little game. It is called Puffy's and it is on the App Store, but you'll need an Apple Arcade subscription to play it. And Leo is showing right now how this works as well. So essentially what you do is you make little. You're putting the stickers back onto the sticker pack. You. You have a whole bunch. So if you want to show my screen, I've got. I've got my phone. So you'll be presented with a bunch of different sticker packs. And I can go like medium normal. And it kind of guides you along the process. As you're playing, there's a black line that appears to help. Help you kind of place the stickers. But there are more difficult and less difficult options. There are bigger and smaller sticker packs, but it's very much just kind of a Zen sort of quiet experience that I have found is delightful for giving my hands something to do while my brain is elsewhere. Again, you do need an Apple Arcade subscription to be able to get this game, but it's made by. By, I think it's called Likey Studios and they have made some other great games that are in this exact kind of feel and scope of just, you know, they're little zone out games. And I have found this quite delightful if you choose to listen to it with sound. The soundtrack is nice, but again, I just kind of zone out while I am placing my stickers back on the sticker pack. And then afterward you can share the sticker pack.

[Leo Laporte]

This is. This is perfect because it's basically the kind of thing you would do during Micah's creative corner.

[Micah Sargent]

Yes, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Micah Sargent]

It's very much in that same vibe.

[Leo Laporte]

It has that kind of. It's a game that isn't going to make you anxious.

[Micah Sargent]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to relax you.

[Micah Sargent]

It's very low stakes. I like low stakes situation. Yes, very nice. Low stakes. Puffy's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's kind of like Tetris for people who don't care.

[Micah Sargent]

There you go. Like Tetris for people who don't care.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Little puffy aminals. Just kind of fitting all together. I like the variety, though. You can have me. Too different.

[Micah Sargent]

I don't know. I want to believe. I have not looked into it. I want to believe that there's. I want to believe. I want to believe that these are created by artists.

[Leo Laporte]

Feels like they might be.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, yeah. And that's very much within the vein of what. But I'm also thinking, how do they make so many? It would be very easy to do this with AI versus humans, but don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Do it with AI Puffies. Do it with real people. By the way, puffies is spelled with a period for some reason.

[Micah Sargent]

There is a period at the end of it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's interesting typography. It's a lowercase P. I'm going to play Puffy's right now, just for you. Here it comes. Game mode is on.

[Micah Sargent]

Likey Studios.

[Leo Laporte]

I likey Puffies. This looks like fun. Oh, you could play it with a controller too.

[Micah Sargent]

You can. I have not played it with the controller because I thought that felt overwrought.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's kind of like doing puzzles. But it's low pressure. Right?

[Micah Sargent]

Low pressure puzzle. I feel like the music is very calm, but I don't listen. I don't have the music on me because again, I'm usually listening to an audiobook and.

[Leo Laporte]

Or doing a show.

[Micah Sargent]

Or doing a show.

[Leo Laporte]

I understand.

[Micah Sargent]

My eyes have to be up.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But, yeah, very fun.

[Micah Sargent]

It's nice. There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Mr. Beaver goes right in his spot there. And you don't have to hit it. Exactly. I like that.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, I like.

[Leo Laporte]

Because I don't want a frustration. I don't want no frustration.

[Micah Sargent]

That's what this is all about. No frustration.

[Leo Laporte]

Too bad I don't get the actual stickers.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, they should add that. They should sell the stickers because there are. The daily challenges are actually much more difficult. Let me show you the Tuesday challenge, just so you can see.

[Leo Laporte]

This is very relaxing.

[Micah Sargent]

There's a little bit of frustration with these because look at how the stickers are shaped.

[Leo Laporte]

Good.

[Micah Sargent]

Very difficult. And sometimes they'll do clever things where you'd think it's a side piece, but it's not. And so, yeah, I like it.

[Jason Snell]

I like it.

[Micah Sargent]

It's just enough of a challenge for these.

[Leo Laporte]

But if you have Apple Arcade subscription, you might as well.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You might as well pick it up.

[Micah Sargent]

Because it's free to you. Well, it doesn't cost you any more to get it.

[Leo Laporte]

Play it on the iPhone, the Apple TV, your Mac, your iPad. Everywhere.

[Micah Sargent]

Everywhere.

[Leo Laporte]

You're everywhere. Mr. Micah Sargent, thank you for being here.

[Micah Sargent]

So good to be here.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll be back on Thursday with Tech News Weekly. Next, as I mentioned, next Tuesday with Rosemary Orchestration Orchard for their regular iOS today taping. You do two in one a day.

[Micah Sargent]

We do. Yeah. So we do it every other week on Tuesday.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice. And it's so good to see you. I will see you June 9th, if not sooner.

[Micah Sargent]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Mike and I used to work in the same building. We don't even work in the same state anymore.

[Micah Sargent]

Yes. Now we're in different states. Huh? I was just thinking the other day about how there was one day where you. I was worried you were in a ditch, and I had. I sat down.

[Leo Laporte]

I was late. Okay, let's be honest. I was late, as I often am.

[Micah Sargent]

For the tech guy. And it's a radio show, so it has a very specific time. And I remember Jammer B looking at me and going, micah, you need. You. You need to go sit in the chair. You need to go sit in the chair. He's not going to get here on time. You need to go sit in the chair. Get ready to do the show. And I'm going, no, no. I started walking toward the chair, like, oh, boy, here we go. And then suddenly we see your car zipping around, and you were not in a ditch.

[Leo Laporte]

I was not.

[Micah Sargent]

You were alive. And you got there just in time. You were a little breathy because you kind of, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

But that was the worst. I think that was the worst.

[Micah Sargent]

That was the one. But it did.

[Leo Laporte]

It did prompt me to make an a, a shortcut on my phone that I texted Micah whenever I left the house saying, I'm not in a ditch.

[Micah Sargent]

So that's in the ditch. I'm on my way.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm on my way. Thank you, Micah. Great to have you. And I H, N. I have no idea how to spell it, but it starts with I, H, N, A, T, K, O. Actually, once you get the ihn, the rest is easy.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's like music.

[Jason Snell]

Say.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's soft and it's almost like spraying comes together.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Quote a lyric.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Andy. Always a pleasure. We'll see you soon. And Mr. Jason Snell, he'[e-mail].

[Jason Snell]

Yes, sir.

[Leo Laporte]

He has a list of shows you can watch, many podcasts on your Apple TV plus.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, check out that list. If you are wondering what to watch, if you maybe are going to pick up Apple TV to watch Severance or something, I got a list. There's a lot of good stuff on there. A lot of good shows, some good movies, some good documentaries.

[Leo Laporte]

And I recommend any of these fine podcasts.

[Jason Snell]

Thank you very much.

[Leo Laporte]

It seems like the list is getting shorter. Have you been kind of phasing some out?

[Jason Snell]

Well, no, there's a lot of like on and off season of various like little TV that I do that are not that common. But the bulk of it is this show upgrade with Mike Hurley, the incomparable. These are the big ones and Downstream, those are kind of the main ones that are happening. And then the Six Colors podcast that I do with Dan, that's for our members. Julia came back to Downstream. She was working for Disney for like nine months and we had her on and hopefully she'll be on again. And she's got a big brain about streaming media. So it was really great to kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

She's super smart.

[Jason Snell]

Let her just let the brain kind of out on. This is her podcast waves, it is her expertise and she's back in the media full time. She was working as an analyst at a research company before she went to Disney and moonlighting at Puck, which is a great news site.

[Leo Laporte]

I read her on Puck. I love her on Puck.

[Jason Snell]

And now she's so people might be thinking like she's oh, she's back doing what she was before. It's not true. She is entirely employed by Puck now. So instead of doing research and moonlighting writing in the media, she's got a full on media job and they're going to use her a lot over there. And hopefully I can get her on Downstream on a regular basis on top of that. Because it's really great to hear.

[Leo Laporte]

You should. And Puck should agree to that. Yeah, I hope so.

[Jason Snell]

I mean Matt Bellany of Puck does a show on the Ringer Network so hopefully I can like do the same. Come on.

[Leo Laporte]

I subscribe to Puck because of people like Julia.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's super smart.

[Leo Laporte]

Smartest people talking about stuff I really care about, not just media or politics, but Silicon Valley fashion. It's a. There's a lot of better and better.

[Jason Snell]

They hired John Oren from Sports Business Journal who was the definitive sort of sports business writer, I would argue smart. And now his column is on Puck too. So Puck News, I don't have a financial interest in that, but they just did hire Julia. So that's.

[Leo Laporte]

No, my only financial interest is I give them money.

[Jason Snell]

I give them money too.

[Leo Laporte]

I give them money so that I can.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Negative interest.

[Jason Snell]

Really?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. I, I didn't know she had a full time job there now. That's fair.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, she's. She's on full time, having spent nine months on the inside at Disney. And I asked her, what can we talk about about her job at Disney? And she said, you can say I'm no longer employed at Disney, but that's it. Because that's all you can say. She was doing secret strategy stuff that. Yeah, you know, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Dylan Byers has always been a great media commentator there, so she will really add.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, she. She is, yeah. She's super smart. And the way they're saying it is you used to pay, you know, thousands of dollars to get parrot research as parrot analytics as research. And now she's just doing it for Puck, which is pretty. Pretty cool. Pretty awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

Very smart of Puck. It sounds like they're doing well, which makes me very happy.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And of course, you're doing fantastic, which also makes me happy. This is the decade of the indie journalist.

[Jason Snell]

It's working so far. I had somebody I used to work with in corporate media catch up with me the other day and he was like, how you doing? It looks like you're still doing fine. I'm like, yeah, I'm still doing great. It's great, great to be able to do what I love.

[Leo Laporte]

Did everybody from future call you and say, hey, I've been getting calls. I started this 20 years ago. In fact, our 20th anniversary twit is this Sunday and almost immediately started getting calls from former radio people saying, tell me about this podcast.

[Jason Snell]

Ah, yes. Well, step one is start 20 years ago or maybe 10 years ago.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that would be the way to do it. Yep.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Micah. Thank you to all of our club members and all of you who watch and listen. We really appreciate it. We do Mac break Weekly on Tuesdays, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern. That would be 1800 UTC. And the only reason I mention that is you can actually watch us live. Most people don't, but if you, you know, you had an anchoring to. Or if you're in the club and you want to chat along with us. We are of course in the club. Twit, Discord Live, but we're live in public as well because you can watch on YouTube, chat there. We watch the YouTube chat, Twitch, TikTok, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. Eight different platforms all streaming live, all at the same time. How do they do it after the fact? On demand versions of the show available at our website, Twitter, TV, MBW. There's a link there to the YouTube channel that is all of the video. If you go there, it's a great way to share clips. So if you saw something interesting that you wanted to share with other people, like my Apple account password, which. Which I inadvertently shared moments ago, you could just. That's all right. I've changed it. You know what? Apple security is so good. So yeah, when I was showing that iCloud PD thing, I inadvertently. I didn't realize, but the text had my cleartext, my password.

[Jason Snell]

So password 456 now. Yeah, it's the new password.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the new Shh. Uh oh, 789Password. So no, but what Apple's so good. Cause I said, oh. I immediately went to iCloud, started to change it. They said, no, you can't. You have to change it on one of your devices so that we can do face recognition because I have the theft protection turned on. And then of course it does the two factor, which everybody should have turned on. So even though somebody in Erie, Pennsylvania, I'm looking at you tried to change my password immediately. Well, I got another confirmation from Erie, PA and I said, yeah, that was not me, but it didn't matter. Good on you, Apple. I didn't need. In fact, I probably didn't need to change my password, but one. Why not? So I have now it's a new and improved password. It's monkey456 just in case.

[Jason Snell]

Damn it. You stole my password.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you all. Oh, and I didn't mention you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That's a good way to watch because then you get it automatically, audio or video. And you don't have to think about it. It's just there for you for your delectation at the moment. You need need a Mac break weekly hit if you would. By the way, if you use a podcast client, give us a review. Give us a. Okay, can I beg a 5 star review on that site? Whether it's itunes or pocketcasts or overcast, wherever you get your shows, if they allow reviews, five stars helps us a lot. Turns out that is a big factor in both new listeners, but also new advertisers. They advertisers look at the reviews for some reason. So just if you would help us out and then. And then join the club and then you don't have to help us anymore after that. You've done all you ever need to do. Thanks for being here. I must say it. I don't want to. But get back to work because break time is over.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Bye bye.

[Leo Laporte]

Get tech news that keeps you updated without eating up your time. Twitter TV's short form podcasts are perfect for a blue break commute or just a quick and helpful tech insight. Hands On Mac and Hands on Windows give you tips to make the most of your devices while Hands On Tech helps solve tech issues fast. And if home entertainment is your thing, Home Theater Geeks with Scott Wilkinson has the best recommendations on top notch consumer entertainment systems. If you like watching the shows, join Club Twit to get full video access, ad free versions versions and more. TWiT TV your trusted tech news made easy. Download our short format shows now at TWiT TV or use your favorite podcast player.

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