MacBreak Weekly 969: Here Comes the Pizza

Summary

MacBreak Weekly 969: Here Comes the Pizza
All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
Release Date: April 22, 2025
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay

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1. Welcome Back and Community Updates

Leo Laporte kicks off the episode by welcoming back longtime host Jason Snell, who has returned from Memphis. The team thanks previous participants and highlights their involvement with charitable causes, notably their support for St. Jude through upcoming events.

[00:59] Jason Snell: "With my blue suede shoes, no less."

The discussion briefly touches on the team's ongoing projects and the return of key members from maternity and paternity leaves, ensuring continuity in their programming.

2. Apple Product Rumors and Innovations

The conversation shifts to the latest rumors surrounding Apple's product lineup, with a particular focus on the Apple TV and the anticipated Apple Watch Ultra.

Jason Snell references insights from Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac, suggesting that the next Apple TV might feature a significant chip upgrade to extend its lifecycle and potentially introduce Apple Intelligence support.

[11:07] Jason Snell: "One of the challenges with old Apple TVs is that those chips aren't necessarily being used anymore... they do need to have chips to put in them so they sometimes revise them just to use a more modern chip."

Alex Lindsay speculates on additional features, such as enhanced frame rates and deeper integration with Apple Vision Pro, hinting at a seamless transition between devices.

[13:02] Alex Lindsay: "They could put a USB-C port on the back again so that they could attach a webcam to it."

The hosts discuss the potential for Apple to incorporate AI-driven enhancements, drawing parallels with Netflix's integration of ChatGPT into their recommendation engines.

3. Overhauling Siri and Apple Intelligence

A significant portion of the episode delves into Apple's efforts to revamp Siri, their voice assistant. Mark Gurman reports a major shift in Apple's Siri engineering leadership, with Mike Rockwell—formerly of the Vision Pro team—taking the helm to lead the improvement of Siri's functionality.

[39:06] Jason Snell: "They finally got there, right... turning them on, this is a real challenge for them."

The team debates whether Apple should leverage existing Large Language Models (LLMs) from companies like OpenAI or Anthropic to expedite Siri's redevelopment or continue building proprietary models.

[50:23] Jason Snell: "Apple has all the money. If you're open to using other people's models, there are very few problems money can't solve."

Alex Lindsay emphasizes the cultural and risk-averse challenges within Apple that may impede rapid advancements in their AI capabilities.

[57:51] Alex Lindsay: "I think the biggest obstacle isn't money or time or whatever it is... Apple is so careful to not have any thorns on any roses that they just can't quite get to a place where they could do this effectively."

4. Earth Day and Apple's Environmental Initiatives

In celebration of Earth Day, the hosts examine Apple's commitment to environmental sustainability. Jason Snell lauds Apple's efforts, noting that even organizations like Greenpeace acknowledge Apple's positive strides, particularly in their supply chain management and recycling programs.

[88:56] Andy Ihnatko: "Pretty much. I was surprised... Greenpeace had a response to it, which I thought, okay, sit back, let's get ready. And actually, the statement was more or less, hey, Apple's doing a very good job."

They discuss Apple's 2030 Carbon Neutral goal, highlighting both the achievements and the areas needing improvement, such as the recyclability of products like AirPods.

[89:32] Andy Ihnatko: "And it's the hardest part... AirPods are one of the worst of all of Apple's products for that."

5. Apple Vision Pro and Immersive Technologies

The team explores the advancements and upcoming features of the Apple Vision Pro. Jason Snell expresses excitement about new applications, such as a ping pong app designed for the Vision Pro, while also expressing skepticism about its current hand recognition capabilities without dedicated controllers.

[102:36] Jason Snell: "I just love table tennis and don't have a house big enough to have a table tennis."

They compare it to other immersive technologies and discuss potential improvements, such as integrating cameras for a more seamless user experience.

[13:02] Leo Laporte: "You'll notice the Vision Pro segments are going to get longer and longer once the camera comes out."

6. Picks of the Week

Alex Lindsay introduces a practical pick: Domke Protective Wraps for cameras. These wraps offer a simple, Velcro-based solution to protect camera equipment without the need for bulky bags.

[125:54] Alex Lindsay: "These wraps are made by a company called Domke... they're great when you're trying to pack a Pelican case."

Andy Ihnatko shares his enthusiasm for a camera repair app developed by Rich Siegel, founder of Bare Bones Software. This app assists users in diagnosing and repairing their KitchenAid mixers, showcasing the blend of technology and practical DIY solutions.

[132:04] Andy Ihnatko: "He anticipated the tariffs and how it might affect the tech industry... he created an app that will just simply find the date in which your KitchenAid made this thing."

Jason Snell presents his pick: Bird Buddy, a bird feeder equipped with a webcam that captures and sends images of visiting birds to the user's devices.

[126:07] Jason Snell: "Bird Buddy... takes pictures of birds and sends them to you and video of birds and sends them to you."

7. Closing Remarks

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on their ongoing projects, personal anecdotes, and upcoming content. They invite listeners to join their community through Club Twit, emphasizing the benefits of membership, including ad-free access, special events, and exclusive content.

[140:31] Leo Laporte: "Club Twit... How you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads."

The team thanks their listeners and sponsors, underscoring the importance of community support in sustaining their programming.

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Notable Quotes

• Jason Snell on Apple TV's chip upgrade:

  "[11:07] 'One of the challenges with old Apple TVs is that those chips aren't necessarily being used anymore...'"

• Alex Lindsay on integrating Vision Pro with Apple TV:

  "[13:02] 'They could put a USB-C port on the back again so that they could attach a webcam to it.'"

• Jason Snell addressing Apple's Siri overhaul:

  "[39:06] 'They finally got there, right... this is a real challenge for them.'"

• Jason Snell on leveraging existing AI models:

  "[50:23] 'Apple has all the money. If you're open to using other people's models, there are very few problems money can't solve.'"

• Andy Ihnatko commending Apple's environmental efforts:

  "[88:56] 'Pretty much. I was surprised... Greenpeace had a response to it...'"

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This episode of MacBreak Weekly offers insightful discussions on Apple's evolving product strategies, particularly in AI and immersive technologies, while also highlighting the team's personal interests and community initiatives. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or a casual listener, the episode provides a comprehensive overview of the latest trends and developments in the Apple ecosystem.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Jason is back. Andy Inocco's here. Alex Lindsey as well. We'll talk about rumors about a new Apple tv. What would you like to see in an Apple tv? The new Apple Watch Ultra. Another rumor. In fact, a lot of rumors. Plus, yes, finally. You've been waiting for it. You've demanded it. You needed it. Ping pong on the Vision Pro. It's next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly. Episode 969, recorded Tuesday, April 22, Earth Day 2025. Here comes the pizza. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We get together with some fun people and talk about the latest Apple news. The fun begins right now with Jason Snell, back from a visit to Memphis. He was walking to Memphis.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that's right. With my blue suede shoes, no less. You know, the fun begins with Jason Snell. Never a phrase used when I was in high school.

[Leo Laporte]

So thank you sixcolors.com we missed you last week. We got Doc Rock on. But it's always nice to see the doctor Doc Rock.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that's great. Great. I'm happy to have let him step in my place.

[Leo Laporte]

And you were doing something really good. You were doing some work for St. Jude.

[Jason Snell]

For St. Jude.

[Leo Laporte]

As you know, Relay FM does a whole marathon come September, right?

[Jason Snell]

12 hours of live streaming in Jerry Lewis style. And so this is kind. We're kind of like filling the tank for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Will Hurley be back for that?

[Jason Snell]

Hurley. Mike Hurley will be back for that. He wasn't at this thing, but he will be back. He's back from his paternity leave. He'll be in Memphis and we'll have.

[Leo Laporte]

A whole Back on Upgrade crew.

[Jason Snell]

And he's back on Upgrade with me as of yesterday. But it was good to see that. I mean, they do some amazing work there. And this time we actually were very lucky. We had a very small group of us actually kind of went through the bottom level of the hospital. And I'll tell you, it's one thing to know psychologically, mentally, emotionally about what St. Jude does. It's another thing to walk a bunch of kids who are being treated for cancer at the hospital. And that's the first time I'd experience that part. It was a really. Yeah, it's a pretty emotional thing. So we'll raise hopefully a bunch of money for them in September.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Also here, Andy Anatko, who dances to the beat of a different Drummer.

[Jason Snell]

The fun continues with Andy Inatko.

[Leo Laporte]

The gags and laughs comes fast and.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Furious with Andy Inatko, especially during the fact checking portion of Andy's comics.

[Leo Laporte]

He's half a minute tell you, good to see you, Andrew. And he knows the Pope. He's shaking his hand. Mr. Alex Lindsay, the next pope, ladies.

[Jason Snell]

And gentlemen, Alex Lindsay.

[Leo Laporte]

Then no, he won't be the next Pope. I think you have to be a cardinal first.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think no Americans ever.

[Alex Lindsay]

That they're gonna let me.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No Americans.

[Alex Lindsay]

But Andy dragged me. Andy dragged me into. Into Blue Sky. It's so much nicer. It's so clean. Like, I was like, are you in Blue sky now? I didn't do anything. Andy pointed out there was a conversation about Light and Magic that came up about. And Jason sent me an email and Andy sent me.

[Jason Snell]

I sent you a screenshot of it because I knew you weren't on Blue Sky. So I was like, here's the thing that happened on Blue Sky. I have a screenshot. Alex, I don't know what you do with it, but take it.

[Alex Lindsay]

Talk about something. You get caught doing something that you weren't supposed. Not really. We're supposed to be doing 25 years later in a trailer. I finally remember.

[Leo Laporte]

So wait a minute, Dan, you gotta tell us, where is this?

[Alex Lindsay]

It's in the trailer for Light and Magic. And it doesn't show me. Well, I show up in the show. So in the first episode of Light and Magic, you're in it. Yeah. If you see. If you go to 45 minutes and about 47 minutes in the first episode of the second season.

[Leo Laporte]

So this was unveiled at the Star Wars Celebration.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And this is the trailer. Okay. Oh, I gotta see this. So where would.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, in the trailer itself, there's a.

[Jason Snell]

Screenshot of it in our discord.

[Alex Lindsay]

Someone pointed it out as I remember it, because it took me a little while to remember. I was like, I knew that that was my screen, but I didn't know. I couldn't remember what was going on. And then I remembered what it was, was that I was playing around with this car simulator in electric image and dropping it onto this dune that I had built or whatever. And a camera crew ran in. So I quickly grabbed the queen ship and put it over top of that video and hit play so that it wasn't like a random Humvee running through the desert. And so. But that' if you look at the.

[Leo Laporte]

Car landing belfries, half, half res, half res, half res. Oh, quick time.

[Jason Snell]

Qt, quick time.

[Leo Laporte]

On top of that space approach. Quick time. And that's Padme's ship, which you were working on.

[Alex Lindsay]

I'm pretty sure that that shot was the. The shot over Coruscant. So that's the shot where it spins over course. And I worked on that for like nine weeks. And so. And so anyways, I'm pretty. Pretty sure that that's my. My desktop because I.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanks for to jam and bull on blue Sky. Who fat or is it Hamon Bull? I don't know. Might be a jamon bull.

[Alex Lindsay]

If you.

[Leo Laporte]

And I must have missed that little skeet, because I see I'm included in it. So. Yeah, if you.

[Alex Lindsay]

But if. Yeah, if you go to somewhere like 45 minutes in or so, you'll see me wander by. I had helped put up some storyboards or whatever. And then there's another place a couple minutes later where I'm just kind of scratching my face in the background.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so you know you're going to be in it. That's great. Well, and by the way, he skied it as a note. You can actually see me in the background in the first show at about 45 and 47 minutes. So now I can follow you on the skeet. The skeeter.

[Jason Snell]

The little skeeter on old beast guy. The old beast guy.

[Leo Laporte]

Old beast guy. Good old beast guy. I hope I'm following Andy. Yeah, I am.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So nice.

[Alex Lindsay]

I'm gonna do one.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, you have the dark hair version as your avatar.

[Alex Lindsay]

No, no, no. It's even darker. It's pure black and lots of it. I forgot that I even had that much hair. Ever so nice. Anyway, you'll nice see a very young version.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you created this account in the 2023. You just never.

[Alex Lindsay]

I just haven't. I just keep on going, oh, I'll get to it. And then I didn't.

[Jason Snell]

Now.

[Alex Lindsay]

Now I'm in. I opened it up. I was like, oh, this is really nice. I think I need to do more stuff here. So.

[Leo Laporte]

So it is what Twitter seemed, you know, kind of was sort of in the old days.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, yeah. So pretty. So I'm gonna be sweet. I'm gonna be there. More people want to follow me there. It's just the same name. Alex Lindsay.

[Leo Laporte]

Good. L I N D S A Y A Y. Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Can I just say, this has been like the past 10 minutes, including the pre show, has been the most Alex Lindsay moment ever where it's like, oh, yeah. Well, I got a. I got stories about hanging out with the pope and, you know, hang out with it. Oh, yeah, Well, I was at Alm and I was doing that. Yeah, I'm in that documentary. Yeah. I mean.

[Leo Laporte]

Is Rum Slag in the documentary?

[Alex Lindsay]

He's not in the documentary, but I.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Think holding out for more money. Very smart. Don't let Disney weasel you out.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Alex Lindsay]

They were like, yeah, you know, you.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Got them, you got them right by.

[Alex Lindsay]

The, you know, it's all about the back end. You know, they said, we just want to do it streaming. I'm like, oh, if you're new streaming, I still need a back end. I like, I, you know, it's, it's going to be important.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, I just did a search on Blue sky for pictures of Rum Slag and there he is. Look at that.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's a scuba suit. Spray painted or orange or whatever. And then like other stuff that was kind of thrown one of the.

[Leo Laporte]

That's you in there. That's you in that scuba suit.

[Alex Lindsay]

It is me.

[Leo Laporte]

It, it.

[Alex Lindsay]

What's funny is it looks like I'm talking to myself. If you actually watch the clip. And what happened was, is that Jonathan Rothbart was next to me, but he could see his face. And because you could see his face, they decided to roto him out. So. So then I was just left there looking like I was crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

So everybody wants a Rum Slag action figure.

[Alex Lindsay]

They still make them. They're like 50 bucks each.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

They still. I don't make them, they sell them. I think that they had a short run. Well, it was funny when I took a, when I, when I finished doing that clip, they had me do what's called a T pose. So you put your arms out and you, and you turn around and they just take pictures. Back then, they just took pictures and, and I said, what's this for? And they were like, the action figure. And I'm like, I'm gonna have an action figure. And they were like, they're like, you're in maybe.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No, George was going to have an action figure.

[Alex Lindsay]

They're like, if tier one sells well and tier two sells well, then we get to your action figure. And I was like, oh, okay. And I thought for sure I'd have one. And then it didn't happen for 10 years.

[Leo Laporte]

Now, ironically, everybody's action figure is AI generated and appearing on Blue Sky. So we've come full circle.

[Alex Lindsay]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Now. Yeah, yeah. There was a, a tweet. Tim Cook still using the X because I think he doesn't want to cheese off Elon Musk. Little tweet joining people around the world in mourning Pope Francis today. And of course, he passed away over the weekend. I actually sent a note of condolence to our friend Father Robert, who said, yeah, I was with him the night before. I guess they kind of saw it coming and gathered around to wish him well on his transition to the next stage of life. Rest in peace. Let's see what else is going well. You know what? This is gonna be the rumor episode, I think.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, we're here. What's right here?

[Alex Lindsay]

That's the rumor.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a rumor going round that this is gonna be the rumor. Oh, one more Pope Francis story before we go on.

[Jason Snell]

Popes and rumors. It's all popes and rumors today.

[Leo Laporte]

Popes and rumors.

[Jason Snell]

Get ready.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the Popes and rumors show one of his last prayer intentions, according to Fast Company. Urged people to look less at screens, and then he passed away. So is this good advice? Maybe, maybe not.

[Andy Ihnatko]

First Jesuit pope, I think so was.

[Leo Laporte]

He the first really?

[Alex Lindsay]

He was a lot of firsts. First from South America, first he was from rjes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And also, I know we're talking about Apple stuff, but famous. He's like the guy who said, oh, a papal limo. No, I would be more comfortable in like a. Just a white econo box. Like, ooh, the papal palace. Isn't there like an apartment building?

[Leo Laporte]

He's in the guest department where we.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Put up people who are visiting. I just give me a suite of rooms there and. Oh, God, Hattenberger had those. All those gold. No, it's gonna be plain. His like, 100% humility.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. Yeah, it's gonna be like three caskets. They used to do cedar, then lead than Elm.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, and the things that we did at the. There was in conjunction with Skolas, which was his. His schooling program that he had built while he was in Argentina. And so it was really talking to school kids, you know, to kids and answering their questions and everything else. And so it was. It was definitely. I mean, he. He definitely believed. I mean, he was definitely embodying, you know, what he. What he believed or what he espoused.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I. I think absolutely. I'm not a Catholic, but he was a very impressive person. And of course, our father Robert, who is a Jesuit, was fairly close to him, so. Wishing you well, Robert. Now to the rumor. That's the Pope. Now the rumors. Apple 4K TV. Apple New Apple TV coming in the fall. Is that right? Is that right? With a big chip upgrade.

[Alex Lindsay]

What are they going to add, like, what do they.

[Leo Laporte]

What does it need?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, well, the good people at 9 to 5 Mac who, you know, Ryan Christoffel writes about this stuff a lot and he said, you know, it'll probably get a chip upgrade. One of the challenges with old Apple TVs is that those chips aren't necessarily being used anymore. So one of the reasons like you don't. It's already really fast. Right. Like I tested it, it's plenty, it's plenty fast. But they do need to have chips to put in them so they sometimes they revise them just to use a more modern chip. So that point it has more life. Probably there's going to be some aspect of what they'll call Apple Intelligence support. My guess is that it'll be, you know, something either related to acting on requests from non Apple intelligence devices and pass, you know, working on them or passing them on or maybe some, I think you could add some TVOs focused ML features and brand them Apple Intelligence.

[Leo Laporte]

You saw that Netflix is going to start using Chat GPT and it's in recommendation engine, I think. So maybe this makes sense for recommendations or searches.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I mean there's lots of stuff, I mean the, what the. That gives me pause is that they haven't done any of this with Apple Music, which is sitting right there. But maybe Ryan at 95 Mac also suggests that this might be where Apple's first WI Fi Bluetooth chip replacing the ones from other suppliers that they designed themselves might come in. So that's a possibility. And then there's lots of mysterious talk about camera support. And I, you know, I don't think they're going to make an Apple TV that you can like perch on the top of your TV like a Kinect or like that little Wii IR bar kind of thing. But I do wonder if they might like. I love continuity camera but the fact is you have to pull a phone out of somewhere and put it somewhere and all that. Wouldn't be nice if you could have a camera like mounted that you could use for Zoom and FaceTime and Apple TV. And one thought I had is, you know, you could just put a USB C port on the back again and then let people plug webcams into it.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, interestingly that's what the Switch 2 is doing and they're gonna, Nintendo is gonna sell a camera that comes with a new switch that you can add on.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, because I like continuity camera. But the problem is like you can't make a standalone continuity camera really because I mean you could, but it would have to connect wirelessly to the Apple tv. And I use the Apple TV for zoom calls every, every other week with my wife's family. And it's great but like I have to set up a tripod and put my phone on it and stuff like that. I'd much rather just put a webcam up on the top of the tv. But anyway, that's one thing they could do as well is, is put a USB C port on the back again so that they could attach a webcam to it.

[Alex Lindsay]

I mean they're, you know, the other things that, that they could do if they, if they wanted to is that one of the things that they could kind of stretch. Almost every TV that you buy is capable of 120 frames a second, although no one, almost, almost nobody uses it. Technically the current Apple TV can support 120 frames a second. But they could, for instance, be more aggressive about that where they start to. Because your phones now can all shoot 120. If you were suddenly able to, you know, have a place to send 120 at regular frame rate to your TV, you may, you know, that's something that basically only they can do. So it puts a lot of pressure on all the other underpowered over the top boxes is that they could, you know, kind of flex that direction. I think that there is some potential for the Apple TVs to integrate with the headset a little bit more so with the Apple Vision Pro. So, you know, being able to have a W1 chip or whatever they want to call it, some chip that makes it easy to understand where the Apple TV is as opposed to, you know, how it's working with the, with the headset so that you can easily take the headset on and off. Because I think that where the headset, I don't think I want to watch a whole soccer game in a headset. But seeing highlights immediately afterwards or you know, like a replay where you're suddenly down there is much more interesting. But figuring out that integration is important.

[Jason Snell]

Theoretically that's something they could do with handoff. And it doesn't actually have to be that, that hard. But that's one of the challenges that they've had is again, I go back, all of these things are eminently reasonable. But I had that same thought about Apple Intelligence with Apple Music where it just sort of hasn't happened and I don't understand why. I would say handoff is a great example where there are lots of places where you'd want to take media you're listening to in one place and transfer it to somewhere else. And other than like iPhones and home pods, which they did, a lot of this stuff is just not there. Like, you still can't do that thing that was in that original iPad ad where you're listening to music on your Mac and you walk away and put in your AirPods and in this case and walk away with your iPhone and like, it continues playing what it was playing before. Like, it just doesn't do it. They don't have any of that. And so I wonder why not. Maybe they need a good reason. But you're right, Alex. Like, if you're watching a movie on Vision Pro and you could just say, transfer this to my TV and it should be able to just do a really quick essentially airdrop, turn on your TV and start playing it well.

[Alex Lindsay]

But I think even further that I'm watching something on my TV and immediately says there's a highlight or there's a special thing for the Vision Pro. And I just put my Vision Pro on and immediately jumps to that, to. To something that, specifically for the Vision Pro that adds to that value, you know, whatever that is.

[Jason Snell]

I don't, I don't think that needs new hardware. I think that that's just a software thing, because that is all within the realm of what they can do with continuity features. They just have to do it. I agree.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think that the real challenge for Apple is they keep on wanting to add more features. And I would love, I mean, I'd be a very happy consumer if they said, hey, we're not going to do anything for the next year or two years at wwc. We're just going to make everything that we've done work, you know, like, you know, and work well and just really refine the experience of those things as opposed to continually adding new things to the list. Because I feel like Apple just keeps on adding new things to the list, and I got a whole bunch of things that kind of work.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah, it is a. It is a chance. Although I don't feel that way about TVOs, I. I feel like Apple has. They've been very slowly moving toward more unification of their two interfaces, the TV app and the. And the app launching home screen. And if you look at any other box, that's not sort of where it's going. It's going to a more integrated setup, at least by default. And I think they've missed the boat completely on, on live streaming channels. And that's the, that's the one where I would really like to see A tvos improvement, but again, doesn't really require new hardware that I think the new hardware rumor. Yeah, I mean my gut feeling is it's basically the chips are old in it and it would be nice to do a refresh there so they can keep doing it. If they can get some price out of it so that, you know, they can maybe lower the price of the box or, or just maintain with their margin, that would be good too.

[Leo Laporte]

And honestly, they could use new chips without announcing it.

[Jason Snell]

They, I mean they do that a lot where they just say, well look, there's a new version.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

They do need to say, I mean, because the specs would change but it could be super low key. If they choose to do nothing but swap in a new chip, they'll just, you know, call it next generation or they'll call it 2025 and not make a big deal about it. If they support Apple intelligence features, they'll make a bigger deal out of it just because there'll be some features that you won't be able to use unless you buy the new one.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And also there could be some forward planning here. Whatever they want to do with Apple TV in the next three to four or five years, the car and hardware maybe can't really do it. So they want to make sure that God knows when they can release Apple intelligence features for the, for anything. But they want to make sure that whatever they ship from X date forward can do whatever they have planned for this.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and we've talked a lot about tariffs, but presuming that tariffs will remain high in China, refreshing products gives you an opportunity to build the tariff, at least part of the tariff into the price. Like, oh, we put a new chip in it so it's $300 more, you know, that kind of thing.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see.

[Leo Laporte]

Also they're going to really have to struggle with that.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think one of the things we really looked at it with high, really high quality streams is the problem and they're very bandwidth intensive and some over the top folks are thinking about more storage where it can trickle, like oh, there's a new release coming for it. So we're just going to buffer a big chunk of it to you before you even get there so that you know, it doesn't have to wait as long. Although bandwidth right now for most Americans is fast enough that it's not as big of a deal. But if you really want to push the envelope of how good things look and it does feel like we're kind of topping out at 4K. AK was a thing for a minute.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's funny, isn't it, that, yeah, 4K had had that same kind of progression where there was no content. The hardware capability was there, but you could get content in NHK in Japan. But it did eventually kind of trickle out. We're still not seeing 4k in sporting events and things.

[Alex Lindsay]

But the hard part is, is that 8K is, you know, four times harder than four to send, which was four times harder than HD. And the, and the challenge really is, is that number one is streamers don't make more money if you stream more things at higher resolution. So they don't like, unless they're charging you a lot more. Having you have an 8k signal is not in the bat, you know, doesn't help them. It's just really a lot of bandwidth. And the other thing is, is that it's really hard to see the difference. Even for me. Like, I mean, I can see the difference between 10, 80 and 4k on a 75 inch screen TV. I can definitely see the difference from 4k to 8k on a 75 inch screen TV. It's pretty hard. It's pretty hard to see the difference. And so especially if you're at a normal seating 10ft away or 8ft away or whatever, it's really hard to resolve that. And so I think that 8K turned out to be really good for theaters. I can definitely see it when the screen is 40ft wide.

[Leo Laporte]

But are there any theaters doing 8K?

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, there's a, there's an IMAX. IMAX is not. But there is, there's one screen in Culver City that, that Amazon owns. It's one of their, one of their screens. And that screen is an 8K screen, the LED. So it's an LED 8K screen. And it is unbelievable to watch. You know you've seen it? Yeah. SMPTE did a, did a thing a couple years ago where they brought everybody in and a bunch of us went and looked at the 4k and the 8k and LED walls in a theater is kind of amazing. Like when you go from dark to light. When they walked out into the desert, you felt like you were in the desert. Suddenly there's so much brightness that your body had this reaction like, I'm in the desert. So it's a different experience. But audio is hard because you have to bounce the audio off the screen.

[Jason Snell]

I got a piece of anonymous feedback for the other podcast to do about media stuff downstream from somebody in the sports broadcasting business who said, yeah, you got to get past this huge legacy and infrastructure and sports stuff. But they are. The goal is. I thought this was interesting, Alex. The goal is 4K capture and the ability to distribute 1080p HDR 60 frames per second. And a lot of the 720p sports now this person says is already 60p, you know, outside or 60 frames outside of the legacy distribution. And there are higher frame rate experiments for some sports. But one of the problems, this person says is the quality jump between 4K cameras and 1080 cameras, even if your output is the same, is so jarring that the general feeling is that they want to minimize until they can kind of like upgrade everything to, to 4K. And then even if they're outputting a 1080 have the ability to do HDR and, and higher frame rates.

[Leo Laporte]

It is, it is during. When they use.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Short depth of field cameras on the field.

[Jason Snell]

I know, right? The long lens and. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's like, wow, that's really.

[Jason Snell]

They do that in all sports now that you see that a lot with like baseball when somebody's coming to home plate after hitting a home run and you get that film like experience, but it's only for that one camera. It looks great, but then you just cut back to the rest.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. So it is. I understand what they're saying.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, the hard part there is that, is that the, when you, it's very hard to get focus. So when a camera is up in the rafters at 300ft from the field, if you give it a large chip, the focus distance will be like a half an inch.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

Like, you know, and then, you know, and so they have to, you know, so using smaller chips allows them to get more, you know, to keep things, especially when people are running back and forth. Camera operators for sports are other, you know, like barely human. Like they are amazing work. They do the most amazing camera operators I've ever, you know, because they're sitting there changing, they're, they're tracking that person changing oftentimes zoom and focus at the same time while they're, you know, those are on their handles and they're doing it all while they're, while they're moving. It's incredible.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You know, also, but just being aware of everything that's going on to know like where to go to get ready for the next thing. Like as a joke, I've. As a joke, I. Well, not as a joke, as a beloved tradition. Every, every year on opening day of baseball season, I post the video, live video of the George Brett pine tar bat incident where he, where he charges, where he, where they take back his home run, his game winning home run, and he charges from the, from the dugout. That's the one time I've ever, like, you see the theatrical. Oh, hold me back. Hold, hold me back. Guys. Like, no, you could see the, both teams, they're like, this is going to get murdered if we don't restrain him. And I'm, and, and as much as familiar as I am with that video, I'm just amazed that the camera guy knew where to put the shot. Framing the shot of the umpire standing in the foreground holding the bat, the dugout with George Brett like standing there thinking, what's going on? Got the perfect shot of the ump going and then George Brett coming into the foreground. You could not have directed that as fiction as well as that. The camera, the entire team did that. And so, yeah, that's why, like, I'm really so impressed with how well they do these things live. I mean, I can barely. If you put a squirrel in a tree eating a nut, I can barely get the camera there in time for five minutes to get them to get the shot.

[Leo Laporte]

They're really good. I watched a documentary about F1. Imagine a car going 200 miles an hour, six feet away from you, and you've got to follow it all the way across from left to right. You're moving pretty fast. Those guys are nuts. Those guys are nuts. Now, I can't show this because it's a Major League baseball video. And as everyone knows, the Major League.

[Jason Snell]

Baseball copyrighted broadcast is provided by the authority of the commissioner of baseball and may not be used and calls the game and may not be for any reason.

[Leo Laporte]

But I'll leave it to you. It's on the Major League Baseball YouTube channel.

[Jason Snell]

I am surprised that Andy has not yet, because that's a Royals Yankees game. I'm a little surprised that Andy has not embraced for his opening day tradition the here comes the pizza moment from the Red Sox game where a fan throws a pizza at another fan.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That was also beautiful.

[Jason Snell]

An all timer.

[Leo Laporte]

Because.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Because it's one thing to say, okay, you know what? There's a tense situation of negotiation on the field where this, where Billy Martin has like raised a, raised an issue with the umpire. Okay. But when you say, you know what, there's something happening in the stands, I bet that that guy is gonna pelt throw that pizza.

[Jason Snell]

And then beloved color commentator Jerry Remy shouts, here comes the pizza. It's amazing. It's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

It is the case that you have George Brett and Billy Martin on the field at the same time.

[Jason Snell]

It's a thing of beauty. I just wanted to say, talking about formats with Alex. Hey, formats with Alex. I think that person who wrote in to me, I get the appeal of higher resolution, but I have to say the idea of HDR in more places and higher frame rates in more places, I think more people would notice and appreciate that.

[Alex Lindsay]

Generally almost all of the research that we've seen so far is that frame rate and color depth makes a much bigger difference than resolution. So if you're going to pick those and they take a lot less bandwidth because making it HDR adds 10 or 20% to the stream. It doesn't add 4x. You know, like 4k goes 4x if you go from 60 frames a second. If you go. Most people are at 60, 60. I mean a lot of people are at 60 now. But if you go from 60 to 120, for instance, which we've done tests on, that's double, you know, it's not 4x, you know, so. And, and I would, I mean I've definitely had the opportunity to see 1080p at 120 vs 4k at 60 and I would take 1080p at 120 every day of the. I mean it is so amazing. Like it is such an amazing experience.

[Jason Snell]

HDR, I mean HDR, like that's the thing that 4K I watched like some soccer games are in 4K and I think it' real 4K, not like Fox upscaling 4K. But the thing about it is not the 4K. The thing about it is yes, if it's streaming and you can get do the bandwidth, you're going to get more bandwidth, a better bitrate than you did a 1080. But the truth is it's the HDR frame rate would be great. I'd love to see that too. But the hdr, the for sports, like the shadows are darker and the colors of the uniforms are better and like it's just, it looks so much better.

[Alex Lindsay]

And you see it way more in sports because they actually shade the cameras towards taking advantage of the full spectrum. When you watch HDR films, the film is kind of drab. Like most films are their color corrected to be kind of drab. Like that's just the look that a lot of films take. So you don't really get to see hdr. When you get to see HDR is when you get sports and they turn all the dials up to you know, take full advantage of the range and, you know, and it's, it's, it's really. Especially if you're looking at Dolby Vision where they're able to really shade that and trim it all. It's, it's quite a thing.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, early days of hd, I bought an HDTV and like two, like way before anybody else should. Anybody should have. It was a CRT. It was a Sony Turnitron HD.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Snell]

Weighed 200 pounds. We had two. Two burly men had to haul it away when we were done with it. But it was amazing. But the moments that I remember that blew me away early in the HD era were all sports. Because sports, you know, sports benefits greatly from having those improved technologies and then everything else. Yes, movies are better in HD and TV shows are better in hd and it all happen. But those. I remember the. Was the Athens Olympics, I think, and just being like, I can't believe what I'm seeing here. I can see individual. We take it for granted now, but like, talk about baseball games and things like that, you could see individual people in the crowd and they were people where before it was like little pieces of confetti that would flicker like you couldn't make them out. They were just sort of crowd noise behind. And now it's like, I can see that guy's eating popcorn. So sports is really benefits from this stuff and just being able to see, like, there are Premier league teams where I've seen them play in the 4K HDR stream, and I'm like, oh, so that's the color of their jersey. Because it's totally different. Like, Alex, you probably know this, but I remember we don't see color the way like standard hd. The Denver Broncos orange is not in the color gamut. It's not the right color. You can't see the Denver Broncos in the right orange if you watch them on tv because it's not in the color space. Stuff like that where you're like, I can't believe what I'm seeing.

[Alex Lindsay]

The, The Dallas Cowboys, they're. If you actually see them see their, their pants in, in person, they're kind of green. Like, it looks silver to the camera.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's so.

[Alex Lindsay]

But they had to make them green to make, to look right. Snap. Green under snap, you know, so there's this.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Alex Lindsay]

There's this like bluish green like they, they have at the. In Frisco or whatever. They have all the old ones and they were.

[Leo Laporte]

They used to be silver. They used to be Silver.

[Alex Lindsay]

And then at some point they realized, oh, the cameras need these.

[Leo Laporte]

Like in the black and white movie days they couldn't really use red blood because red blood didn't print well. So they used chocolate syrup which tasted, tasted good too.

[Jason Snell]

Hell of an after party for that.

[Leo Laporte]

One by the way. One rumor and Ryan Christoffel refers to it as 9 to 5 Mac article and it's from Mark Gurman is that there might be a camera. It's kind of a long shot.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. I mean again I feel like they should do it. The question is, is it a camera or not? Because to me it makes sense to sell a camera as an add on and have a way to do it. And ideally have it be attach to.

[Leo Laporte]

Do what Nintendo is going to do. I think is brilliant.

[Jason Snell]

The other way you could do is you could re imagine the whole thing as a little thing that lives on top of your TV that is a camera and, and an Apple TV box and attach it. But I feel like modular is the way to go with that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

And because I feel like the problem is like person like me, my, my Apple TV isn't anywhere near where I'd want to put a camera. Like I have one Apple TV that's like in another room. Like it's in my server room or whatever. And then the other ones are all like somewhere that I wouldn't want to try to figure out how to put a camera in. I think it makes way more sense to have a new Apple camera or whatever or just make it available to webcammers. You know it could just be a USB C in. Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Literally. Literally USB C. To say nothing.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The fact of. Sorry. To say nothing. The fact of like what camera can they put into the device that will still be good two or three years later.

[Jason Snell]

Exactly.

[Andy Ihnatko]

We're still complaining about the built in cameras on imacs and on MacBooks, right?

[Leo Laporte]

That's true.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. From two or three years ago. Yeah. I hope they do that though because if you haven't had the opportunity to use it. Continuity camera with a good camera sitting on your tv.

[Leo Laporte]

It's really great.

[Jason Snell]

It's like you're in a science fiction movie. It looks so good. And it works with Zoom and FaceTime and all those, all those VoIP apps have, have embraced TVOs and it, it's really good. It is really. They do good noise canceling. So you sound decent. Everybody else sounds. I do these family calls on zoom and it's, it is like the thing that we all thought the future would be like amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

And you have legs, which is rem. Remarkable. The future has legs.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And he knows how to use them.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, in those old black and white movies, they also used to wear yellow makeup because the white skin was too pale. For the.

[Andy Ihnatko]

All the monster movies where they do the transformations, all they would do is, like, put gel. Different gels over the lens. So literally. So it's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the early werewolf transformations. It's like they put one set of, like, monster makeup on in one color and the normal makeup on on top of that. And then by simply changing the filter on the lens, that would block out the normal makeup and highlight the monster makeup. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And, you know, it was better in the old days when you had to work around the technological limitations. Sometimes too much technology, they still.

[Jason Snell]

They still do. It's just different now. But I love. People are like, oh, special effects have ruined movies. It's like they've been doing special effects since there have been movies. All a trick.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The one constant is studios and creators who are like, nah, it's not worth the effort. This I can use. I can use this, and it'll solve all my problems. Done. And.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, and I. I was watching some. Something random from the Eastman House talking about the history of photography, and they were talking about the fact that, you know, for a long time, if you wanted a portrait, someone came and painted it, you know, of you.

[Jason Snell]

Wow.

[Alex Lindsay]

And it was expensive, and only the rich people could have it and everything else. And then suddenly these crazy kids with these cameras and everybody could have a portrait like, they were like, the whole industry is ruined because everybody now can do it.

[Leo Laporte]

There were people in the 19th century who were itinerant painters who would go around and paint. Do portraits of you. In fact, I have one in my library over here of my great, great, great, whatever grandfather from the 1830s was painted by an itinerant portrait artist. Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That had a big effect on culture. There's a sculpture that I'm a big fan of that I've been studying for a long time in Boston, where there was uproar in 1896 because they thought that she was. That this nymph was drunk. And part of the reason why.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And part of the. Was because she's smiling and showing her teeth, which is not something. Because everything. Everything was like if. If people saw for a portrait, they would be very, very formal and very.

[Leo Laporte]

Had a bunch of grapes and some guy behind her fooling around, so who knows what.

[Andy Ihnatko]

She was also nude.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

But I'm saying that was what was going on.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, but that, but, but that was part of it. It was like if she's got to be drunk. I saw someone depicted like in a broad, actually actual happy smile as opposed to posing very, very stiff for a photograph. It's like, oh well, they're unrestrained in motion because they must be drunk.

[Leo Laporte]

No one would dream of smiling. And for a portrait. We will take a little break. When we come back, breaking news. Mark Gurman's Sunday newsletter is is has been replaced by something that came out this morning about Apple Intelligence. We'll talk about that that in just a little bit. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy and Ako, Alex, Lindsay, Jason Snell, the whole crew in town. Our show today brought to you by. Speaking of living in the future, Spaceship, Spaceship, Here's a question for you. Why do we assume the words simple and affordable mean basic and you know, just for beginners? Tech professionals want to save time and money too, right? That's the idea behind Spaceship, the pioneering domain and web platform that takes the pain out of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products. Things like shared hosting, virtual machines and business email. And I gotta tell you, I have never seen a better user interface. You could see it right now when you go to spaceship.com twit. This is, this is incredible. And so many nice features besides below market prices for domain registration and renewals. You can save money there, but it doesn't feel like a kind of low rent district. Man, Spaceship has some pretty fresh ways to deliver simplicity. There's Unbox, which connects your Spaceship products to your domain and makes it so simple. Configuring it all in just a few steps. And if you had at all, you know, if you've ever done domain management, it's tricky but fortunately ALF is there for you. Hi alf. Your very own AI assistant for making life easy. From domain transfers to updating DNS records, ALF does the stuff you probably don't love, even if you're a pro. I mean, I could do my own DNS, but ALF made it so much easier. Plus, Spaceship is new, so there is a roadmap. You can help them become even better. Their roadmap will help you explore, suggest and vote on new features and products they're considering. So you as customers in the tech community, get exactly what you really need. Look at the prices on the domains too. They're fantastic. I had to say as soon as I saw Spaceship, I said, ran in there and said let me get a few domain names. Plus makes it very easy for you to set up a site, to set up email. They have excellent email. They've got virtual private servers so you can run your own server off of there at a really good price. Visit spaceship.com TWIT Take a look at the exclusive deals on domains and more. Spaceship.comTwit this is a new and better way to get your domains and set up your website or your hosting site or your email. Spaceship.comTwit we thank them so much for supporting Mac Break Weekly and you support us when you use that address and make sure you use that address. Spaceship.com I was going to go with the leak that maybe iPhone 17 Pro will be available in sky blue, but no, no. I have an even better story. Mark Gurman this morning right before the show. Mike Rockwell is now moving in, as you know, to run Siri, and he is bringing in people from the old team, the Vision Pro team. This is Mark Gurman, Apple's new Siri engineering chief, is overhauling the management team, leading development of the beleaguered voice assistant. Mike Rockwell, who was running Vision Pro, is starting to bring in his own people over from Vision Pro. I don't know if that's good for Vision Pro, but you know, who knows? John Giandrea, who was the highly touted guy from Google that Apple brought in to run AI, is kind of off in the the desert now. He's still at Apple, I guess, still an evp, but still on the leadership.

[Jason Snell]

He's still in charge of AI and machine learning research and stuff, but he's not in charge of Siri.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the key. Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Because Siri is a product that needs to ship and be good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Fixing Siri, Gurman writes, has become one of the highest profile challenges at Apple. You know, the Siri's been sucky for a long time, so maybe he has brought in Ranjit Desai, a longtime deputy from Vision Pro. He'll be in charge of series engineering. Rockwell told staffers from According to German that the executive's background in high performance, low latency systems would help Siri reach a new level. Oliver Goodnecht, a senior Vision Pro software executive, taking over the team in charge of the user experience. Nate Begman and Tom Duffy joining the Siri team to run underlying architecture. Wow, he's really brought in a lot of people.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Stuart Bowers, who has led data training evaluation teams, will get an expanded role working on Siri's ability to figure out how to respond to a user. David Winarski, a longtime Siri leader taking over a new group responsible for all voice and speech related components. This is an all hands on deck moment for Siri, isn't it?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it is, it is. They finally got there, right. What we've been saying for a long time, it seems like the one, two punch of all the Apple intelligence failures and Siri in general being kind of bad and broken and behind seems to have finally led to a breaking point. And it does seem like based on some reports, Tim cooks a little conflict averse. He kind of wants his senior managers to fix it, which I get it, I totally get that that should be the case. But I think in this case there was a lot of, you know, territorialism as well as a lot of like, I got it, you take it kind of going on. And now he, he finally, clearly has come in and said, okay, Siri over there, fix it. To a guy who is pretty trusted and is, has proven to ship things and get those products out the door and we can talk about like the Vision Pro strategy and all that. But like that's an amazing product and they shipped it and that's due to that team. And so turning them on, this is a real challenge for them. Right. Because this is a problem. As you said, Leo, it's not like Siri was good three years ago. Siri has been broken for a very long time.

[Leo Laporte]

It actually got worse though, I will admit it. But it wasn't good to begin with.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yep.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Earlier this year, engineering and quality issues forced Apple to postpone the release of Apple app intents from May to April. By March, the company delayed the trio features indefinitely. In a rare retreat, these Siri upgrades in an internal meeting prior the prior head of Siri told staffers the system didn't work properly as often as a third of the time. Yeah, that's about right. He said employees may feel quote, embarrassed due to the quote, ugly situation. Yikes. Yeah, no more embarrassment. You know, this is something they're probably going to talk about next month or in June for I would guess for wwdc. But they're not going to admit to this. What are they going to say?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, this is probably the second WWDC in a row in which Apple has to make a big, big show to not just developers, but to users, to analysts, to the job market, to researchers, that they do have a plan for Apple intelligence. That was like unveiling the plan, excuse me, for AI, that was the big deal last year's wwd. This year they have to convince people that their future plan going forward is to not magnify the intensity of how they step on rakes inside the Apple campus that they are actually going to do productive things that actually work. It's not. This isn't. I wonder if part of the pressure to make sure that they don't solve this problem by half measures is all of the dogpiling bad press they got in the past six weeks which were just impossible to wave away, impossible to pretend as though, oh well, gosh, that's just a couple of dissatisfied people who are just sort of leaking things that they shouldn't be leaking about. We'll have an all hands meeting and reassure people that no, this is absolutely. It's not just. I've just finished like reading German's article about this and like you're absolutely right. This isn't just, oh well, we just, we moved a few people from one department to another. No, this is more like they took people off of really important projects to. This is how you know that this is considered to be a very important project when they're willing to stifle to an extent development of iOS itself and also to divide the attention of someone who is working on Apple's Betting the Future on it product Vision Pro. Hopefully that means that, yeah, they figured out that whatever our plan was before, it's not working. We need a brand new game plan. We can't just add some chapters to the old one.

[Leo Laporte]

Gurman writes. Jen Drayer remains Apple's head of artificial intelligence, reporting directly to Cook. He oversees core AI initiatives, including large language model development infrastructure teams and testing operations. Those are admittedly very important, as well as a measurement group focused on improving AI performance. Robby Walker, former head of Siri, still reports to Jan Drea and remains. This is an interesting way to put it. Involved.

[Jason Snell]

Involved.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He's involved and committed.

[Jason Snell]

Involved. Possibly polishing his resume, but looking forward.

[Andy Ihnatko]

To spending more time with his family and his charitable endeavors.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Although, and this is kind of the key point of this whole paragraph, he lost hundreds of engineers to Rockwell.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, I mean this is a takeover, the house on fire metaphor. I mean that's, that's about right. This is a high priority for them. And Leo, you ask, what do we do at wwdc? What, what are we looking for there? What are they going to say? Yeah, my guess is that one of the things that they're doing, the new group coming in Rockwell and his team is saying, what do we, you know, what's our quick win? And by quick win, I think basically it's what can we announce at WWDC that we are certain we can ship in the next cycle? What do we got? And that is they probably been doing a lot of triage. They've been talking to engineers, bypassing those old managers and saying like, what do you have with state of affairs is everything? Because you probably need like Gurman keeps talking about, oh well, they want to do an LLM Syrian. It's not going to. And he's always like, it's not going to be available for two years. It's been like not available for two years, for two years now. And so I feel like that is obviously got to be a priority. But you know, if it's going to take that long, you got to find, I don't want to call it the low hanging fruit, but you've got to find the parts of this, the aspects of what's going on with Siri that you can get again, I don't, you know, a quick win, low hanging fruit are probably not right. But something you can ship that's appreciably better that you can do by spring of next year and announce it at WWDC and not have to apologize the following spring for failing to ship it. And that's tough. I don't know what's there. And it's not like his new team has got, oh well, let's just do nose to the grindstone for the next two months and, and then we'll have everything. Like it takes time. So I don't, I don't envy them at all having to do that. But I do think that that's what they're going to do is find out what we can ship, not, you know, what can we show in June and ship by next March that is decent. What do we have? What is the line from Apollo 13? What do we got that's good, but that's important.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I was thinking the exact same thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Because a year ago they announced stuff they couldn't, they didn't and couldn't ship. So, so they've got, it's got to be something that has to be good just very quickly.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Jason. And Jason, I think you're absolutely right because it's not just about. There's also a question of internal morale. This is a team that has been tarred with nothing but failure despite working extremely hard about a project that I'm sure that initially they were.

[Leo Laporte]

Steve Jobs would have let him go.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, exactly. But part of it is that we have to give also our team a win. That you are building something that is successful. Even if it's a, even if we just give, Even if just you achieve a, a small success on something that's a stepping stone to something else. Here's something that you can have tangible results of being proud of having done this that I think is really, really important for the team right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

And the hard part is, is that there's no quick fix. So this is going to take time for them to figure out. You know, they basically probably have to grind the thing almost to the ground and start building up from it. And so I think that, that the challenge is always. We're hoping that Apple doesn't panic and just try to keep on clopping things onto something that is kind of half baked, you know, and just really have Rockwell go in and look at it from the ground up and say, we're going to keep this going, maybe we add a couple little things to keep people happy, but we're really going to rewrite the entire, you know, basis of how this thing works because I think that's what's necessary for it to really work. It's just there's a lot of fundamental foundational problems with Siri that will not, will always be a problem unless they just start over on a relatively clean slate.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And Jason, there's some conversation going on in our club twit discord about why not use OpenAI, ChatGPT or Claude or some other.

[Jason Snell]

Gurman reported that apparently Craig Federighi, the head of software has said, you know, no sacred cows, we can use that stuff if we need to. And the question is, what does that mean? Does that mean. And there's a lot of theories out there about that. Does that mean they'd put, put somebody else's model directly attached to their os? Does it mean that they would use those models to help train their models? Does it mean that they might make it sort of a modular system where you can. They build Apple builds features and you can use Apple's LLM or you could use maybe other LLMs to do that kind of thing. Are we talking in the cloud? Are we talking on device? Do you have to register? Do you have to pay like there's lots of questions out there, but one argument is a quick win. And this is coming back to a quick win for the new Siri group. A quick win is to use existing LLMs that are good to do and offload more optionally perhaps, but offload more to them. And I mean, I have talked to people who say I. Literally everything I say now is ahoy, lady asked Chad GPT to do this thing because, because you just want to bypass the lady entirely and just go to chat GPT like well that's probably not great. Like last year was all like, oh well, you can do chat GPT but we won't make you. That would be a quick win to say you got a favorite LLM. Boom, it's in there. You select it, you log in, you get, we got it, we made deals with everybody. You're good. According to German that Federighi was like, let's not do that. And you can feel how careful they were at WWDC last year because they're like, we know you're all scared of LLMs and this year it's like, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

You'Re not that people like them, they're.

[Jason Snell]

Not that scared and it makes us look bad. So we're going to let them. And they may even overcompensate, who knows? But like that's the answer is that, is that last year it felt taboo and this year they have said no, it's fine. So we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

It strikes me also that one of the things that the current crop of AI companies are realizing is it takes a huge amount of server cap capacity to do to even answer these questions. A couple of days ago Sam Altman at OpenAI said, yeah, every time you thank ChatGPT it costs us tens of millions of dollars for all the thank yous because even responding to a thank you takes server capacity.

[Jason Snell]

ChatGPT should always finish its answer with and I'll take my question off the air.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, really. But, but the point being maybe app it more difficult than it thought to do these local servers, right? To build out all this capacity, especially now that's possible.

[Jason Snell]

Although what I, I mean they've got the ability to do a lot of that. I think what it comes down to money. This goes back to Giann Andrea and there are stories that like Gian Andrea wanted a lot of, wanted a lot of hardware that they, that they didn't buy and that Luca Maestri said you can't have that many and then Apple said that's not true. They did get everything they want eventually, which sounds to me like, like it is true. And they slow played them and they wanted it all now and they got it over two or three years instead. So that is about building Apple models and I think that is one of the core things here is there are models now in the discord people are saying like, well you know, Apple doesn't like using other people's tech and it's true. But they're playing for time in a way because one of the problems is their models are behind and they need to get up to speed. And that's what Jan Andrea's group is supposed to be doing, is make Apple's AI models better and so that they can use them and they can use them in private cloud compute and they can use them on device. But in the meantime other people have good models use them. And I think that that is, that's the part that's broken long term. I'm sure they don't want to use them.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a total precedent for this. Microsoft in the same boat had its own models but ended up making a $10 billion deal with OpenAI to provide copilot it. And now there's, now down the road a little bit, they're starting to move back to their own models. But that was, I think a very similar situation where ChatGPT surprised everybody.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And there haven't been any reports of this. But Apple has all the money. Right. Let's not forget Apple has all the money. And so I know, and I know there's a lot of stuff going on with Apple and tariffs and products and we'll see how it all goes. But like there, if you're open to using other people's models, there are very few problems money can't solve. Whether it's giving open air money, it's giving perplexity money, whether you buy them or you just rent them, it doesn't really matter. If you're open to the idea of a strategic partnership where you can write a check and solve a problem that is critical to your business, even though it's you going to another company for help. And that hurts your pride a little bit. I feel like Apple is in at the point where they're probably ready to do that. I don't know if they will. There may be hang ups with some of those companies but certainly that has to be on the table on top of all of this other stuff. And an example would be make a deal with OpenAI or perplexity or something like, or Google even where some money changes hands. That means that users can use those, those models without, you know, doing 10 searches and being told you can't search anymore for another month. Like they're like, no, we'll pay for some of your searches and we're going to enable that for iOS and this is part of our deal deal. Like if, if it comes down now that they've gotten over the no other LLMs thing. If it, if they need to write a check, they should and probably they will.

[Leo Laporte]

I wonder if Google's off the table given their trouble with the ftc. They've lost two recently, two trials, Monopoly trials. And, and in some ways they've been, you know, it looks like they might have to sell Chrome kind of.

[Alex Lindsay]

I mean, still, they got caught spending.

[Leo Laporte]

A lot of money getting Samsung to put Gemini on their phones.

[Jason Snell]

I feel like Google is on the table as an option. Right. Like they've always been talking about, like in addition to chat GPT you will be able to run Google. I think that they're unlikely to say, we just made a deal with Google. Google's going to have all of our stuff, plus it's your arch competitor. You know, at best it levels the playing field with Android instead of potentially.

[Leo Laporte]

Giving you a leg up, which is very good, focused on safety. It doesn't have the baggage that OpenAI or Google have.

[Jason Snell]

It's right there.

[Leo Laporte]

You could make an acquisition. I'm sure you know the Perplexity's price is going up, but I'm sure you know Apple has enough money to buy it.

[Jason Snell]

The danger is that you ask. Look, if you ask John G. And Andrea, do we need to buy Perplexity, he'll say, no, no, no, we can do that, we can do it. The problem is how many years go by where you hear him say that and he hasn't delivered and I don't know the internals there but like that's the problem is you. Nobody is ever going to say, yeah, you should buy the people out there who are beating me at my job and use them to replace me. Nobody's ever going to say that. So that's where Tim Cook has to have other advisors he's listening to who are accurately gauging whether Apple can catch up. I feel like there are lots of signs that this is more commoditized and that if you put in enough money, which Apple has and give them a couple of years, they are going to be able to catch up up. If that's not true and you're Tim Cook, you should spend that money and buy somebody else and bring them in and have them be your AI model. That's what you should do.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But there are a couple of government problems with that kind of, that kind of. Just in general with AI number one, yeah, Apple has the biggest, most powerhouse checkbook in the industry. But will the FTC allow a big $3 trillion company to simply buy out like one of the major top AI companies. And secondly, even for their progress in producing things inside Apple, how a lot of the talent they need are residents of other of countries other than the United States. And it's going to get more and more difficult to bring that talent into the United States. Even if they can bring them in, it's going to become harder and harder to convince the people that they're going after that it's okay, come here, buy property.

[Jason Snell]

Apple has a lot of history.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You will not be thrown out after on two weeks notice.

[Jason Snell]

Apple has a lot of, a lot of history buying international companies and leaving the people where they are though. I think that, and in this environment, I think that's what they have to do if they're, if they're buying a company and it's not in the United States, I think they would probably say you stay right where you are and it's fine like that. The logic or the Final Cut developers? The Logic Pro developers are still in Germany and they, they were a purchase like forever ago and they're still in Germany so I feel like they could get over that. But it is, I mean it's ftc. Who knows what the FTC is going to do these days. And if it was something like Perplexity and not OpenAI then would that be, would that be different? I don't know. I, I think that's a really interesting question is do they think this is something that they can truly catch up on? And the deep seek thing makes me think that maybe they can do that. But I also, the fact that they haven't makes me concerned that they just don't, they just don't have the culture or the skill. And one way to get the culture in is to buy some company that has a good culture for doing this and say you are now our AIML culture.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think that the biggest obstacle isn't money or time or whatever it is this aversion to risk and not wanting to give the wrong answers. And I think that that is what it feels like when you play with Image Playground. You just feel like you are in a tiny. As someone who does a lot of, of image prompts in, in ChatGPT and Mid Journey and so on and so forth. You just feel like you're in this tiny little sandbox that we just don't want you to touch anything that might look even remotely sharp and, and you're just like, okay, like, you know, I'll go back to what I was doing and, and so, you know, so I think that Apple's like overarching. This is. This is where they get hurt. In a lot of places. They do great. And a lot of people use them and they feel safe inside the. Inside that walled garden, but they're so careful to not have any thorns on any roses that they just can't quite get to a place where they could do this effectively. So I think that opening it up more for users who are already using ChatGPT or Anthropic or whatever, making it easier for us to use, because right now I just do. Hey, Shlomo, start chat. And I'm in. Like, I just opened up a text thing with chat to be thanks to a listener here told me how to do that and just a shortcut. And I don't. And I just. So I do that all the time.

[Leo Laporte]

Anybody. I don't think anybody could do as good a job of characterizing me as Image Playground has just done. That looks exactly.

[Alex Lindsay]

And it's got all these photos of us. Here's the worst part is I gave it a photo. I know.

[Jason Snell]

No, but it only takes one. I know.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Cover your left eye and read the third line from the bottom, please.

[Alex Lindsay]

This is a great example. Photos has thousands.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Alex is. Alex is right there is. And this shows you how they rushed. This is. Photos has an entire identification model.

[Leo Laporte]

It could make it look just like.

[Jason Snell]

Huge amounts of data of what your face is like. And Image Playgrounds does not use it. It doesn't use more than one image as a base. It is because they slapped it together in a short amount of time. That's why. Right. Yeah, it's just.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, because what it could be doing in the background is building models of all your friends and all your family and everything else on your phone or whatever they, you know, whatever that is.

[Jason Snell]

Using the Faces database.

[Alex Lindsay]

Using the Faces database is already there.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Just.

[Alex Lindsay]

Just grab all that data and make it so. So that you could do funny things with those all the time. Oh, my gosh. I don't even know what I'm looking at.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you read that bottom line.

[Jason Snell]

Let'S.

[Leo Laporte]

Put a sunset in. Why not? Well, that wasn't much of a sunset. Yeah, this is the. I mean, I can't imagine anybody plays with Image Playground and thinks, oh, yeah, that's what I've been looking for.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, it's a toy. It's a fun toy.

[Alex Lindsay]

You use it if you don't have something else. Like, if you don't have something else and you're like, oh, it's kind of cool, or whatever. But.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is because of risk aversion. You nailed it. This is because they don't want to take a chance.

[Alex Lindsay]

Right. And they put the little borders around them so that you absolutely know that.

[Leo Laporte]

It'S a. Yeah, it's fake.

[Jason Snell]

Fake.

[Alex Lindsay]

And you're just like, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Meanwhile, I mean, people are putting out deep fakes like crazy. We're somehow surviving. Did you know I invented the peanut? Anyway, George Washington LaPorte. I'm looking crazier and crazier. I think they make giving me cross eyes. That's nice. Thank you. Okay, let's take a break. I can't take it. Great idea. Alex, Lindsay, good to have you. Andy Inatko, wonderful to have you back. Jason Snell. The McAfee Weekly team is assembled as we continue in just a bit. But first, a word from our sponsor. This show brought to you quite literally. Oh, no, wait a minute. Yeah. Brought to you quite literally. Check by who's bringing us Cash Fly. Cash Fly, that's who. Ladies and gentlemen, Cash Fly is the secret. That means that you will never have to suffer with slow connections or paused downloads. I mean, it is a miracle. It is our content delivery network for over, I think 20 years now, CashFly, and we've been using it for 15. So you know, Cash Fly has been delivering high performing, ultra reliable content Delivery serving over 5,000, 5,000 companies in over 80 countries including, I might add, us. We are very happy to be Cash Fly customers. One of the There are a couple of things we like about Cash Fly. It's the only CD and built for throughput with ultra low latency video streaming which can, this is mind boggling, deliver content to over a million concurrent users with less than one second latency. Now, if you're a gaming company, you gotta know about Cashfly because Cashfly delivers downloads faster with zero lag glitches or outages. Mobile content optimization means if you've got images, you're going to love Cashfly's automatic and simple image optimization. So those images load faster on any size screen, any size device. Plus the thing that was important to us. With Cashfly, we were just starting out. We didn't know what our bandwidth needs were going to be. It was very peaky. But Cashfly gave us flexible month to month billing till we figured it all out. And then discounts for fixed terms once we understood what our needs were. The point is they let us design our own contract and they will let you design your own contract when you switch switch to Cash Fly. Cashfly is now leveraging the capabilities of Something they call Pure Storage. Oh, wait a minute, that's a company. Yeah, they're an IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technology and services to drive performance, reliability, flexible scalability and predictable pricing for customers. So they're replacing, I think I've noticed this actually, the legacy systems. With Pure Storage as cutting edge technology, Cashfly has achieved a 5x boost in compute power and reduced power consumption by nearly 90%, slashing operating expenses while enhancing delivery speeds for customers worldwide. That's pretty sweet. The big modernization effort going on right now for Cashfly as the company prepares to further enhance its object storage solution. That's the innovative offering that promises to redefine how businesses manage store and scale unstructured data with unparalleled speed and reliability. Cash Fly is not resting on its laurels. They are improving all the time. That's what we love about them. Fifteen years? Nah, they're still. They're just getting started. Cashfly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs. And this is something we've done for some time. They now allow everybody to shield your site content in the Cash Fly cloud, which means you're going to get 100% cash hit ratio. And with Cash Fly's elite managed packages, I could tell you for sure you get VIP treatment. You'll have a dedicated account manager who'll be with you from day one, ensuring smooth implementation and a reliable 24. 7 support when you need it. Learn how you can get your first month [e-mail] twit. You've heard me say it for many years. Bandwidth for Mac break weekly is provided by cash fly at C-A C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT. Thank you cash Fly. You have made a huge difference in my life and made really a lot of what's happened over the last 20 years possible. Cashfly.com TWIT you could thank them by by going there. Thank you Cash Fly. Apple Watch Ultra 3 more rumors about the next generation Apple Watch, including 5G cellular and perhaps satellite messaging again. Ryan Christoffel on 9to5Mac I love my Apple Watch Ultra. I guess we're due. It would be in the fall, right? That would be two years between releases. Yes.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they did the first was it one year and then they skipped last year. So this would be a reasonable time to do it. Yeah, I love the. As somebody who uses an Apple Watch cellular and leaves my phone behind, the idea that you could have A cellular Apple Watch with satellite support and 5G support. So you're going to cover a bunch of bands of the cellular spectrum and have that emergency when you're out, just, you know, out in the wilderness and you can have it all on your watch, even if your phone is not with you. I just think that's really cool. I think that's a cool, a cool idea for what is supposed to be an adventure watch. The idea that you could literally be out there, are doing an adventure with just your Apple Watch and you would be fine. That's pretty sweet.

[Leo Laporte]

You think it'll be just the Ultra that will go 5G or will all be.

[Jason Snell]

Well, the rumor is about the Ultra i5G might be on the main ones, too. Just depends, I would imagine, on the size and cost of the part.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the advantage of the Ultra and.

[Jason Snell]

The power management because it's got a lot of battery in there too. I don't think there are any suggestions that the satellite features would come to the main one and that, that it actually kind of fits the, the. The whole premise of this being a big, A little pricier and adventure watch. Right. That's where you want those features is when you're out of cell contact entirely.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I haven't. Now, Ryan, in his article says he notices how slow the Apple Watch's cellular connection is. I have not noticed that, but he says he's unlikely to want to use it for messaging and stuff. That 5G will make a big difference. Is that your experience as well? Yeah, Jason?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a little slow right now.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, I don't know. I don't know where Ryan is versus where I am.

[Leo Laporte]

He's in New York.

[Jason Snell]

I'm not using. I mean, I'm not actively using my cellular connection a lot. It's more that it's there and that if it needs to sync or if somebody calls me or texts me, I get them. But I'm not like, I rarely leave.

[Leo Laporte]

The house without a phone, but I.

[Jason Snell]

Do every day when I walk the dog. I do it without my iPhone.

[Leo Laporte]

You do?

[Jason Snell]

It's just, I just don't want the phone in my pocket and I have a cellular watch and I love and AirPods and it works great for me. So it's a choice to do it that way. But that's, you know, and the advantage of that is, is that, yeah, if you're somewhere your, your phone isn't and something happens, you're still connected. If you've got the, the watch and.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to admit, as an Apple Watch skeptic, early on, I am now 100% all in. I mean, I love it.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's not a lot of good lie other good choices. I mean there's other watches, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Andy, do you wear an Android watch?

[Andy Ihnatko]

I have one, but my no, you wear Casio.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. Like I said, I'm really interested in the new pebble watch because the breaking point for me is I can't be counted on to put the thing on a charger each and every night. It's not that I'm lazy, it's just that sometimes I'm working at my desk and I just want to take this thing off and put it next to the keyboard and then I leave it there and just go to bed and then, dang it, I have to leave in 30 minutes for whatever it is and rather than grab the charger, I'll just simply, oh, well, here's an analog watch or whatever that is already working. And after doing that enough times, I realized I really didn't miss it. And I was an Apple Watch SE user for like nine or ten months. And the same is true, by the way, about the Pixel Watch, which I love the design of it. I think it's actually prettier than the Apple Watch, but exact same thing. Mostly I'm using a watch to tell the time. Sometimes it's nice when I'm having a busy day to be able to quickly glance at a notification and realize that no, I don't take my phone out of my pocket, but it's just not doing enough for me to justify A$300 and be the burden of again having to remember to shop.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you buy your groceries with that Casio?

[Andy Ihnatko]

I can't actually. The There actually are some G shocks that are like $250 that are one week battery life and have a lot of those basic features without necessarily being like a run apps on this thing, color display, win awards for your activity sort of stuff. But even so like my. I actually have like a little. I actually have a little like chart, a little omni outliner doc of if I'm not going to spend $300 on a smartwatch. If I have a $300 watch budget, like what would I want to get instead? That would total up to $300 and it's like. And it's a list of. Of like three or four like really kind of like cool, interesting, fun and one dress watch that it'd be like, ooh, a Seiko Series 5 would be kind of nice. And then I could also have the. So. Yeah, but that's, but that's just me. I have to say that if I were to like, I have to say the Ultra, particularly the specs of this new Ultra 3, if they come true, are the sort of thing that would like, sort of draw me back in. Because like Jason says, the number of times where I walk, I'm going to be out for like two or three hours running errands. I don't actually need my phone except for to take pictures. All I need is like emergency contacts and maybe the ability and of course, tap to pay. And that's a nice looking watch. It looks like it won't break after three months. It's pretty.

[Leo Laporte]

This has been very robust. I don't have a scratch on this thing. This thing's been really, really tough. I really like it. Yeah. All right, well, we'll watch with interest. There'll be something to watch in September. Gosh knows how much more it'll cost. One stock analyst is saying now get out of app. Run for your lives while you still can. Not that we care that much about stock prices. I don't think that's really our beat. But, you know, sell Apple stock before it sinks another 30%, says Moffat Nathan, not financial advice.

[Jason Snell]

Yes, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we're not giving you that advice. In fact, if you look at the Apple stock, this was when the tariffs were announced and it plunged, but it's kind of working its way back up. I think it was over 200 again earlier today in the intraday. It's up 2.94%. So it's doing all right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I did read that advisory this morning or whatever and I was again, because I'm not like a financial reporter. Every time I see something like that, it's like in the back of my mind, it's okay. What major fund or major player really, really wants. Pete wants this stock to tank so that they can buy it at a buy now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And that's something that I always have to think about when it comes to like financial stock stock predictors. Like, well, sometimes they are in the money. But it's like.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't think anybody on this panel has Apple stock. I know, I know. And I know, I know Jason doesn't.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But it's different. It's different when like bank of America is, is saying we are dumping Apple stock now, now, now, now, now. Because they don't really necessarily have. They don't have the same. I don't know again, I'm talking above my, my, my pay level here again. So I'm stopping for.

[Leo Laporte]

I have stopped looking at my portfolio. I can't afford to.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It really is like riding in an Uber where if I'm scrutinizing this person's driving moment by moment, I'm going to be terrified. If I simply sit back and Trust that in 43 minutes time I will be at the train station with my life intact, it'll be okay.

[Leo Laporte]

If your retirement is a few years off, it's probably prudent not to pay any attention. Unfortunately, I'm right in the middle of my retirement right now, and so I'm just thinking, okay, I hope this twit thing works out. I'd like to keep making a living. Wow. It's a little scary. Don't panic, right? Thank you. Paul in our YouTube chat says, don't panic. That's probably a good advice in general. Well, I'm not giving you stock advice. Don't listen to Apple. Did drop. I don't know.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Don't take advice from someone who's wearing like a $23 Casio watch.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, that's right. Well, you know, that's one of the reasons I don't know if I should buy financial advice. You know, go to a financial advisor. If the guy's that good, what's he doing working for a living, right? And if he had a Casio watch.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He'S gotta be in the game.

[Leo Laporte]

Gotta be in the game, man. National Advertising Division, whoever they are, has recommended that Apple modify or discontinue the Apple Intelligence claim. They have now dropped available now from the Apple Intelligence page. I can't believe they still had it nad inquired. They're part of the Better Business Bureau's advertising stuff. So, you know, when there's a little wait when they say, you know, Apple, you probably shouldn't say, it's available now.

[Jason Snell]

Now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They're also facing a couple of lawsuits, which were inevitable anyway. But there's like, it's not, it's not as though people are necessarily scrambling to buy iPhones because of Apple Intelligence at this point. I don't think they need to really force that. Although they did have a couple of. Was it one or more than one new, like, YouTube ad about someone using like, generative image generative emoji to like create a dating profile or whatever. So it's not as though they're not. Not. They've decided to not promote Apple Intelligence at all.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Apple found also that Apple included its AI supercharged Siri beneath the available now heading. Even though, as we all know, the supercharged Siri has not arrived. Apple said, no, no. We updated our promotional material and disclosures to adequately communicate their status. Apparently, there's a small footnote saying, come someday. The company also discontinued its more personal Siri video. That's the Bella Ramsey video. We know about that. Apple said we disagree with NAD's findings related to the features that are available to users now, but we appreciate the opportunity to work with them and we'll follow their recommendations. We disagree, but we're going to do it anyway. Okay.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Our customers love our Apple Intelligence ads and we're pleased to tell them that our next one, one we think is our best Apple Intelligence ad and we'd like to share it with you now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Any other rumors you think that are worth spending some energy on?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, you blew right past that blue vision.

[Jason Snell]

I just did.

[Leo Laporte]

It was a one liner. Sky blue. You know, when, when Apple Insider rates a rumor as maybe I don't. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. Sky blue. Now they point out that the leak came from China. Majin Bu. He claims to have the details on the exclusive color that is expected to debut with the flagship Apple phone this fall. The leaker says it'll be available in Yuan Fung blue, which is sky blue, which would, I guess, look like this. Would it be. I mean, I wouldn't call the M4 MacBook Air Sky Blue. Not from the one I saw, Jason Snell, but they did. I understand.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Sky gray. It's nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Blue gray. Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Although there was. There was one, like, rumor ish story that I thought was hysterically funny. There's like, someone posted videos from an Apple. An actual Apple store in China where they're showing customers, like, an aluminum model of the supposed iPhone 16a or, excuse me, iPhone 17.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what it's going to look like.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Like, and not just like, oh, hey, I've just snuck this onto the floor. It's like, no there. And this is. If you want to Compare the upcoming iPhone 17 Air with the iPhone 16 Pro and not buy the actual phone that's actually shipping right now.

[Leo Laporte]

It may seem like that. Yeah, it seems. Now, was this an official Apple store or just some Chinese store that sells Apple? That's unclear.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's unclear. The. It's. And that's a. That's a good call out because there's a bunch of, like, Apple stores. I think Jason and I visited one in Bermuda. That is not an Apple store, but.

[Jason Snell]

It'S an actual Apple Store.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But it looks all the way down to the details, like, aspirational Apple store. Yeah, Aspirational Apple. It's a Potemkin Apple store.

[Leo Laporte]

This is also Majin Bu in China stores using the CAD models I provided to show people how. So in other words, he brought this into the store and got. And it looks probably his hands. I don't think this is proof positive that Apple is showing this.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Oh, no, I don't. I would never think that Apple was doing it.

[Leo Laporte]

No.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It just made me amused that someone, according to the story itself, claiming that it was actually people who work at that Apple store who are showing it off. The idea of, like, them missing a certain training video that they probably should have been had to watch saying that. Yeah, don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Also, is this a store or a kiosk in a mall? Because I could see a hot dog stand right behind her head. So I don't. Okay, I'm not sure exactly where this is.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mentioned. I did point that. I did mention this to the story because again, I thought the comedy value. You. Yeah, well, this is like I said.

[Leo Laporte]

We'Re in the rumor. We're in the rumor portion of the program. And I did ask you. I said, give me some rumors. Let's see some rumors here. The Vision Air is. Are they really calling it the Vision Air? Mac Rumors is using that.

[Jason Snell]

Come on.

[Leo Laporte]

Come on, man.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I mean, there is this rumor. The Vision Pro rumors are so. I feel like they're working on a bunch of different hardware options and they haven't settled on anything. And everything comes out with this breathless like, oh, this is the next thing they're doing, they're going to make. Or it's the one after the next one they're doing. And, you know, they show hardware and they're like, oh, look, that looks sort of like a thing that's a bit pro. It's like, it could be. It could be. I doubt that it's from a production model. It feels more like they're just trying things out and seeing what they would be like and all of that. I don't know. I mean, there's not a lot of heat about rumors of. Of precisely what a next Vision OS product would look like. But. But if they. I mean, if somebody wants to get excited that it might be darker or something like, I guess, go ahead. But the one. The one that blew me away. And I don't know if you guys talked about this last week or not. You probably did. But I love that Mark Gurman broke the news that they're trying to make the Vision Pro cheaper and lighter. Yeah, Great idea, guys. No kidding.

[Leo Laporte]

No, they were saying maybe they'll use titanium instead of aluminium.

[Jason Snell]

Right. I mean, I have no doubt that they are trying to make the Vision Pro cheaper and lighter. Like, those are the two things you need to do. So. Yeah, get on.

[Alex Lindsay]

A lot of the other stuff is working pretty well. It's just weighted cost.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Make it cheaper and lighter.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll buy it if it's cheaper and lighter.

[Jason Snell]

Nailed it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yep. Apple has finally won its long standing battle with the city of Cupertino.

[Alex Lindsay]

Was it a battle? I thought it was a battle between the state and the city. Like the. I don't think. I think that Apple did it on purpose to funnel money to Cupertino. And then the court said that you can't do that.

[Leo Laporte]

So Apple was saying every phone sold in California was sold from Cupertino. So the sales by mail, I think. Oh, by mail. Okay. Which makes sense. It probably was. Which the deal. This is. Since 1998, Apple's treated all online purchases of products within California as if they were made in the city of Cupertino. The deal allows Cupertino to collect 1% of Apple's 7.25% sales tax. By the way, we're over 10% here in Petaluma. So Apple, if you want to open a little dropship in Petaluma. A third of the revenue ended up being returned to the company because the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, known colloquially as cudfa, audited the city and determined that the state. State should get that revenue. Instead, the city needed to pay back any previously collected sales tax dollars Apple was going to set aside. Apple, actually, Cupertino was prepared to set aside $56.6 million. That's a lot from a little city like Cupertino to pay back the amount. Then they reached a settlement with kudfa. Does not call the kudfa, but it should be allowed Cupertino to keep the roughly $74.5 million in Apple sales tax revenue it had collected. But they did give Apple back 12 point some.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't understand. I don't understand that case at all. Because it's like, why did they not give it to the state? Like, I don't understand. Like, I'm sure Apple wasn't like, banging down the door for the money.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, we need that $12 million now.

[Alex Lindsay]

Cupertino, they charge the user for it. Like, it's not like. Like the money that Apple, like, you know, it's in that little tax thing when you buy it like it's.

[Leo Laporte]

It is a windfall for any city. You know, I know from our little town in Petaluma where they have turned away the big box stores that we are suffering with potholes because there's no tax base because they wouldn't allow these big sales tax revenue generating businesses in town.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, they gotta figure it out. But what I will say is I'm.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure it's a benefit for Cupertino to have Apple Computer headquartered there.

[Alex Lindsay]

Petaluma has done well. I don't know. I'm surprised that they're having trouble with taxes. It just feels like it's the nicest downtown. And it is.

[Leo Laporte]

It's cute, isn't it?

[Alex Lindsay]

North of San Francisco?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

Just.

[Leo Laporte]

Just don't make sure you have a good suspension when you drive here. We're the pothole capital of California. They. They say, did you come up for the butter and eggs day parade on Saturday?

[Alex Lindsay]

I didn't. I forgot about it. I. I should. I. When I was lived there, I went there every single time. I got pictures of my.

[Leo Laporte]

It feels like everybody in California came. It has become a. A crazy zoo. It used to be just such a small town parade parade that the parade would go all the way through the downtown and then come loop around. And I always felt like people watching the parade on its first pass would then jump in back to keep. Keep the parade going so that because there weren't enough people to both watch the parade and be in the parade so they were sharing duties. That is not the case anymore. You can barely move downtown during butter and eggs day.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, it's been hectic.

[Leo Laporte]

It's cray cray.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So we don't need you apple. We've got butter and eggs.

[Alex Lindsay]

You just need to tax the butter and eggs and they'll be set.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, you know, being the source of eggs is pretty good deal these days. Not bad. We get our. We get our eggs from a little farm up the road a piece for $5 a dozen. I think that's pretty much the standard.

[Alex Lindsay]

That's a great price. Is it for northern California? California. For like real eggs.

[Leo Laporte]

They are real. You know they're real because they're not white. They're blue and brown and green and all sorts of colors. You're watching Mac Break weekly. Home of the eggs.

[Jason Snell]

The eggs leader.

[Alex Lindsay]

But it's so funny when you go from Cal. One thing about it, when you go from California to some other, like we were doing a job in South Carolina or whatever. And there was like 18 eggs for $2. And from someone from California, you look at them like, what's wrong with these eggs? Like, I don't know if I can eat these eggs. I don't know if they're, you know, like there's wrong, you know. But of course it's. All the eggs are very local.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. And luscious back Break Weekly Andy Inako. Jason Snell, I almost called you Jason Alexander.

[Jason Snell]

My middle name. My answer to that. Jason Alexander Snell. Indeed it is. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm going to call you Jason Alexander.

[Jason Snell]

You stole my bit.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's your bit. I didn't even know it was your bit.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And Alex, Lindsay, we're so glad you're here.

[Jason Snell]

Here.

[Leo Laporte]

V. Lion Von's X Meta and Tik Tok to play by the rules in Europe, no matter who is CEO. You put this in, Andy. I don't even know what.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, no, well, that was, it was a double, it was a double whammy because I think the Washington. No, sorry, the Wall Street Journal had a big exclusive article about how, oh, the EU is like, was planning on hitting Apple and Meta a whole bunch of the company with a whole bunch of sanctions, including fin. But not just fines, but sanctions. But they decided to postpone it until some situations in Washington sort of sell themselves out. And it feels as though this other, this, this piece that you, you called out was like the EU's head saying, no, no, that's not true. We're not doing that at all. We're still after them. We're like a dog on a sausage with those people. Don't worry.

[Leo Laporte]

Have opened cases against TikTok X, Apple and Meta, just to name a few. I don't know what Ursula von der Leyen sounds like, but, but I'm going to make her sound like Colonel Schultz from Hogan's Heroes. We apply the rules fairly, proportionally and without bias. We don't care where a company's from and who's running it. We care about protecting people.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, is that, is that a kind of off, kind of a glancing reference to Elon Musk?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Maybe? There's again, there's been a lot of reportage and a lot of speculation about like what EU enforcement of the digital markets acts and act and other things are happening in now affecting actual US diplomacy where like the Trump administration has been making noises that no, we regard these attempts to find America. We believe that the DMA is specifically crafted to hurt American business. And by golly, if we're going to hurt American business.

[Leo Laporte]

We're going to do it ourselves. Gosh darn it, not let some frogs do it in Europe. JD Vance said we're actually going to tie participants participation in NATO to your continued aggressive stance against American companies. That's crazy.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. It's only been escalating and there's no end in sight. Again, to quote, hunt for Red October. This is going to get out of hand. It's going to get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live through it.

[Leo Laporte]

And now we've had our requisite weekly hunt for Red October. Quote. I think we can continue.

[Andy Ihnatko]

We get to keep our liquor license.

[Jason Snell]

One ping. Oh, no, we already did. Next time.

[Andy Ihnatko]

One ping only.

[Leo Laporte]

What a great movie, though.

[Jason Snell]

What a great movie.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Apple is celebrating Earth Day in five ways. Earth Day is today.

[Jason Snell]

Today? I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

Happy Earth Day.

[Jason Snell]

Thank you, man. Happy.

[Andy Ihnatko]

As the spokesperson for the Earth.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Congratulations to everybody out there on the Earth. We did it, everybody.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Thanks for sticking with the winning team for an Earth.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's go. I don't know. I was around as a ute when Earth Day began in the 70s, and it was really an attempt. It was an attempt to kind of focus people on the fact that we only have this one planet, Mars notwithstanding. And maybe we ought to take care of the darn thing. Apple's homepage is updated to celebrate Apple 2030, a plan as innovative as our product. Is Apple a good custodian of the planet Earth?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Pretty much. I was surprised. So they released their annual environmental progress report. Greenpeace had a response to it, which I thought, okay, sit back, let's get ready. And actually, the statement was more or less, hey, Apple's doing a very good job. However, their supply buyers are the real culprits in greenhouse gas emissions and other damage happening to the planet. So if even Greenpeace is not willing to stick its fangs into the neck of Apple about this, that probably means that whatever they're doing is seen as somewhat positive.

[Leo Laporte]

I think the excessive use of green ink in this report proves that Apple is focused on green ink.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You know that. You know that the green ink has a lot of mercury in it. Oh, that's the big problem. Don't scroll too far down.

[Jason Snell]

I'm saying, I do think that. I mean, is any big corporation that is selling lots and lots of products like super green, you know, we could talk about, like, maybe you should. Your product should all last longer and people shouldn't buy new ones. But Apple has tried. I think genuinely, this is not Greenwashing. Apple is genuinely committed to driving change. They have been really since Greenpeace called them out back like 20 years ago. You know, they do the environmental checklist slide every time they introduce a product. Now they do that came directly because they were criticized.

[Leo Laporte]

They had a for Mother Earth a couple of years.

[Jason Snell]

They did, they did, they did. If you like comedy bits. So I, they have, I believe they truly want to do this. That 2030 commitment to be carbon neutral, like even with the suppliers, like their goal is that the suppliers also, because they're counting everything that's in their products, including what's provided by their suppliers and what's used by the users, that's part of the commitment too. So I think generally, like we could quibble about what Apple does, but I think Apple makes a lot of other companies look bad. And I think when other companies say we can't do it, we can't do it, we, we just couldn't afford to do it. They hate the fact that people can point an Apple and say, yeah, actually you can do it, you just don't want to. And I think that Apple, like again, could they do better? Yes, there are lots of ways. But I think that if you're talking about a giant, profitable, profit seeking shareholder, you know, value seeking, speaking corporation that is still showing a responsible commitment to environment and carbon neutrality and things like that, you will probably not find a company that's a better example than Apple.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I mean it's tough when you're selling stuff that is destined to end up in landfill.

[Jason Snell]

Well, even there they've spent a lot of time reclaiming like they built their robots and I know that some of that is for show, but like they are trying very hard, especially the tariff thing. I mean this is actually part of that, which is they, they, they try to resell those products and refurb them. And when they've ended their life, what they try to do is pick them apart and get all. And that's one of the reasons why so many of their products now use recycled elements is because they're pulling those elements out of old products and melting them down and then using them again for rare earths and the things they use for welding and for their aluminum. And like again, are there skeletons in that closet? Are there things they could do a better job with? I'm sure that there are, but, and that's true with all recycling, by the way. All recycling. Oh yeah, it's not as good as you think it is. But I do think that one of.

[Alex Lindsay]

The things that Apple is doing is not as good.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So I still do it. I hope that some of it's worth it.

[Jason Snell]

Some of it is good, some of it's not. My wife used to work for a energy firm that did recycling stuff. And she's like, oh, boy, let me tell you. But they keep. But there is some keep saying, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Could put plastic in my recycling. I don't think they can recycle plastic.

[Jason Snell]

Most of the plastic they can't. Glass and aluminum, they can plastic recycling. But anyway, so Apple. And it benefits Apple, too, in the sense that they can use these recycling chains to acquire materials that they would otherwise have to source from a mine in China that China is not allowing to be exported, or from a mine in Africa where the people are horribly exploited. Like, some of it is. Is. Is that too. So even, even there. And it's interesting how they do this. Right? Like, they have found a potential criticism and said, okay, what can we do to offset that? And the recycling? They, I mean, they legitimately have made a big effort to get those to do a whole reuse chain where they're selling old phones, selling old computers, and then when they reach the end of their life, they will take them and they've got a system to take those components apart. And not just landfills because they have value.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they able to recycle Air AirPods?

[Jason Snell]

Nope, they're just plastic and batteries. So, no. They're one of the worst of all of Apple's products for that. It's an interesting question. In the long run of what we've seen, the pattern. Right. Tends to be that the Apple comes out with a product that's incredibly powerful and small and completely unrecyclable, and then over time. And unfixable, unrepairable. And then over time, as time moves along and everything miniaturizes, they get better at that. So I would imagine that that'll. That'll happen. I know some other companies have tried to make airbud or earbuds that, that have removable batteries.

[Alex Lindsay]

Stainless steel.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, eventually. Aluminum.

[Alex Lindsay]

Aluminum.

[Jason Snell]

The.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The progress report does proudly say that the Airport AirPods Pro 2 use 100% recycled gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's expensive.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. I mean, and that's. That's compared to like, the other, like, illustrations where here is like, here's what we make the box out of and here's how we recycle all of that.

[Leo Laporte]

I always.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's a readable report.

[Leo Laporte]

I always think of the factoid that every plastic toothbrush ever made is sitting still in a landfill and will be for years to come. But I mean everybody has to do what they can and I guess, you know, keep your pods going as long as they can. Apple is, I mean they did do an Earth Day activity challenge on your Apple watch today. If you work out for 30 minutes or less longer, you're going to get a 2025 Earth Day award in the activity app. Congratulations.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Do you get extra move points for like throwing tomato soup at a piece of artwork at a museum? Either in or you're not.

[Leo Laporte]

Do not do that. Please, I beg of you. They are offering actually this is real 10% off eligible Apple accessories when they recycle eligible devices at App Store at the Apple store stores through May 16. Let's keep doing that Apple. Maybe not just for the month, maybe keep doing that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The one thing that I'm still curious about is that and I agree with Jason, there's a lot of greenwashing. There's a lot of like you notice that Google used to be a lot more proud and demonstrative about its green efforts until they had to put 8,000 more horses on their AI development and now they can't really source all clean energy to train all the those models with, can they? And so now they're a lot quieter about what they're doing. Apple has a small section about artificial intelligence in which they mentioned that well yeah, we try to do most of the stuff on device so it's not consuming more energy than was already going to be on the device. Apple intelligence servers are running 100% clean energy or renewable energy. I don't have it in front of me but it doesn't merely make it clear. They're subcontracting cloud compute from Google and others to train those models. And I don't see anywhere in the report. It's 126 page report. Maybe I just didn't see it. It doesn't mention. Well here is how we're taking responsibility for the hit that we are contracting other the hits we're calling out on Mother Earth but through subcontractors and other hitmen. I think that that's an interesting thing that should be investigated. I'm sure they're working on it. I'm sure that they're concerned about it. But that's the one thing that's missing from this.

[Leo Laporte]

Where can I find my awards? I want my Earth Day award. I worked out today. Well, I can't find it. They said it's in fitness plus, but I don't see it anywhere. Other things they're going to do. They're going to enable clean energy charging on the demo units in an Apple in US Apple stores. So they'll charge at times a day when the grid is clean, cleaner. Yeah. Okay.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, I guess actually, you know what, I like that in that it shows that they're actually thinking from top to bottom.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

If. I mean it looks. It looks weird if they're saying, oh, well, here's a way that you wouldn't save a hell of a lot, but you'd save a certain, a non zero amount. So why don't you do it like. Yeah, maybe we should do it this way.

[Leo Laporte]

Just want to show you my Earth Day award. Look how pretty that is. 2025 Earth Day Day.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And it's. And it means more because it was done through the voting of your peers.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. I do not have the global close all your rings Day award, however. I didn't even know there was such a thing. I have the Heart Month Challenge, the Veterans Day Challenge. I've got a lot of. I have accumulated a lot of awards I wasn't even aware of. Yeah, look, there's a little Easter Bunny Award.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's for Lunar New Year's. A lot of leavers to get a lot of food pellets.

[Leo Laporte]

I didn't even. No, I mean. Yeah, I'm gonna get back in there.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You've been tricked into good health.

[Leo Laporte]

They tricked me. Okay. Anyway, you can read the entire sustainability report if you care. And Greenpeace. Greenpeace.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's very readable. It's very illustrative. I think it wasn't. It's not just for Greenpeace. It really is.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they care. I agree. They care. It's just difficult when you're a company that sells products.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That have a limited lifespan and are made of plastic.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. I mean both, both things can be true. That a. This is incredibly good PR for Apple and they also care genuinely about the environment. That one does not necessarily negate the other.

[Jason Snell]

Indeed. Indeed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Andy, you have so many good stories in here. Meta removes use of Apple intelligence in its apps on the phone. Now you have that as an option. As an app developer, why would Meta take that out of their Facebook app and their WhatsApp and their Instagram app?

[Alex Lindsay]

I'm wondering whether they don't get the access to the data if Apple doesn't.

[Leo Laporte]

Want you to use their app.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think if you use the Apple intelligence for that, I think that Apple's not handing them back what you typed first. They want to see all of it if they can.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, I mean we're talking about like when you edit text in Instagram or whatever, like in any other app, if there's editable text, you automatically get that little dingus that says, hey, click here for Apple Intelligence features. That's been removed from pretty much every, every Meta product.

[Leo Laporte]

You can still do it with Meta's own AI. Of course it's not Apple's and I think you're exactly right. That's, that's because Meta wants that data. Apple, I mean, this is how valuable the data Apple is actually using bug data reports for AI training.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, it's free text.

[Leo Laporte]

Anything we can eat.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yep, that's. I thought that was unusual. I mean they're used to sort of like take it or leave its stance with all of its developers anyway or anything that's developer related. But that thought that was weird. There's no opt out of harvesting that for AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Look for this line everywhere where it says Apple may use your submission to improve Apple products and services such as training, Apple intelligence models or other machine learning models. And your choice is go back, don't ask again, or submit. You want to submit a report you're going to do, but you know how much is in there? Not a lot. Yeah, I mean it's a. I, you know, I, I submit the bug reports when I see them, but I don't write anything. I just say, you can have it, that's fine.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, it's, it's more interesting with Apple than it would be with other companies because, because they do try to establish themselves as. No, we're different from Google, we're different from Facebook, we totally respect user privacy. I don't think they're doing any damage by taking this information because it's not like people are saying, oh, I was, I was using. I was. I tried to type my Social Security number in here and I typed it as blah blah, blah, blah blah. But it gave, you know, it's not as bad as that, but nonetheless, if there, it's weird that there is. That is part of the workflow of collecting data for AI when it goes to the approvals process of Apple as a new policy. There isn't immediately a point in the workflow that says, okay, and at what point are we going to ask for permission? Either ask for people to opt in or tell them they have the ability to opt out. And so it's weird that this is like a, it's true of nearly everything that Apple does with AI with personal data or private data. But it's weird that this is an Omega mission. Assuming that, like we understand this correctly.

[Leo Laporte]

Poor John Ashley's finger's been hovering over the Vision Pro button for the last two hours. Go ahead, press the button. Go ahead. What do you see? What do you know? It's time to talk to Vision Pro.

[Jason Snell]

Also, this goes before that previous thing where we talked about rumors about the vision.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. Can you move that in there? I forgot.

[Jason Snell]

Slide that. Just.

[Leo Laporte]

I didn't know that was going to be a Vision Pro story, so I didn't. I didn't prepare properly.

[Jason Snell]

We need to talk about that later.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Also, there's only one Vision Pro story, and it's not great. Ping Pong club brings realistic table tennis to the Apple Vision Pro.

[Jason Snell]

I gotta try that. My favorite app on the Meta quest is 11 table tennis, which is an amazingly accurate ping pong app. And I'm just gonna. I'm gonna predict that this one's not gonna be as good because 11 table tendencies uses actual controllers that know exactly where your hands are and how they're moving in order to do. They're very realistic. Because holding a Meta Quest controller is very much like holding a ping pong paddle. And if you just have to use the Vision Pro's onboard hand recognition with no controllers, I'm going to guess it's not as good. But I will try it. Because I love table tennis and don't have a house big enough to have a table tennis.

[Leo Laporte]

You need a special basement with a big piece of petrified wood it looks like, I guess. And little boxes.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Ultra exclusive. This is like the. The ping pong. Ping pong rec room of a crime lord. That's how fancy this.

[Jason Snell]

I will check this out and report back next time whenever it ships, if it's out yet, whatever, I will go get it and. And I'll report back. Yeah. My favorite location in 11 table tennis is a mountaintop chalet. It's just delightful to play ping pong at the top. Top of the world. You've done your skiing for the day and now it's time for some table tennis. I love it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Seek enlightenment and an overhead smash.

[Jason Snell]

It's legitimately great. It is a perfect use of that technology to do that. So we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

Now, are you playing a person or you're just playing the Mac on this? It looks like.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, you know, it's. Well, 11 will let you do either one. They'll let you do AI or. I found that the problem is that this is such a quick reflex that you need incredibly low latency or it doesn't really work. But the AI players are great.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Good for your.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course they're great. They're better than you if they really wanted to be.

[Jason Snell]

Well, there's a sliding scale, right. So you. Basically the way you play on 11 table tennis is you keep sliding up the difficulty until it, until you can't win and then you realize that you've reached your limit as a player and I reached my limit as a player in that game. But it's great fun. Great fun.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I just say though, it reminds me of like probably my all time favorite game on the classic Mac, which was Shuffle Puck Cafe, which was air hockey. And it was perfect because. Because in air hockey you have a controller in your clawed hand that you, that you slide across a table.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And what is it you have with your Mac? You have a mouse. You slide across a table.

[Jason Snell]

Amazing. Greatest.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So it reminded me of like if you've got. If I can just like have a. You must be right. I'm sure you're right that it's better with a controller. But the idea of if I can just stand in one place and just, you know, like pretend I've got a paddle in my hand, pretend I've got the Forest Gump Chairman Mao style paddle competition.

[Leo Laporte]

Darren Okey does point out there is one big advantage to the simulated table tennis versus the real ping pong table. You don't have to bend over to pick up the ball in the Vision Pro. In the Vision Pro, the ball comes to you.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's the Vision Pro segment.

[Alex Lindsay]

Now you see, now you know we're.

[Leo Laporte]

Done talking the vision unless you guys can come up with is there any new immersive anything?

[Jason Snell]

That's it for now.

[Alex Lindsay]

Not a lot of new content yet. I mean a lot of us are waiting for the camera. So we're all waiting for when the camera starts rolling out.

[Leo Laporte]

But we just imagine those Vision Pro segments are going to get longer and longer once the camera comes out. Would you buy an MDR dasher keyboard? Are you ready? Are you ready to start processing data for severance? Is your any red? There is an actual mechanical keyboard from Atomic Keyboard. Based on the keyboard in Severance, it uses a 70% layout built in trackball. Just like the TV show. Deep Blue housing, rounded keycaps. And just like the TV show, there's no escape key.

[Andy Ihnatko]

No escape key, control key or option key. So you're going to have to have another Keyboard next to it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not a good keyboard.

[Jason Snell]

Buy a real keyboard and put the severance keycaps on it like I did.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look at that. That's pretty cool.

[Jason Snell]

It's good enough.

[Leo Laporte]

I say, is that a Commodore logo on your keyboard?

[Jason Snell]

No, that's the six colors logo.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay. Sorry. I apologize.

[Jason Snell]

But yeah, it's the. You get the dasher keycaps and make your own on whatever keyboard you want.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay. Nice. That's what those are. Those are the dasher keyboards.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, mine are from. From, what is it, drop.com?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And they have dasher keycaps that you can get as a set and put.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm guessing you're quite a fan of the old settlements.

[Jason Snell]

Love it. And the keycaps are cool, too.

[Leo Laporte]

What does MDR stand for again?

[Jason Snell]

Macro Data refinement.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. And we do a little bit more. Know what's going on. I finally finished.

[Jason Snell]

The work is mysterious and important. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

The work is mysterious and important. The work is mysterious and important. Ted Lasso Back from the Dead. Brett Goldstein compares it to a dead cat. Apparently in his youth, he had a cat. He thought it got hit by a car. They buried it, but it turns out it was a different cat. And the cat came back.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He was on a podcast. He told the story when they're asking about it, like about ked Lasso kind back, said, I have a friend I went to university with and I think about this a lot. He had a cat that died. He loved his cat. And the cat was run over. And they buried the cat. Buried it. And he was a child. They buried the cat in the garden. And he lay in bed so sad, so upset and crying. And he prayed and he prayed and he wished, I wish the cat would come back. And then the cat did come back. And it turned out that the cat they buried wasn't their cat. And I think about that all the time.

[Leo Laporte]

There he is. He is, of course, not only one of the show's writers. He plays Roy Kent. And that was kind of a serendipitous thing. They didn't originally cast him.

[Jason Snell]

No, he was just a writer on the show. And then he auditioned for the part.

[Leo Laporte]

So you should be a soccer player. Anyway, so it's coming back. I don't know. Didn't they finish it? Didn't they wrap it up?

[Jason Snell]

I mean, it was a story. They had a three season plan and they told a story. And then there was a question of, like, are there more stories to tell? Since it's wildly possible, popular and Apple's going to back a truck of money up to Jason Sudeikis house. And I think he looked at the size of the truck and finally decided that it was worth it. Also, I will say it is a British production. I know it's. It's. It's an Apple and there's American producers on it, but they shoot it in the uk, and in the UK especially, there is a grand tradition of going away and then coming back a few years later and then going away again and then coming back again, like. And I feel like American TV is starting to do that too, which is like, you can just, you know, come back five years later or whatever. And I think that they decided the money was too good to pass up. And I think Jason Sudeikis finally did come up with, like, an idea for what he could do that he would feel good about. And, you know, I feel like as long as they want to make Ted Lasso's Apple is happy to write that check.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, and I think that for the streamers, it's always so hard to find something that's successful, like, you know, like, with anything. With any series, it's not just streamers. It's just with any series, they're all kind of a shot in the dark. You don't know if they're going to have the lightning in a bottle that's required to make them great. And so, I mean, you look at Andor, I mean, I think. I think Disney's spending $25 million an episode on Andor because.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. Like, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Even with the volume, they're spending that much money.

[Alex Lindsay]

They. They've put in 645 million for season one and season two so far.

[Leo Laporte]

They just.

[Alex Lindsay]

They just.

[Leo Laporte]

What makes it so expensive?

[Alex Lindsay]

There's a lot of ships.

[Leo Laporte]

They're shooting on a stage that.

[Jason Snell]

No, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but they're all.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, it's a lot of ships still. A lot of.

[Jason Snell]

It's not. And it's a lot of sets, too.

[Leo Laporte]

It's.

[Jason Snell]

It's the Mandalorian. I think there's a lot more stuff with the volume.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, even with the volume, there's a lot of effects. There's a lot of other things that have to get done. It's not, you know, and then there's actors and writing and all the other things that are required, and it just gets to. It adds up. Especially when you start doing, you know, like, the Pit, I think, is rumored to be like 5 or 6 million. They literally never leave the set. Like, the set is Done. It's.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's there.

[Alex Lindsay]

They don't have a lot of big actors.

[Jason Snell]

They do three days of location shooting in Pittsburgh and then everything else is in la, in the studio.

[Alex Lindsay]

I can't even imagine that they. Maybe three days from the whole season.

[Jason Snell]

They did the rooftop scenes at the beginning and end were shot in Pittsburgh.

[Alex Lindsay]

But three days for the whole season. They spent.

[Jason Snell]

For the whole season. Yeah. They literally had to write the script for the last episode because they shot that at the beginning of the shooting block. And so they had to know how it ended before they began because. Because all the outdoor stuff was shot in three days in Pittsburgh and then they moved.

[Leo Laporte]

It is remarkable if you ever get a chance to see it, visit a soundstage. I remember seeing visiting the soundstage for Parenthood. And they just built a house. Like a two story house.

[Jason Snell]

Right.

[Alex Lindsay]

Except you can move all the walls.

[Leo Laporte]

But you can remove walls. And like the refrigerator, the back of the refrigerator, you could take it out so you could shoot into the freezer as the guy opens the refrigerator. And of course they use Duratrans outdoor stuff behind all the windows so it looks like they're in a real house. Yeah, it's pretty cool actually. What Hollywood can do on a set manage to spend tens of millions of dollars.

[Alex Lindsay]

But the thing is, is that. Well, but again, but that's how they got, you know, that's how they got the pit down to a regional price is that they don't have any. Any exteriors and. Or is all exteriors. Not only is it exteriors, it's exteriors on other planets.

[Leo Laporte]

Tatooine.

[Alex Lindsay]

So they have to jump around a lot. And so it. I think comes out tonight. So should be.

[Leo Laporte]

Do they shoot that on the volume though?

[Alex Lindsay]

I think I don't know whether they shoot. I have to find out. I know they do Mandalorian on the volume.

[Leo Laporte]

I know man. That's famously.

[Alex Lindsay]

You know, one of the things that they. You don't think about with the volume is they were going to put one into 3210 or something that was not quite as big as the that volume. And we have what we at 30U10 had 6,000amps amps. Not the 6,000 volts or watts, but amps amps. You know, three phase, 2,000 each phase. And. And it wasn't enough.

[Leo Laporte]

Volume. That's the screen.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, the screen is so it like it's just. It just. It's so expensive to turn on. You know. So you just you. And then you have all the processing that is Required to get it there. And you're building, I was gonna say.

[Leo Laporte]

My dreams of building one in my house.

[Jason Snell]

I guess I don't know if the volume is as much a money saver as it is a just a different creative tool because you still have to do. You still have to build the worlds that are in 3D. The revolutionary thing about the volume is you do that work up front instead of waiting till the end to do it.

[Alex Lindsay]

And the actors feel like they're there.

[Jason Snell]

And then, yes, you do that work up front, like building a set. And then when the actors are there, they feel surrounded by it. And also the director and the camera operator can move around and have it be artistic decisions based on what it's gonna look like as if they were outside. And that's the big deal with volume.

[Alex Lindsay]

And the, the funny. They, they, they did talk. There was a point in Light and Magic that when it came out last week in one of these first episodes where John Noel just said, yeah, I looked out at, at these act, these poor actors and all this giant set with green screen and thought, oh, those poor guys. Like, even back then they were just like.

[Leo Laporte]

And it looks.

[Alex Lindsay]

And I just remember when we were working on it how much, like, especially Ewan McGregor hated it. Like, he stayed at the green screen because he's just like, I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know where I am, I don't know how I'm, you know, you know, it was, it was always, yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And with the volume, there's some set, right? Like, they'll often have the ground is there and there's some near foreground things. It's a lot like how they did planets in old Star Trek episodes, right? Is they would have like some set dressing in the near ground and then they would just have that cyclorama with orange behind it. And now it's actual background. But that means you are in a tangible set and also have some idea of what surrounds you. And the lighting is dynamic, so the light moves. And like, as an actor, I know it's a little weird because the perspective shifts as the camera moves. But like, as an actor, it must be so much better. And as a director and a director of photography, it's got to be so much better to feel like you can control what you want the look to be. And I, I've heard from people in the VFX side who say, you know, the beauty of it is all those creative decisions have to be made up front instead of, you know, they Say, oh, we're going to do it like.

[Leo Laporte]

This, fix it in post.

[Jason Snell]

And then they see the VFX and they're like, no, let's do something different instead. You agree to it upfront. It forces everybody to be a little more professional. Although I have heard stories where people then will shoot on the volume and say can we change it now? And it's like no, what are you doing?

[Alex Lindsay]

And then times where they don't know, you can tell when you look at the behind the scenes, they don't know. They just turn the set green though. They'll put make a section green behind them going like we don't know. We don't know what we're gonna do there yet. We haven't made that decision in so or it's too much.

[Leo Laporte]

Probably time to confess that the whole attic studio thing, the whole thing was just a fake. I never.

[Jason Snell]

It's a green, green screen.

[Leo Laporte]

We're still in the east side studio. The whole thing was a bad dream.

[Jason Snell]

How could you.

[Andy Ihnatko]

As a matter of fact, I mean we all share a house. We're all actually right.

[Leo Laporte]

We all live together.

[Andy Ihnatko]

As a matter of fact, Jason, Here is that Dr. Pepper that you wanted to borrow.

[Jason Snell]

Oh well thank you Andy. I really appreciate that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That looks delicious.

[Jason Snell]

Tasty.

[Leo Laporte]

If you're a gamer, I should get rid of this. This is yours actually, Jason.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that's my pick.

[Leo Laporte]

That's your pick. I love it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You're inviting all kinds of mischief when you just as a joke decide to put drop over green screen behind you.

[Jason Snell]

Nobody knows.

[Leo Laporte]

This thing is huge.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The discord is probably already full if.

[Jason Snell]

People listening and not watching. It's a giant green screen. I would just want to point out that nobody knows that I'm also in front of a fake backdrop. It's very exciting and now I'm going to turn it off and oh, it's also my. I just have a fake of my.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it that you do that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Going for the double bluff. Very.

[Jason Snell]

That's right. But I am here. Ho.

[Leo Laporte]

Is he real or is he memor. How can you tell? If you are a Mac gamer, you probably know about whiskey. Not the one you drink, but the one you use to play Windows games on your Macintosh. Whiskey was created by an 18 year old college student student who's tired of it. He's attending Northeastern. He says it's always a balancing act between my schoolwork and dev work. So Isaac Marowitz is. This is from Ars Technica is basically killing whiskey. He says to save paid apps. But really he's just tired and he wants to go back to. Back to school. So good for him.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, classic story, right? There's nothing, nothing bad here. He just was a kid who did an open source thing and everybody's like, this is amazing. And he's like, I have to stop now and do my homework.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And because this is no longer 1991, nobody stepped in and say, hi, here's $40 million. I'd like you to start a company.

[Jason Snell]

Based around this right now instead. Crossovers Developers said congratulations on deciding not to do this product that competes with us anymore. Well done.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll take it from here. Thank you very much. Now I would like to know about this. There is a developer who has shown window Windows 11 Windows on ARM running on an air, an iPad air using emulation. Can I do that? That's thanks to the dma. This is Windows latest spotted this. As far as I know, it's not been released or has.

[Andy Ihnatko]

If you're in Europe, it's on the altstor Classic alternative app store. But it shows you that, well, if you can't, here's what could be done done. And there's a video and it seems to run as well as Windows 11 on ARM would run, which is not terribly great, but certainly usable if you are.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, honestly, I run it on my Mac in Parallels and it runs very nicely. It's actually probably as fast on a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro as it would be on many Windows machines. So I'm very happy with that. But it would be cool to be able to run this on my iPad. I agree.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I gotta say, that's as much as we're all allergic to Windows Windows to one degree or another. Like the idea of I've got this really cheap iPad that I love for 90% of the things that I do. And it's nice to also have like an actual desktop operating system with full app support, full everything support or even for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Just that one game. Right. You know, or, or that.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Or that one app. I'm not sure if it's. I'm not sure if it's solid enough for gaming or at least the demo mode doesn't indicate. But it's not as. But it's not as though, like, don't you refer to some of these things as like bar bet apps where it's like you want a $20 bar bet by proving that yes, you can, you can post. You can boot Windows and get past the post screen like no, no, this is actually like a stripped down version of Windows 11, but still Windows 11.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, and then, and then of course you can just get one of these and get a cheap monitor and it's going to perform better than the iPad.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, like good points.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, actually I've got something on my Raspberry PI where I just have like a USB display adapter that basically allows. Oh God. I know it was. I think we did this as pick of the week a couple years ago. Company has an app that is just simply take an HDMI input and put it in a window, put it inside the app view so that you can have a Raspberry PI or whatever hooked up to the video input and use your iPad as a screen. But nonetheless, because it's getting that through an app that is simply feeding through the HDMI signal, that means that you could just, it's just another app. So you can have all of your iPad workflow apps but also be able to tab into Raspberry PI, Linux or whatever else you're running on it. I mean they're these really cool like AliExpress120,$130 deck of card sized Windows machines that are useless for anything other than I would spend $120 so that I could have this one app that I need to run on my iPad but can't run on my iPad and I don't want to use, use VNC or anything like that to get back to it. It's. It's interesting. It's an interesting option.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Not worth moving to. You do. There are other reasons to move to Europe, but nonetheless it's not, it's not worth moving to Europe to get to be able to access.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm moving to Europe just for that. That's all. I'm just doing it for that. That's the reason. And the fabulous harmony Beau.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I was going to say exactly that. In Barcelona I'm still like, oh God, I wish I'd eaten more ham when I was in Barcelona.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, they often talk to people on their deathbeds and people never say, oh, I wish I'd worked more or.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And they put it on, they put it on a big lathe that never turns, but still it's a lathe.

[Leo Laporte]

And just sometimes they say, I wish I'd eaten more Jamon Iberico. I think I will say that on my deathbed. Maybe it'll kill me.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They actually make Jamona Barico flavored Lays potatoes potato chips. Yeah. And no, it doesn't just taste like bacon. It actually tastes like sort of like.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen we have come to the silly portion of the show. Obviously you're watching Mac Break Weekly Andy inocco, Chief Silifier Mr. Jason Snell from sixcolors. Com. He's very serious. And Alex Lindsay, who has shaken hands with the late Pope. All of that in one show. Where else are you going to get.

[Unnamed Speaker]

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[Leo Laporte]

These proven security best practices defend against.

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[Jason Snell]

Today, CIS provides cybersecurity services, threat intelligence.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And critical resources to help public and private sector organizations alike strengthen their Cyber defenses.

[Jason Snell]

Visit cisecurity.org today.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's the letters cisecurity.org to find out how CIS can help your organization as we create confidence in the connected world.

[Leo Laporte]

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[Andy Ihnatko]

Just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads you can know.

[Leo Laporte]

Your reaches the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title industry Company seniority skills Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads.

[Andy Ihnatko]

We'll even give you a $100 credit.

[Leo Laporte]

On your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results terms and conditions apply.

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[Leo Laporte]

Picks of the week. Let's start with you, Alex Lindsey. Why not?

[Alex Lindsay]

I have, I have it right here.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he's got it right there, right behind him.

[Alex Lindsay]

I was gonna grab it when somebody else was doing their pick, but I.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I surprised you. I'm sorry. I apologize.

[Alex Lindsay]

A lot of times you have cameras and you want to wrap them but you don't have the right bag. You figure out how to put them in there.

[Leo Laporte]

Just pull those off your bed, those old sheets. What is that?

[Alex Lindsay]

This is a dom key. So this is a wrap. I paid good money for this piece of, piece of cloth here. So you have a camera. Like that's the camera there. And so but you don't want to bang it up. But you don't also don't need a, you don't have a place for it to go. And so these are, these wraps are made by a company called Domke, I think. I don't, there's probably other people that make them, but these are all the ones I have. I have lots of these. And for. Andy's got a couple but for taking electronics, metal lenses, cameras, mics, and you just want to wrap them in something to keep them from banging against each other. It's not like a huge thick wrap. It's just something that you want to throw, you know, you want to throw around something. They're about 20 bucks each and I've got so many anyway, so you know, and so they're just great when you're Trying to, like, pack a pelican case and you got to put a bunch of stuff into it or pack your backpack, and you just don't want the metal stuff banging against the metal stuff to scratch it and so on and so forth. They're a great deal. And they've got. Basically, they just have Velcro. You just run them around and they just attach to themselves and you just wrap it up. And as you can see, Andy might have one or two of them.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So they come in all kinds of sizes.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, there's like a little one. I recommend the 19 inch, because you just. You can always wrap it more. The 11 inch, I find to be. Oftentimes the 15 is not too bad. I have got all the sizes, but it's. They're great.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So, yeah, I. I have to double his recommendation because for me, it's not just. Sometimes you have things that are kind of odd shapes, and you don't necessarily need a bag for it. You just want to be protected when you throw it in your laptop bag or in your backpack or. Like, I love my mobile setup here, but before, like, I went into my closet and got out, like, surplus donkey wraps. It's like, how do I carry two little LED panels and their chargers in one package? I don't have a bag that's exactly the right. Right size, but I do have wraps. So I can just simply wrap them into one tight, compact package with some padding around it. And it's just absolutely perfect. Not, not only that, but it's also, again, for my camera stuff, because, again, I don't want to carry a camera bag around wherever I go, because that's, you know, I'm. I'm a person that a miscreant could thinks, hey, I could probably outrun that guy. So I don't want to carry, like, a camera bag with me, but I have my, My. My little, like, satchel, and I don't have, like, a whole pile of stuff. I want to just wrap my, like, really expensive, really nice lens in something so that it won't get scratched up inside that bag, but nonetheless will be a tight, compact package. It's like every. If it's in that category, if you just keep buying these, when they're on sale, buy them. There are some knockoffs that aren't terrible. Buy them too. And once you have just like, use it for the purpose you bought it for, but then you put it in a closet. Once you have this as inventory, as a resource, it's like, ah, damn, I'm packing for this Trip. And this. There's no way I can get. Oh, wait a minute. I've got those damp donkey wraps. I can just put. I've got my microphone, the stand, the cables, and a backup pair of headphones like all in one little wrap. Actually, I think I sent that to you because I was so.

[Leo Laporte]

Could you wrap your lunch in it?

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mean, would my microphone burrito, I called it.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's really just a piece of. Is it padded?

[Alex Lindsay]

It's simple. Yes.

[Andy Ihnatko]

There's a little bit of padded padding inside. So.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's got Velcro, so it's easy to kind of make it any arbitrary.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The entire outside surface is Velcro. So for instance, if I want to wrap this Dr. Pepper can, I could just put it in there.

[Leo Laporte]

So the will work with anything because it's got hook and loop on the inside and the end.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, it's all the. It's the Velcro, whatever the. Yeah, the entire outside could make a.

[Leo Laporte]

A little pope hat out of it even. Well, so.

[Alex Lindsay]

So you take, you know like. You just like too soon.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Sorry, I shouldn't joke.

[Alex Lindsay]

So. But you.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Jason. You're the conscience of this show.

[Alex Lindsay]

But like you know, you just anywhere you grab onto it.

[Leo Laporte]

That camera that you're. You're handling there, that wouldn't be one of the new black magic.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's not new Ursa camera. It's an Ursa. But it's not this one.

[Leo Laporte]

Not the Ursa. No, this looks alike. It is looks our sign as 1 would versus 12k. So that's what I. But you. It doesn't have that special.

[Alex Lindsay]

No, no, it's. It's the original 12K.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice couple years. That's a very nice 12K camera you just got thrown around there.

[Alex Lindsay]

I. You know. You know, I will tell you if you show up to your kids high school camera with three of these. With three of these and some big lenses, everyone pays attention, you know.

[Jason Snell]

So.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yes.

[Andy Ihnatko]

IPhone, iPhone 12. Yeah, that's. That's nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you James Cameron? Oh my.

[Alex Lindsay]

My daughter said it would be weird if I just shot really good footage of her playing. You know, she's in the pit for the things. I was like, well I'll just shoot everybody and we'll happen to get some of YouTube, so.

[Jason Snell]

Wow.

[Alex Lindsay]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Domkey D O M K E. It's on Amazon. You're looking for your donkey F Stroke 34M 15 inch protective wrap in a variety of colors. You also have your 11 and your 19 inch all with a built in Hook and loop. Thank you, Alex. Andy, what do you got?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Mine is just a bit of fun. An app that I just love the fact that it exists and I love the person who made it. Rich Siegel is a name that comes up on this show often. He is the creator, again, principal of Bare Bones Software and the creator of BBEdit, an app that I think Jason. I'd be surprised if Jason and I have another app that we've relied on for longer than we've relied on bbedit. Even just last week, it was like, how do I transmogrify this data every single week into a blog post? Because editing it manually is too hard. Like, oh, wait, I just go into bbedit Creative regular expression for search and replace. And now it does automatically. So he has a. He turned up.

[Leo Laporte]

You mentioned that he repairs these KitchenAid mixers.

[Jason Snell]

Rich, you know that pivoting from BBE edit to KitchenAid mixers is a thing that happens.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He has to. He anticipated the tariffs and how it might affect the tech industry. Industry. And he's. And his hobby is like men is like repairing KitchenAid mixers. And I don't, and I don't mean, oh, look, that plug was a little busted. I mean, just like his like BMW sports car. Ripping it all down the brass gears. Replacing this, Repacking with grease, Replacing worn out parts, upgrading old parts.

[Leo Laporte]

Hold on. I'm gonna run downstairs and get my mixer and see if this works.

[Jason Snell]

I have. Well, yeah, I mean, I, I've done it. I done it too. I. I actually done two mixers. My. One that I got from my mom and one I found literally sitting on the street.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And Rich guided me through.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And KitchenAid mixers are apparently only until very recently, if it's 20 or 30 years old, so long as the molecules are still together, you can repair them, you can upgrade them. There's an aftermarket for replacement parts. And so he started a site called mixerology, mixerology.com for his, like, hobby pursuits and also as an information source. And of course, it got a little bit out of hand. His partner is a. Is a librarian and a really, really good web developer. So she created with Rich a, like, web tool for the Mixerology site that if you, if you type in the serial number of your KitchenAid mixer, it will tell you. It'll decode the serial number to tell you when it was manufactured. Manufactured. And because Rich is the kind of genius that we should elect to hire office, but is too smart to take the job of being in higher office, he Decided, hey, I'm a developer. I can just write an iOS app that will just. Why type in the serial number when you can just use your iPhone or your iPad to aim the camera at the serial number and we'll decode it for you. So on the App Store, you can get the Mixerology app available for iOS. And so you can just simply find the date in which your kitchenaid carry this thing. Oh, God, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Up into the attic.

[Jason Snell]

They're heavy, aren't they, Leo? I agree, they are pretty heavy.

[Leo Laporte]

And now where do I take a picture? What. What am I. Is there a serial number somewhere on there?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Go to mixerology.com that's looking for a serial number.

[Leo Laporte]

Aim the camera at the serial number label underneath the mixer.

[Jason Snell]

It is on the underside of the. The mixer.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you mean like the. The head of it?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, of the base. Underside of the base. You'll see it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, the.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You'll find the serial number on the label underneath the base of the mixer. When you turn it over to look, use a towel or other soft pad to protect the.

[Jason Snell]

Don't lift it yourself like we're doing. That's madness.

[Leo Laporte]

But I don't. I think this one's so old. This is vintage. Like, I don't have a base.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, it should be.

[Jason Snell]

No, that's it. It should be in there somewhere. The. On the underside. I love that this is a show where two people are stand mixers in there.

[Leo Laporte]

He turned into prop comics at some point.

[Jason Snell]

I don't know when that happened. I mean, so literally, this one that I'm holding here, I found on the street. And I. I was running and I ran by it, and I was like, oh, man. And so I came back home after my run. I got in the car, went and picked it up and emailed Rich and said, rich, what do I do here? And he. And he was like, okay, I. This. This model. I get this. I can send you a part for this. You need to order this part for this. And, you know, now I've got. I grant you, a second mixer. But. But this one's probably going to one of my kids at some point, and it's awesome. Or they'll get the one that my mom did. But also, like, I.

[Leo Laporte]

It's an avocado green, which tastes pretty nice.

[Jason Snell]

My mom's one is avocado green, too. And what I did do with Rich's help is I opened it up and replaced a couple of things and re. Lubed it with new grease. Cause the grease in there was, you know, 3040 years old. And that was a nice thing, too. They are built like tanks. That's the thing you learn from Rich is there are parts that can fail, and people. People, like, put them on the side of the road. It's like you can fix those parts and they will run forever. They will run.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, they never go bad. Yeah. I can't find the serial number on mine, but.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, that might. That might be a pre1984 Hobart mixer. Whirlpool days. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it could be KitchenAid on it.

[Jason Snell]

You send that picture to Rich and he will tell you what it is. Let me tell you, I used to.

[Leo Laporte]

Use Hobarts in the cafeteria. I remember those Hobart mixers. Those. They have stand mixers that were as big as me. I mean, they're big. Huge.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Mixerology.com for the full online version of that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's free.

[Jason Snell]

Wonderful, wonderful.

[Leo Laporte]

Designed for iPad, not verified for Mac os, but I can tell you it ran just fine. The only issue I had was I couldn't find my serial. And what do you learn? You just learned when it was made.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Basically, you just learned when it was made.

[Leo Laporte]

I would like to actually know when this was made. I can't remember when I bought it, but I have a feeling this is a couple of wives ago. I mean, I don't know, but I think this might have been a wedding present from many, many moons.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, literally, the mixer in my kitchen that I use is the one that made all the cookies that I had when I was a kid. It's literally the same, and it still works. It's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

It's 50 years later.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's the appliance. Probably more than any other appliance in the kitchen. It's the one that will destroy brotherly, sisterly bonds when. When someone. When. When. When the parents, like, move and they don't want to take everything with them. And now we have to decide who gets the KitchenAid mixer.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, I love it. That. The fact that this. This app comes from Ocean State Mixer Repair, llc.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Which is Rich Seagulls.

[Jason Snell]

That's Rich.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, can I send this to. It costs more to send it to him.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He does have a contact page.

[Jason Snell]

Mixerology.com He Also, like I said, he also provides advice.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. If you have a question or problem, please take a moment to find the model number and serial number when you write in the model number. Yeah, exactly. I can't find them. Tell me what the mixer says on the side and whether the head tilts. Tilts up and down or the bowl cranks up and down. And if it's really old and doesn't say anything, tell me that, too.

[Leo Laporte]

It's really old and it doesn't say anything.

[Andy Ihnatko]

He's that kind of kind guy. Like, he will help anybody about anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Jason Snell]

But seriously, if your mixer is broken, you can fix it. Mine never broke.

[Leo Laporte]

It still works.

[Jason Snell]

I know, I know. That's.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm ashamed to admit I have replaced it with a spiral mixer.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, see if it's working. Now you're just talking about performance upgrades. And you can help me with that, too.

[Leo Laporte]

Jason, this leaves you for your pick of the week.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I'm going to do something that's completely impractical and pointless because it's nice because. Do you like birds? I like birds. There are a lot of birds around who does birds. And this thing is called Bird Buddy. It is a solar charging, although you can get one without. It's got a little battery in it. Bird feeder with a webcam in it. And it takes pictures of birds and sends them to you and video of birds and sends them to you. And you get little alerts on your phone that say, there's a bluebird on your feeder right now. And not only that, since I work at home, I can actually go look at the bird, but I clean this up for the spring and just set it up and the birds are going crazy. I've had, like, so many birds the last few days. And, like, what's the practical nature of buying a bird feeder with a camera in it? None. But, like. Like, that bluebird is the king of my house now. The bluebird rules. And it does. It does. It does.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you share these on Instagram?

[Jason Snell]

Could you share these? It's 2K you can send to your photo library. It shoots 2K video plus pulls out a bunch of stills. It's just using WI fi. And like I said, it's little roof. It's optional, but, like, it's got a little roof with a solar panel on it. So as long as that panel is pointing in the direction of the sun, like, I never need to charge things. This thing, it's just sending me pictures of birds all the time in my backyard.

[Leo Laporte]

If you order today, you get a free SE holder.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, well, they. Some of the birds like the suet, and then they've got a hummingbird feeder as well.

[Leo Laporte]

Which one should I get? The Pro or the special Easter Buddy with a bird? But.

[Jason Snell]

But I don't know. I. I have the pre. The older model, so the Pro is probably super fun and fancy. And then they've got a new thing that they're doing where they're going to have like blocks where you can have habitat, a feeder and different kinds and all of that. But that one is going on Kickstarter in a week, I think. But I took a flyer. I was literally like bird feeder with a camera in it. That sounds fun and it is fun. So that's it. It's not practical at all.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna get this for Lisa. She loves the birds and it uses.

[Jason Snell]

They use like machine learning algorithms to detect what kind of bird it is. And you can. And there's like a. You can look at other people's bird pictures.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a three in one nutrition set for fruit eating birds. There's a perch extender which attaches for bigger birds. There's a solar roof.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I just got, yeah, I just got the basic.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna get the basic one.

[Jason Snell]

And they like it. And I bought. And I went to my local hardware store and bought some. Some fancy finch food. And all the finches are very fancy and happy. So that's it. Birds. Who doesn't like them?

[Leo Laporte]

Who doesn't? And that concludes this episode. Episode. The kind of the wackiest episode ever of Mac Break Weekly. Jason snell [e-mail] now with with Mike Hurley on the upgrade [e-mail] Jason. Yep, he's back, baby. Did he have a good time with his little new newborn?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I think, I think he had. He, you know, taking two full months off is a pretty great thing. So good for him to do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Very proud of him.

[Jason Snell]

Now he's got to grapple with being a working dad. We'll see how it goes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Awesome. Nice to have you, Jason. Thanks for being here. Andy Inako is on the Blue sky at I H N A T K O Bluesky Social. Thank you for being here, Mr. Andrew.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Thank you very much.

[Leo Laporte]

Always a pleasure to see you. And Alex, Lindsay Officehours Global. Anything you did your NAB coverage, that's all online. I'm sure it is.

[Alex Lindsay]

It is. Yeah. So we were, you know, we pushed that pretty hard. I think we talked about it. We did a 5.1. We had that microphone, which turned out to be really great.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, sound cool. Okay.

[Alex Lindsay]

If you listen to it in surround, you know, now I can't listen to anybody else's coverage without surround sound because when you hear it, you're like, oh, that sounds. You just feel like you're there. And when people use regular mics where you cut everything out with an SM58 or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Alex Lindsay]

It just now feels so dead stunning, you know, and sterile.

[Leo Laporte]

So you did a whole episode on deconstructing the Sphere experience.

[Alex Lindsay]

Oh, we talked.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's a different sphere. That's not the microphone sphere.

[Alex Lindsay]

We got into a conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

Vegas sphere. Oh, okay.

[Alex Lindsay]

And extra hours. Extra hours is, you know, the Monday night. Our Monday night show. And it's. It's much more slow groove. It's like a slow groove of us talking about, you know, and we were. But we were talking a lot about the sphere, so.

[Jason Snell]

But now.

[Leo Laporte]

Would I notice if I listen now?

[Alex Lindsay]

No, no, this is a different one. So we did a bunch of different things. So this was a different. Different.

[Leo Laporte]

That was not. That's my bird feeder. Oh, yeah, there was.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, but.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

So the. But if you go up there, though, there's a. There is some coverage where we walk around and nice. And it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, there you are. Yeah, yeah. Office Hours Global. They do it every day. So even if, you know, you missed last week, you still got this week. Every single more day.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's a crazy thing that we do this every day. And we were talking about that field. We have not. It's been over five years now, so we.

[Leo Laporte]

So great. Congratulations.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I don't want to be, you know, nosy here, but have you. And you. Has Office Hours issued its own environmental impact report?

[Alex Lindsay]

We're saving people money by teaching them how to not. We're saving them people. We're saving the environment by having people do less travel and more virtual events. Virtual events is a. Someone asked me, like, what is your environmental impact? I'm like, well, I empower events not to be all in person.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't know how to calculate that.

[Leo Laporte]

For you, but you've added a new section to your homepage at officehours Global, which is great. All the audio, visual stuff you've done over the years. So if people are late to the Office Hours game, there's a great list of things. Everything from Dante to using motion to Luma. I mean, this is fantastic. The guys are good at showing a.

[Alex Lindsay]

Lot of the older stuff. The team works on that. I have to admit, I'm not very past oriented. So, like, as soon as I'm done with the show, I never want to do it again.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, I'm like, you know what?

[Alex Lindsay]

Next show?

[Leo Laporte]

But it's commend the team that we.

[Alex Lindsay]

Have this incredible team that goes through and, you know, really pulls out those things so people can find the Information. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This is new on the page and I love it. And then all the special guests. Oh, look, me and Andy are on there. There you go. And others, many, many others. Is Daria Musk any relationship? Elon?

[Alex Lindsay]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Alex Lindsay]

Just curious. She is, yeah. She's a music artist in Connecticut.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at all the people. This is great. They've really. There's a whole bunch of stuff now. Office Hours Global. And of course you can join the Daily Shows as well. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Jason. Thanks to all our club members for making this show possible. Without you, there is no twit. Seven bucks a month. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get special events. We did our coffee event on Friday. We've got coming up, Stacy's Book Club. This Friday will be our monthly AI user group. And there's just so much good stuff happening in the club. And of course you get access to the Discord, which means there's always a group of interesting, smart people you can hang out with. All that for seven bucks a month. Now, I have to tell you, we're trying to figure out, as the economy goes down, hell in a hand basket, if seven bucks is enough. And I think in the next few months, we may have to raise our prices. But I will promise you this, if you are already a member, you will be grandfathered in at the current price. So now would be a good time to go to Twit TV Club. Twit. Join the club. There is a yearly membership. Yes. As well. We'd love to have you. And it makes a big difference to are going forward to continuing to do the things we do. So thank you to our club members. Thanks. Wait a minute. What did you make? Oh, dear. You're outing me, Anthony. Oh dear, oh dear. So that will be the subject of our AR users group. Let me do it full screen, make it more fun. I got laser eyes and everything. That's fantastic. That's a little creepy. Twit TV Club Twit. Please join. We do Mac Break weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live on eight different streams. Club members, of course, get special behind the velvet rope access in our Discord. But there's also YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, X.com, linkedIn, Facebook and Kik. Watch wherever you want. But you don't have to watch live because we also record this. It's a new technology. I think you'll find it very interesting and put it up on our [e-mail], mBW. You can watch the video or listen to the audio, or both. Both. There's a link there to the YouTube channel. Great for sharing little clips. If you've got a friend with a KitchenAid, you might want to share that. Share that little clip of Jason and I showing our devices. You could also subscribe. That's a good way to do it. And that way you get it automatically as soon as it's available. After our Tuesday show. Thank you everybody, we appreciate your being here. And as now, I'm sorry to say my sad and solemn duty to tell you, get back to work because break time is over. Bye bye.

[Jason Snell]

Hey, focus up. That is what I said to Hands On Tech when we looked at the relaunch. It is time for us to focus on one topic at a time and make sure we're answering that question. I am answering that question as thoroughly as possible. If you are a member of Club Twit, you can watch the video version of this show completely ad free. Of course, listen to the audio version ad free. If you're not a member, the show will still be available to you in both ways. You can watch the video on YouTube with ads, or you can watch the audio as you always have. I mean listen to the audio as you always have in our feeds. In any case, you gotta tune in to Hands On Tech because I guarantee there's going to be a question you're going to want to have the answer to. And from time to time I also review a gadget, a gizmo or something of the sort you gotta check out Hands On Tech and I can't wait to get your question.

[Unnamed Speaker]

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