MacBreak Weekly 973: Lyle Did It!

Summary

MacBreak Weekly 973: Lyle Did It! – Detailed Summary

Release Date: May 21, 2025 | Host: TWiT (Leo Laporte)

In Episode 973 of MacBreak Weekly, titled "Lyle Did It!", host Leo Laporte and guests Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, and Alex Lindsay delve into the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) within the tech industry, with a particular focus on Apple's strategies and challenges. The episode also touches on legal battles surrounding the App Store and emerging technologies in gaming.

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1. AI Race and Apple's Position

The episode opens with discussions on recent significant AI announcements from Microsoft and Google. The central question posed is, "Is there anything Apple can do to get back on track in the AI race?" [00:00].

Notable Quote:

Jason Snell [04:54]: “I don't think that this is hopeless because I do think that all of their research into this means that Apple has got a role to play in something you wear on your face.”

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2. Google's Android XR Glasses vs. Apple

Google's recent unveiling of Android XR glasses collaboration with Samsung marks a strategic move in augmented reality (AR). These glasses, set to be sold through Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, feature prescription lenses, heads-up displays, cameras, and built-in AI capable of real-time object description and navigation overlays. The team discusses whether this innovation poses a threat to Apple's upcoming AR initiatives.

Notable Quote:

Alex Lindsay [03:33]: “Maybe instead of making the next iPhone, you could start off by making the next AirPods. And those are absolutely, totally doable right now.”

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3. Apple's Struggle with AI: Insights from Bloomberg's Article

A significant portion of the discussion centers around a Bloomberg Businessweek feature highlighting Apple's difficulties in advancing its AI capabilities. The article suggests that Apple's delays in AI development could jeopardize its dominance in the smartphone market and its ambitions in more futuristic products like robots.

Notable Quotes:

Alex Lindsay [12:00]: “If Apple has an AI that can just sort of do it, it doesn’t really work all that well versus Google, which is iterating on like its 10th year of its speech to text system.”

Jason Snell [14:16]: “It's absurd to look at something like Siri and say... or lock them into whatever Apple does, even if it's way behind everybody else.”

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4. Apple's Corporate Culture and AI Adaptation

The panel examines Apple's internal cultural challenges in embracing AI. Unlike Google and Microsoft, which have aggressively integrated AI into their products, Apple appears hesitant, preferring to maintain its closed ecosystem prioritizing privacy and user control. This approach may hinder Apple's ability to innovate swiftly in the AI domain.

Notable Quote:

Andy Ihnatko [22:07]: “Apple has gotten really good at taking people, taking a market that is already existing but not very good at what it does and leveraging it with design and interface.”

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5. Legal Battles: Apple vs. Epic and Fortnite

Transitioning from AI, the conversation shifts to Apple's ongoing legal dispute with Epic Games over Fortnite's presence in the App Store. Following Epic's attempt to bypass App Store fees, Apple has blocked Fortnite, leading to a courtroom showdown. Recently, Judge Rogers ordered Apple to allow Fortnite back into the App Store, threatening contempt charges if Apple fails to comply.

Notable Quotes:

Jason Snell [56:50]: “We have to negotiate with Epic... It's a little like a poker game.”

Leo Laporte [57:08]: “Judge Rogers is gonna not be happy.”

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6. Additional Topics

The episode briefly touches on the controversy surrounding the use of Darth Vader's voice in Fortnite, where AI-generated voices raised ethical and contractual concerns. Additionally, there are mentions of upcoming Apple events, product launches, and integrations with other technologies, though these are discussed succinctly without detailed analysis.

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7. Conclusion: Apple’s Future in AI and Legal Challenges

As the episode wraps up, the panel expresses uncertainty over Apple's ability to regain its footing in the AI arms race while simultaneously handling legal challenges that could reshape its App Store policies. The overarching sentiment is one of cautious optimism, emphasizing that Apple's future success hinges on its adaptability and strategic decisions in both AI development and legal negotiations.

Notable Quote:

Jason Snell [37:11]: “It's absurd to look at something like Siri and say what's the right thing for Apple's customers?... Today's Apple is all about locking things down and not giving people choices because they're afraid.”

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 973 of MacBreak Weekly, focusing on the critical discussions surrounding AI advancements, Apple's strategic positioning, and legal confrontations affecting its ecosystem.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inocco, Jason Snell, Alex Lindsey, they're all in the house. We're going to talk about. Both Microsoft and Google made big AI announcements this week. What is Apple going to do to respond at WWDC? And a big cover story in BusinessWeek about why Apple fumbled AI. The real question is, is there anything they can do to get it back? We'll also talk about Darth Vader's voice in Fortnite. No, you can't get it on the iPhone yet. All that more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly. Episode 973, recorded Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Lyle did it. It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Hello, everybody. Sorry about our tardiness. For those of you watching live, we were watching Google pretend that it has everything under control at Google I O. Now it's time to Talk Apple with Mr. Jason Snell of 6colors.com. Good to see you, Jason.

[Jason Snell]

Good to be here. Everything's fine. Under control here. Fine. How are you?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, dear.

[Alex Lindsay]

It was a boring.

[Leo Laporte]

People say that. I worry.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Star wars reference there. I got the Star wars reference.

[Alex Lindsay]

I did too.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it was a Star wars reference. Oh, that's right. Oh, yes.

[Alex Lindsay]

We're gonna have company.

[Leo Laporte]

Everything's fine.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, fine.

[Leo Laporte]

How are you?

[Alex Lindsay]

Negative lockdown.

[Jason Snell]

I feel like the whole tech industry is doing that right now. Right? Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

It's fine.

[Jason Snell]

It's good. How are you? How are you doing over there? And whatever you're doing, any of that.

[Leo Laporte]

Go also here at the library. Hello, Andrew.

[Alex Lindsay]

Hey there. Heather Ho there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, good to see you. And of course from Officehours Global, Mr. Alex Lindsay. Thank you for being very pat patient. We're starting a little late because of Google. I had to say watching Google I o And by the way, the last thing they saved the, you know, the big announcement for the end was these Android XR glasses they're developing with Samsung. They will be sold by Warby Parker and another company that I whose name I was weird and I've forgotten it. These are pretty impressive and I think mostly a shot across the bow. Gentle Monster is the name of the company. Mostly a shot across the bow to Meta because they're very much like the Meta Orion glasses. But I have to think Apple's watching too and saying in my mind, let me just say this, this is the next iPhone. This is the next Breakthrough consumer product that will change everything when it comes out. A pair of spectacles with your prescription in it with a heads up display, cameras and AI built in that can describe what you're seeing. It can, you know, put your notifications, you know, one of the things they showed that was awesome was a map on the ground that you could see while you're walking telling you, turn left here, turn right here. All of these things again. Maybe not today, but sometime Google's going to release this and I think this is what everybody is looking for. Do you think it scares Apple a little bit?

[Jason Snell]

Some are near, some are far. It's time to talk Android xr. Dun dun dun dun dun dun.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no, no.

[Alex Lindsay]

I should never have showed you my royalty statement for the vision.

[Jason Snell]

No.

[Alex Lindsay]

Now everybody's trying to get their own will not. Yeah, no, I think, I think that a lot of companies are like, kind of like slapping themselves in the forehead because, because the Ray Bans are such an easy thing to make. They're all trying to figure out, well, we have to have six or seven or eight year plan because we're waiting for the display technology to catch up. And they were sort of ignoring the idea that, yeah, but maybe you can have something, an interim product. Maybe instead of making the next iPhone, you could start off by making the next AirPods. And those are absolutely, totally doable right now. And remember that. And Google's been like developing the software for a product that is still not going to exist for a few years, for a long time now, remember?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they didn't give a date and it could be.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, no, as usual.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we've seen one of the killer apps which they've shown now at Google I O for a decade is simultaneous translation and they showed they actually were able to do it in front of the audience. From Farsi to Hindi and back again, it failed halfway through. But at least the first part got done. And you know, you could see, you could see the outlines of a really killer product. And I don't know, is it five years away, is it three years away, is it ten years away?

[Jason Snell]

Let's. And since this is an Apple show, I'll just point out like all the reports suggest that this is what Tim Cook wants, right? Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Why I bring it up.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And as they were building it and so, you know, in our discord, somebody says it seems like Apple's just went back the wrong horse here. It's like, I don't know, it sounds like based on the reports this is what they wanted to build and as they looked at the technology they're like this is not going to be a product for a while, it's just too soon. And that Vision Pro is kind of the backup plan of like why don't we start from the top down instead of the bottom up that do they.

[Leo Laporte]

Get learnings from the Vision Pro?

[Jason Snell]

I think, you know that Vision OS stack that's got using cameras and is using hand gestures and all of that. I think that there is huge research value and all that stuff that will benefit if we're going to do glasses based interfaces in the next decade. The problem I see is that Apple, when they made that move they didn't say let's also work from the bottom up on. We'll start with sort of glasses that are AirPods and then just kind of iterate from there because if it's true that iteration is the best thing to do and that' why the Vision Pro got released to the public at all is you got to ship it and then learn from that and grow. Well you could also ship a pair of glasses bottom up, fairly limited and then learn from that and grow and progress up the chain at the same time. So I don't think that this is hopeless because I do think that all of their research into this means that Apple has got a role to play in, in something you wear on your face. But I am troubled by the fact that they didn't take that opportunity to build glasses like the Meta Ray that are, you know, technology. They basically, they have all of it. They just didn't think there was a product there I guess or at least not enough to, to build it. And now, you know, but I'm not, I'm not sure that Apple didn't go through everything Meta and Google has gone through and been like this is going to be awesome. But also when's it going to be?

[Leo Laporte]

And maybe Apple's battery life issues, the heads up display might be more tricky. Google did buy a company, Anthony Nielsen was showing us his glasses that did many of these things using laser projection on your lenses and stuff. So Google does have some technology in house that can do this. Thank you. But I'm wondering how close we are. Google, you know, look at every. Google's working with Samsung so they've got a manufacturing giant. I do believe that if Apple wants to preserve its lead in consumer technology, this is the next iPhone, is it not? Am I wrong? And by the way, it's going to require at least Google's does a phone to go with it. So it Sells phones and Zach.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, the classic problem that we've been discussing for years now is that what do you. That's great for. In the people in this conversation. That's great for Alex, that's great for Jason. It's great for anybody who wears glasses every day anyway. What does it do? I mean, I have very, very weak, very weak nearsightedness. I use my glasses when I'm driving, but otherwise it's just an option. Is this going to convince me to wear glasses all day, every day just because I want to have that feature? And how many people are actually in the bubble where, hey, I don't need glasses at all, I don't even own a pair of non sunglasses. But, but am I going to start being someone who wears glasses all the time because of this?

[Andy Ihnatko]

And I think the hard part is that, like, when I had Google Glass and I was using, I would wear that for big chunks of time because I would be playing with it and experimenting with it. And the camera on the Google Glass, you know, the number one reason I took the Google Glass off is because A, I was having a meeting that I didn't want to ever have a chance of it being broadcasted, and B, someone would ask me to take it off. Like, you know, like, you know, and what I was doing, like, including people that were connected to the product. So, so the, so the, you know, so the, the, you know, so the, that was the challenge there. And I think it's the same thing. Like, I think that for me, the Facebook Ray Bans, I was just, I was just having lunch with someone sitting there, talking freely, and suddenly realized that what I was looking at is someone with, with Ray Bans from, from Facebook and immediately clammed up. And even though it's supposed to have a light, I was like, I'm not comfortable anymore. And so I think that's one of the challenges that beyond all the other technical challenges, the camera sitting on someone's head all the time is still something that even I haven't gotten over. I have most of these things.

[Leo Laporte]

We get used to a lot of these things, you know, I bet we get used to it.

[Alex Lindsay]

I think you're right in the sense that, remember that when Google Glass came out, we were still at the end of the happy fluffy bunny period of the Internet, where it was possible to do things on the Internet without being absolutely 180% scrutinized, catalyzed, catalyzed and monetized. For better or for worse, Actually, for worse, probably people have, I think they've grown a tough skin about surveillance and that they're going to, they're going to be aware about it. They're going to be, they're going to be able to protest when saying, hey, yeah, just make sure you're not recording me. Hey, I see that light on, on your device. I don't want to be recorded, but I don't think that when you have a device that hints that there's a camera there as opposed to a camera on your face, I think that a lot of people are going to be like, okay, I mean, I'd rather they're not, I'd rather they not be wearing those glasses, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to force them to take it off just because I'm concerned that maybe it might be on.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody will be wearing them. So you'll just have to, you know, have to live with it.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, this is what we've already done with. I mean, we live in an environment where there are cameras everywhere. There are cameras on buildings, there are cameras in everybody's pockets. People can shoot video at the drop of the hat. And what I, I feel very strongly that the feeling that was there when Google Glass appeared isn't there now. I just, I think that that's the difference is Google Glass people reacted really viscerally to the idea that you had a camera on your face and with the snap glasses and with the meta Ray bans, I mean, I'm not saying people don't care and that Alex doesn't care. I'm saying culturally, I feel like everybody got over it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. And again, I, as someone who wears them, and I thought I would get over them, I realized that I'm, I'm not over it. And so that, I mean, that's what. The only thing I observe is that even as someone who is pretty far on the front end of things, you know, I'm just like, well. And maybe it's because I end up in a lot of conversations that are somewhat complicated. So it would be hard, you know, from a business perspective, that I'm probably more conscious to it than others.

[Leo Laporte]

Bloomberg piece by Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett. You brought this one up, Andy. Why Apple still hasn't cracked AI. Insiders say continued failure to get artificial intelligence right threatens everything from the iPhone's dominance to plans for robots and other futuristic products. Does Apple watch this? Google I O. And by the way, Monday, Microsoft, whoops, I don't know what that happened there. Microsoft showed a lot of very interesting AI stuff As well. And is Apple worried? Should Apple be worried?

[Alex Lindsay]

I think they should not. This is a life ending incident. It's not like they're the confusion, the company's hinging on the success of their AI, but it's going to when, if we wind up in a world three or four years from now when people expect that it doesn't matter that this is a noisy environment, I can actually read the captions of someone who's speaking to me or what's going on in that TV up there, all this sort of stuff. If Apple has an AI that can just sort of kind of do it, but it doesn't really work all that well versus Google is iterating on like its 10th year of its speech to text system. And it's not just getting it in noisy environments. It's not just getting it in any sort of accent that might trip up another AI, but it's also getting every, pretty much every language that anybody who travels within 10,000 miles of home would ever encounter. That's the sort of thing that would make Apple look like they. It's the inferior product. Just when we look at Apple design, like there are people who are into design, say, oh well, let's compare this iPhone 15 to the latest Samsung and you see where the grill for the speaker is perfectly centered vertically and horizontally between those two screws, whereas on the Samsung it's just off kilter. And you can see like there's sort of a gap in the panels right there. And that's the difference between Apple design and Samsung design or whatever design. This could be the exact same difference, only against Apple's favor where it kind of works, but not really. Versus No. I have every expectation this is not only going to work, but it's also going to work pretty much flawlessly.

[Leo Laporte]

From the Bloomberg piece seven years after Jan Andrea arrived, the big coup, you know, getting the Google AI guy, the optimism he brought with him is gone. Apple's AI has not only fallen further behind, has only fallen further behind. Since OpenAI's Chat GPT software burst in the public consciousness, Every major tech company has accelerated its efforts to develop the large language models that power such programs. I think it's beyond LLMs at this point, by the way. Incorporate them into voice assistants and other tools, hype them to consumers. You know, it's not that Google is in the lead by any means. In fact, Google is facing existential threats from companies like Perplexity and OpenAI. This is their response to them. But boy, it doesn't look like Apple's even in the game.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, I think that there's a lot more at stake for Google as well. I mean Google, their search is existential. Like this is what pays for everything. I mean Google has a lot of other little projects but the thing that pays for Google is AdWords and their ad networks. And so something that I know that my use of Google has dropped 80%, 90% since I started using ChatGPT. That's an existential threat because they're selling something that is directly impacted by AI where I think Apple not yet, you know, they're selling hardware. So I think that that's, that's a different situation. I do think that Apple's probably, what we'll probably see next month or, or soon after is a relax. They're going to relax. I think the, their pressure valve which is make it easier for people to use chat CBT or Gemini or other things on the platform. Yeah, that kind of takes a lot of pressure off of it. It's not like Apple users are ready to buy another piece of hardware. So they're, you know, like they're, I mean that's not. If you just make it easy for them. I mean for me it's a little bit of a lift. I have to push a button and give a, you know, say hey Shlomo, start chat. And Now I'm in ChatGPT and I, and I and I'm asking questions and so on and so forth but it's not fully integrated into the rest of my experience. And that's what if Apple just lets me tie in ChatGPT into my experience, you know, as an Apple user I don't know when they need to fix that. You know that it gives them two, three, four, five years of if, if the AI can seem, if they just figure out how to seamlessly integrate the AI into it do. Is there a long term solution that they could provide that is different than everybody else's? Absolutely. Inside of a private thing inside of the hardware. But I think that that can be slowly cooked correctly. While most of us are really happy with what we have in front of.

[Leo Laporte]

Us, one of the ways Apple's responding. Jason. I'll just put the link to today's Gurman piece in. Our discord is they've announced today that they're going to open their AI models to developers.

[Jason Snell]

It's not announced. It's a report. Right. It's going to be a WWD thing.

[Leo Laporte]

This is going to be a w.

[Jason Snell]

This is a German scoop but, but this is a one Two punch, right? So one punch one. And this is mentioned in that Bloomberg businessweek feature is that Apple is trying to improve its own models, right? Like, and one of the things that they're going to need to change is their annual cycle. Because according to that feature, Apple feels like their foundational model in the last year plus has gotten way better and they feel that it's in the realm of a chat GPT at this point. Now is that true or is that a pipe Dre? I don't know, but I'm sure it's better, right? Because that company has been acting like they've been on fire for the last year and a half about AI. So I'm sure that their model is better. And when you see how fast new AI models get released and Apple doesn't seem to be doing that right? Like, so maybe in the background they've got a new model that's better, but that they're also, you know, at least in Europe and maybe elsewhere they're, they're, you know, we know that Gemini is the worst kept secret, right? Everybody's saying like, oh, that'll be nice when Gemini is on iPhones. Like, well, yeah, okay, that's going to happen. And there may be others. And to Alex's point, maybe it will be easier to trigger them whether they're taking over for Siri or whether you're just sort of like choosing which world knowledge engine Siri uses. Either way that you could get something there. But Apple's model is important. And so this story today is saying something that a lot of people were writing about and talking about a few months ago, which is one of Apple's great advantages is the App Store and the app market and the fact that people write apps that are on Apple's platforms. What you want to do is make your platform more open to using AI features. And so this report says Apple is building APIs for app developers to use Apple's on device models. And this is big because if you're an app developer, you can ship an on device model, but it'll get killed because it's using too many resources, right? You, that really needs to be an API from the operator operating system. And according to Mark Gurman, that's what they're building. And there are a lot of developers who will look at that and say, oh, this is so great because now I can just use the foundational model on the device. Assuming it's okay, assuming it's good. We have to assume that. But like its place as being an Apple model And having the APIs for it means that that potentially opens up some interesting things for app developers to do. So it's a one, two punch, right? It's like you want to be open, if you're Apple, to the third party AI worlds because they are pushing so fast. And it is very hard for Apple, I think, to keep up there, especially in the short term. And then the second part of it is, can you use your platform advantage to say, you know, let's empower a bunch of app developers to do interesting things with AI models? I mean, the example I always use is Apple can afford to take its podcast back end and transcribe every podcast and put transcriptions in Apple podcasts, which they did. But if you're Marco Arment, a single person who writes a podcast app, you can't do that. But what he could potentially do is let all overcast users run a transcription engine in the background, transcribe their podcasts and upload them to a shared server so that you create a cloud of transcripts. Like that's a thing theoretically he could do, but he's never going to put his own transcription engine on phones. It's just, it doesn't make sense. So, like there's there. So to answer the big question, which is like, is Apple, Does Apple care? Is Apple trying? It seems like Apple behind the scenes is trying literally everything. I think the question is, is it enough? Will it work? Are they the right things? Those are the things we don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm kind of a fan of the Lindsey plan, which is that Apple actually in some ways, you know, Microsoft's in a similar situation. They have their own local models like fi, which they promote. But they are also very quick to say, but look, you can use everything else. They announced that you can use Grok if you want on Azure. I think Alex is probably right that, well, I don't know Apple, this is a big crisis. I think one of the things we learned from the epic trial and from the Google trial is that I believe there's a schism in Apple leadership about how to address this. Yeah, like one group says, no, no, we gotta keep, keep doing what we've been doing, which is a closed ecosystem, we control it all, we're going to protect people's privacy. And other groups saying this strategy is failing now and we have to, we have to get, we have to start opening up.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, and this is always the challenge when you have a large company that's making a lot of money in one place. It's really Hard for them to put that in any way at risk because you, you know, there are companies that have done both things, which is that they jump to something new and the rock wasn't there like, or they, or they missed the rock when they jumped. And then there's other companies like Kodak is a good example of something that had a lot of challeng is because they saw the digital revolution before everybody else. They just didn't act because they had this huge investment in film. No, worst, you know, they did act.

[Leo Laporte]

They, they put out digital cameras, they bought a photo. They did act, but it wasn't enough.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It wasn't enough because they, because they were always conflicted.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, yeah, their model, their model was based on the profits of developing and film.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Right. It was just very hard for them to see how, how to get to the other side of that. And that's always the issue that large movers have these, you know, big, you know, is, is that someone else is going to do something. And again, Apple, I think what makes it very challenging for AI is that Apple's constantly worried about their brand and constantly worried about the, the it's safe and it's, you know, it's going to be easy to use. And you know, when you're using AI all day, you're used to it just failing all the, I mean, I'm used to AI for me, fails about half the time. Like, like, you know, like something is not right about.

[Leo Laporte]

And we don't mind, we go forward.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, yeah, we understand the precision. Yeah, the precision of the, of the. You don't expect accuracy beyond the precision of the device. And so you're constantly working on that, on that process. And so, but being, but Apple, that is like outside of Apple's little world, like, like to be wrong half the time. But you can't innovate without failure and it's very hard for them to do that.

[Jason Snell]

And knowing that that's part of, it's a tool and that part of the tool is failure and that you deal with failure and that's outside of Apple's. This is almost like a perfect storm of things that Apple to modern Apple, it's in its blind spot. Right. In a lot of different ways. And I think that Alex's point about, you know, you have that stream of income and do you jump? And there are definitely people at Apple who just still believe that, you know, ChatGPT and its ilk are never going to be good and they're overhyped and that this is all going to blow Over. But the problem with that is this is a company that's been billions of dollars on what if the next big thing is a car or what if the next big thing is goggles and yet they don't seem to have put any money into or at least not a lot into what if LLMs are the next big thing until it was too late. And that's a, that's a sin in a way. I don't know whether it's a mortal sin or not, but it's definitely a sin on their part. So I don't know what, what you know, I don't know what they do. But I think the key is it's absurd to look at something like Siri and say what's the right thing for Apple's customers? Is it to let them choose from the various agents that are out there, the various voice activated or text based agents that are out there and choose what they want to use or is the right answer for the Apple's customers to be to not let them choose and lock them into whatever Apple does, even if it's way behind everybody else. Like, like there's an obvious answer here but today's Apple is all about locking things down and not giving people choices because they're afraid. And that's the part that bothers me the most is I think Apple has every opportunity to compete for payments and like to compete in all these different areas to compete and it's got the home field advantage but it feels like that's not enough. If it can just prevent everybody from seeing what it's like on the other side of the fence, that's going to be even better. And I like it. Just, it's bad, it's bad for Apple's customers. Bottom line.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. There was a part of the reporting in Bloomberg this week. This wasn't just Gurman, this was a team effort about the what's going on inside. Part of it was made the story that Craig Federighi himself was part, he was part of the problem early on because he was looking at LLMs, people were talking about LLMs. He didn't see where that could play a role in Apple. And this is, I wonder if this isn't part of Apple's institutional problem with certain kinds of creativity where if you pitch them, here is a piece of hardware, they're a pair of magic goggles that will allow you to see dancing elephants on the middle of your desk. Wow, great hardware. Let's do it. Here is the idea for a car. It could be designed Like a car and the dashboard will be like one big iPhone and will be self driving. Wow, that's a great piece of hardware. Let's build it. When you say here is a piece of software that's going to take billions of dollars and years of effort, it is electrons that are glued together in ways that can do some kind of cool things, that can have lots of different improving effects on lots of different things across an operating system and apps and third party apps. That's a divide. It's not a divide by zero error, but it's not something they're instinctively going to understand. Ooh, oh, that's not a product.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Oh well. And I think that part of the problem is that, that what Apple has gotten really good at is taking people, taking a market that is already existing but not very good at what it does and leveraging it with design and interface, you know, so if you look at the phone, the phone was pretty big market already. It was, you know, but it was just, you know, no one loved their phone. They just hated the one that they had less than all the other ones that they had. And so like I had a trio. It's not like I was in love with my trio before. That was the last phone I had for, before the, before the iPhone. But Apple fixed it really quickly. Same thing with the ipod, same thing with the watch, Same thing, you know, like they, they build things that are easier to use. They're, they're simpler, they're safer, they're all those other things. The problem is, is that, you know, AI doesn't is a, it's a still a very volatile market and they just don't know where to like. It's not like, like cars I think made sense to them because I don't. There's very few people that I know that really love their car.

[Leo Laporte]

There's an interesting Business Week piece. It says Steve Jobs wasn't particularly interested in building search engines, intelligence or otherwise. He believed Apple's job was to curate and show customers what they should want. But then he found Siri. Yeah, and Dag Kitlous, who created it outside of Apple, it was a standalone company. Said the original concept was for a do engine. The ultimate vision was, was you could talk to the Internet and your assistant would just handle everything for you. Sound familiar? That's exactly what Google's proposing today. And so Steve said, oh I. Wait a minute, hold on. He loved this. Soon after he started using Siri, he phoned Kitlos, invited him and his co founders over to his house during a Three hour chat. Jobs offered to buy the company. When Kitloss balked, jobs called him 24 days in a row, every day for 24 days, saying, I want you. How about that?

[Alex Lindsay]

One can argue that this weekend is a negotiating position.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Kitlow says, I met with him every week until he no longer could for health reasons. He made Siri his personal project. Jobs got it.

[Jason Snell]

He got it. He did, he did. And the DO engine I think is there. And the idea that Apple would kind of of. Because his goal was not like, oh, we need to curate and that we need to hide the world from our users. His idea was always computer for the rest of us.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

I feel like Steve Jobs very much.

[Leo Laporte]

Especially for the mind.

[Jason Snell]

Exactly. And his relationship, even going back to was like where was. Was the technical guy was, knew all the technical detail. But Steve was not concerned about that. He was more concerned about how do we, how do we reach people? This technology is amazing, but most people can't use it. And so how do we make it so they can? And that was always the lens, I think, through which he saw the world of technology for certain. And so you look at this and it's a very similar approach, which is, why don't I. Is there anything I can, I can not do or not do easily on a computer or a phone or whatever that I could just tell it what I want and then it figures it out? Like that is kind of the goal is, you know, we, we all have fun here. We're all tech nerds, we have fun playing with technology. But for most people it's a means to an end.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

And if you could, the more you can make it so that anything technology can do, any person can do by just expressing what they need the end result to be, you win. And Jobs knew that. And you know, he, he was at the misfortune in some ways of being born in an era where the computer tech was so primitive that, that, you know, the original Mac was the best he could do and then the imac was the best he could do and the original iPhone was the best he could do. But it's not surprising to me that he saw something like Siri and is like, oh, right, least like now you could just ask it things and it'll do it. And that's, that's so much better for a lot of. Not for everything. You know, I don't, I wouldn't want to voice navigate maybe like a spreadsheet that I've got or my planning documents or something. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. But like I really appreciate that idea and I would say it is because it is a Steve Jobs thing. It is fundamentally Apple like of like how do we make things easier? The sad thing is of course that that whole presentation thing that they, that they never ended up shipping, featuring app intents and personalized Siri using an index, a semantic index on your device that is a really Apple vision of how this stuff could work. It's just that they, they couldn't do it.

[Leo Laporte]

They wouldn't do it. I don't know if they couldn't or wouldn't.

[Jason Snell]

Well, they couldn't. It sounds like they're still working on it. But that's one of the great mysteries of wwdc, right? It's like what are they gonna actually say that they can, they can ship now?

[Leo Laporte]

According to this article, by the way, really thank you for bringing it up because it's really interesting. Tim was, according to this article, Tim was one of Apple's biggest believers in AI. He was constantly frustrated that Siri lagged behind Alexa. So it wasn't from the top that this failed. He brought in John Draya. Something went wrong. I'm not sure what went wrong. I don't know if maybe it was Craig Federicki who the article says was reluctant to make large investments in AI, didn't see it as a core capability for computers or mobile devices.

[Alex Lindsay]

Wrong.

[Leo Laporte]

Everything we've seen, by the way, this week at Microsoft and Google was about talking to your spreadsheet. He was at that level of you're going to talk to your computer and it's going to do what you want. Whether it's fix the spreadsheet or order donuts, it's going to do it for you. Agentic AI is, I mean that, that's the dream, right?

[Jason Snell]

Like the computers don't exist to be used as computers. They exist to help us do things in life. And if you can, if, if there's a better way to get a computer to do a thing, then you should do that, right?

[Alex Lindsay]

100%. Apple was at the forefront of a couple of the most important transitions in user experience. From command line interfaces to pull down menus and windows and icons and then from clicks and taps with mouses to actual multitouch. The third wave seems to be no, just ask your computer what you want it to do. It does it and it doesn't seem like they're ready for this. That transition. One of the more interesting things from Google I o today was Google basically saying we've got our AI features for Google Search and we're going to be making them a little bit more prominent where it will be an agentic version of Google Search where you ask it questions and it will basically be doing the search queries for you. And that is a very, very good plan. Google search was conventional. Google search was actually up, I think 12% last year. So it's not as though there's a lot of information, there's a lot of data about it dying, dying, dying. But Google sees the writing on the wall and they're already saying, well, they've.

[Leo Laporte]

Added an AI mode tab to the Google search results today.

[Alex Lindsay]

That's when they're, that's perplexity. Basically I've had it in Google labs for a while now, but basically to change the paradigm of Google search from I have to know what the search terms to use because I have to give it a good target. I have to know the query language. I also have to know how to, how to skim past all the stuff that's trying to get my attention in the search results and get to the good stuff to no, we'll do it all for you. Basically it will go from, we're changing Google Search from a search engine to a research engine that has a powerful search engine behind it. This is the sort of stuff where you don't have to convince somebody to get a brand new app, you don't have to get them to change the way that they work. Google is already the concierge for most of the world to the Internet and now that concierge will not at least fight them so much on trying to get the information and the results that they want. That's the sort of stuff that Apple has to make sure that they're not missing the boat on that. If people start expecting, hey, look, why is it that I have to actually type in a backslash command to use this spreadsheet? That's what kind of killed command lines and Multiplan and Lotus 1, 2, 3 in the 80s. They could be heading into a place where, wow, why do I actually have to give this phone a list of instructions and go through them step by step by step to get something done? I just want to get all of the data about our upcoming weekend trip and make sure that it's sent over to all the people who are going to the trip with me? Why do I have to like actually open an email client and go into these apps and cut, copy and paste and bedlam. Bedlam.

[Leo Laporte]

So this article, I guess my conclusion from this article is that Apple is culturally not prepared for this new world of AI and that that's fundamentally the problem.

[Alex Lindsay]

This doesn't care if it were true.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple's culture and if it's true, it's really a problem.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think that, I still think that the, the, I mean Google is facing a much more existential problem which is that, that they have and I think that they're doing a great job at moving down the path but their situation, they're much closer to their horizon events than Apple. Apple's selling hardware to people who don't really want to use some other hardware. And so there's going to be a long trail before people start like peeling off for just that there's just one product if they make the other AI tools more available. For Google, the problem is that you have of people using chat, GPT and other things to figure things out instead of searching. But the other thing is, okay, you solve that problem and you make it great. I mean the demos this morning on Google I O were stunning. But the problem is now I'm sitting there talking to Google and asking it questions and it's not giving me ads.

[Leo Laporte]

So one of the problems, if it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Starts giving me ads, I'll be like.

[Leo Laporte]

What the, what we talked about this in the stream. One of the problems all these companies have is these are all fungible products. There's no lock in. If you don't like what Gemini gave you, you just go to anthropic. If you don't like what anthropic. And so in fact, one of the reasons I use perplexity is I could choose the model from all of the above and I can use whichever one works for the moment.

[Jason Snell]

Isn't that an advantage for Apple then?

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe it is. So what Google's trying, clearly trying to do and OpenAI has been doing this too is use. Google said because of all the context, this is exactly Apple strength, all the context we have about you from the apps you use and so forth, we can feed that into the AI. We know more about you. And that's the sticky part is well, you're, you know, building up this body of knowledge, this expertise in Gemini and so you're going to stay with Google and Apple has that same opportunity but for some reason they are struggling. I think the telling paragraph from this article I thought was it's an example of how AI is proving to be a technology that doesn't play to Apple's strengths. The usual playbook a long time executive says is we're late, we have over A billion users. We're going to grind it out and we're going to beat everyone. But this strategy isn't going to work this time.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, so this is the, this is the real question for me is it's very clear that culturally, Apple was incapable of essentially seeing this happening. That the. John, Gian Andrea. They saw that machine learning was going to be big. They did. They actually did. They built it into their silicon. They built it into a whole bunch of features. But the LLM thing in particular, they just were like, no, that's, that's not what we do. It's not going to be a thing. And they, and they missed an important thing. The question is there were all those reports about how, like last, I guess a couple of years ago now, they had that panic moment of like, oh, no, we, we missed this. And how, how do they respond and how do they build those models? And are the models that they're going to talk about in June going to be appreciably better than the models that they had last summer? Because that's, that's where we are now is it's not. Did Apple fail to respond properly to this? That we know the answer. They did. The question is, are there ways for Apple to change their culture, to adapt to how LLM stuff works? And how do you alter your vision of, like, what a product is and what third parties you integrate and all of those things in a way that keeps, you know, keeps you Apple, but that doesn't make your, your products feel irrelevant. And I know that some people have said Apple will be able to restructure and do this internally. I think other people have said they're probably going to go need to buy somebody at some point and get a, like an infusion of a different culture on the AI side. But that I think the jury's still out. Right. Because I think that this is a case where we're still dealing with the ramifications of Apple being so late to the party. And I mean, who knows? Like, like, like that, that Bloomberg Businessweek article says they feel like their models have made a lot of progress, but their models are unreleased because nobody's seen them because Apple keeps secrets. So we don't know where they are in that. And they may be delusional or it might be real. But like, that's, that's the great mystery right now is like, we know they, they know that they blew it, but we don't know quite what they've done. And it's a real challenge for them. There's no doubt about it. Like it just. It is, it is perfectly not what they're good at.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, the tension is building. June 9, WWDC. We will cover the keynote as we have a little differently from the past. The way we did it today with Google I O yesterday with Microsoft's build is in the club only. And that's because Apple will take us down. And we're afraid of losing our Google YouTube account as well as our Twitch account because of takedowns. So we no longer stream in public. If you want to watch our coverage, Mike and I will be covering the Apple event June 9th. You need to join the club. For seven bucks a month you get a lot of other benefits, including app free versions of all the shows. But that's how we're going to do it. I'm sorry, I wish we didn't have to do it. I'd much prefer to do it publicly. But that's how we're going to have to do it. And I think there will be a lot of interest in what Apple announces on Monday, June 9th. And we will talk all about it for you on Mac Break Weekly. The next day we're gonna take a little break. Lots more to talk about. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Thank you for being here. Our show today brought to you by Spaceship. Oh, I love Spaceship. It's. It is the modern domain and web platform so modern that simplifies the process of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products. Let me just talk. We've been talking about them for a while. Let me talk about what they've been up to recently. It starts with below market prices for domain registration. So you're already saving just when you register a domain. But you don't want to stop there because they have an amazing, innovative features for domain management. They just launched Thunderbolt. This is a pioneering app where you use your domain to chat, message and video call instead of a phone number or an email address. Doesn't that make sense? Shouldn't your presence on the web be your domain name? Right. No. And I gotta talk about this too, because security is a big issue. We hate hackers, right? With other messaging apps, how do you log in your email, your password makes your account more vulnerable to hacking if you don't practice proper password hygiene. Well, at Thunderbolt, your domain ownership is verified. Messages are end to end, encrypted. They're not stored on Thunderbolt servers ever. And it's really simple. This is a new app, very exciting for domain owners who value privacy and are looking for A secure way to communicate. I actually want to move all my domains now over to Spaceship. This is really cool. They also have so many other features. But let's talk about Thunderbolt right now. Visit the App Store. Get the Thunderbolt app from Spaceship now. They surprised me. They came up with this and I had. I had talked with them a couple of like a couple of weeks ago. They didn't mention a word. This is really interesting. The Thunderbolt app from Spaceship or Go to Spaceship? Actually, I'd prefer if you did this. Go to spaceship.com twit you can. You can see a QR code there and download the app. But you'll also get exclusive deals on domains and more. Spaceship.comTwit we thank you so much. Thunderbolts. Very exciting. Powered by Spaceship. These guys really are doing some interesting stuff. Spaceship.comTwit we thank him for supporting Mac Break Weekly. Well, we do have the WWDC message stickers, so there's that.

[Alex Lindsay]

They shipped.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, they're cranking it up.

[Jason Snell]

And all the invitations went out and they did the official that it's a 10am on the Monday and all of those things.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, okay. By the way, this octopus on a keyboard, they're going to have a little bit of a problem because Google has shipped something called Let me see if I have it here. I don't. Jules. Which is an octopus on a keyboard. It's an AI coding assistant on GitHub.

[Jason Snell]

Love it.

[Leo Laporte]

So well. Okay. You know, there's only so many octopi in the world.

[Alex Lindsay]

Hey, at least they're developing their own octopus. They understand that this is going to be important five years from now.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody needs an octopus.

[Jason Snell]

That's right. You just want to hedge your bets. What if in the future the octopus replaces the iPhone? You got to be there with an Apple Octopus. It's very important.

[Alex Lindsay]

I don't see the Octopus as a product, though. It's a feature. It's not product. It's a feature.

[Leo Laporte]

Jason, you've been really thinking about this whole thing. I mean, you've got a great piece at six colors. How will Apple rethink AI features for wwdc?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I mean, inspired in part by our conversations here. And it's that Apollo 13 image that I used, which is the. It's that moment. So you're Apple and you're taking over. You're Mike Rockwell, the guy who was in charge of the Vision Pro. And you got put in charge of Siri, and you're brought into Craig Federighi's group And John Gianna Andreas being sort of moved to just a research role more than anything else. Model development and you survey the damage. Right? What now? And the moment that I kept thinking is that Apollo 13 moment where Ed Harris says what have we got on the spaceship that's good? Right? Like where it's like let's stop doing damage. And it's really, for Siri and AI in general. It's like let's stop doing damage control. Let's look at this as he says in the movie, from the perspective of status. Let's look at it from the other direction which is what do we got works, what do we got and what. And then you move into the next level which is like what do we got that we can shift? We can announce in June and we know we can ship because if we, we got burned last year so we got to change our rules about that. What are we going to announce? That Bloomberg Businessweek story we've been talking about, one of the most interesting things in there suggests that Apple is going to change its how it approaches promising new features and it's not going to announce features that it can't ship in a few months.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a lot of blame on Jaws in the marketing department. Isn't it a little bit over promised last time?

[Jason Snell]

Well, I mean somebody made the decision to heavily market those features that weren't shipping and some of them that didn't ship. And if that's, if it's Jaws then it's, it's Jaws's fault. Like I mean, but I'm sure the marketing people would say we were assured that if we were going to announce a feature it was going to ship. Right. Like I mean that you can point, you can point fingers there but, but like I think that's the challenge of, of Apple's. The people who are in charge of AI and Siri. Net right now is, I'm sure what they want to do is say yes, LLM Siri is coming. But also last year they've said things were coming and they couldn't ship them. So they're going to probably need to not say that or they're going to be able to hedge it and say like we, we are working on it but we don't have anything to announce right now with details. And this is that Apollo 13 kind of thing of like you got a triage like what can we do? What, what can we bring in partners? What can we do with that? Can we open it up to third party app developers? Can we bring in that and it's like, I don't envy them that challenge because that is a huge challenge of kind of picking up the pieces after a couple different disasters and saying, all right, what do we go out to the world with in June? And that's one of the things I'm looking forward to seeing in whatever it is. Three weeks is. Is what they. What, on the spaceship is good? Like, what is it? What do you. You guys know? So what is it? What are you guys capable of announcing with confidence? Because everybody's gonna be skeptical after last year. So what. What are they capable of saying? This is what we're doing next.

[Leo Laporte]

When you wrote that before you. Hold on a second. Before you. Before you wrote that article, did you know that the day after you wrote that article, the guy who solved that problem passed away?

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you know there was a story?

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, the guy who made this for.

[Leo Laporte]

This, here's the picture of him with duct tape.

[Jason Snell]

So that's for the CO2 scrubbers. And that was one of the classic Apollo 13 moments. And I'll shout out, my wife's grandfather worked for the contractor that built those systems. So they were in a room in California working on that same problem, trying to figure out how to do the CO2 scrubbers. So, yep, yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Ed Smiley, the. The engineer who figured out how to do it with duct tape passed away the day after you wrote your article.

[Jason Snell]

That's the inspirational part of the Apollo 13 story, is that that was a complete disaster that happened in space and everybody came home safely. And it was due to a lot of ingenuity. And that's why I think it's one of the classic troubleshooting stories of technology. Is. Is thinking about. And in that moment, not to. Apollo 13 is one of my favorite movies. And. And I have to tell young people now, it. It literally all happened.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, it's not amazing.

[Jason Snell]

And if you get a chance to watch the Blu Ray or the DVD of it, there's a commentary trailer track you can watch where Jim Lovell and his wife literally talk about what really happened. Compared to the movie, it's one of the most amazing commentary tracks I've ever seen. But the idea that in that moment, Gene Kranz, through the flight controller played by Ed Harris in real life, too, said had that moment of like, let's don't, let's not.

[Leo Laporte]

What do we got?

[Jason Snell]

Let's not make it worse by guessing. He says, let's look at this from a perspective of status. What do we have that's good? And it's really, like, like. And then that famous line, let's work the problem, people. It's like, let's take the emotion out of it. Let's look at this coldly. But we know that it's bad. But like, we need to start thinking about it in a methodical way so that we can get to the solution and, you know, no lives at risk for Apple. So I don't want to make the parallel too strong, but there is, as a technical exercise, it really, there must have been a moment where those people came into a room and were like, oh boy, Apple Intelligence and Siri, what are we going to do?

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, you can't try to solve the problem by unstirring the tanks. That's not going to happen. You have to, you have to move forward from there. And I think that one of the difficulties was that Apple was in the same situation in 2024 at WWDC that I think Google was in, in 2023 at Google I O where AI became an app. OpenAI put the world on its ear with ChatGPT. Anybody who cannot do something like that or cannot demonstrate something like that runs the risk of being pegged as someone who is clueless and is technically far behind. And they had to basically, if not ship something then and there. Explain that. No, no, we are aware of this and we have the capability and here's what we're building.

[Leo Laporte]

To be fair, even the folks at OpenAI were shocked at the capability of ChatGPT 300. I mean, they, and even they did not expect it. It took everybody in Silicon Valley.

[Alex Lindsay]

And remember that this is based on the research that, that Google first published in 2014. And now they're, they're. And now there's, there's, there's stories came out, maybe defensively that, well, we had the capability of doing this, but we were concerned that the model that we had wasn't good enough for what we would be selling it. They were demonstrating a lot of things at IO, but, well, here's a demo of, of what this could work like, but we're not ready to actually put this into human hands yet. But it's exactly the problem. When Apple felt, then Apple is the classic model of Apple. And I think one of the problems that we all have is thinking that the classic model of Apple that we've, that got solidified in people's minds in 2002, 2003 is still operative. The classic model is that you never hear anything from Apple until the thing is ready, until they demo it and they're shipping it and they got a launch date. And now they were in a position where they had to demo something that they were planning on doing and that they hoped would be ready by a timetable that everybody in the conference room decided to sign off on. Because, okay, we have to choose a launch date. Let's choose this date. And they felt as though they didn't have the ability to simply say, we're working on this. We think this is very, in Tim Cook's words, we think this is really interesting and very exciting. And we have nothing to announce at this time. And they won't be able to get away with exactly that in 2025, but hopefully they have. The next time that they're about to again try to unster the tanks, they'll think back to we that did not work for us the last time. Perhaps we should be a little bit more circumspect and hopefully they can just be calm.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Like, you know, like the hard part is, is that, you know, folks got wound up. And you see this in many companies and in, you know, it takes a handful of people to freak out, to get everybody else running around like they're, you know, like chickens with their head cut off, you know, like. And they, and the issue is, I think that they panicked over something. Obviously they didn't get very far, so they didn't need to do any of this. Here they are with a failure instead of non action. And they had plenty of time. I have 600 movies in my Apple TV. I use notes on all my machines. I have an Apple account. I'm not going anywhere. The thing is, Apple has plenty of time to. To. They had. Not forever, but they had plenty of time to do this. They didn't need like, it was just such an unforced error last year to go down this path and panic when there was no, there was nothing to panic about. Because the lock in that Apple has is so much deeper than what Google has because, you know, I very, you know, I love Google. I love Google search. It's what I use for search. And I immediately shifted over to something else because it was producing a better product very, very quickly. And so that, and that's a problem for Google. That's not. But, but I was still doing it. All of these things. The, and the chatgpt on my Mac and on my phone and on my, you know, and so I think if Apple simply had pivoted last year to saying we can make it really easy for ChatGPT to tie into what you're doing or Claude or Gemini probably couldn't be Gemini because of the antitrust stuff. But. But all of the. If they just said, we're going to make this available and we're working on something bigger, that's going to be even better, but this is what we're doing today, they would have been fine. And I think that they'd be fine if they did that this year. I think that they have plenty of time, and I think the biggest thing that will screw up Apple is to panic and rush.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, we'll find out. I'm excited now. June 9th is going to be a big, big moment. And of course, there's lots of other things Apple could talk about, like the App Store nightmare that is unfolding as we speak. Apple has agreed to or has decided to appeal that. And as a result, they are telling Epic. Yeah, no, we're going to wait and see what the judge says before we put Fortnite on the App Store. They're blocking Fortnite. Epic says okay. On Friday, they sent a letter to the judge accusing Apple of refusing to consider its Fortnite submission, calling it, quote, Apple's latest attempt. These are fighting words to circumvent this court's injunction and this court's authority. Yeah, Rana.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. Apple hopefully can tap into some of the good. The font of goodwill they've built with that particular judge.

[Leo Laporte]

Judge Rogers is gonna not be happy.

[Jason Snell]

Her response is very much like writing, see me after class on a paper and handing it out to a student. It's basically, look, you two should be able to work this out. And if you can't, whoever at Apple is responsible for not working it out must appear before me on a couple of Mondays from now and explain themselves. And it's like, well, look, how good are you guys at reading signals?

[Alex Lindsay]

Okay, that was the. That was the chilling part of the response was basically because. Because remember, in the previous order, they said, okay, hey, I'm going to be forwarding this, this, this, this for possible criminal charges, contempt, criminal charges against this specific person who lied under oath. Now she's like, I'm going to have. You going to give me a name, dude. You're going to give me a name so that if this.

[Leo Laporte]

So that if I order you something, it doesn't happen.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So TechCrunch said that the judge is, in effect, ordering Apple to approve Fortnite. Is that your sense of this?

[Jason Snell]

I think they're basically saying the judge is saying, you should be able to work this out without me. But if you think, if you can't, then let's talk about it. And I think that, that if I'm Apple's attorneys, what I, what I would probably say is something like our argument is not your order about purchase rules in the store. Our argument is with epic which, which stems from them violating those terms and conditions back in the day and us not trusting them and that our ban is still in place and that you, you haven't said anything about whether we could allow it or not. I think the judge, just as a non lawyer human being, I think the judge is not going to be super sympathetic to that argument when what EPIC is really trying to do here is say we, we just want to be in the US Store following the rules that are in place in the US Store and you should let us back in because the thing you banned us for isn't disallowed anymore. And so let us in. I think, I think it's going to be tough one for Apple to win. Even though technically they have an argument. It just, it seems like it's too far for them to go.

[Leo Laporte]

Remember, the judge wrote that Apple contends that it can ignore this court's order having not received a stay from the 9th Circuit even though its request was filed 12 days ago. This was, this came out yesterday. Obviously Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing hearing. However, if you don't figure it out.

[Jason Snell]

We'Ll give you one.

[Leo Laporte]

And this is the thing, this is the key part of this. The Apple official who is personally responsible for ensuring compliance shall personally appear at the hearing on Tuesday, which is basically saying you're somebody in trouble here and I want names.

[Alex Lindsay]

Who's that? New entire. Lyle, congratulations. You just got promoted to chief counsel on this case.

[Leo Laporte]

JUDGE CONTINUES Any opposition brief shall be filed by Wednesday, by tomorrow and shall identify by name the Apple official referenced above.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, and, and, and the hard part is, is that the judges also understands what Apple's doing from a legal perspective is they want, they want a legal case that they can appeal. And so they, the, they don't, the, they don't, the judge doesn't want them to do that. They, they've been losing these, so they may, they may continue to lose those. But what they're, but what somebody's going.

[Leo Laporte]

To get a contempt order on, on the 27th if. Yeah, right.

[Alex Lindsay]

Not necessarily a response by X State. So I think they were just waiting off the clock, I think. But sometime next week. I think it is. Or the end of this week.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, but the main thing is is they need, they need the court action to happen so that they can take it and appeal it. So what would happen is, is that once you put that into the, into the, into the spin, what it means is that they can say the court, she then requires them to do it. But she made that order. It's now a court action. It can now go to 9th, 9th Court of Appeals. And if, and if they, and if for somehow Apple wins. Because remember, each one of these is its own case. Now she's mad about all of it, but an appeals court might look at it and go, well, they need to open up the thing because that's what was ruled. But in this case, they have the right to tell, you know, to tell someone who acted in bad faith back then. They have the right to do that. And then a court and a, another court above her may decide that that's the case and then pull that back and then they'll immediately pull that app out of the, out of the store.

[Jason Snell]

What you risk, though, if you're Apple, is, is by pressing this, the judge orders you to put that app in the App Store and to un, reject and unban them, setting a precedent that in the future could possibly mean that Apple no longer really has control over what goes in the App Store or not. Like that's the thing. Yeah, right. On the other side of it. So the question is, it's a little like a poker game, is like, do you want to push it that far or do you want to essentially negotiate with Epic? Because what the. I think one of the issues here is that Epic doesn't have a non app store or an in app purchase version of Fortnite anymore. Basically they have, you want to buy the stuff, you buy it from Epic outside of the app. And if Apple wins its case or gets an injunction or gets the injunction overturned, I guess technically, then what does. What happens to Fortnite? And I think that that would be a thing that Apple could argue in court, but they could also just argue with Epic and say, look, we'll let you back in, but if this thing gets overturned, you got 24 hours to put in a purchase in your app or it's out of the App Store. And because that's, I think that's every, you know, Kindle, Apple, every other country but the US that thing is there's a switch that's flipped and you can't buy external web links, but in the US you can. There's a fallback position for everybody else, but there isn't a fallback position. I don't believe For Fortnite, it's not engineered to do it anymore. That would be the argument, I think.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think also Apple is very resistant if they feel like they have some chance in court. I think they're very resistant to putting Fortnite back in because most Apple iPhone users forgot that Fortnite existed. Like, you know, and so they're being else.

[Alex Lindsay]

Right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mean, they're being R now, but they haven't. Their kids are playing it, but. But they haven't started playing it yet. So the thing is, is that once they play it and then it gets pulled out again, that's leverage for epic. Yeah, that's so. So the thing is, is that I think Apple will do pretty much everything it feels it can do within the legal limits, even if someone spends a couple nights in jail to keep Fortnite out of. Out of it. I'm not. I'm.

[Alex Lindsay]

Poor Lyle.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, Lyle. Lyle.

[Alex Lindsay]

And by the way, it's going to be counting against your personal days.

[Jason Snell]

It's okay. He packed. He's going to pack pajamas and a toothbrush.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think they'll offer him double time. We'll offer you double time for those days.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. And. And remember that part of the Apple strategy, when they, when they were. When they filed this emergency stay, part of their argument was that, hey, by keeping Epic out of the. Out of the App Store, that means that there's no reason for you court not to give us an emergency stay, because it's not as though epic's being harmed by an extra few months of being kept out of the App Store. They're already generating no income from us.

[Leo Laporte]

So once the kids see Darth Vader talking bad words in Fortnite in James Earl Jones voice, strategic value is very.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, say it again.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Hawk Tour.

[Leo Laporte]

Darth Vader says Hawk Tour in the new Fortnite. And SAG AFTRA is not happy about it, by the way, even though James Earl Jones, who's the voice of Darth Vader's estate, his family authorized the use AI use of his voice. And presumably that's. This is one of those legitimate uses. SAG AFTRA says it violates fair labor practices.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, basically, they're arguing that EPIC has an agreement with SAG AFTRA that basically prohibits them from doing this and that the complaint.

[Leo Laporte]

Because there's a strike on right now.

[Alex Lindsay]

Exactly. The complaint they filed with the National Labor Board was basically that they did not come to us first and they did not attempt to negotiate a way through this.

[Leo Laporte]

And so epic's already got the lawyers in the building. They just go down the hall on this one and.

[Alex Lindsay]

They got the hotel at the Holiday Inn next door. They're going to be staying there for another.

[Leo Laporte]

Holy cow.

[Alex Lindsay]

But fun fact, the AI is the chatbot. Part of that is actually gemini. Google gemini 2.0.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting. That's.

[Alex Lindsay]

And they're using 11 labs voice technology.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. All right. Yeah, they were getting to say all sorts of bad words. It sounds pretty good.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, I mean, it's, it's weird. I don't. I, I don't know if Jason would agree with agreement on this, but it's like I've heard a lot of this audio and it sounds like somebody doing an. An impression of Darth Vader that you hear everywhere has nothing to do with his performance. It's like, yes, I'm lowering my voice and I'm talking like this.

[Jason Snell]

It's.

[Alex Lindsay]

As opposed to the pauses.

[Jason Snell]

Right.

[Alex Lindsay]

Puts on certain work.

[Jason Snell]

It's okay. It's important to note that this is all dynamic. Right? Like the way, like in the. What is it? I think in the Obi Wan series they used the re speecher technology based on James Earl Jones voice. But there was a performance. Somebody was giving a performance of Darth Vader and. And then it's being tweaked and there's a lot of like, very subtle, careful stuff to give. Yet in the end, I would argue with Darth Vader, that sounds more like classic Darth Vader than the last few times James Earl Jones did it. Like in Rogue One, Darth Vader kind of sounds like an old man because James Earl Jones did it, but he was an old man. But, but it was a performance. This is not a performance. This is an LLM with an 11 Labs virtual voice. And so it sounds like Darth Vader. Sure. But it's not a performed Darth Vader. It's a. It's a text to speech Darth Vader. So you get, you get what you pay for. Basically.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's kind of how we' culturally, we've forgotten what Elvis Presley really sounded like. We've forgotten what Frank Sinatra really sounded like because our cultural memory has been supplanted by every single Elvis impersonator going, oh, oh, thunder Munch. And I think, and I'm perfectly okay with this kind of use of AI if the actor or the actor's estate signed off on it. And apparently the family was pleased enough by whatever check they may or may not have received that they actually provided a quote for the press release. Because I'm sure Epic anticipated this kind of a problem. However, this is a situation where I would much rather be like when they replaced Jim Henson's voice for Kermit. It's like, okay, it's a different voice, but it's a different actor. It's a new actor that's more acceptable than. I'm going to have a synthetic voice that replicates the sounds that Jim Henson made, but I'm going to have another actor give the performance and the cadence and overlay that on top of that. That's where it gets a little bit murky, and that's where, as a consumer of entertainment, it gets a little bit.

[Leo Laporte]

You really have to wonder what James Earl Jones would have thought about this whole thing.

[Alex Lindsay]

Oh, the family statement is along the lines of, oh, well, James Earl Jones wanted the character to survive and wanted this and was very pleased about this being a new generation. But again, fortunately, he had enough resources that he. He was able to provide legal cover and legal continuity for these choices to be made. So there. There's no doubt in my mind that there are people making these choices on his behalf that he specifically considered and designated for this sort of stuff. So it's hard. So we might not like it as an audience, but ethically, I don't think there's a big problem with it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's nice. It's actually nice to, you know, take.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, I mean, what are you going to do? Like, not have Darth Vader anymore because the actor's not gone. I just wish there would be.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Be.

[Alex Lindsay]

Let's. Let's hire a new actor who is definitely going to do a voice that's compatible with James Earl Jones. But we're not going to pretend that.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, well, they did that, didn't they? There are a lot of people in cartoons and elsewhere that have voiced Batmans.

[Alex Lindsay]

Keep getting cycling in and out all the time, and it's like a little, tiny, little spin on it.

[Leo Laporte]

Take a little break, Come back with more. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Start a little late, but we're gonna get through this, trust me. In time for Steve Gibson and security. Now, we'll probably be about an hour out for Steve Gibson and security. Now, just so you know, if you're tuning in to watch that show on our live feed, we do do these shows live so that you can watch on YouTube, Twitch, X dot com, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Kik and TikTok. Did I mention TikTok? Is TikTok up, by the way? Do we get that working? Working?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, so we are now on TikTok as well. So watch live if you wish. 11:00am Normally Pacific on Tuesdays 2:00pm Eastern 1800 UTC but we like it if you subscribe to the podcast. That way you get a copy, audio or video for your edification and entertainment after the fact every week automatically. Our show today, brought to you by Bit Warden, the trusted leader in passwords, secrets and pass key management. That's what I use it for anyway. With more than 10 million users, this number blew me away. I couldn't believe it. 180 countries, 50,000 business customers worldwide Bitwarden continues to protect businesses and individuals worldwide. G2 consistently ranks Bitwarden number one in user satisfaction. Every year on World Password Day, Bitwarden does a survey survey of people about passwords, how they use it and so forth. Their survey this year shows that even the youngs will benefit from a robust password manager. Gen Z may be the most digitally native generation, but it has been found guilty of the highest incidence of password reuse. According to the survey, 72% of Gen Zers reuse the same password across accounts. 72% it's not like they don't know. 79% know admit password reuse is risky. 59% recycle an existing password. And this is the worst when when companies disclose data breaches and they say we had to reset your password. 59% say yeah, we just reuse the existing password. We don't care. This is why you need Bit Warden kids. Bit Warden has announced the launch of Access Intelligence. This is a new capability that helps enterprise enable employees, including your Gen Z employees, to proactively defend against internal credit credential risks and external phishing threats. It uses two core functionalities to do this. Risk Insights reduces alert fatigue and allows IT teams to identify, prioritize and remediate at risk credentials. There's also an advanced phishing blocker. You'll get alerts and it'll redirect your users from known phishing sites in real time. And it's always up to date. They use a continuously updated open source block list of malicious domains. So if you're using Bit Warden, the chances are if you try to use that password at a phishing site, you will be stopped. It's. I've. It's actually happened to me. I love it. What sets Bitwarden apart is it's easy. They prioritize simplicity. Setup will only take you a few minutes. In fact, it's very easy to move over. It supports importing from most password management solutions and this is very important to me and I would submit, important to everyone. Bit Warden is open source. That means the source code can be inspected anywhere on GitHub by anyone and it's regularly audited by third party experts and they publish the results of those audits. Bit Warden you can be confident meets the strictest security and compliance requirements. There's SOC2 type 2, GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, ISO 27001200 to it is secure. And you know that's if you're going to trust a password manager with your vault. But if you're an individual user, you don't have to, but I do. You know, you can, you can host your own Bitwarden vault, but I like to have Bit Warden do it and it's kind of reassuring to know that they really are experts in securing that. You and your business deserve an effective solution for enhanced online security. Employ any gen zers you maybe want to get started today with Bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan. And I always like to say this free forever across all devices as an individual user because it's open source, free forever. That's unlimited passwords. It's passkeys. Trust me, if you're using passkey, I love passkeys. But you've got to put it in Bit Warden, not on a hardware device so that it's everywhere you need it to be. So when I log into fast mail or GitHub and or Google, even I use pass keys. It's more secure than passwords. And if because it's in Bit Warden, I have it everywhere. Bitwarden.com TWIT Sign up today. It's what I use Steve gibson [e-mail] twit we thank them so much for their support of MacBreak weekly. New book. I haven't read it yet. I want to read it. Apparently he was on Colbert last night. The author Patrick McGee Apple in China the capture of the World's greatest company. The premise of this. Oh, you got it. You've read it. Nice.

[Alex Lindsay]

No, it just literally arrived today at the library and.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's a library book.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the summary from Simon and Schuster. After struggling to build its products on three continents, Apple was lured by China's seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. Soon it was sending thousands of engineers across the Pacific, training millions of workers, spending hundreds of billions of dollars to create the world's most sophisticated supply chain. These capabilities enabled Apple to build the 21st century's most iconic products in Staggering volume and for enormous profit. But without explicitly intending to, Apple built an advanced electronics industry within China only to discover that its massive investments in technology upgrades had inadvertently given Beijing a power, power that could be weaponized. The author McGee says China could just stop the iPhone cold anytime it wanted.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, it's a. I've only, again, I've only read the forward. But the forward begins with like when Xi Jinping, like entered, rose to power and immediately Chinese states, state sponsored television was like launching attacks against Apple about, oh, you're not treating China, your Chinese customers as well as you're treating international customers. And you're just all this, that and the other. And how like Apple was like shocked that but, but, but we spent all this money making this great relationship and our, our policies are pretty much the same like everywhere. And it was like a moment where they realized that they maybe don't have the relationship with China that they thought they did and that he, the author identifies that as like a turning point where that's the point at which instead of being going 100% diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy and putting executives living in China full time to keep an eye on like what the weather was over there. That's when they should have started to think about what if this relationship breaks down. They were putting in. One of the figures that's being quoted a lot in the reviews is about how the chips act. Like the Biden's chips act was something like $52 billion total, whereas Apple was putting like $55 billion a year into Chinese manufacturing. And it wasn't just like investing in factors. It was like creating workflows, creating infrastructure, creating this, that and the other. Basically, as I think that quote that you said put it. A transfer of knowledge, a transfer of experience going into China. And if you're concerned about, about geopolitics in that kind of manufacturing, the argument to be made is that Apple seriously undermined the United States ability to ever be able to build iPhones profitably inside the United States by putting all that money and all that expertise into building up a Chinese electronic device.

[Leo Laporte]

It sounds like this was well researched. More than 200 interviews. Apple, according to 9to5max says the claims made in this book are false, false and there are many inaccuracies throughout. The company asserts the author didn't perform proper fact checking.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So Apple doesn't like it. And there's a pretty good article, not article, good interview on the Daily show as well with that's what it was.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It was kind of hilarious. John was particularly Animated in this. This is probably not one he could have done on his show on Apple tv.

[Leo Laporte]

No kidding.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah. So I mean, it definitely outlined, you know, how you go down a path, math and you know, something grow. You know, I always call it the kitty cat principle, which is that your cat is so nice to you as long as you're much bigger than it is, you know, and as soon as it's bigger than you, your lunch, you know, and yeah, yeah.

[Jason Snell]

It would switch.

[Andy Ihnatko]

To lunch really fast. Even your own cat. I think that the challenge that Apple had is when they got there, there wasn't a lot there. They splunked it. The problem is, I think anybody saying that this could be done in the United States isn't really looking at what people are willing to pay. I mean, we're talking about people not willing to pay for a headset for $3,500. That's probably about what the top of the line Apple phone would cost if we did it in the United States. And that's just labor. Like just the cost of labor is just entirely different. And it was much different back then. It's gotten the labor. The cost of labor has gone up in China pretty dramatically, partially because of Apple, but the automation has also changed. And so it's. And again, I think that, you know, trying to compare that to the overall decline of machining and precision machining in the United States long before any of this stuff happened, I think that he probably jumps to a couple conclusions I wouldn't follow. But it is the case that Apple trained a lot of people to do a lot of things and it has built a lot. When you look at a company like DJI who is exploding, there's a lot of technicians that are working on DJI that probably came out of those app at some point point or in those Apple factories getting trained to do precision work.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I guess I will read it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I got the Audible book, I bought it. I saw the interview with Jon Stewart and ordered the. I mean literally while I was watching it. Going good.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, next week.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, by next week I will book club.

[Leo Laporte]

Tell us what you think. I mean, on the surface it makes a lot of sense and I don't think there's anybody could deny that if somehow in this trade war, China decided it would be more in their interest to slow down production of the iPhone, that they could do it. He says, you know, you could cut power to four hours a day or there is.

[Jason Snell]

So the counter argument is that we, especially in America, tend to build up China as this big Scary boogeyman.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

And while China is huge and has a huge economy and has a lot of money, the fact is that it is a two way relationship. The fact is China benefits greatly and China's economy benefits greatly from all.

[Leo Laporte]

It would have to be a crisis in our relationship.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it would have to be a severing of ties basically for this to happen because it would be. And again, I know it's an authoritarian regime and they've got complete control and.

[Leo Laporte]

All of that, but like they're also in economic straits.

[Jason Snell]

The weakness is always going to be the economy because people put up with a lot, but there is a limit to it. And, and so let's, that's the thing is like, yes, Apple would be completely boned if China was like, nope, no more exporting anything to outside of, you know, to outside of China. It's over. But China's economy would be pretty boned too. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

And it's, it would be mutual. It's mutually assured destruction.

[Jason Snell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, always.

[Jason Snell]

At which point we're really just talking about a war over Taiwan is the scenario here.

[Alex Lindsay]

Well, there are, there are a lot of components to this and part of it is having watched, anybody who's been watching for the past three or four years has seen that China has decided that why are we, why are we direct helping our own people to put money into a company like Apple and making that almost the national luxury brand. Why don't we make Xiaomi the national luxury brand instead and eventually wean ourselves of the influence of, of this kind of foreign money? And this is one of the reasons why I think you see sales in China declining, declining, declining. There was another story about how some retailers were offering unprecedented discounts on iPhones above and beyond, just like a regional or a holiday sale because just sales are just down, down, down and doesn't seem to, that doesn't seem to be a way to get them back up again. And part of that is it has to be because the Chinese Communist Party has all kinds of outlets in which to promote a. Chinese, Chinese businesses and to at least disadvantage Apple businesses. I don't think they're, I don't think they're at a point right now where they will do what they did in 2013, which is to basically like within it really was, it was, it's a nice opening of the book. Literally within 72 hours of taking power, he was like firing fuselage against Apple. I don't think we're back to that. But they don't have to really attack Apple directly, directly so long as they give local companies, Chinese companies, advantages that are denied to Apple.

[Jason Snell]

Well, Apple says that they're still selling pretty well in urban China. It's not all of China, but in urban China that they still, they sell very well. Their business is not growing like it did a while ago. I think that the, and I think that from a China standpoint, they keep vacillating between the nationalism of, you know, be proud and buy Chinese products and the other part of it, which is, look how awesome we are. You get access to the very best product in the world. It isn't denied to you. And they customize it for China. And isn't that great? And so there's a real kind of like back and forth that happens there, but that's the consumer part of the business. And I think, I think nobody would argue that if Apple's sales in China went to zero, Apple would be in dire straits. Right. They wouldn't be happy. They'd be very sad about it. But like, that's the consumer sales aspect where as there's the manufacturing aspect where they would be completely wrecked if that went. And China benefits from that because those are factories that are employing lots of people in the supply chain and you know, assembling Apple devices and all of that. And, and that is, you know, if you lost that, that would be bad for China's economy. So it's, it's complicated. But like, there's no doubt about the thesis of this book, which is the. Tim Co. Cook didn't have to put Go all in on China, but Tim Cook in 2000, in the 2000s, was a real believer in China as a market and China as a manufacturing center and went all in. He did. He went all in. There's no denying that. And now he is dealing with all the weakness that that causes him and the lack of flexibility that it causes him.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, and I think that the hard part is, is that a lot of these things kind of generate their own weather system. You know, like all the hard drives are made in Thailand or whatever. There was a time, at least when all the hard drives and when we had a floor flood we had. We couldn't buy hard.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Because everyone. Because the problem is, is that you have these huge, massive supply chains that are. It's like a, you know, you have to have all these other pieces that are there to supply it. All the little pieces, all the little things that are made, it's all made by a bunch of little companies. It's not just that there's one big company that's building all these things. There's all these suppliers that are providing all of these things that are. That are all kind of flowing into that. Into that system. And so. So as you build that up, it gets to a point where it's pretty hard to do anywhere else, you know, and so now Apple is doing it, and it's very expensive. And I think that China's sensitive to that. I think the problem is all the saber rally that's happening between the United States and China gives Apple a little bit of COVID Like, hey, we got to be able to do something else and we got to be able to, you know, we've got tariffs and everything else. So building up into India makes sense. But I think what they're doing in India is exactly the same thing as what they did in China in Vietnam. They're training lots of people. You know, it's not just that that India is. And this is why India has such large tariffs for. They want you to build things there because they want skills, you know, like, they want the skills that are. That are part of this puzzle. They want. They want to build those skills up whether. And Vietnam wants the same thing. Everybody. So Apple going in and hiring tens of thousands of people to do these things, you know, is going to build up an industry again in other countries. They need time.

[Leo Laporte]

Time.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And the question is whether they'll have enough time to make the term before there's a conflict over Taiwan. I think that really the big thing is we can talk about all the other things that Apple might be caught up in, but the war in Taiwan is the thing that would probably be the thing that will turn the crank the hardest between the two if something happens there.

[Leo Laporte]

China's already cut off some of their minerals, right. Rare earth for magnets and lithium and stuff. Stuff some of which are not easily attained elsewhere. Lithium is. I mean, I think that we are already in a trade war with them.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And admittedly, we're very dependent on each other, but it could go south at any point. I mean, that's just one more threat to Apple. There are many.

[Alex Lindsay]

And it's not just the trade war aspect of it. Another piece of news this week is Xiaomi shipped their first version of Honor, their first laptop that runs on our OS, which is 100% internally made, no external code. It's not based on Linux. It's not based on anything. It's completely homegrown. And they're putting it on their phones, their watches, their tablets, their laptops, servers, everything. It Just shows you how comprehensive this idea of we want everything to be made inside China. It's not just nationalistic. It means that there are a couple of Congress people this week basically said that we have to make sure that this honoros doesn't like gain a toehold in world technology because it's probably a spying apparatus for the Chinese government. It's like it almost definitely is a spying apparatus, at least for their own people. And that's the level of control that the party wants to have over the technology that transacts inside this country. So there's a lot of reasons why I'm sure that they don't, that China does not want to lose Apple's business, certainly not as a manufacturing business. But, but if they can apply like a 5 year or 10 year plan that basically says that we can basically handle all the rest of the world's manufacturing without Apple, the benefits of the multidimensional benefits of producing all of our own stuff for our own consumers and our own people internally, that might very much outweigh that.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, also there's some of these phones from Huawei and Xiaomi are pretty darn amazing. You can't buy them in the US this trifold mate. People are raving over it. It's, it is like $3,000 but you can't get it in the US it's not a stunt.

[Alex Lindsay]

People who have their hands on it saying I don't know how long it's going to work.

[Leo Laporte]

No, the raves.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's an amazing device.

[Leo Laporte]

One tech blog said the best phone you should not buy because it's not only so expensive you can't buy it in the US but this is the thing. I mean I don't think think that. Well, it's an interesting world we live in. Let's put it that way.

[Alex Lindsay]

Much in motion is the future.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's take another little break. You're watching Mac Break weekly. The usual assembled. It's great to have Jason Snell from sixcolors.com Andy Inoco and of course Alex Lindsay from Office Hours Global. And we're so glad that we have have you too. Thank you for watching. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and safeway now through June 17th. Shop in store or online for your favorite personal care Items and save $5 when you spend $15 or more. Stock up on items like Dove Body Wash Degree Motion Sense Deodorant, Tresemme Hairspray, Dove Shampoo, Dove Bar Soap, Dove Men's Body and face Wash and Dollar Shave Club blades and save $5 when you spend $15 or more. Hurry in before these deals are gone off rents June 17. Promotions may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details. F1 I'm a big F1 fan. Monaco is this coming week. Apple has a big movie coming out next month with Brad Pitt. So of course they're getting in on the F1 hype. You can now travel the Monaco circuit on the Apple maps in beautiful cartoon fashion. I've stayed there. I've stayed on the hairpin and I've walked the Monaco circuit and. And it's quite amazing. In fact, I was there a couple of years ago when they were getting ready for the race and it was really fun to watch it be transformed. I love watching the race.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they did it with Vegas. They did the same thing with the Vegas race where they added it. I've heard from people about like, they do this with super bowl cities. They use it as an opportunity for that too. And there's temporary landmarks that they mark and then those go away when the grandstands come down and the permanent landmarks that they mark. And this is that enhanced 3D city view and all of that. I got a briefing about this, which I find hilarious because I'm like, are they saying Monaco is the word they're saying? And then I'm like, oh, yeah, it is. But you know, if you zoom in close, there are all these like billboards and everything. And they're all billboards for the F1 movie that's coming.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God, you're kidding.

[Jason Snell]

June from Apple in theaters everywhere, starting Brad Pitt. Because that's. That's what this is. This is part of the month long, more than a month long, Rolling Thunder promo for the F1 movie that's coming out next.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you gonna get invited to a special screening?

[Jason Snell]

I doubt it. I mean, that would be a first. I would love. Although I'll say this, I would love to go to a movie screening at the Steve Jobs theater because that would be state of the art. That sound system is so spectacular. Those projectors are amazing. I would love to do that. But I bet that's gonna be an Apple employees only kind of thing.

[Leo Laporte]

You gotta be Jony I've level or better to get in there.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, you know, you gotta be this tall to ride the ride. Whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

I loved it when I worked in San Francisco on radio. I'd get invited to. They had. There's a screening room in San Francisco. Small, it's about 10 people get in there very comfortable and you'd get advanced screenings of movies. I always go to as many of those as I could.

[Alex Lindsay]

I was a little surprised to find that after the new Apple campus, after the spaceship campus was open, that they, there weren't more events, public events at the Steve Jobs theater because it's situated kind of like how the theater at ILM is situated where it's off the main entrance so that you don't have to let people go through like the actual building in order to get there. And Alex will know that there's. They do have like Academy screenings and other like special events because it is the most kick butt theater you've. I've ever been in in my entire freaking life.

[Jason Snell]

That's good.

[Alex Lindsay]

But I'm kind of, I kind of imagine that one of the reasons why the Steve Jobs theater was placed where it was was so that if they had a production or a movie or an event that they felt was in line with their interests or their goals that they could, they could have, they could hold it. They can make that theater available without again people to allowing people to run roughshod over the entire spaceship.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think it's definitely designed to have a lot of people there and to let people in without, you know, the way that you get to it from the front entrance, the way you, you know, all that stuff is, is a pretty straight shot without having any kind of. You're not connected to anything else else. So it stands alone by itself. The I think the challenge is, is that I think that they, I think it might have been building up towards that they were doing more events there right before COVID When Covid hit, they got used to not having anybody around.

[Alex Lindsay]

And they kind of liked it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They probably were just kind of like, I'm here because I mean it's amazing. The, when you walk up to it, this, you know, the Meyer, the very expensive Meyer speakers that are in the, in the walkway sound amazing, you know, on the way there, you know, and, and it's so the, it, it, it's a great space to, to do that in. But I do, you know, I think that, and there's only. I think it's probably one of the best theaters there. I mean I think the Dolby Theater, the internal Dolby theater that is at Dolby is probably the nicest one in the Bay Area as far as sound.

[Leo Laporte]

And, and there's Lucas's right at the ranch. That's a pretty nice theater stag.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, I saw, I've been there there. I saw what did I see there? Men in Black. I saw Men in Black at the Stag. It was amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

Good sound.

[Andy Ihnatko]

They had to add sound back into the Stag because. Because they were. They were creating when. Because they use it for the move, the mixes. They sit in there and they listen to it. They say, oh, a little bit of this. They were adding things that were too subtle for an average theater. So they had to have a way to add noise back in to, like, dumb it down so that you understood that this is not what people are going to hear. Like, they're not going to hear any of what you just added.

[Leo Laporte]

Because.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Because the system can't.

[Leo Laporte]

It is amazing to see something with really good sound in that theater. It's quite a thing to see.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The closest you can get in public, I think right now is from that. From the fidelity is probably the Dolby theaters as far as the number of speakers and stuff like that in public. And then I would say imax.

[Leo Laporte]

Those are two big. There's a certain irony in the fact that all of those fancy speakers, like the Revel speakers in the sound booth there at Lucas Sound now are owned by Samsung, which has purchased every damn speaker brand, including Bowers and Wilkins. That there is. They're all under the Samsung label now. So Apple should have done a little bit of that. They could have switched Denon. I don't know if Myers is. Myers might be too small, but Revel is Bowers and Wilkins is. Because they bought Denon Morantz.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

This just happened. Let's see what else is going on in the Apple world today. I need to fill some time so we don't have all the commercials happening at the. Oh, you know, I wonder if Tim Cook's ears were burning when the President was in Saudi Arabia, you know, making money, accepting planes, all of that. Jensen Huang made the trip. He joined him from Nvidia. And the President said, I see my friend is here. Jensen, Tim Cook isn't here, but you are. Tim Cook isn't here. Is this like a mob boss saying.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I mean, if you.

[Alex Lindsay]

If you would be another million bucks.

[Andy Ihnatko]

If you're.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Ihnatko]

If you're asking, like, why did all those people pay a million dollars and willing to sit behind him during the thing is because of the constant threat, you know, like. And so, you know, the constant, like, I'll. You know, I. All of this can go away tomorrow at. At a whim.

[Leo Laporte]

So. So Trump says, I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday. I don't want you building in India. He says, little problem With Tim. God, it must be. This must be so humiliating.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

I said to him, my friend, I treated you very good. You're coming here. This is such a mob boss. I said, my friend, I treated you very good.

[Alex Lindsay]

Not once invited me over for a.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Cup of coffee and Tim didn't look at him and go, I think it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Very well, very good. You're coming here with $500 billion. Now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India. This is the President of the freaking United States threatening basically, yeah. Unbelievable. I don't want you building in India. I said to Tim, I said, this is more quotes. I'm not making this up. Tim, look, we treated you really good. This is from cnbc, which is, by the way, not the most left leaning of organizations. I said to Tim, I said, tim, look, we treated you really good. We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years. We put up with that. Now you gotta build us. We're not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves. We want you to build here. I said to Tim, I said, Tim.

[Alex Lindsay]

Tim's name is never far from his lips. It's weird.

[Leo Laporte]

Something's not far from his lips.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I think.

[Leo Laporte]

Christ.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Anyway, so the, the, you know, I think that the challenge is, I think Tim's played it about as best as well as you can, but it's riding a buck and bronco.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't win. You can't win.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Eventually you're going to come off. And I think that that's the, that's the challenge. And again, I think that oftentimes in all of these Monopoly conversations and everything else, you just realize how quickly all of this can go one way or the other. Especially in the current environment where whatever you thought someone had a controlling interest, things can evaporate very quickly. And I think that. But he's obviously threatening that. I'm sure that Tim, Apple will promise some factory more factories or there'll be a new announcement, WWC about another factory in Austin or something that they're going to bring to the United States. And then Trump will forget about it for another six months and then complain about it again.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know if you were watching the Google event, but weirdly they had U2 a U2 song behind one of their promotional videos. Kyle. I hope Tim doesn't find out. Bono says Apple is, quote, dying to make Vision Pro affordable. Nope. We got. Wait a minute. It's time for the Vision Pro segment.

[Jason Snell]

What do you see?

[Leo Laporte]

What do you know? It's time to talk to Vision Pro. So Friday, Bono Stories of Surrender arrives on Apple TV and on your Vision Pro. Are you all excited to watch that?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, I'll be interested to see it.

[Jason Snell]

I am.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not about you too. It's about Bon. It's kind of a Bono thing. He. It's going to be the first full length immersive video, by the way. So bring snacks.

[Andy Ihnatko]

That's the one hard thing that is.

[Alex Lindsay]

Wear your cervical collar so you can bear the weight of the thing for the entire runtime.

[Leo Laporte]

It's only a.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Eating the snacks looks a lot like pinching. And so every time you do something with the snacks, I found that it's like, oh, never mind, I can't. That's the. You know, if you want to have popcorn, you gotta go back to a regular screen.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is what Bono says. Apple have this new sonic innovation, commitment to fidelity of sound. Sounds are becoming really important in movies, in people's home cinemas. The Vision Pro, it's a commitment. You're getting into a world and there are extraordinary things. I've seen. I've seen extraordinary things through the Vision Pro. We had this idea of, well, the camera can be on stage and walking around, around you. We couldn't light it as easily as we thought, but we successfully got the viewer on stage. I took out my drawings from the stage show for the filming and they're not in the 2D Apple TV plus version of Stories of Surrender, but they are in Vision Pro. These childlike drawings. No one would be able. Would like to be to.

[Jason Snell]

Able.

[Leo Laporte]

Able to draw as badly as me, but it's like a signature, a fingerprint. Anyway, that's Bono talking to Deadline.

[Jason Snell]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

[Alex Lindsay]

That's what it sounded like.

[Jason Snell]

A little.

[Leo Laporte]

Blade Runner going on there.

[Jason Snell]

Well, time to die.

[Leo Laporte]

When asked on the Price Is Right.

[Alex Lindsay]

Sorry, I'm remembering this video.

[Leo Laporte]

Should I. Is there. I can't. Probably can't show the video actually when they had a Vision Pro on the Price Is Right. And as you know, with that game show, you're supposed to guess the price and whoever's closest wins. Right?

[Alex Lindsay]

Whoever. It was a showcase. It was, it was a part of the show where like they're, they're. They're at their little kiosks and they have to. Whoever comes closest to guessing the price of the thing gets to come up on stage and you know, actually, so.

[Jason Snell]

It'S your, it's your start without, Without Going over and so the first. First guy says 750.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You know maybe. Can I show. I'll just show it. What the hell. What are they gonna do take us down? It's on threads for crying out loud. That's right at night. Well everybody look because the first prize.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Is coming on down.

[Alex Lindsay]

It's a mixed reality headset like coming down like an angel.

[Andy Ihnatko]

256 gig Apple Vision Pro headset offers an immersive 3D camera system that can.

[Jason Snell]

Display photos and videos, take calls and can be used why don't they do.

[Alex Lindsay]

Product launches like this where they lower.

[Leo Laporte]

It from the ceiling watch TV and it's rotating and then what back to the ceiling it goes to ever if it's closest to the actual retail price without going over. Good luck everybody. Go ahead. He kind of knows 4,000 was the first B1750. Okay big mistake.

[Jason Snell]

Big mistake.

[Leo Laporte]

$1,000 say one. Yeah be.

[Jason Snell]

She should have just bit.

[Leo Laporte]

A listen to the audience.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I know that's the thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Been dumb. The audience can't believe oh and come on down.

[Alex Lindsay]

Somebody's grand. Somebody's grandson or granddaughter is going to get one hell of a nice Christmas this year.

[Jason Snell]

Yes. So that's I mean without going over so so after that the first two bids the the third guy is like well it's more expensive than that. So that's a thousand and one. And then the last lady is like the right. If you are convinced that it's more than that you just got all prices above it. An infinite number of prizes above it. We obviously all of us are are.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You know we we spent our child when we were sick.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah absolutely.

[Alex Lindsay]

We know the straight we're talking we're talking about Dan on on Jeopardy. Last week at I, I, I'm not confident that I do great on Jeopardy. But everybody's like oh my God. I would have gotten my I would have got the a hundred dollar bonus if for that one.

[Leo Laporte]

If you get the price you get.

[Alex Lindsay]

A hundred dollar bonus anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

A hundred dollar bonus you would have gotten on that one. Everybody knows it's 3500 the audience gas.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You would have lost Leo. You would have 3:35.99 you went over.

[Leo Laporte]

I got to go under.

[Alex Lindsay]

You would have claving yourself out of a free vision pro there.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think she got the vision pro. I think it went back into the ceiling for next time it's gonna take.

[Jason Snell]

A tax on it. So yeah.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Has anybody tried the new sound therapy on on Apple music it the Collection from UMG leverages Cognitive Science and their roster of global superstars. Subtle auditory beats to well known curated tracks. Oh, that's interesting. So it's not special tracks, it's regular tracks with beats behind them.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, it's like, it's like a meditation DJ mix of like, actual.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but I'm not going to meditate to Katy Perry, Casey Musgraves. I mean, come on, man. Anyway, there's focus, there's relax and there's sleep. I'll have to try it. We play sleep sounds when we're sleeping because we have a noisy street near us.

[Alex Lindsay]

I mean, I love, I love the idea of it. I love that Apple is like continuing to add features and have new ideas for it, as opposed to just simply coming up with new ways to, like, insert a playlist into the front screen that I need to move past to get to the stuff I actually wanted to listen to.

[Leo Laporte]

Tech Radar's Hamish Hector says, I tried Apple's new sound therapy playlists and they've solved my sleep troubles. So I'll take that for whatever. It's good link bait. I'm no sound psychologist, but I am an Apple music subscriber.

[Alex Lindsay]

You know, it's a. It's a good thing, I think. I think a lot of us are in the. Like, I. I listen to, like, when I'm preparing, like, to do this show, I've discovered that my, my show Prepped is exactly 1turin dot long. So if I put on like a recording of Turin dot, it's like, how.

[Leo Laporte]

Long is Turin dot?

[Alex Lindsay]

Like two and a half hours. Like, oh, something. Something like that. And I know that if we get to Nesun Dorma and I'm not like, just like sort of saying, well, what have I missed? I'm probably behind. And by the time that Leo makes her sacrifice, I really need to be uploading the. Uploading the spreadsheet.

[Leo Laporte]

My preparation is about hang on sloopy long. It's not.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, I just. I just take the greatest hits of Alvin and the Chipmunks and put it on repeat. And so by the time I got here, all I could do is see blood and want to kill everyone. And that puts me in the right frame of mind.

[Alex Lindsay]

So all I was getting is pretty, pretty music. And the lyrics don't like, because I don't understand the language. I don't like. It doesn't really distract me. So I like the idea of here's something that if you have a work session that's going to be two or three or four Hours long. It will be enough to basically cover up whatever the background noise of your life is. It's going to distract you while not being so pretty and so engaging that it's going to distract you from the thing you needed like two and a half hours to three hours worth of piece for. So it's interesting. I gave it the shortest of listens just to see what it was about. But again, I like the idea that Apple is putting in interesting features for Apple music to distinguish itself from Spotify beyond high resolution music, which we're still supposed to be getting on Spotify any year.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you saying that Puccini's story of the Chinese princess Turandot and ancient China is not sufficient to put you out?

[Alex Lindsay]

I will say that as if I'm focusing on it. Once again, I'm thinking, oh my God, Kalaf is such a stupid, stupid tenor to fall in love with this woman who clearly Kalaf. The first thing you saw was one of her suitors being beheaded and the head being put on a pike to join all the other people who have dared to ask her to marry them. What the hell do you see?

[Jason Snell]

And somebody's been listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks. I guess.

[Alex Lindsay]

If you listen to it at normal speed, I think makes you want to murder.

[Leo Laporte]

You're gonna have something new to miss Listen to come July 18, Snoopy presents a summer musical. A new original Peanuts that's special. Featuring music by one of my favorite pianists, Ben Folds and Jeff Morrow. I mean, look, I mean, Vince Guaraldi's long gone, but at least you can have Ben Folds in your thing. That's pretty cool.

[Alex Lindsay]

First musical in how many years? I think they were saying.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's cool.

[Alex Lindsay]

They've been doing some cool stuff. Our first penis musical in 35 years according to Apple TV.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jason Snell]

Excuse me. I have very important news. Breaking news that I need to share. Here, here, Leo, we need to close the parentheses.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you know? And it was the short while segment ever. I added some Bono.

[Jason Snell]

That was the just the second shortest, Leo. Second shortest.

[Alex Lindsay]

That's why the show wouldn't compile unmatched parenthesis. Good catch.

[Leo Laporte]

You'd think being a Lisper, I would have known. It is the 75th anniversary of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the Peanut scandal. And Apple, of course, owns it.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And so there have been other specials, but this one's fully musical. Directed by Eric Wiess, it's written by Craig Schultz. Brian Schultz. Those are interesting names. I think maybe related somehow.

[Jason Snell]

And Cornelius Uliano, the World needs more Peanuts and Muppets.

[Leo Laporte]

I think I agree pre Dizzy Muppets, but okay. Frogg and Toad is coming. Wonderful stray. I used to read my kids Yo Gabba Gabba Land. Okay. And a whole lot more of kids entertainment. But there's nothing like Peanuts for all the family of all ages.

[Alex Lindsay]

One morning, the Peanuts gang learns that their beloved camp is shutting down because fewer campers are joining each summer. The news especially saddens Charlie Brown, who feels hopeless about losing a place that's meant so much to him and his friends.

[Jason Snell]

Start a bikini car wash, right? That's what happens next, right?

[Alex Lindsay]

This is. This is definitely cinematic universe canon, because in strip and comic strip canon, Charlie Brown hates going to camp every single year. He does. Drafted. Except for the one time he went with a sack over his head and became elected camp president.

[Jason Snell]

But we know based on the hello, the hello, mother, hello, father corollary, that by the end of your time at camp, you actually love it and want to stay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Jason Snell]

And that probably happens like that for Charlie Brown. Every year he gets drafted, he doesn't want to be there, and then by the end, he doesn't want to go.

[Leo Laporte]

Any of you own an Aston Martin?

[Alex Lindsay]

No. Oh, not right now.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Not now.

[Leo Laporte]

Soon it's CarPlay Ultra. They found one manufacturer who was willing to let Apple take over the entire front of the car. And there it is. You have to have an Aston Martin, a new S1.

[Jason Snell]

Although they did, they said that Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis are now on board as partners as well. To add to the list, I think this is. I don't know if you saw the Top Gear video, which was excellent and people should watch it, but it's very clearly like a marketing push for other car makers from Apple where they're talking of the Aston Martin designers. Like, it was so great working with Apple and all that. And you can see it's like, yes, it is great to work with Apple. You too could work with Apple. But that. That all said, it seems reasonable. It seems like we got an answer to a lot of the questions that we had three years ago of, like, how do you implement this if you're not running at a low level? And the answer is, is something that I definitely talked about with some car industry people three years ago, which is there's themes. So Apple's working with the car makers to build a bunch of theme files, and then when you connect the phone the first time, it downloads the theme files so that there can be parts of the interface that are generated from the car and Parts from the iPhone. But they all share the same theme and they all look of a kind and they can project or cut out one into the other and, and all that's going on. So you know, I would, I would say Aston Martin obviously is a, you know, very niche case, but there are probably going to be some bigger car manufacturers who will be happy to let Apple give them a little bit of a glow up in terms of availability.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I mean this, they take over the instrument, the instrument cluster.

[Jason Snell]

But it's a co brand like when they plug it in it's, it's not, it's a collab. It's like Aston Martin X Apple. Right? Like it's like we together.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Jason Snell]

And I'm sure that's because Apple went to all the carmakers and they're like, nuh, yeah. And so instead it's this kind of like we will collaborate with you and you get to work with Apple's designers and we'll work with your designers and we'll make this beautiful thing and it's a very interesting way to get something. And I suspect that there are some carmakers who, who like putting screens in their cars because it makes them cool, but doesn't like maintaining software stack and writing user interface. And I think that those companies are going to love the idea that they get to work with Apple and have it be awesome. And then, and then there are other companies who feel like, no, no, no. As a car company we take pride in our user experience software engineering, which I would argue is delusional. But there are companies like GM who think that and they'll say, no, thank you, you, we're not even interested in CarPlay at all.

[Leo Laporte]

Honestly, if you want to update, I think it's better to update the phone than update the car. I've had numbers of cars with that do updates where the dealer says you got to bring it in because we're not going to let you do the update yourself.

[Jason Snell]

Ironically, if you've got NAS Martin, you need to bring it in to get the software update to do this.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah, of course they don't want to break anything but in fact I.

[Jason Snell]

Think those, I think the three Korean brands that got announced, I think that that's a great example where they have really some of those, the Hyundai Ionics and all that. The screens, the screens look awesome but if you've ever been in one, the ui, it's not very good. Right. It's just not very good. So letting iPhone users just kind of like get a super upgrade of their their car because they're an iPhone user. That's good for everybody. So I think that, you know, some automakers will jump at the chance to work with Apple on this, the press release.

[Leo Laporte]

A design unique to each automaker.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that's key. That's the key, right, Is that, is that a lot of people assume three years ago that Apple just was going to walk in and, and like steal everybody's interfaces away. And I think Apple discovered there's no way they're going to be allowed to do that. So instead, like the Aston Martin, it's got like a little Aston Martin logo on it and all of that and then a bunch of themes, some of which are very traditional and some of which are very digital forward. And that's interesting and like, but Aston Martin feels good about it. And I think that's the message to all these other carmakers is this is Apple. You get to work with Apple on a thing that makes your product better. Not that Apple wants to come in and steal your product from you.

[Leo Laporte]

And us and Canada right now, it'll expand globally in the next year. You have to have an iPhone 12 or later running iOS 18, 5 or later, which is kind of surprising to me. Like it needs an iPhone still to do this.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Well, that's where all the computing goes. I think that Apple really wanted someone like Aston Martin to kind of show the high end version. Like, hey, we're doing this too. Not just with some, some of the Korean, more even Aston Martin even let us do it. But the, but James Bond car. You know, I think a lot of people, there's a lot of iPhone users out there that when it's not available anywhere, only available in one car, that's not going to make a big deal. You know, they've got a bunch of other choices. But if it starts getting available in let's say 10% or 15 or 20% of the cars, you could. There's a certain group of iPhone users that would definitely look at that first. Like I would prefer because I mean, because most of the interfaces for these cars is junk, as Jason said. I mean they're just horrible. I rent a lot of cars, so I see a lot of interfaces. None of them look as good as the Apple interface. And usually all I want to do is just get rid of it and replace it with my iPhone anyway. And when I can't do that, I usually just suction cup something to the front of their little screen and put my iPad up and call it a day. And so the thing is, is that I think that. I think that there's enough iPhone users out there that for these companies, you always have to remember these companies are fighting over 1 or 2% of the market if it moves. You know that. I think I've told the story before, but Dodge, when they made their big redesign, there was a solid 40 to 50% of the people who said they would never touch that design were the ones with the big open lights or whatever. And someone came back to the CEO and said, well, I guess we're not going to make it, because only 15% said they had to have it. And he said, our market is 7%. We'll absolutely do it. And so the thing is that when these car companies are trying to do something new, if they decide their competitive advantage is not going to be their interface, their competitive advantage is cost. Their competitive advantage is some other part of the design. Why bother. Like, why bother having that, you know, let Apple do that. They're really good at it.

[Jason Snell]

And there's a comfort factor, too, where, like, you know, Hyundai is very comfortable in making a big. A dashboard full of a big, wide, beautiful screen. Right? Because that's a hardware installation and they're very comfortable with it. And they know they need to do a base level of software in order to drive those screens and in order to do basic functionality.

[Andy Ihnatko]

But.

[Jason Snell]

But, like, do they have an enormous pride in investing anything beyond that? Probably not. But for a company like that, getting Apple as a partner is actually even bigger because they. Since they made the investment in all those screens, all those screens now all get an upgrade by using the CarPlay interface on top of their interface. So, like, it makes. It makes sense to me. Like, it's not going to make sense for every car maker, but you're absolutely right, Alex. I think over the long haul, you're going to end up with three sets, three choices. You're going to get a car that can't do CarPlay, a car that will do standard CarPlay, and a car that will do CarPlay Ultra. And then you'll decide. And iPhone users will be inclined to choose one of the other two. Right. And a CarPlay Ultra car will be more appealing to an iPhone user because.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And if that moves the needle 1%, that's a huge billions and billions of dollars that are there. And to have Apple do the market marketing for you, because Apple's gonna. For these, especially for these first ones, Apple's going to promote the heck out of them. You know, they're going to be in ads, they're going to be in all kinds of other things. The amount of, of what they're going to receive for being part of that I think is going to be pretty big. I know that for me, you know, in a couple years I'll probably be in the market for a, for a car. I'm going to stretch my car out 130,000 miles. I can go a little while longer. And when I, when I do that, right now, the slate is the thing I'm probably most like, most likely to buy. But if, if I don't buy that, it's going to be some kind of electric car that has the Apple, you know, interface to it, because I'm not gonna, you know, why bother when all things, other things are equal? Because I don't really care about anything else in the car other than it moves and that the interface works.

[Jason Snell]

So yeah, yeah, and, and definitely it's one of those things where I bless some car makers. Some of them really do take pride in their, you know, that they're doing, doing building beautiful, beautiful software with beautiful interfaces. But boy, I, I've driven a lot of recent model cars as rental cars in the last couple of years. And I mean, it's just, it's rough. It's rough and, and CarPlay is not perfect. But you know, if I'm, if I'm them and I've built these beautiful screens that have my mediocre software on it, I'm like, yeah, I'll work with Apple. Sure. Where do I sign up?

[Andy Ihnatko]

Up? I mean, I'm back to running a car every two or three weeks and, and I get, and I, I'm often left with, oh, like, like, it's just it just like this is like, I gotta figure something out. And these, these guys, rental cars though.

[Leo Laporte]

Are not exactly, they're not, they're the worst of the horse.

[Jason Snell]

Well, they're not, they're not as Martins. But I mean, I, I, I got a, I got a Hyundai with 50 miles on it and it's a brand new 2023, 2024 Hyundai. And it's got their whole like, screen interface up and it's beautiful screens and the interface is, is, you know, functional. It's functional.

[Leo Laporte]

They should talk to former enterprise design lab leader, product lead at Apple, Richard Doss. Richard has just the wildest story on his blog about Vibe Coding A ChatGPT app for the Apple Watch. Thank you, Andy, for bringing this along. Oops. He says, I accidentally Vibe coded a chat GPT client for my Apple Watch. It was this, this easy. He just, he put before going to bed, I just typed this in the Claude so I could revisit it in the morning. How feasible is it to make an Apple Watch app that allows a user to ask a question in ChatGPT using the OpenAI API? I want to start with just a single conversation so that every time the Watch is used, it's just depending to the same thread, but optionally, maybe down the line, corporate, a way for the user to save a list of conversations and choose between them. For now, a single red thread would be sufficient. He didn't expect that Claude would come back with code. Claude didn't just answer my question, responded with what looked suspiciously like working code. I would be a fool if I didn't at least try to compile it. So he generated a new XCODE project, opened the OpenAI dashboard, generated an API key, plugged it in, then hit build and run. And to my surprise, I was staring at a working ChatGPT client running on my Apple Watch.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, wow. It's a good story because we've seen a lot of stories from people who are not necessarily experienced coders who's like, oh, wow, I vibe coded this incredible stopwatch apps. He actually is ex Apple. He used to work. He used to be, I think, a project.

[Leo Laporte]

An AI guy.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

UI guy, rather.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yes, yeah. Enterprise. Apple's Enterprise Design Lab, which is where he used to coach companies on how to build internal apps. So he's very, very familiar with the entire process. He did say it's worth a read because it does explain. Well, it's not as though you magically get this completely working app, but he understands the entire stack of what you need to do when you're writing an app. Not just, oh, look, I got something that compiles and functions, but I need to have a philosophy.

[Leo Laporte]

I need.

[Alex Lindsay]

I need to have a flow to it, I need to have structure to it. And it's a good field guide to what the AI was able to help him with and what he still had to have full control of. But, yeah, it's still like it never gets old. The idea of, well, I didn't intend to have a working Apple Watch app.

[Leo Laporte]

But I just wanted to go to bed.

[Alex Lindsay]

Exactly. I knew if I clicked seven buttons, I could find out if this thing actually worked on my watch or.

[Jason Snell]

Or not.

[Alex Lindsay]

So I did.

[Leo Laporte]

It's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing story. I guess I have to end. I don't want to end with this, but I have to end with the sad news that just broke during the show that George went as past Norm, of course, from Cheers, very sad to say, dead at the age of 76. And of course as I read these obituaries, as I get older and closer to that age, I start to think.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, oh boy, it's a dog eat dog world. And I'm wearing milk bone underwear.

[Leo Laporte]

A classic. A classic. All right, one more break and then if you would prepare your picks of the week. You're watching Mac Break weekly. And if you're a member of the club, you don't have to listen to this. Join the club because you're already a member and you're probably getting an ad free version of the show. So we just cut that all out, out. But if you're not a member, can I please beg of you? It's looking more and more like we are going to raise the price. It's been four years, it's getting more expensive to run the operation, et cetera, et cetera, ad revenues going down. So I think a slight price increase is in the cards. But I want to promise you this, if you are a member, you'll be grandfathered in forever at the old price. So now is a good time to join. Don't say I didn't warn you. Twit TV. 7 bucks a month, $84 a year ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the club Twit Discord, which just by itself is a great place to hang out with people like minded, people like, like you. But we do a lot of stuff in the club. For instance, all of the keynotes now, including the WWDC keynote will be club only. There's a Twit plus feed where you can listen to those after the fact or you can watch live in the club Twit Discord. There are special events. We had a great Stacy's book club and now we're voting on the next book in the book club. I'm going to be hanging out with Dick D. Bartolo later this week, May 23, just a few days away. We're going to celebrate the GizWiz's 2000th episode and I'm going to drag out the old jingles. That'll be a lot of fun. Again, club members only. The AI User group is the first, first day Friday of every month. That's June 6th. That was really fun last week. Anthony showed us how he makes some really cool, cool little interstitial videos for the shows. Our keynote WWDC keynote's June 9th. There's a lot photo time with Chris Marquardt. June 13th. I hung out with Micah in his crafting corner last week and it was so much fun. I'm looking forward to the next one next month. Just a lot of reasons to join the club, but the big reason is it's keeping us on the air. 25% of our income now comes from club members. We really appreciate it and we would like you all to be members. TWiT TV Club TWiT. Someday. My dream to have a network that's just completely supported by listeners. Wouldn't that be cool? Oh, grandfathered in is becoming an unfavored term during it to have a racist origin. Oh dear. Okay, well, give me another term and I'll use that instead. I didn't realize.

[Alex Lindsay]

Legacy users or legacy.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Alex Lindsay]

Keeping the price. Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, you get what I'm saying and I apologize if it's offensive. Twit TV Club Twit. You see, I learned stuff from the club all the time. They're very smart. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and safeway now through June 17th. Shop in store or online for your favorite personal care Items and save $5 when you spend $15 a month.

[Jason Snell]

More.

[Leo Laporte]

Stock up on items like Dove Body Wash, Degree Motion Sense Deodorant, Tresemme Hairspray, Dove Shampoo, Dove Bar Soap, Dove Men's Body and face Wash and Dollar Shave Club blades. And save $5 when you spend $15 or more. Hurry in before these deals are gone off REN's June 17 promotions may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details. Time for our picks of the week. Jason Snell, why don't you kick things off?

[Jason Snell]

Sure. I can't believe I have. I haven't done this one before, but I consult mbwpicks.com before every show and make sure that it has been a little while since I promote anything that's not my pick. MBWPicks.com is free. Everybody can go there and find all.

[Leo Laporte]

Our picks thanks to the guy who does it. I've never met him. It's just amazing.

[Jason Snell]

It's awesome. So I don't think I picked this, but I'm going to pick it now. It's called Pushover. There are apps for various platforms, the Mac and the iPhone, but I only use it on the iPhone. And what it Pushover does is it uses the push notification system that's on all Apple devices to push to your phone. In my case, whatever you want. It works with webhooks. There's an email gateway it's super easy to use. All you do is Pay. It's $5 per platform. So I paid for this Service, I paid $5 for the iPhone app. And I can send. It's not unlimited, but it's like a thousand pushes a month, I think, to this thing. And I.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you push? What do you. Okay, I mean, what doesn't have a notification that you. You.

[Jason Snell]

Well, here's. Here's a great example. So, for example, the guy who edits Upgrade my podcast with Mike Hurley, guy named Jim Metzendorf, he puts him. Hi, Jim. He puts our files in a Dropbox folder and then says, here they are, they're ready to be posted. And then I post them. Because my Curly's in London. He's going home to his wife and his baby. It's my job to post them. Well, I have an automation on my Mac that's actually using Hazel that basically sees that those files appear in our shared folder and fires off a webhook URL to Pushover. So wherever I am, if I'm walking the dog, wherever I am, my phone buzzes and says, the upgrade files are ready. Go, go post the show.

[Leo Laporte]

I bet our producers can.

[Jason Snell]

When I have. When I have people email me or people upload their files to Dropbox for podcasts that I host, and Dropbox generates a receipt that basically says, oh, this person used this. This Dropbox link to send you a file. I have Gmail auto forward those to the pushover email address. So I get a note saying, oh, that person uploaded that file. So I know when their files are all there, and then I can move them all along in the process. And more recently, I wrote a little script that runs on my server that when my solar stuff on my roof is. The battery is full and now it's just exporting power to the grid, it sends me a little push notification on my phone that said, we're exporting power to the grid now, which for me is a really great notification. So I can do some laundry, run the dryer, plug in a car, like anything that uses power, because in the middle of the day in the summer, exporting it to the grid earns me nothing. So I'd be better off using that power for literally everything else. Pre chill the house, you know, with the air conditioning, run the dishwasher, literally anything. So. But what I love about it is those are three totally random examples. It's just one of those things where if you're not an app developer, you don't have the ability to, like, send Yourself. A push notification. Push fills that hole. It does it well, it's cheap, it's easy. You know, you can do it with just email. A web hook is literally just, you need software to hit a URL and then that's it. And then it automatically sends you the push notification. So it couldn't, couldn't be easier. It's really not very technical. And there are probably cases where if you, if you know that it exists now, you'll have that moment where you'll think to yourself, boy, I wish this was a push notification. Oh, I can make it a push notification. Even if it's just forwarding an email that meets a few criteria, that's all you need. It's pretty great. So pushover. I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. Jason Snell. My little pick of the week actually came from. Earlier today, Google announced that NotebookLM, which is a very cool tool we've talked about before, it takes information and turns it into a podcast that you can listen to, is now available for iOS as well as Android. So you can install the app, you can give it content, content, add sources from anywhere, and then it will start talking to you. Let's see, I gave it at one point all of the security now podcast transcripts. I wonder if it could generate a security now show it's doing it right now without me or Steve. Anyway, Notebook Link, it's a very cool tool. We're going to interview the people behind it on intelligent machines soon. We've interviewed them in the past, but if you want to try it on iOS now, you can have a little. If you don't have enough podcasts, make some of your own. Andy and Otko Pick of the Week.

[Alex Lindsay]

My pick of the week is one of my favorite AI tools, Notebook lm. I've been using it for a long time.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, you talk about it now.

[Alex Lindsay]

That's good.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that.

[Alex Lindsay]

I'm just going to endorse your pick and because there really is not much I need to add to it that it's already really, really wonderful. It's the sort of thing where once you start using it and once you start. No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. Once you start using it and say, okay, well, every time that I get a new piece of information about this thing I'm studying or this thing I'm working on, or the thing, this thing I want to understand more, I'm going to add it to this notebook. And you have multiple notebooks. The idea of having it on your phone makes this idea even more powerful because I'm always reading Reddit, I'm always reading Google News, I'm always reading feedburner and it's like oh wow, that's a great article or great piece of news on this topic that I'm tracking. Like here is a piece of legislature that's going through about controlling social media. That's going through, that's moving through conversations Congress. Now I can actually just simply whatever I'm reading, just forward it to that particular notebook and it adds to the corpus of knowledge that I can access through NotebookLM so that if like a month and a half later I can ask questions like oh didn't wasn't there some sort of a change that was made to that law that had. That's, that's not going to go anywhere because that's no co sponsors like what's. Which law is more like most likely to be moving forward at this time. And because I've been feeding it nothing but news and updates and PDFs of, of draft legislation for months and months and months, it can now answer questions based on the greatest knowledge. And because also because it's, it's, it's, it's mobile, you can basically say just talk to me for 20 minutes about this subject and you can interrupt and ask questions about it. You can even do things like, like I'm trying to, I'm like if you're trying to actually learn something, say can you give me like a quiz on this part of history, like the Victorian area era, but like art and how sexism affected like the advanced art. Just give me like a 10 question quiz about that sort of stuff and oh that's cool.

[Leo Laporte]

It'll give you a quiz while you're.

[Alex Lindsay]

On your bus, like be going over the stuff that you did. Anyway, amazing tool with or without the mobile app. The fact you have the mobile app means that whatever you happen to be reading while you're waiting at the gate for your plane to board is now things you can be adding to your notebooks and interacting with with so really, really really great stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Love it if you I. You can use it for free but I think you can also if you have a. I have a Google AI subscription so yeah, 20 bucks a month. I suspect that gives you just more chances to use it. Let me just play my Security now podcast that I generated. I don't know, we'll see what it sounds like with the, with the Notebook LM team of podcasters. Why are you spinning? You said you were Ready? Oh, I said this may take 10 to 20 seconds. Anyway available. It's a free download. You can use it a certain amount without logging in. I think so.

[Andy Ihnatko]

It's really amazing. I mean, the one on desktop is mind boggling. It's so much. I've thrown books in there and I'm amazed at books that I've read. The podcast sometimes a little corny, but it's pretty corny.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but it's still.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Still, if you want it, it pulls. What's interesting is always that it pulls things out of and quantify. I mean, it like crystallizes something that I just didn't think of in that book.

[Alex Lindsay]

Right.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You know, it just says something that's funny that, that, that is. I was like, oh, I never thought of it that way. And the other thing is I use it a lot to, to interrogate like manuals. I throw manuals into it and just go, how do I do this, how do I do that, how do I do this? And it just immediately, you know. But it is funny. It does a podcast for the manuals, a podcast for the sound devices. Scorpio is a pretty hilarious. This is some really crazy stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the only thing I know about. You're a little too. Here's our Security now podcast.

[Alex Lindsay]

Welcome to the Deep dive. We're here to unpack the latest in security and tech. Pulling out the key insights for you.

[Jason Snell]

The learner.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep, lots to cover today. We've got sources touch on everything from browser security pitfalls to how your car.

[Alex Lindsay]

Might be spying on you and encryption battles, hardware security.

[Leo Laporte]

We don't really need security now anymore. We can.

[Andy Ihnatko]

The guy, the guy that. The guy that. The man's voice sounds so much like someone from NPR and I just can't click.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah. And the fact that they'll be like a catch in their breath and stuff like that, that just really like sells the idea that you're supposed to do a podcast. Like I said, I just sent this out the apple in China today and I can't. I'm. I'm sorry. It's the fact that I'm looking at this saying, you know what? 400 pages, that's only like 200 double page spreads. How long would it take for me to simply photograph each double page spread and put it in notebook lm and so that after I finish reading it, I can ask questions like, oh, wasn't there a section in which like there was a car chase with like, with organized crime in Toledo? Like, oh, there wasn't anything like that. There was a time when Tim lost his luggage on a trip. Oh, yeah? What page was that on? Oh, that was a. Page 303. Okay.

[Andy Ihnatko]

My biggest. My biggest temptation to wanting to crack open ebooks is specifically just to put it. I mean, I don't know, I'm happy to pay for them. I just want to put them into lm.

[Alex Lindsay]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andy Ihnatko]

You know, like you're just kind of like.

[Alex Lindsay]

I get a corpus of knowledge you can then interrogate with questions where it's not. It's not, it's not. It's. The. The problem with chatbots is that you can ask it a question and it might be getting its information from God knows where it might be God knows how old. Barras, if you have a chatbot that says, here is the only sources of information you should ever consider when I ask you questions about this particular subject and this particular app and even so, Notebook. Alan, one of the things I like about Google's overall approach to AI is that it's not. Trust me, bro, it's not we will do your homework for you. It's that we will help you find the information in this book that you gave us and we will cite our sources when you ask us questions. Because this is an aid to you doing this manually, not us doing your homework for you.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. I think that's why I'm likening it to Khan Academy more than anything else. It's a tool, it's a way to learn. And I think we have some amazing new ways to learn now thanks to the.

[Alex Lindsay]

They've been consistent about that since day one, since they started talking about AI at Google. I o. I like that about them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. All right, your turn, Mr. Alex Lindsay, pick of the week.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I was excited about it and then I was afraid that I'd be disappointed and then I wasn't. Murderbot is so good.

[Leo Laporte]

It's here. So exciting.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Are you enjoying it, Jason?

[Jason Snell]

Love it. It's really good. It is in the spirit of the original written work, which doesn't matter.

[Leo Laporte]

That was the question.

[Andy Ihnatko]

I don't like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because the original work was so beloved, right?

[Jason Snell]

No, but it's in that spirit.

[Leo Laporte]

Skarsgrd is maybe not, from my point of view, the best casting for that character.

[Jason Snell]

He's good at quirky. I mean, everybody's head cast that charact, which is very. It's non gendered. It's an it. Its pronouns are it. It's.

[Leo Laporte]

He's a robot, a service robot, and.

[Jason Snell]

They hired a man to play the part. But it is but he does really, the quirky aspect of that character very well. And thank you for mentioning it, Alex. The other thing I would say about it is if you're looking at that title and are like, I don't know, it's like, like it's, it's. It's a comedy. It's a comedy. There's science fiction action. It's set in a science fiction world, but it's also funny. It's really funny. That's kind of the point.

[Andy Ihnatko]

So, yeah, sarcastic. If you're an introvert. It's everything that goes on in your head.

[Jason Snell]

Yes. Like eye contact. Do I have how long he gets the. It gets ordered to make eye contact in episode two. And it's like, could I just dissolve in acid instead?

[Leo Laporte]

I haven't seen it yet. I can't. I can't wait to see it.

[Andy Ihnatko]

We won't say anything else. I don't want to ruin any videos. It's remarkably, by the way, snackable. It's much shorter. Apple's experimenting, I guess, on shorter content.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not an hour.

[Jason Snell]

No, it's half hour. Like 20, 25 minutes. Yeah, it's more like. I'd say the closest analog might be something like Star Trek lower decks, which is animated. And this is live action. But it's like that in that there. It's sci fi. There's sci fi stuff in there. But it's also meant to be funny. And they're all in that kind of half hour format, not the hour long.

[Andy Ihnatko]

And if. And if they gave me the whole season, I probably would have sat down on Saturday and watched it.

[Jason Snell]

Watched it all.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah, it was so fast. It felt like it was. It was short, but it just felt like it just evaporated.

[Jason Snell]

It was really, really good.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. In the high tech future of rogue security, robot gains free will. Yeah. Murderbot, new on Apple TV plus. All right, that's it for security now. No, that's coming up next. That's it for Mac Break Weekly. We thank you all for being here. Sorry about the lateness of the hour, but we're so glad you could watch. If you're watching On Demand, of course it's exactly when you want it to be. That's the reason to subscribe and your favorite podcast client to Mac Break Weekly. Andy. And Otko has nothing to plug yet.

[Alex Lindsay]

But I have daily deadlines, so he's working the stress lines on my face. Says, hey, Andy's publishing every day.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I can't wait. I think you're gonna be Amazed at this.

[Alex Lindsay]

I hope, I hope you're enjoying what I've been posting so far. It's as, as I keep wrestling with like, oh, if I want to, if I want to accept payments. What. What's wrong with my ID that I'm providing with is okay, fine, I'll give you another. It's like, okay, I guess that's another week of content. All the people will.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

What a.

[Leo Laporte]

What a world we live in. Not as easy as it should be. We'll go luck I H N a T K o Keep that, you know, in, in the back. Maybe use maybe just a little notification in the background that could just pop up when the site comes out. Something like that. That would be kind of cool. Maybe we could make Andy to, to write something for Pushover Vibe. Code it Vibe coded. Andy put it on my watch. That's Jason.

[Alex Lindsay]

I'll add it to my free time.

[Leo Laporte]

Six colors dot com. All six of them. Them Fantastic, fantastic site. Lots of great shows, including Upgrade, where you go on a California CarPlay road trip.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, we talk a lot about that. CarPlay Ultra stuff. Yeah. Interesting, interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

And the new home of Glenn Fleischman's help and how to. I think that's great too. Congratulations on scoring, Glenn. Thank you. Really, really pleased about that. You make a dead man cry. He's very funny. He is. He is that, that funny.

[Jason Snell]

He's a character.

[Leo Laporte]

He's a character. 6colors.com thank you, Jason.

[Jason Snell]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Alex Lindsay Officehours Global Q& A every morning of the week.

[Andy Ihnatko]

Every morning. So we're Q and A. There's, there's no, no change to the Q and A. We Every morning at 7am we get up on Pacific Standard Time and we, we answer questions. They're always, they're always good. Like, we've now answered like almost 60,000 questions. And, and they just, you're always like, this is going to be the day. And we get up there and It'll be like 7am and there'll be like four questions in there. And, and we're like, oh, this is gonna be a really short show. We send some back at the end. And so, so we, we, we have some great conversations there. Also on, on Gray Matter, we had Paul Laberator who is a, a rock and roll journalist here from Marin who kind of really grew up in the whole rock and roll world. And so it's a fun, fun conversation. So that, but that's Gray Matter show.

[Leo Laporte]

Graymatter show. Paul Liberatore. I look like a rock and roller I am a rock and roller. Awesome. Thank you, Alex. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern. Eastern, 1800 UTC. Except for today. But that. But we'll be back on schedule next week. Don't forget June 9, WWDC. If you're a club member, you can watch that in our Club Twit Discord. We'll talk about it the following day, June 10th. And I guess all I can say now is, well, it's time to get back to work because break time is over. We'll see you next week. 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.

[Leo Laporte]

Twit, you can watch the video version.

[Jason Snell]

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 of you gotta check out Hands On Tech. And I can't wait to get your question.