MacBreak Weekly 977: A Slab of Ham on a Box

Summary

MacBreak Weekly 977: A Slab of Ham on a Box – Detailed Summary

Release Date: June 18, 2025

In the 977th episode of MacBreak Weekly, hosted by Leo Laporte alongside regular panelists Andy Inatko, Alex Lindsey, and Jason Snell from 6colors, the team dives deep into the latest developments following Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The episode primarily focuses on Apple's software advancements, the Vision Pro headset, and innovative immersive media projects.

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1. Reflecting on WWDC: Apple's Software Momentum

The episode kicks off with the hosts sharing their impressions a week after WWDC. Leo Laporte remarks, "I have a theory that Apple software is on a roll" (00:45), indicating a positive trajectory in Apple's software ecosystem. This sentiment is echoed by Jason Snell, who notes significant strides in Apple's operating systems, suggesting that Apple is overcoming previous software limitations.

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2. Vision Pro and VisionOS 26: Advancements and Challenges

A substantial portion of the discussion centers around Apple's Vision Pro headset and the latest VisionOS 26 update. Jason Snell highlights that VisionOS 26 introduces Spatial Personas, enhancing the user experience by rendering more lifelike avatars. He shares, "They are so good. They're capturing the sides of your head in a way that... it's really remarkable how much they look like the people" (14:07). However, the panel also addresses current shortcomings, such as issues with facial hair rendering, where beards can cause the avatars' mouths to appear ghostly or fade away.

Andy Inatko adds insight into the hardware-software synergy, stating, "If you want to do something that's really technical, you're still probably going to end up using the Blackmagic camera" (08:27), emphasizing that while Vision Pro offers impressive capabilities, certain professional applications still require specialized equipment.

The pricing of Vision Pro is a hot topic, with the headset priced at $3,500. Alex Lindsey questions the practicality of this price point for mainstream consumers, "I really have the inability to think about how much content they could..." (21:00), suggesting that Apple needs a substantial library of compelling content to justify the investment.

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3. Canal Plus' Immersive Documentary: A New Era of Apple-Produced Media

Another highlight is the announcement of Canal Plus's collaboration with Apple and MotoGP to produce an immersive documentary about French motorcycle racer Johann Zarco. Filmed entirely with the Blackmagic Ursa camera, this project is touted as the first Apple immersive video production. Leo Laporte quotes the press release, "This new documentary event is the first Apple immersive video production filmed entirely with the new Black Magic Ursa camera" (06:24).

Jason Snell explains the significance, "It's really like they threw a pilot to see how third parties can use the Blackmagic camera with Apple," (10:07), indicating Apple's support for external creators to explore immersive media. The panel anticipates more such collaborations, expecting an influx of high-quality immersive documentaries in the fall.

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4. Enhancements in Developer Tools and AI Integration

The conversation shifts to Apple's improvements in developer tools and AI integration. Jason Snell appreciates Apple's move to make AI models more accessible, stating, "They have a pre-baked version that they worked on with OpenAI... it's very specific and is going to be the best with Swift code and Xcode" (86:33). This openness allows developers to integrate diverse AI models into their applications seamlessly.

Andy Inatko underscores the importance of Apple investing in authoring tools, "Apple needs to get better at generating content for the headset because right now it's not easy," (24:36), suggesting that enhanced developer support is crucial for Vision Pro's ecosystem growth.

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5. iPadOS 26: A Leap Towards Mac-Like Multitasking

iPadOS 26 receives commendation for its revamped multitasking capabilities. Jason Snell explains, "They embarked on a multi-year project to completely rewrite the windowing interface... to bring Mac windowing to the iPad," (60:58). This overhaul allows users to manage multiple windows more efficiently, akin to the macOS experience, enhancing the iPad's productivity potential.

Leo Laporte highlights Apple's strategic shift, "It's about building the best stuff and making it palpable across all devices," (73:36), indicating that Apple is finally aligning the iPad's software with its robust hardware capabilities.

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6. Apple's Software Renaissance: Overcoming Past Limitations

The panel observes a significant turnaround in Apple's software development. Leo Laporte notes, "Apple has made all of this stuff available to app developers," (84:23), celebrating Apple's enhanced collaboration with the developer community. Jason Snell adds, "It's a very clear change from a year ago when they're like, we are working on one model for Xcode... now it's like any model. Bring your own model to Xcode," (86:33), highlighting Apple's shift towards a more open and supportive environment for developers.

Alex Lindsey concurs, emphasizing how these changes promote privacy and ease of integration, "We don't have to say we're sending data to a third party... We're only using and trusting Apple's own on-device stuff," (93:53).

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7. The Future of Apple’s Ecosystem: Vision and Strategy

In concluding remarks, Jason Snell reflects on Apple's long-term strategy, "They're placing a bet on some product they ship, whether it's glasses or a headset or something in between," (28:03), indicating Apple's commitment to evolving its product lineup to maintain market relevance.

Andy Inatko further elaborates, "Apple can do something that's going to take years to develop and have everyone slowly used to it," (73:05), suggesting that Apple's gradual and meticulous approach ensures smoother adoption of new technologies like Vision Pro.

Leo Laporte sums up the episode by acknowledging Apple's significant strides in software and hardware integration, expressing cautious optimism about the company's future endeavors.

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Conclusion

Episode 977 of MacBreak Weekly offers an insightful analysis of Apple's current trajectory, highlighting substantial improvements in software development, ambitious ventures into immersive media with Vision Pro, and enhanced support for developers. The panel remains cautiously optimistic, recognizing both the progress made and the challenges that lie ahead. For listeners keen on understanding the nuances of Apple's evolving ecosystem post-WWDC, this episode provides a comprehensive and engaging overview.

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Notable Quotes:

• Leo Laporte [00:45]: "I have a theory that Apple software is on a roll."

• Jason Snell [14:07]: "They are so good. They're capturing the sides of your head in a way that... it's really remarkable how much they look like the people."

• Alex Lindsey [21:00]: "I really have the inability to think about how much content they could..."

• Jason Snell [10:07]: "It's really like they threw a pilot to see how third parties can use the Blackmagic camera with Apple."

• Jason Snell [73:36]: "It's about building the best stuff and making it palpable across all devices."

• Andy Inatko [24:36]: "Apple needs to get better at generating content for the headset because right now it's not easy."

• Jason Snell [60:58]: "They embarked on a multi-year project to completely rewrite the windowing interface... to bring Mac windowing to the iPad."

• Jason Snell [86:33]: "They have a pre-baked version that they worked on with OpenAI... it's very specific and is going to be the best with Swift code and Xcode."

• Jason Snell [28:03]: "They're placing a bet on some product they ship, whether it's glasses or a headset or something in between."

• Andy Inatko [73:05]: "Apple can do something that's going to take years to develop and have everyone slowly used to it."

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For those who missed the live broadcast, the episode is available on all major podcast platforms and the TWiT website.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Alex and Jason are here. Yeah, it's a week after WWDC and we have thoughts, lots of thoughts. And of course the Apple executives have been going around stimulating those talks. We'll talk about the kind of the hangover of wwdc and I have a theory that Apple software is on a roll. We'll talk about it next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TW IT. This is Mac Break Weekly. Episode 977. Recorded Tuesday, June 17, 2025. A slab of ham on a box. It's time for Mac Break Weekly the show we cover the latest news from Apple. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to our bachelors for this week's episode of Mac Break Weekly. No, it's not the Dating Game. Alex Lindsey is here from office hours that global. Hello Alex.

[Andy Inatko]

Hello. Hello. Good to be here.

[Leo Laporte]

I will use my Bob Eubanks voice though. Also here, andy Inotko from enotko.com hello Andrew.

[Alex Lindsey]

I think a long walk along the beach and then we would rake for clams and then roast the clams at a clam bake on the beach and I'd get you home early and hope for a second date later.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what made me think of it is you and I both watched that Pee Wee Herman documentary. Yes. And early in his career he entered the match game as Pee Wee Herman and won. Got picked. That was pretty unexpected, shall I say? Also here, Jason Snell. Six colors.

[Jason Snell]

Hello. All colors present and accounted for.

[Leo Laporte]

So how was F1? Did you enjoy it?

[Jason Snell]

Didn't go. I went to the Daring Fireball instead. I wanted to support the independent tech media and so I went to the non sanctioned Apple event.

[Leo Laporte]

Good for you. Had I known that was your room.

[Alex Lindsey]

And you saw like a six color X on the door in rough paint.

[Jason Snell]

They variously marked it as optional on.

[Alex Lindsey]

Our.

[Jason Snell]

On our briefing schedule. Optional?

[Leo Laporte]

Optional?

[Jason Snell]

Really?

[Leo Laporte]

Only reason I know is because Mac Stories had a had a piece mention he kind of a humble brag. You know, when I was in the Steve jobs theater watching F1 in those fine leather seats. But we're not going to start with that. No. Ladies and gentlemen. And I should have warned because we have a fill in producer John Ashley's off getting married. Anthony Nielsen. I should have warned him. It's time for the Vision Pro segment. What do you see? What do you know?

[Jason Snell]

It's time to talk to Vision Pro.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody thought that would happen.

[Jason Snell]

I don't know why you're doing this. Up at the top of the show. Leo, what is happening? Are you okay? All right.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm losing my marbles. That's why. No, I just thought I'd. I'd throw you. I'd throw you a bone.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, boy.

[Alex Lindsey]

Every now and then. Every now.

[Leo Laporte]

There'S news. In fact, you've been embargoed, Mr. Snell, for two freaking weeks.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, there's. There's news, there's. I assume that you spent most of the time last week Talking about Vision OS 26 and all of the amazing features.

[Leo Laporte]

It was such a hot topic.

[Jason Snell]

No, because I do think that that is.

[Leo Laporte]

How do you scroll with your eyes? Can you explain?

[Jason Snell]

I have not yet successfully scrolled with my eyes. I don't know how that works. I've seen the alert that says, you want to do that scroll with your eyes, but I can't comment on that now.

[Leo Laporte]

Anthony did it.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, good. So, like, if you have the, you know, this is your window, you just.

[Alex Lindsey]

Kind of, like, look towards the bottom.

[Jason Snell]

Of the edge and then the whole.

[Andy Inatko]

Thing kind of shifts.

[Leo Laporte]

So if you look at the top, it'll go the other way.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, but it's kind of weird because, like, you have to look at the edge and you can't really, like, scan.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you're reading and all of a sudden, in order to go down, it's weird. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

So the.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, Jason was on Twitter on Sunday and turned it into an Apple gabfest.

[Jason Snell]

I did not. We. I mean, I watched in hor. As we added a whole second segment about Apple stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

We spent an hour talking about the.

[Jason Snell]

I blame the former editor in chief of PC world, Harry McCracken, for that one.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But we turned out everybody on the panel had been at wwdc.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it was. I mean, yeah, you had. It's not just. It's like you had Jason Heiner from cd, Ned and Harry's from Fast Company, and used to be the editor of PC World. So it was not. It was not Mac guys, it was not Apple guys dragging you to wwdc. But it was. It was sort of the big news of the week. All right, so here's the thing. And this is a lead in for Alex. Alex's excitement, although he hasn't seen it, but I got to see. So Canal plus, which is a media company in France, they made an announcement last week that they are working on a documentary about French motorcycle racer Johann Zarco at the French Grand Prix, if you click through on that. I mean we're showing my link to my story. But they've got a whole, like, is.

[Leo Laporte]

There a whole thing here?

[Jason Snell]

There's a whole press release. There's not a lot about this that Canalus announced a lot of things. They announced it this week, but it is. They did a bunch of stuff. So one of the big things is they may. They're making this documentary. They released a trailer. It is what they call the first Apple immersive video production filmed entirely with the new Black Magic. Ursa.

[Leo Laporte]

You said our secret word.

[Jason Snell]

So. So Alex, I can tell you it looks. It looked really good. A lot of motorcycle footage. A lot of you are standing at the track, you are looking out the window, you are down in the pit. It's pretty much. I mean it looked great. It looked like an Apple immersive experience to begin with. But I just, I feel like this is our. We've been talking for a while now about like, oh, I don't know, are they out there or what's. What's going to happen now? And it turns out that an early one apparently got to Canal plus because they have shot this documentary at the French Grand Prix. So a lot of motorcycle immersive motorcycle racing coming this fall. But they say it's a complete immersive documentary. I assume not a 10 minute long doc, but who knows what it is. But anyway, so there's proof of light.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's Produced in collaboration VEC Le Pome, Apple and MotoGP. A compilation organized by Donna. This new documentary event is the first Apple immersive video production filmed entirely with the new blackmagic Cursa camera. Impressive.

[Andy Inatko]

I'm excited about the filmed entirely part, you know, because I Entirely, entirely.

[Jason Snell]

When I see like that was a message to Bono.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah. And I see full length now I go now I kind of feel like now I need a little sticker on all of them that say 100%, you know, immersive. Yeah, 100.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you need to Canal pre location to do this or.

[Jason Snell]

No, it's unclear how they're going to distribute it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a, it's a. It's a feature for its application. The Canal Plus.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

So it may be that you just go to the App Store when they release this and download the Canopolis app and, and get it there. And I don't know if you're going to buy it or if they're going to do the thing where they just have everybody who's got a vision pro just gets to see it.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's a promotion for this new app. Is the, is the whole thing right?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, we'll see.

[Andy Inatko]

But anyway, that's the idea and I think that the. I think we're going to see a lot more. I haven't seen this yet, but from what you're talking about here, I think that you're going to now these kinds of experiences, like you can go there. And I do think that the immersive is going to make a lot of sense for documentaries and for non motorcycles. Yeah, well. But for non narrative as well. Just feeling like you're somewhere, you know, like I'm going to take you somewhere. And, and, and I think it's going to be. It's going to be fairly effective. But again, it was. It's been an art project. Every time we've done this for the last 20 years, it's been, you know, cobbling things together. Having a camera that you push the button and it records and having a back end that can publish to the headset is going to. Is going to make a lot more available.

[Leo Laporte]

You do not want to handheld the Ursa, or do you?

[Andy Inatko]

You can. I wouldn't necessarily do handheld. I probably. You probably could put it on. Yeah. In general, in general, moving a lot. They're going to show some moving. You need to have a stable. Something stable right in the middle of the frame, typically to keep your width.

[Leo Laporte]

So if a race, if a motorcycle's racing by you, you wouldn't pan with the Ursa to fall?

[Andy Inatko]

No, typically you'd let someone experience them. They'd watch it with their head, you know, they wouldn't necessarily.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's good. I like.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, so. So that's what you're.

[Jason Snell]

You're got that wide field of view and there's definitely moments in the trailer where, where you get that wide field of view where there you. You have to watch. It's like you're standing there, right? You can see the motorcycles coming and going and you're watching them as they go around. It's cut to another, another viewpoint. But you're not, you know that I think that that is a best practice for this sort of thing is in 2D regular on a screen, like it's doing the panning for you. But in immersive, you should be looking around. It's your job.

[Andy Inatko]

And that's part of what makes the filmmaking so much different. Why it's hard oftentimes to work with traditional filmmakers because they have this like, I want you to be looking right here. Right now. And you're like, well, you want to experience this thing and then experience that thing. And it's more of a play but broken up into little bits and pieces. And so. So I think that it's going to be. I think this will be really interesting, I think, but the number of cameras out there will start very small. There's one here and one there. But I think that once the tooling is done, the big advantage of having someone like blackmagic build it is once the tooling's done, they can produce a lot of them. And I think that even though the market is relatively small, it can be big enough if you have enough, 10,000 people willing to do something, that's enough to pay for a lot of things. Maybe not this whole documentary, but. And I think I'm hoping that Apple, you know, the problem really is that Apple tends not to underwrite other people building stuff for them, you know, and so. And that's a. It's a huge clamp on what can be done.

[Jason Snell]

Right. This feels very much like a test case still. I mean, the training wheels aren't off, but it seems like as a pilot of here's how a third party can use the blackmagic camera, Apple, because Apple is listed as a co producer here. Apple and Black Magic have gone to a media partner, Canal plus, and said, let's make a thing using, presumably using either your production team or a doc team that you're comfortable with. And we have best practices and they've got the cameras and we'll do it. So it's really like. It was probably a pilot of like, what happens when one of these things ships? And we'll give them advice and we'll use it. But it still, it feels to me like a step along the way to having the ability to do immersive content, just be out in the world instead of it being something that if, if it's not, you know, baked in by Apple, it doesn't exist.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and more importantly, there hasn't been a good Moto GP film, according to Burke, since the Doctor, the Tornado and the Kentucky.

[Jason Snell]

I will tell. I know nothing about this. I had, I assumed that it was going to be about car racing and I saw it was motorcycles. And my response is exactly what you'd expect, which is, oh, motorcycles, two wheels. Okay, I don't, I don't know. But the fact is I don't care about the, I don't care about the, the, the bull rider at the rodeo either. But that was a really interesting immersive dock or the, or the people climbing. Free climbing, you know. Right. It's not about, it's not about deeply caring about a sport. It's all. It's more about, like, why do people find this interesting? What is the spectacle? That's what I love about docs. Actually, one of my favorite things about documentaries is finding something having to be about people who are deeply into something. Because, like, the King of Kong is my favorite example, which is like, you know, like I, my, my interest in Donkey Kong is limited, but I love the idea that people are obsessed with it. Yeah. And that passion is so amazing. So when I saw, I was like, okay, sure. Motorcycle Grand Prix is going to be spectacle. It's going to be. There's going to be human drama. Like, I get it. And in the trailer, like, it's a hell of a trailer. I will watch the whole thing. Totally.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry. Jaws wanted to jump in. Associated News. Ijustine posted a tweet about the new spatial Personas.

[Jason Snell]

Neo. They're so good. They're so good.

[Leo Laporte]

They're so much better, aren't they?

[Andy Inatko]

They are the beautiful rainbows.

[Leo Laporte]

And she got Jaws to respond.

[Jason Snell]

Here's Jaws, Greg.

[Leo Laporte]

Jaws.

[Jason Snell]

They're so good. Oh, my goodness is right.

[Alex Lindsey]

Your Persona looks absolutely fantastic. He's gesturing like he's Italian, not a Jaws.

[Jason Snell]

We have.

[Andy Inatko]

What an amazing.

[Jason Snell]

He's showing off the hand gestures.

[Leo Laporte]

The amazing disappearing hand.

[Jason Snell]

I did a Persona chat with, with my friend Casey List this morning and I, I had to remind myself that it wasn't a regular straight based on.

[Leo Laporte]

That's. That's a big.

[Jason Snell]

They are that good. And the trajectory here, which is kind of one of my points about this stuff, is like, look, we all know it's $3,500. Most people are never going to buy one. They shouldn't buy one. This. The reason this stuff has to exist is because Apple has a plan to gradually build more affordable devices over the course of a decade. Right. But you got to keep pushing the ball forward. When Personas was debuted, they were creepy and dead eyed and I was repulsed by them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And then they did Spatial Personas. They upgraded the Personas and they put them in. In 3D space instead of in a box in a 2D box. And they were good. So it was like, yeah, you did it. All right. Good, good. Check, check the box. But no envision OS 26. They're like, forget it. Throw it away. Those are bad. We're going to. We're doing entirely new ones. And they're so much better. They Are they capture the sides of your head in a way that the others. It was sort of like a really. A fairly convincing front face, but it was almost like stacked on a. On a mannequin head or something. And now you can actually get the kind of sides. And it is. I mean, all I can say is you showed the clip there, but, like, they look like the people now. It's really remarkable how much they look like the people. So good job on whoever straight away.

[Leo Laporte]

Because there's nothing new in the hardware to allow this.

[Jason Snell]

I think they struggle with the software. I mean, Mark Gurman at one point was reporting that they were really struggling to get it to ship at all. And. And how far we've come with the same hardware. Right, right.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. And to be fair, the only. I've seen so many videos of people just basically so excited at how good it is. We've seen so many examples like Jaws and like. Like Justine, about how good it is. The only thing that I've seen in video so far that still stumbles on is beards. Like the. A mouth will, like, just disappear and fade away and ghost.

[Jason Snell]

Yes.

[Alex Lindsey]

Depending on the facial hair.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. In fact, I. My friend Mike Hurley wrote a piece about this called Spoiler. The beard is still a problem. And the issue is not the rendering, because the rendering is good. The problem is that if you have a beard, something about the algorithm fails to register that your mouth is open. So you talk sort of like it's very. I have no mouth and I must scream. And they gotta. They gotta fix that. But the Persona itself is so much better than it was. So kudos to them for getting one of the best features, honestly, of Vision OS and just kind of tossing it out and doing a better one. Like, just. It really. It's really very good.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think that this is where Apple's going to keep. Is continuing to grow into the headset. The headset has a lot of capacity. It has a lot of overhead to some degree. And in some cases, like video playback, I would say that when it's doing 90 frames a second, 8k per I, it is at its max, you know, of what it can do. And so there are places where that's what it was built for. But I think we're going to see more and more of things growing into what you can actually do in the headset. And I think that if they made the headset lower powered, we would never get there. Like, we would never see what's possible. Yeah, that's the. That's the issue is you everything. The last set of Personas would have been good enough because that's as good as it can do. This one probably. Probably has another step up from here. And I, and I will say, even with the last version, I really felt like with the last version that was out, I've had like one and two hour meetings in. In with folks that are placed in 3D space. And we're sitting there talking and I'm. I get kind of surprised that I'm having this conversation somewhere in the middle. You're just like, I can't. I can't believe I'm just doing this virtually.

[Leo Laporte]

So it does look a little perturbed by his lack of beard definition. I mean, can you play one of the videos so we can see the mouth kind of.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that's the problem is the mouth just doesn't. Yeah, they need. They got to work on it. Like, it. They got. I'm sure there's a fix they can do and I'm sure they're aware of it. But like, you should be able to use this with a beard. You really should not have to like, step, Step one, shave. Step two, Vision Pro is not.

[Leo Laporte]

No Apple executives have beards. I just want to point this out.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

There you go. By the way, weirdly, that's the first time we've ever seen an Apple executive, as far as I know.

[Jason Snell]

I think it's legitimately because the Personas are so good now that they can do it.

[Leo Laporte]

They could do it. They didn't. They. That's. That's an admission. They didn't look at.

[Jason Snell]

It just looks like Jaws. It doesn't look like a weird puppet of Jaws. It looks Jaws. And that's. That's the difference. Yeah. I did a. I did a brief, I got a briefing, I did a demo. Is why I wrote about it on six colors is that I got to experience the. Not just a feature that's not in the beta yet, which is the Jupiter environment, which is interesting mostly because they added UI to environments so you can affect sort of choose what they look like, which they didn't have before. It was sort of just a. A stable kind of immersive environment that you could go in the side of your head. It's so realistic. The old. It's not like a slab of ham on a, on a box, which is what it used to be.

[Leo Laporte]

It really is a big improvement. That's an.

[Jason Snell]

It is vastly better. But like, they did the thing where there were two rooms. I was in one room. Talking to them and using the Vision Pro. And we used the little thing where you can again, this is one of those table stakes features in the long run, which is if we both have Vision Pros on and we're in the same room, we should probably see the same things, right? And they've added that. And to go along with that, that suggests a level of geographic understanding. You understand what room you're in and you do a share play and the other person understands you're in the same room, seeing the same object in the same space. Well, the next thing they do is they take me out of that room. It's like, okay, where are we going? There's a room next to it.

[Alex Lindsey]

Never let them take you to a second location.

[Jason Snell]

I know, I was thinking it, never go with a hippie to a second location. And I step in the door and all of a sudden, boop, boop, boop, boop boop. Windows and widgets pop up all over in that space because they preset it. Because that's one of the other features of Vision OS 26 that is also again, kind of like a long term AR table stakes, which is if you're, you know, want to leave if like, okay, so Sandwich.

[Leo Laporte]

I remember, I remember though, when you first got it, you lost an app in your garage.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that's true. It's like I left Safari in the other room. But that, that was only when you were using it and, but, and it was. Sessions would forget where. And then, and then the new feature is that through reboots, it's all persistent and now you can actually lock items in place and say that stay, stay here. And you can, by the way, you don't actually lose it. If you open Safari, you can still see it in a different room. The idea though is when you go back into that room, it'll be back exactly where you left it.

[Leo Laporte]

Which is funny. Microsoft has a Azure location facility that does that and they showed it off in their Minecraft apps like four years ago where you would build something and if you went back to that area as you were walking around, it would still be there.

[Jason Snell]

It is. I mean geographic persistence is a thing you need to have. You're going to do AR down the road. So I'll give you an example. Sandwich has this really funny app called Television where you can put place various 3D television Television objects in space and then watch video on them. Well, that app, and there's another great one called Windora, which is basically like a virtual window that you can put a picture in and set it into a wall and then it's like there's a window there, but then you take it off and you come back a couple days later and it restarts and they're gone. Because they're not persistent. With Vision OS 26, if you put any app that can generate a physical, a virtual physical object in a space somewhere, you basically know that when you come back it'll be, it'll still be there. Which is like you have to, if you're going to advance this platform, stuff like that has to be the case. So it's just, I wasn't very encouraged that there's no S26 there. They keep rolling the ball forward because obviously this is a long term project for them, for it to be anything that is broadly appealing and they're still doing the work. This does not feel like an abandoned platform and it better not because you know, the only reason for it to exist is the future.

[Alex Lindsey]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna stand corrected on the Vision Pro, they really did stick with it. And it's presumably, I mean, that's an M1 in there. 2 2. So presumably in years to come there will be successors that will have more power, more capability. I'm sure they have those in the labs right now, presumably.

[Jason Snell]

And the most important things right is cheaper and lighter. I mean, that's obviously, obviously if it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Super capable, maybe it's worth 3,500 bucks. You pay 3,500 bucks for a high end MacBook?

[Andy Inatko]

I mean, I still look at that in today's dollars. The Apple IIe that I got when I was 12 was $6,000.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Andy Inatko]

So it's not true. It can't be.

[Jason Snell]

But for that you need content and use cases and that's what they're still struggling with. Is right. I agree that $3,500 seems ridiculous, but if you could watch a bunch of NBA games courtside or a bunch of Broadway shows or like there are lots of different kind of like very specific applications that if you can get those on that device, even at 3,500, they'll sell some and at 2,000 they'll sell a lot more. But it's hard. Not a lot of now.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah, it really has to be a productivity device at that price point, it can't at less than $1,000 luxury. But that's the. I still, I still think, and, and obviously Alex will have more, more to say about this, but I'm, I still have the ability, have the, have the inability to think about how much content could they what content could they possibly create to make people think that a $2,000 even headset like this was worth it as an entertainment device? I mean, they're nice to have the demos, they're nice to have that extra experience, but there has to be a huge library of tailor made entertainment to justify that expense, which is why it has to be a productivity device at that price point.

[Andy Inatko]

Well, I also think it depends on whether people have, you know, a lot of people they hang out with and whether, you know, it depends on like a lot of things related to that. Because I can tell you that like if I'm watching a movie and my kids and my wife aren't around, I just watch it on the Vision Pro. And the reason I do that is because the resolution is the highest resolution I can find. Whether I'm at a theater or at home, the highest resolution of a film is on the Apple Vision Pro. Like I can see the grain, you know, like, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but Apple has to make a step. I mean, look, you guys are enthusiasts, you spend a lot of money on it, you're all in on it, but they've got to take that step.

[Andy Inatko]

Well, that's the enthusiast. I think there's a couple things. It's all about building the authoring tools for the content that needs to go onto it. And I think that that's what's missing right now. So the camera is part of that problem, but the other part of that is how do you generate virtual environments or experiences and other things in three. And I think that Apple hasn't spent enough time on that. They've got the Reality creator and they've got Reality converter and they, you know, but like for instance, they gave a bunch of money to Blender to the blender. Org and we still don't have a direct USDZ export from it, you know, and that's the kind of stuff that Apple, you know, should be focusing on. Like, hey, we're going to give you a bunch of money, we want an exporter out of it or write it themselves. It's an open source thing like write a plugin to do that, you know, effectively, but it should ship with it, you know, and so, but the key is figuring out how do we make it easier to build content for the platform. And I don't think that Apple's investing enough. And I think this is the same problem I'll always keep coming back to books is that Apple is like, build it and they will come and they need to maybe do a little bit more So I think that having the apps be a little bit more aggressively either supporting other apps, building better partnerships or building their own apps or buying companies and doing it. Apple needs to get better at generating, making it really easy to generate content for the headset because right now it's, it's not easy, you know, to generate content.

[Leo Laporte]

So the club is bombarding you, Jason, with the questions I should have been asking. Tell us about.

[Jason Snell]

I saw. I mean, no, I mean, I already said it. It was a trailer and it was about, you know, you're in the pits, you're, you're following this guy around. It's about this guy who, you know, it's obviously going to be a character study. And he comes back, the PR says, comes back to win the Grand Prix. A spoilers, I guess. Yeah, no kidd, but, you know, motorcycle action.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want to watch a loser.

[Jason Snell]

I don't want to be like Joe Bob Briggs. But it's like motorcycle foo pit foo. Like, there's the stuff. It's a, it's an interactive sports doc. You're going to get all that stuff. I imagine that trailer is.

[Leo Laporte]

Wanted to know if you get, if you see it from.

[Jason Snell]

That would be a very heavy, large camera to put on there. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's some, there's some stuff like following him. We'll. We'll see. But there's a. The Canopolis app is available in the App Store for Visualization Pro. So I would imagine the trailer is there now. I haven't verified that. Okay, I got it. Apple now has the ability, which is really nice for press, to give us things under embargo in advance, which they added this whole like immersive video utility to the App Store. And one of the advantages of that is you can run that on your Mac and then download a file and then play it on your Vision Pro, which is, it's. That's very helpful for those of us who cover this stuff. But I. So I haven't. With WWDC and everything, I haven't gone back to verify if it's in the app yet, but it should be soon. And that's the trailer. And they say that this fall the whole doc is coming out. And the newspeg here is that why are we talking about this instead of, you know, every other thing that they release on Vision Pro? And the answer is it is the first sighting in the, you know, in reality of Alex's much ballyhooed anticipated blackmagic camera that regular companies could get and use to make their own immersive content as opposed to the custom, shall we say Apple solution that has been built.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you have a delivery date Alex, yet for your, for your Ursa Pro?

[Andy Inatko]

No, they didn't.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't send you an email. I don't. You'll get it soon if you have to ask.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know it's, it's still.

[Leo Laporte]

So one day a package is just going to show up at your door and you're going to go, oh, I.

[Andy Inatko]

Think there probably be more discussions in between. But I think that the, but I think that what's going to be interesting is that it's not just the hardware that they have to get working, it is the software. And what Apple is doing is not the same as what Meta is doing with the software. In Meta you have a stereo pair that you're looking at at Apple there is an extrusion based that's building a delta correction between your, the inner axial of the camera and the inner ocular of your eyes. And that is a much more complicated problem then what happens. And it's why the, when done well the Apple footage looks way better than what you see on Meta is partially because of the resolution but partially because of this correction system that is, that can be used, you know. And most of what you're seeing on Apple Vision Pro, if it's not done by Apple, doesn't make that correction. I think the Prima app is the only thing that has made that correction so far that we've seen outside of Apple. So that's the, so those are the things. But getting that to all work and resolve I think is a non trivial problem, you know and I think that.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S so it's, that's what's interesting about this whole thing is it's harder to do what Apple set out to do. Yeah, they weren't able to do it out of the gate.

[Jason Snell]

So this is, this is the reason you ship the Vision Pro even though it's ridiculous, is because it's a developer beta.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

If you wait for the moment that finally you are ready to have a consumer product that everybody can use and then you're like hold on, hold on, we need another three years to learn everything we need to learn. It's like you've missed the moment. Like this is the time to stumble around and figure out what's good and what's bad and what works and what doesn't and get a pipeline going. See the market with people who are thinking about immersive video and all of those things. And like, again, I appreciate them willing to take the punches on this product because look, actually I'm going to draw a parallel to Apple Intelligence. When they rolled out Apple Intelligence, they did it in a way that only Apple rolls out anything, which is full marketing blitz to everybody. And that was a problem, right? They shot those Bella Ramsey Apple Intelligence ads for a feature that they didn't have and that, and that still hasn't shipped and won't ship until next year. And that was a mistake, right? Well, I think they did that with the Vision Pro too. They're like, well, we'll just sell it like an amazing, revolutionary consumer product. And it's like it's not, it is a developer kit. It's a taste of the future, it's fun, but it's not practical in any way. And like that's okay as long as they keep their eye on the idea that they're just kind of iterating and figuring it out. Because they're placing a bet on that some, some product they ship, whether it's glasses or a headset or something in between, in the next dec will be built on a version of Vision os. And you know, I'm not saying that's a guarantee. I mean the, the tech may not advance enough for it to create something people are willing to wear. It may not. But I think they're, they and Metta are placing a bet and Google now are placing a bet that there's probably something there and if there's going to be something there, they want to be there. And, and, and Apple's doing that work now.

[Andy Inatko]

And the advantage they have over Meta, for instance, is the fact that, that I feel like the entire new operating system, all those little buttons and all the changes and everything else that's built for a headset like that is a, that is slowly preparing us for headset operation. All the semi transparent, you know, the glass buttons is all setting up for, they look great on a phone. They look, you know, they're, they're cool. But what they're really useful for is when you're, when you put a headset on. And so this is a multi, you know, Apple can do something that's going to take years to develop and, and have everyone slowly used to it. So when the headset comes up, they don't the amount of friction to use whatever the wider releases happens. But to Jason's point, you have to have a, you know, you had to have a seed, you had to have a number of people and it can't be like 10 people or 20 people in labs. So having 400,000 people who are playing with it and thinking about it and able to talk about it and cross pollinate and there's enough for some people to turn that into a business. And I think that that's going to be. That's, you know, that's where they're. That's all they have to do right now and that's all they've had to do right now. But they got to figure out both. The video part is getting very close by the end of the summer. I think that they'll be very close to having something that's able to churn out video. Live video is the next thing. So being able to have live immersive, which this camera, I don't expect to be able to do, not at full resolution, at full frame rate. So we should. You should be able to see it live. I think they've talked about it being able to. You'll be able to see it live while you're shooting, which is. Is super. If you look at a lot of decisions that I wouldn't agree with necessarily for some of these productions, it's because you can't see it like they shot what they shot. You couldn't see the live out.

[Jason Snell]

See with. With that submarine movie. You could see that the director is standing there. They did some stuff of like, they're literally looking at it in a Vision Pro while they work on it, which is good. I, I will say there was a. Not immersive, but There was a 3D live stream last week. Right. Sandwich did the talk show live again and they learned some lessons. They're going to have. I think it's multiple camera angles this time where you can choose to watch straight on or. Or there. They had a couple other devices. I think there were iPhones left and right. It's not immersive. Right. It's a 3D on a stage kind of thing. But like, I love that they're experimenting with that. The idea of can we stream this stuff live? So everybody's, everybody's tinkering. And that's. This is. This is why I liken it. When I wrote my first review of the Vision Pro, I likened it to when the early days of computers and the Apple II and stuff like that, because that's what it reminds me of is everybody's just playing around with stuff because I mean, the tech is new and it doesn't quite work. Right. And nobody's really there yet, but it's probably going to be something eventually. So let's figure it out in the meantime. And it feels like that's exactly what's happening with a lot of the spatial stuff.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think that the phone has turned out to be more successful than I think even Apple expected with the Spatial stream, you know, spatial capture. And I mean, when you are out there capturing the biggest. For me still the biggest problem with the spatial capture that Apple does is playing it back inside of photos with that blurred. That huge blur around the edges really is a bummer. And it's like. And I know that there's some edge issues that they're trying to hide, you know, probably. But, you know, like for instance, that's one of the reasons you open up the Stream Voodoo app, which is another app that's doing spatial and it takes away this blur and looks fine.

[Leo Laporte]

Like it looks good.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think Sandwich doesn't use the. The blur on the outside. It doesn't and it looks fine.

[Jason Snell]

I hate.

[Andy Inatko]

And so, so I immediately. The problem is, I think a lot of people that don't use it either don't have the Sandwich app or don't have Stream Vudu where you can just open up the stuff from your photo. I mean, I'm not. Does a Sandwich app let you just open anything from your.

[Jason Snell]

Basically, yes.

[Andy Inatko]

From your photo stock. Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

So system.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah. From. From Stream Voodoo. I just go to my, you know, I just open up whatever I've got and I can look at it and it's now got hard edges and it's a much more pleasurable experience. But I think that, so, But I think that what's, what's really cool is, is that you can now take your phone and literally just pick it up and be streaming Spatial. That means that we're starting down that path without having to swallow the whole immersive problem, which is where this. Which is going to take some. Some more. More time, you know, to get well, but all of this stuff is capable of doing it know, I don't. 4k per eye. 360. So not 180 but 360. We were doing 4k per eye. 360 at 60 frames a second in 2017. So this is not new technology. This is simply. It's getting it all working and it's the higher scale, the 8K and the higher frame rate, 90 frames a second, which is what makes everything really, really hard.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there's one thing I could say at least I now know what it looks like when Jason Snell is suddenly snuck up on by the bass player of Metallica.

[Jason Snell]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the look. By the way, those are not the glasses you're wearing today. Is that.

[Jason Snell]

Those are virtual glasses. You don't capture with glasses. You pick your glasses. And those glasses in particular were ones I picked very quickly because I was in the middle of an Apple demo.

[Leo Laporte]

Because you do get to pick the glasses you're wearing.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And they're actually. They added a whole bunch of more Apple or glasses options because they want you to try to match match glasses that you like or that you wear. But in that case, I really just sort of flipped through and clicked on one and generated that because that was generated during my. My demo.

[Leo Laporte]

Got it.

[Alex Lindsey]

Very nice. They're very Gus Fring.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I like it.

[Jason Snell]

I do. Yeah. I mean, because. Because it goes without saying, maybe Mike Hurley needs to shave and then capture and then they can add a beard on. But unfortunately that's not the problem. The problem is the reverse of that. So. But. All right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's your Vision Pro segment. Are you happy?

[Jason Snell]

Thank you, Leo. Vision Pro.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't get used to it.

[Jason Snell]

Done.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, I'm more of a. I'm more of a believer than I was. I mean, we're making progress, which is interesting. That's. That's what Apple had to do to make it something.

[Jason Snell]

And I think thinking of it more as a science experiment.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And not as a thing they're trying to sell you that you don't want.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

Makes it feel a little bit better. Because I think it's really interesting. And no, nobody should buy one. But it's really interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I'm glad you guys have. That's good.

[Alex Lindsey]

To me, it really just illustrates that sometimes your old impressions of Apple and your old rules that absolutely applied in the past don't necessarily apply in 2024, 2025 in Old Apple. They would not have released something unless they figured something out that nobody else has figured out yet in modern Apple. It's fine for them to say, okay, this is just another one of those. But we'll continue to iterate on it. So the next time we hear rumors of a brand new product, I think that appropriately, we're not gonna be expecting. My God, they're gonna fix all the problems that everybody hates about a folding phone or a folding tablet or eyeglasses or whatever. It's just gonna be a very nice piece of hardware that's gonna do some nice things to begin with. Some people will be able to afford it. Some people will not be able to afford it, but they'll continue to iterate.

[Leo Laporte]

Stay tuned because we are gonna talk about a rumor about a brand new product when we come back. When we come back after this word bombshell from our sponsor. Your it's not a pop show. Not even close. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy Inako, Jason Snell and Alex Lindsey. We're glad you're here today. Our show brought to you by Storyblock. You're gonna be glad you got Storyblock. Well, if you know anything about content management systems, you know how painful these legacy CMSs can be. They promise enterprise grade features. What do you get? Slow, clunky systems that need dev support for even the smallest. And when you're trying to move fast, that's a nightmare. That puts the brakes on the whole thing. Well, this is why I want to tell you about StoryBlock. It completely changes it. In fact, once you play with this, you will love it. Unlike those monolithic CMSs, StoryBlock is headless. I am a big fan of the whole notion of headless. Your backend with a strong API becomes your powerhouse, but it's completely decoupled from your front end. So developers you can build in any framework you want, react, Astro Vue, whatever, but you still get this incredible CMS connected to the backend. So for instance, marketers can use an intuitive visual editor to create and update content without filling out dev tickets. Oh, and StoryBlock, I mean if you're gonna put the backend on Storyblock, you'll wanna know this. It scales whether you're a freelancer or part of a global enterprise. They have a global cdn, aws, data centers. It's all over the world, us, Europe, Asia. It's built for performance at scale because this is for you in the enterprise. It's enterprise ready. They got all the features you need. Role based Access control, enterprise SLAs, of course, top tier security, all the stuff Fortune 500s demand. One global e commerce giant switched to StoryBlock and cut content update cycles from weeks to hours. Another major brand empowered marketing to launch campaigns independently, you know, on their own, freeing up devs for bigger projects. So the whole idea of StoryBlock, it has an API first approach, so your content loads fast anywhere in the world. It means better ux, higher engagement, improved SEO. You know, your users will love it and your content creators will love it because with their real time visual editor, well, marketers are going to see exactly what the content will look at like before publishing. No more endless back and forth over minor tweaks Devs love it because they get fewer interruptions. Marketers get more autonomy. That's a win. Win.

[Alex Lindsey]

Ooh.

[Leo Laporte]

And if you're an agency, you're going to love storyblocks. Storyblock offers multi client workspaces, flexible permissions, seamless collaboration tools. You can manage multiple projects without disrupting development workflows. So. So whether you're a startup, an enterprise or an agency juggling multiple clients, StoryBlock gives you the power and flexibility you need. Try it today. Storyblock.com twitTV25 use the code twit25 twit listeners get 20% off for three months on the growth and growth plus plans. That's storyblock.com twitTV 25 in the offer code twit25 for 20% off the first three months on growth and growth plus plans. S t o r y b l o k.com twitTV-25 use the code twit25 storyblock thank you storyblock for your support for Mac. Break Weekly. So what we're in now? Oh, it's empty seat for Alex. We'll wait till he teleports back in. Thank you.

[Andy Inatko]

Sorry about that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's okay. Were you shaving?

[Andy Inatko]

No, no, I should have left it.

[Leo Laporte]

On and you know, I wish.

[Andy Inatko]

I'm, I'm in meetings. I'm in meetings a lot and anytime I'm not active I have a tendency.

[Leo Laporte]

To just like a cough button.

[Andy Inatko]

Just like. Yeah, just, just turn it off.

[Leo Laporte]

An empty chair.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

What we are in is the week after WWDC where it's like kind of of, you know, we saw the high level 30,000 foot picture but now we're getting a little more of the details. For instance, in the developer beta for iOS there is information about an Apple Home Hub smart display. It's in the beta code.

[Jason Snell]

This is what Mark Gurman had been talking about for a while. This is the HomePod with a screen that they have.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it have a robot arm?

[Jason Snell]

No, this is not the one with arm sans. They say it can't really go until they get that new Siri work.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. So the file Name Apple Logo 1088 x Home PNG has a picture. So this is, you know, if you use Home Assistant for instance, or I'm sure otherwise solutions like Hubs, you're probably used to a screen like this, a tablet somewhere on the wall that you might control your home with. A lot of people do that. This is Apple's solution to that.

[Alex Lindsey]

And the simple fact that it integrates so well with all of your apps, all of your systems, all of your other hardware means that again getting back to what we were talking about a moment ago. It doesn't matter if it doesn't have a robotic arm or if it doesn't fix the problem or bring anything new it can be very very good just simply as an Apple vers another one of those things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah well good and Mark's been saying end of this year I guess that's yeah, really.

[Jason Snell]

I mean the question is how, how much does it really fit into needing app intents or needing new Siri? Is it just the app intense stuff Will that ship this fall or will that be next spring? Spring sounds like the hardware is has been in in pretty good shape. So so they may do that then and yeah I mean I've I've had an Echo show I have a Google Home Nest mini whatever they call it now in my kitchen now I neither of those devices are particularly great.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have the A word plus yet the Amazon AI version.

[Jason Snell]

No, I, I actually sent the A word to the cornfield because I was tired of every single interaction I have with it including a By the way let me try to sell you on.

[Leo Laporte]

A service provides Amazon has turned the egg into its fire TV device and.

[Jason Snell]

It'S, it's unacceptable and I just won't do it so I, I got a Google one which is okay but it's really slow and it's not that great and also I have a lot of Apple stuff and it's not that integrated so instead I would love to try a you know, not necessarily ad ridden connected to my stuff device from Apple in my kitchen instead of the Google device. I don't hate the Google device. The Google device is sort of underpowered but okay I, I, I came to hate hate the Echo because it was just I realized that they should be.

[Leo Laporte]

Paying me because Amazon is the poster child. It was in Cory Doctorow's first article about it Oven shit ification. Yep they are now turning their customer base their locked in customer base I might add into into you know, money machines and I don't like it. No I gotta, I, I've been a 25 year subscriber to Odd literally since the year 2000 and they just unilaterally canceled my account yesterday because I was on a light listener plan. They no longer offer instead of handling it in any reasonable way they just canceled my account and now of course I can go back and reinstate it for the same price for half as many books. And I understand, look, maybe they're losing money on the old light listener plan, but that was the most kind of abrupt and unpleasant experience. So I'm dropping Amazon. I want to get out of the Audible ecosystem. Corey's been saying, you know, Audible is kind of totally at the audiobook monopoly at this point, even though there are many other choices. They dominate. Yeah, I'm ready to move on. I downloaded Libro fx, which supports my local independent bookstore. Same cost as the Amazon, but I can download them without copy protection and put them, you know, on my Plex server or whatever.

[Jason Snell]

And you can also check audiobooks out from your local library. And the Libby Libby app has an audiobook player in it and it's great. It does. CarPlay.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, like, it's really great, you know, goodbye Audible. And boy, I would love. I agree with you. Goodbye Echo. So I'm an idiot. I read somewhere, I don't know where, that if you bought a new Echo, you'd automatically get a Word plus. So I bought the new Echo. Did I get a Word Plus?

[Alex Lindsey]

No. I recently actually I had a couple of Echo devices just like in the, in my library and they're a little bit old, but they were still useful. And I finally decided that there was no chance whatsoever that I'm going to ever use these for like their intended purpose. So I took them apart and harvested the speakers from them. Because I'm trying to repair like a Bluetooth speaker, saying that's the best thing to do. It's a two way speaker. I can just simply take these things apart. Yeah, but it's weird though. It might be a more difficult thing to crack than we might imagine. Google, you might think is, well, gosh, they got the Nest speakers, which I think are very workaday, but they're very, very useful. I have a smart speaker with a screen in my bedroom. I've got a smart speaker with a screen in my kitchen. And both of them are very, very useful. But they're not amazing, but they're very, very useful and they're worth the amount of money that I spent on it. However, you'd think that because they've got Gemini, which works very, very well, at least when I'm typing at it inside the Gemini app, you'd think that making that into a conversational AI on these devices would be a slam dunk, but they've been very, very tentative about releasing Gemini and these advanced chatbot features onto these speakers. IO last week, last month. It was amazing because one of the big things were Saying, oh, it's, it's Gemini and everything. Gemini is going to be in Android Auto and Gemini is going to be on the watch and Gemini is going to be on this and nod, nod, nod and the smart speakers and they didn't say anything about it.

[Jason Snell]

So they feel abandoned. They really do feel abandoned.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean I also have a Kindle some leg room here and like you, I retired my Kindle for the Kobo. Not that Rakuten is some small mom and pop operation or anything.

[Jason Snell]

I think we're on a small spunky operation.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it. Yeah. And I just subscribed to Read Wise, which is kind of a replacement for Instapaper in Pocket and I love it. Now it's not free, unfortunately. In fact it's kind of expensive.

[Jason Snell]

But this is where we are though. I feel like this is the final result of a lot of Internet business trends, which is there are kind of a couple models emerging and one of them is the Amazon model, which is what Cory Doctor was. Dr. It really is the point where like they might as well give it to you for free because what it is is an orifice to be used to send you engagement bait and special offers and stuff like that. Or you go, and the fire TV is like that too. Or you go the other way where it's something like Apple is a good example of this where, where it's nicer but you got to spend. Because the reason, I mean the reason that, the reason that Apple TV is expensive and Roku and Amazon are cheap is because Roku and Amazon don't make their money on the money they're charging you for the thing. They make the money on all the revenue that they generate on you later based on advertising to you and all of that. And then, and I'll mention like Google makes a TV streamer that's actually pretty nice and doesn't do that. But, but, but Google is very, very easily distracted and in the home speaker space I feel, I feel like Google is probably not even paying attention. But you end up with, so you end up with these choices which is do you want it unfortunately, do you want it cheap or do you want it good? And if you want a good, you're going to pay through the nose for it. But maybe it'll be good and nice.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a great opportunity for Apple.

[Jason Snell]

There's really for sure.

[Andy Inatko]

I just don't know. I'm, I don't know how interested. I mean I'm a pretty heavy Apple user. We've talked about this in the Past.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought you might be.

[Andy Inatko]

I look at that screen and I go, I don't know what I'd use that for. Like I, like I walk around and I want the control in my pocket.

[Leo Laporte]

Which is where you want to talk to your house. What you really want is, I mean that's why you need the new Siri. You want to say, turn on the lights. You don't want to touch something.

[Alex Lindsey]

Can I, can I just, can I just say that one of the reasons why I like my Nest displays and the AI is in there is that yes, I'm saying, hey, what's the weather going what's the weather like today? And I'm just listening for do I need a coat? Do I not need a coat? Do I need an umbrella? Do I not really need an umbrella? But the thing is the screen is really great for supplemental information for that answer that you'd be annoying me if you're giving me like a 30 second presentation on the weather. But if I want to know more, I glance over and show actually here's how it's going to go hour by hour and here's tomorrow weather too. And Nest is really, really good at figuring out in context of their request. What else can I put on the display that I don't have to say out loud? So there's a lot of opportunity there for that.

[Leo Laporte]

I agree 100%. Yeah.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think that I'm just so, I mean, I guess I just don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Want to touch the display. I want to talk to it.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And then use display as a supplemental.

[Jason Snell]

Information, ambient information or, or like somebody facetimes you when you're in the kitchen and you can just pick up and, and have it use Center Stage.

[Leo Laporte]

I will bring all the Google and Amazon stuff out and put in home kit if, if it, if it just, if they live up to the promise of it, they haven't yet.

[Andy Inatko]

I just think that like for me at this point, like my, my chatgpt is so embedded into like my daily life that I, I look at this and I think this is why Google has to, this is why it's an existential threat for Google and not for Apple is that I'm still on my iPhone. I'm not going anywhere. But I've stopped searching. You know, I've stopped Google searching and I, you know, I, I've stopped calling it ChatGPT. I now call it Janet from the Good Place. So I just, I literally push a button and I go, Janet, hey Janet.

[Alex Lindsey]

Janet, it's getting inside your head. Alex, don't let it inside your head.

[Andy Inatko]

And yesterday the garbage disposal didn't work. And I was like, janet, my discard. My garbage disposal isn't working. What can I do? And she's like, you might want to look underneath. There might be a button to reset it. And I'm like, where is it? It should be right in the middle of the center.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, I love it. Isn't that amazing button.

[Andy Inatko]

It was done. That was going to be $150 of calling somebody because I don't know anything about disposals. And. And. But I was like, I'm going to give it a shot. And. And you. But I, like, I was in a theater. I didn't even say what the brand was. And I'm like, hey, I'm looking. I'm in the. In a projection booth. And I go, I'm looking at a CP950 is the big dial. Does that control the speakers in the theater or in the. Or in the room? And they go, oh, that's the speakers for the.

[Leo Laporte]

I was taking a walk last night, and there were horseshoes on the wires above. Yeah, what the hell is that? So I took a picture, said, hey, what's that? And it told me, that's for. It's to take up the slack at fiber optic. I learned that the neighborhood had fiber optic. And I would have just, in any other in the past, just walked by, gone. Well, there's some weird structure in the wires up over my head.

[Alex Lindsey]

Gemini is good at that, too. I'm cleaning out lots of. I'm going through a lot of house cleaning and trying to figure out which of these six portable Bluetooth keyboards that I acquired is a keeper. And just the ability to simply use Gemini Live and say, how do I pair this keyboard? And we'll just say, oh, well, that looks like a gen 2, blah, blah, blah. Hold down the F key and press one of these three keys at the top. Because it was just befuddling me. And the thing is, Gemini has my loyalty right now. Not that I think that. Oh, my God.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that because you have an Android phone, a Pixel phone, or.

[Alex Lindsey]

It was my default because I was looking at it before just simply as a research thing when it was just like the Llama models. And because I have a Pixel phone, it's really well integrated at a fundamental level.

[Leo Laporte]

Level.

[Alex Lindsey]

But Alex is right that I could be using the icon at the bottom of the screen, could be the ChatGPT app instead of the Gemini app without much difficulty. The thing is, though, they're so close to each other in like the 80% of what they do that if my loyalty is originally to Gemini, I kind of need a reason to try something with OpenAI. And also when I'm doing that thing, I should do like every six months, looking at all of my subscriptions and asking myself, yeah, I know it's only $20 extra to do ChatGPT as well, but I almost never use it. Should I be paying $20 a month? Whereas Gemini will definitely have for that and all the other AI tools that, that Gemini Pro, I forget what they call it, but you know, the subscription version of it adds on. It's like that's a good $20 package every month that earns its keep. And I don't know that Claude or any other one will have that much of a role in my life if I already have something that is again, 80% overlap with everything else.

[Jason Snell]

Else.

[Andy Inatko]

But that's why it's so important.

[Leo Laporte]

Perplexity allows you to choose your model and you can choose Gemini or you can choose chat GPT, 20 bucks a month. Firefox, I think is about to make. And this is really interesting because they get a lot of money from Apple Perplexity, their default search, if that happens. Now, somebody in the discord made a very good point. What's going to happen when we get the insidification of AI? AI?

[Jason Snell]

That AI ain't cheap, boy. Right? Like, I mean, how? And how.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, when it starts doing what the Amazon Echo is doing and saying, oh, by the way.

[Jason Snell]

Or I mean, or you'll have those two paths again, right? Which is we'll just pay for the premium AI and then you won't be bothered. It's like, or Netflix or anything else. Or you can get this one and it's cheap or free, but it's full of ads.

[Alex Lindsey]

There's also, there's also the, the theory that in retail research with researchers that an AI model gets progressively more. We're driving it insane by using it and slowly and slowly and slowly they're adding improvements, more models. But the thing is, the corpus of this model is losing its grip on its mission and its reality little by little with each passion passing year. So there's going to be again, but with this researchers, a couple of researchers theory, there'll be a curve where it's getting better and better and better and then suddenly, suddenly it just completely destabilizes, then falls off the cliff and we have to start again.

[Andy Inatko]

And all I can say is that, that I plan to take full advantage of it until that happens, you know, like. Like I. I was, you know, like.

[Alex Lindsey]

I just make it feel bad about itself.

[Andy Inatko]

No, I'm just like. I'm just like. I'm just gonna keep on. I. I feel like some people are talking about the end of the world and AI And I'm just like, well, I'm gonna enjoy the last five years. I mean, you know, I'm gonna, you know, make sure that I, you know, so, like, I'm just.

[Alex Lindsey]

I, like, you know. ChatGPT. Everybody's figured you out. They know that you're no good and that you're just not good up to the task. That's what I'm. That's not what I'm saying. That's what I'm hearing. And I keep defending you, but, oh, boy, do people really have literal. Literally no faith in you. And those shoes are ugly, too.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let's take a break. When we come back, I want you guys to tell me what the important learnings were from wwdc. There were all the executives went out and did interviews. What. What were, you know, know. What have we now a week later learned. That's the question for you to contemplate. Mr. Jason Snell and I. Anatko and Alex Lenzi. This episode brought to you by Red Canary. When cybersecurity threats hit fast, you need an MDR partner that moves faster. Red Canary delivers 24.7expert MDR support, total visibility and actionable insights. Plus, it helps you detect four times more threats so you can stay ahead without burning out. Red Canary clears the noise and has your back every hour, every incident. Get the backup you deserve. Visit redcanary.com difference to learn more.

[Jason Snell]

Hi, Zoe Saldana.

[Andy Inatko]

Welcome to T Mobile. Here's your new iPhone 16 Pro on us.

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Thanks.

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And here's my old phone to trade in. You don't need a trade in.

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Up to 800 bucks and you still get to keep it.

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There's always a trade in.

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Not right now.

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It's T Mobile.

[Jason Snell]

I feel like I have to give.

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You something in return for karma.

[Jason Snell]

That's okay.

[Alex Lindsey]

I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see.

[Andy Inatko]

Hand sanitizer.

[Alex Lindsey]

It's lavender.

[Jason Snell]

I'm good.

[Leo Laporte]

Seriously.

[Jason Snell]

Let me check this pocket.

[Alex Lindsey]

Oh, mints.

[Leo Laporte]

Really, I'm fine.

[Andy Inatko]

Oh, I have raisins.

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I'm a mom.

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Wait, wait one sec.

[Alex Lindsey]

I've got cupcakes in the car.

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We'll even pay off your phone up.

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To 800 bucks with 24 monthly bill credits.

[Leo Laporte]

New line 100 plus a month on experience beyond Finance Agreement 999.99 and qualifying.

[Andy Inatko]

Ported for well qualified plus tax and ten dollar connection charge.

[Leo Laporte]

Payout via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days credits and balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel CT mobile.com you're watching Mac Break weekly. We stream, by the way, the show live every Tuesday 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC. Of course, if you're already in Club Twit, you can watch in the Discord and chat with us in the Discord. But it is open to the public. Not the Discord, but we've got YouTube and we follow the chat there. I'm seeing all the chats in all the places. Twitch TV, TikTok. Yeah, we stream on TikTok of all things X.com, kik, Facebook and LinkedIn. So if you want to watch us live, I invite you to do so quick. Of course, most people watch after the fact or listen after the fact because it's a podcast. That's why we make it a podcast. So you can always subscribe on your favorite podcast player or go to YouTube or our website, Twitter, TV, MBW to watch later. Or do both. That's fine with me. I like having a live audience. We've always had a live audience for all of our shows online. Just because that's how you get interactive. Right. On we go with the show. Apple's Craig Federici said it was a long road to Apple's multitasking. This is Andrew Cunningham and Ars Technica. Why did it take so long?

[Alex Lindsey]

There was a lot of stuff where the interview is really, really good and it's substantive, where he's basically saying that the capability. The distinction he was making between Mac OS and ipados wasn't theological in nature. It was that the performance of the iPad is such that it's not going to be able to keep up with multitouch and what you would be doing by manipulating Windows. Also, the hardware of the iPad for the longest time was not going to be capable of running multiple apps in the way that someone who interacts with a desktop.

[Leo Laporte]

He said Mac users were more tolerant of latency.

[Alex Lindsey]

That makes sense when you.

[Jason Snell]

Because direct interaction. Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Lindsey]

You're not directly manipulating something on a screen. Again, this is why I Like that interview. The substantive point that he said that we set a goal for ourselves, that this kind of multi window multitasking means four windows on the main screen, four windows on an external screen. And if we can't get all that working at the same time, we need to keep on developing this, both the hardware and the software. So it's not just simply hey, we don't want to make the iPad like the Mac because we have a dogmatic exclusion. He was making the case at least again in this very. What he knew was a public forum that there were technical reasons and we wanted, here's what our goals were and we were not able to meet those goals until Apple Silicon. Until the most recent Apple Silicon and the most recent everything.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, it's a, I mean the original iPad multitasking was kind of at an earlier time, you remember it was limited to very specific hardware and part of that was because they were using chips that were not as powerful as the M series and later and as well as not having enough RAM and that they have now. So that's part of it. My understanding also that's my cryptic when I say my understanding. We all know what that means which is I can't tell you how I understand it, but I understand it is that they embarked on a multi year project to completely rewrite the windowing interface. And what this is not is a modification of what has come before that was a around for a few years and they realized they needed to start from the start and just do it right. And so they, they threw that away. That's gone. And what they have is an entirely new multi windowing model that's inspired by the Mac that can use modern Apple Silicon processors and the increase in, in RAM in, in the general environment now that wasn't there before and build something that works great and having used it for a week like it works really, really well. They did a great job with it. So it really is one of those interesting cases where they cared enough about on the iPad to not just keep patching what they had built, which was a compromised system, but to admit like yeah, we just got to throw this away and start again. And so they had a team that just has been chunking away for a while in the background and this is what they've done which is basically bring Mac windowing to the iPad and like and not, not only can you put the windows everywhere and you can put them off the side if you want and all the things you just expect on the Mac, but it's got expose it's got all the tiling features they to the Mac last year, and they're all bound to shortcuts or to keyboard shortcuts. So you can, you know, what is it? Globe, shift, left arrow, and the window that you're in goes automatically tiles to the left half of your screen. Or you can tap and hold, or click and hold on the green button and you get a whole menu of different tiling options. You can do globe F to toggle in and out of full screen like it's the whole thing. Like they just did it and dropped it on the iPad and said, there it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Federighi told Andrew Cunningham at ours, we've discovered many, many Optimus. We rearchitected the windowing system, we rearchitected the way we manage background tasks, background processing that enabled us to squeeze more out of other devices than we were able to do at the time. We introduced Stage Manager.

[Jason Snell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Cunningham also says Stage Manager still exists, but it's an optional extra. Multitasking.

[Jason Snell]

That's what it is on the Mac. Stage Manager on iPad Now, Stage Manager on iPad used to be how you did multitasking. Now it's just an option to manage Windows if you want to, just like it is on the Mac. And it has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the window management, which, yeah, as, as he said, it's a, it's a rewrite. They just, they put it together and then he mentions background tasks. One of my other favorite announcements of IPADOS 26 is the fact that you've got the ability now, because this was, this was one of my complaints about Final Cut, right? Was they're like, yeah, we did Final Cut and don't, don't leave the app when you export because it'll fail. And like on my Mac, I can start a Final Cut export and start and then check my mail, right? But you can't do that on the iPad.

[Alex Lindsey]

You can't download in the background.

[Jason Snell]

So they did this thing and they did it in a smart way, right? Because their concern is that on the iPad especially, you're not going to be thinking about the fact that there's some app in the background that's chunking away at something and killing your battery. And so it's for, it's for finite tasks, tasks that have an end that were initiated by the user. And then if you go to the background, it pops up a little live activity. And it's not just Final cut exports and 3D renders, but like a big file copy in Final files will do that too. And so you don't have that moment of like, I'm copying a file but I can't leave. Right. Like, because. And it feels so, so old and silly. Right? Because this thing is incredibly powerful as a computing device and yet I've been able to switch to another window while my Mac was doing something since the 90s. So, yeah, they did a lot. I mean, it's very impressive what they did. They seem to have finally embraced the idea that let the IP iPad not just like be its own thing, but take stuff from the Mac. And it's just not a big deal. If windowing is good on the Mac, do it. Just, you know, don't try to pretend like you need to put a weird spin on it for the iPad, you could just do it.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. And there was, there was also the problem of not all Mac apps. Third party apps are designed to react well to being in an arbitrarily sized window. One of the big things in the, in one of the developer videos this year was changes they were making to ui. UI kit that basically tells developers, hey, look, in the past if you haven't made your app responsive to unspecified screen sizes, we've tried to help you out by putting you into a container that would be appropriate for your app. We're not doing that anymore. So your app is either not going to work or it's going to look like hot garbage. So you have to start changing your app so that it can sit in an arbitrarily sized container. Container, which is again, a lot of it. Apple is. One of Apple's great strengths is to be able to dictate something to its developers and make it stick. That's not something that Google can do when this, when it makes a big change to Android. But Apple says, look again, here's what it's going to be like. You can either have your app stink on ice and look like it stinks on ice, or you can play nice, do what we've been trying to get you to do for the past two or three years, and be ready for the, for the upcoming folding iPhone, which we can't actually directly mention, and be ready for resizable apps on the iPad and on the Vision Pro. So yeah, like Jason said, it's a big, big, big change. And like, I'm glad to see all this specific information that this is not simply a dogmatic opinion that we are not going to make the iPad like the Mac because the Mac is. We don't want to make a toaster a toaster. Toaster fridge. It's like that. Which seemed odd when Tim talked about that many years ago. We're not asking for a toaster fridge. We're asking for like a modern tablet based machine. You make it a Mac or an iPad. But it shows that this is whatever that whatever influence that might have had in the past, that was no longer operative. And they really were working very, very hard to move mountains to make sure that this happens. Seems like a simple change. Finally. Oh, God, they've listened to me after all these years. Like, no, they were actually. It took a long, long time to make this happen.

[Andy Inatko]

And I don't think the Mac's going anywhere, but I don't think that they've ever protected the Mac from the iPad. I think it's a matter of figuring out what parts of the Mac they want to put in the iPad and how to do it effectively and everything else. Because I still think that Apple views the iPad as the more modern version.

[Alex Lindsey]

Sure.

[Andy Inatko]

And so the Mac is there and they're continuing to develop it. But I still feel like somewhere there there's a little bit of, well, that's the legacy platform.

[Jason Snell]

I think there's a lot less of that than there used to be. There was definitely a time when that was absolutely what they thought. But I think it's the reverse, Alex. I think that they have overprotected the iPad from the Mac for a while.

[Andy Inatko]

While.

[Jason Snell]

And they're like, well, we can't just do what we did on the Mac. Let's do it differently. And with windowing, you're seeing them, you know, the windowing on the Mac's pretty good. Maybe we could just do that. And, and so they do it. I would say, to Andy's point, about, about kind of dogma. I feel a real dropping of dogma.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

With the iPad now where they're like, you know what if Mac windowing is good and that's what people want, we'll do it and we'll make it good. Instead of it being like, well, we're going to be precious about it and kind of take it 3/4 of the way and leave it there where nobody's. They're like, no, we're going to go all the way. And the thought struck me last week while I was writing one of my stories that the big winners here, big winner here is Apple. I feel like for the first time, the next time they do A round of iPad Pro releases is not going to get the same story they've gotten for the last eight years, which is well, the hardware is not nice, but the software just isn't good enough and you can't use it and, and their software is letting down the iPad. That has been the narrative for almost, for basically a decade now, since the iPad Pro was first released in 2015, a decade ago. And I feel like they've skated away from a lot of that this time. I'm sure there'll be people who still rehash that narrative. But like I, I look at what's in ipados 26 and I think, oh, for the first time I feel like the ipados or first time in a long time iPad OS is software that lives up to the hardware and that's going to be so good for them to not have that criticism. I mean there'll be other criticisms, right? But I feel like the idea that the OS has completely let down the hardware, it feels like isn't so much the case anymore.

[Andy Inatko]

I think that the part is it's not so much the OS that is letting down the hardware as much as all the other apps. I mean there's no apps that are fully taking advantage oftentimes of the iPad's power. And the problem is that's combined with Apple makes a really good tablet that doesn't. That lasts a long time. My daughter is still using the first iPad Pro, the, I don't know, 12 point whatever in her room. She's still using it like it's, they're very, very durable. They last a long time and a half years.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Inatko]

And, and, and they're, and, and it's still in use and I have, you know, I have some pros. I think they're a couple years old. I haven't felt, here's the problem is for Apple is I haven't felt the need to go to another, other to a, to a newer one. The one that did get me to buy one was because one of the apps needed to have it. I think it was, I think, I think it was resolve or something needed to the, you know, something to move up. But in general I've, I've not felt the rush that I felt to oh, I have to get something. And I, I've slowed down on the phones. I think Apple is having a hard time outdoing every phone every year. I don't think that was the design but some of us were buying them every year. I think the 15 was a huge jump forward. I think, think that, you know, the 16 I didn't feel like I needed to have. So, like it wasn't Enough wasn't enough change. So I think that that's. But I think that the problem with the iPad is that is, is that again we just don't have developers pushing it hard enough and Apple's going, getting there. But I think that there's very few times when you open up an iPad and you feel it bend under.

[Jason Snell]

Well that's true. Although I mean between the background tasks and the menu bar like I feel like there they have laid the groundwork here for the iPad and its apps to be taken more seriously and a third party, there are some really great third party apps for it but I agree, but like if the platform vendor can't do it, then what's the point? And, and to Apple, Apple's credit, I feel like they've stepped up now in terms of building an operating system for the iPad that's worthy of the hardware that it runs on.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I guess I would say that the, the other thing that this is a problem for the M series in general that may run that Apple run too is these chips are so powerful. The M4 Mac mini, I'm running 120 frames per second, 1080p or 4K actually 4K at 120 frames per second out of an out of Mac Mini and it's at like 10% capacity, you know, like it. And so it makes me think about, you know, when we. The only time we ever feel it processing is when I'm running Resolve with a D grain and you know, a full size render on a little base unit. $600 Mac mini is the only time we feel like it started to slow down.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think that that's going to be again I think Apple has to look at. I still feel like Apple needs to invest in. I know it's against their. This is where they are dogmatic of like we're not going to ever pay developers to do something but I think they really should, should have a mega fund like what Epic did of. If you're going to do something adventurous on our hardware, you know, we'll help you because I think that would help them get people being more aggressive with the hardware.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like there's a bigger story here. You know, for a long time Apple's been criticized for their software. Their hardware is great, but they just don't have a good software team. Not since you know, Steve Jobs was running the pirate operation and you had Bill Atkinson and Andy Herzfeld. Does it seem to you like suddenly software's clicking but like everything we've talked about today is improved software. Did Craig Federighi bring in a bunch of new people, fire a bunch of dead weight? What happened? Or is that just my imagination?

[Jason Snell]

I don't know. And the problem is we'll try to connect it to things that we've been talking about for the last six months, but it's probably more like something in the last couple of years.

[Leo Laporte]

Years.

[Jason Snell]

But it's very hard to see.

[Leo Laporte]

But I agree with you impression makes sense to you. It feels like there's suddenly like just even exciting time.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The profiles in Vision Pro suddenly we re architected iPad windowing. Sounds like their software team is suddenly.

[Jason Snell]

Getting good clicking a little bit.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, I think that the, that the port to M1 was an incredible amount of energy before but before the M chip and everything had like for years you gotta remember that there's like a. There was a huge lift for two or three years before the M1 came out of. How do you get ready for the. So they were distracted and you have all this other stuff that's happening afterwards to kind of keep. And they're. And they're continuing to, you know, to rebuild all the code. You know they're. And you're seeing more being ported to Swift. You're seeing more which is going to be much more efficient than some of the older solutions that they had before. And so there's a lot of optimization of the code for the hardware that. So I think that there's been five or six years of that energy at least being sucked up just by this conversion to an entirely new platform. And I think we're now only just starting to see the fruits of that.

[Jason Snell]

Of that also they built, they built Vision Pro in the background the whole time. They had a car and a car. Right. So Vision OS was stealth until two years ago. Right. But those people have been able to. There's still people working on Vision Pro. Obviously it's moving forward, but a lot of that they, they built that OS and so that is freeing up people and car project freed up people. And we know that we've seen like Rockwell who was in charge of Vision Pro has now been brought over and is doing other stuff, including Siri. So like I do think that this may be in hindsight we may look at this and say, oh, that period where the software was kind of shaky was when they had at least two skunk works projects unannounced where they were building whole operating systems underneath the surface. And now they're. Now they're back doing what they're doing here. And, and it wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the story, too. It's just like a lot of engineers who spend a lot of time building. I mean, I've known, I've talked to people like years ago who were working on car stuff and then it turns out working on vision stuff, and, and now those projects are either wrapped or they're visible and they've shipped. So it's, it's a better, better time. Yeah, the vibes are good, Leo. I mean, I really. At a time when a lot of the vibes around Apple are very bad in terms of this very specific, like, are they executing on software where the, the answer for about five years has been not really. It felt like they, they, they. This OS update, they're really showing their work, and the work is pretty good.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think what you're seeing is also a grand unification of the, of all these oss, you know, that they're really all feeling like they all belong to the same thing, which is the Vision os.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what they all feel like they're.

[Andy Inatko]

Part of, is they've kind of built something that they're not planning to change for a while.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. And for a $3 trillion company, we often forget that Apple has a limited amount of focus. So if something is commanding a huge chunk of that attention, then their collective attention is not necessarily going towards other directions. And so I think that Jason has a really great point that a lot of their attention has now been freed up to the meat and potatoes of the operations. I think that's why we're seeing, cumulatively a lot of this really quiet, revolutionary stuff. Really, honestly, this is one of the best WWDCs, I think, in many years, because we're just seeing. Not one of my things is always that, okay, fine, you built a $3,500 game, you made a $12,000 watch. Give something that will actually help people and make their lives simpler, give more value to the stuff that they already own. And this really was one where, oh, if you have an iPad and you bought it like in the last four or five years, it's about to get so much better. If you did buy the Vision Pro last year, we're going to actually make it a lot more useful than it used to be. On and on and on and on. Just little changes, basic changes that make whatever you bought in the last five years work way, way, way better and make you glad that however long ago you put that money into the Apple platform, you feel like that was a really good investment. Again, very happy about wwc.

[Andy Inatko]

And I will say that also that the language stuff we kind of stepped over. Apple's not in the front lane on the language thing. Microsoft was way ahead of everybody else. Google has been doing this for a little while, but we are really quickly approaching a time like very Star Trek. Like we're two or three years away from you having a conversation with someone with your AirPods in and you're just hearing the translation as they're talking. And I think that's kind of amazing when we think about it. It's going to be low latency. It's going to be zero latency language translation. I mean, there's little headsets that kind of do it now, but it's going to be something everybody has, I think probably within the next three years. And that's going to change a lot of things. I was talking to someone, they just released some of these AI things to go back and forth. I think it's Google actually did this with Kinrwanda, which is a pretty small language. You know, this is the language in Rwanda now. It's being supported. It means that the entire English, you know, corpus of information is now available to someone who doesn't speak English in Rwanda, which is a big deal from an education perspective.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that was Mac. Break Weekly. Andy Inaco, Alex Lindsey, Jason Snell. Glad you're here.

[Jason Snell]

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[Andy Inatko]

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[Jason Snell]

To tell you that Mint's offer of.

[Alex Lindsey]

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[Jason Snell]

So I thought it would be fun.

[Andy Inatko]

If we made $15 bills, but it.

[Jason Snell]

Turns out that's very illegal, so there.

[Andy Inatko]

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[Jason Snell]

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[Andy Inatko]

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[Leo Laporte]

Point that Apple has improved its software do you think? I mean it's an opaque operation but it feels like they maybe have reassigned, reorganized, move people around. For instance, they've migrated their backend servers for passwords from Java to Swift and they saw a 40%. 40% improvement. I'm sorry, Java to Rust. Did I say Swift? It says Swift but it was Rust I think. I don't know now see I'm seeing Swift. I thought it was too but then I'm seeing competing articles so maybe it was Swift, I don't know.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they're real believers in Swift on server side to the point where there's this entire. I don't know if you've mentioned this before but they just dropped an entire new container architecture last.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that fascinating? It's a Docker like system just for macOS.

[Jason Snell]

It's docker like it runs on Mac OS and lets open up Linux Scant operating system. Yeah, it's a Linux container so it's docker like but it's fascinating but it's a Linux container and then you can do your. The idea is you can do it for anything you want but they built it so that you could do like Swift Server based Swift stuff because they found value in that.

[Leo Laporte]

So the password backend was written in Java. That's kind of thing that any enterprise would do a quick and dirty version of it at some point they said let's rearchitect this. They got 40% improvement. John Voorhis has an article at Max Stories about the new Speech Text to speech to text APIs.

[Jason Snell]

I used this earlier today. So his son whipped up this command line tool that uses those APIs that are available to developers now and really.

[Leo Laporte]

We'Ve used whisper from OpenAI for a couple of years now. I thought very highly of it.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, so I, I've used Whisper CPP which is a C project and I wired a shortcut into it and it's using the V3 Turbo and Apple's transcription that's built in. It will be on every Apple device that has 26 on it. It was about twice as fast as Whisper.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Jason Snell]

It was not as accurate I will say as V3 Turbo, but twice as fast and it Will be great to give that power to users. But it also goes to, that may.

[Leo Laporte]

Be a dial by the way you can turn that typically is slower means.

[Jason Snell]

More accurate but like that, that also means every app developer gets that. So if there's any audio, if you're a podcast app developer, you could just turn this on your podcast. I, I transcribed a two almost two hour long podcast in like 75 seconds on a, on a Mac studio. So, so his son Finn, he says.

[Leo Laporte]

In just like 10 minutes built this app Yap, a command line using the speech framework. So he's obviously got the beta developer beta going.

[Jason Snell]

Right. Only works on the beta. And yap is it shouldn't need to exist. Right. But he needed a way to bridge just demonstrate it to those frameworks from the command line. But you can literally unlike Whisper where you have to convert it to a very specific wav file format after Apple's stuff, you just give it a sound file that Apple understands and it spits out a transcript. It's kind of amazing. And this is again, this is part of the story of WWDC where third party app developers are getting access to a whole bunch of different Apple models that are machine learning models that they can just use in their apps. And this is another one of them, which is this transcription engine. So you can take speech and turn it into text in a very short amount of time.

[Leo Laporte]

I also love it and we've mentioned this a few times, but that Apple has made all of this stuff available to app developers.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So you get these great high quality tools and what it shows also is a little bit of a change in culture from. No, no, we're going to have access to the best stuff. You're just going to have to do with what we give you. Apple will let third party music apps show animated artwork on the iPhone screen now. Right. That's I think a slight cultural shift, isn't it?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah. I mean some of it I think is actually nudged by regulation. I noticed a lot last week where they were announcing new features and saying and there's an API where it used to be sort of like a new feature and then wait a year or two or three or four and then maybe there'll be an API. And I think that that's good. But also look, they're not going to say it, but I know a lot of developers feel it. If they don't feel the love necessarily, they feel the generosity here where Apple is saying, yes, we want to give you tools so that your apps can be good on our platform. Now we can all say, of course that is one of the ways that Apple can make its platform stronger is by letting its app developers make better apps. But there have been times when it felt like Apple wasn't doing that. And, and this year I know a lot of developers are like really excited. They're not excited about the new design mostly because it will cause them to do more work this summer on the new design, but they are excited about things like access to all these different ML models that Apple has just given them. It's it because it reduces amount, an amount of overhead that makes it kind of unlikely in a lot of circumstances for apps to innovate on this platform and instead it makes it pretty easy for them to do it. It's pretty.

[Leo Laporte]

So your, your headline Apple gets over its hang ups with the iPad. Really? Maybe more than just the maybe so.

[Jason Snell]

I mean certainly with the ML stuff, the fact that the Xcode will use any AI model you want, including ones not yet developed, right. Like it'll, you can plug in in three months or six months or nine months if a hot new model comes out. You just plug in the API key in the URL or something you build locally and it'll just work. That is a, that is a very clear change from a year ago when they're like we are working on one model for XCODE now it's like any model, bring your own model to Xcode.

[Leo Laporte]

They have one humbled, they have one by all this.

[Jason Snell]

And I'll say that the Xcode one, you know, they have a pre baked version that they worked on with OpenAI that uses Chat GBT but it's a very specific version that is going to be the best with Swift code and Xcode. And like yeah, I feel like they were humbled by last year and I think that there were maybe some, some executives who were like no, we will do it all ourselves and we will dominate. And then after what's happened in the last last year, other people at Apple have said what we should do is be more open because there's a lot of great stuff out there and we could use it and it makes our products better, it makes our platform better. It doesn't all have to be from us. And you know, I definitely had people at Apple say we don't have to do everything here. And last year it sure felt like they had to do everything. So this is better. It's better.

[Leo Laporte]

As Andy pointed out, he can now use his Mutt text based email in Apple's terminal and not feel Bad about it Apple, weirdly, I don't know why because there's so many third party terminal apps, including the very popular iTerm. But Apple has updated the Terminal app even.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah, I think this is because sometimes you see evidence that Apple's own developers, Apple's own engineers are like, I'm sick and tired of using our built that. Our built in app that I have to use all the time stinks. I'm going to add features just for me to make me happy.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe that's what happened.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah, I mean I haven't checked it myself, but a couple other people are saying that this is literally the first time they've updated the terminal app in any meaningful way.

[Leo Laporte]

Since I only use it when for some reason ITERM or Alacrity or Kitty or lately I've been using Ghost tty when those aren't for some reason available, maybe I'll start using Apple's terminal app. Same thing with Spotlight. I've been using Raycast and Alfred and Launch Bar. I don't know if I need all those extra features. Spotlight looks like it might be plenty. It's really a change. It's good. Apple was getting a reputation for not doing well with software, to be frank. And I think that might be changing.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. Again, exciting times. This is fresh on my mind because today I borrowed from this library the new book on Apple in China and had to return it today because it was due even though I hadn't quite quite finished it yet. So I. Damn it, it's a good book. I'm going have to buy it. But one of the fun parts of the first quarter of it is just the history of Apple and the trouble and dogma that was kind of handicapping them from the beginning. And one of them was an exchange between Steve Jobs and someone else at the company saying, why are we letting third party developers make money off of our work? We resent that. And sometimes you see, again, that was a long, long time ago. That was like back in the 90s. But sometimes you feel as though there's some residue of that, like cigarette smoke, like in the wallpaper. And it feels, and it feels like that's absolutely going away, especially with what they're doing here. The ability to simply, I don't think it could be overstated how important it is to allow developers to have access to these models directly to simply say, no, I'm not going to simply support an Apple intelligence feature that's on the side of the box that Apple is promoting. That helps to promote Apple. I Just want my app to be better. Wouldn't you be great if, if we could extract text from something that's going on, not to do simply speech to text and make that a feature, but so that we can now examine the text with another LLM, make a decision that benefits the user all as something that is a feature inside our app. That would have been so many hours of development, such a huge distraction before WWDC 2025. Now I'm sure it's getting a lot of developers thinking what is now possible, we will make time because my God, wouldn't that be a great transformative feature for our scheduler and organizer?

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, we've definitely talked to some developers who are definitely looking at the AI solutions, even though they're not as robust as some of the other ones. They're great to solve a bunch of simple.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they're free, they're on device, there's.

[Andy Inatko]

A lot, it's really valuable.

[Jason Snell]

They're not going to be the solution for everything, but they can be the solution for a lot of things. And being able. If you're an app developer and you're thinking like, oh, I could do AI, but I'm going to either need to include a model and then update it all the time or I'm going to have to, you know, I'm going to have to go out to the cloud, but then I'm going to need to get an API key and it changes my business model instead. It's sort of like, no, I'm just going to do a thing on the phone using the phone's processor and we don't even need to talk about what it is, it just happens on device. That is great. And Apple also is going to keep updating those models and every time Apple updates that model and makes it better, all the apps that use the model get better. And that's pretty great too. I wanted to. Since this is turned into Love Fest, I'll just say for those of us who really love the Mac, and I think all of us here fall in that category. That Spotlight thing that Andy mentioned, the fact that one of the major features at WWDC is that they took not just Terminal, but they took Spotlight and they did pro things to Spotlight power user features to Spotlight. And I asked, I asked some Apple people, I was like, you know, do you think this Spotlight feature is going to be like embraced by the masses? And they said, no, of course not, it's a power user feature. But there's value, value in exposing the power of our system in Places that we control like Spotlight and the idea that they've got the quick keys and they've got app intents and they've got a clipboard manager. It's literally in the entire 41 year history of the Mac, Apple has never let you look backward in time on the clipboard. That has only been if you add a third party app. And yet in Mac OS 26 Tahoe, boom. Clipboard history is a feature that's built into Spotlight and like a couple of keystrokes and you've got a clipboard history. Like those are like. I would never have bet that Apple would double down on power user features in Spotlight on the Mac, but they did. And that is a, for me, that is such a great sign that there are people at Apple who are being allowed. There have always been people at Apple who love the Mac and want the Mac to be great. The people at Apple who love the Mac want it to be great and are being allowed to do stuff like that again.

[Andy Inatko]

And it's smart because it, it so ties you into the operating system because you get good at those things. And now you're really, this is how you do those things. I was talking, we were talking on office hours I think a couple days ago and I talked about, someone asked me how much I use PCs and other things. I said I have PCs, I have a couple over here and I, I've got some Linux boxes, but they're all appliances to me. Like I, I use them as appliances. There's things that they do. That's because they are the only thing that does that. And that's why they do that. I said, but my entire environment is, is, is a Mac and, and here's the thing, it's just because of Notes. Like literally Notes is the glue. It, it seems like such a basic app that we have here, but it is on all of my computers and I'm able to keep sync wherever I'm taking notes and wherever I'm putting things down and whatever I'm taking pictures of or whatever I'm throwing in, all of that stuff is all in, across all of these platforms. And it's so I, I can't even imagine. Like every time I go to a PC I suddenly realize, realize I don't. My notes is my other part of my brain. And I'm like, I don't, I can't operate for very long. And so I think that when they make these things something that seems simple like notes or like Spotlight, really, really powerful and they continue to invest in it it definitely the, the sticky factor gets much higher too.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. And let's, let's squeeze in one last thing about the ability. One of the knock on effects of developers being able to implement like Apple's I on device built in like AI models as opposed to having to go out for a license key to having to go out to other apps and other services. This means that they get to allow, they get to keep like their privacy nutrition sticker. They don't have to say oh by the way we're sending some of your data out to a third party. Please don't be scared by that. If you click through you'll find out that it's actually just not as bad as it sounds. But this is now just no, we are only using and trusting Apple's own on device stuff so we don't have to put anything that's kind of scary into the, into our App Store listing.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, there's one great quote in Apple and China. I really enjoyed the book because it's, it's, there've been a lot of books about the origin story of Apple, but it's Apple, you know, later after you know, Steve Jobs came back.

[Alex Lindsey]

Triumph.

[Jason Snell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the Triumph. And so it's, it's something that hasn't been that well documented and there's a of lot, lot of interesting things in there.

[Alex Lindsey]

If we don't close this deal, you don't understand. Don't negotiate with this with us on the sale of this facility. If we don't close the sale by Thursday, nobody gets paid.

[Jason Snell]

What a great story. Yeah, what a great story. He's like, you're threatening my paycheck. He's like, no, I'm saying we won't be able to pay anyone.

[Leo Laporte]

All of our paychecks, all of your Factory. Now Scott McNeely, this is also quoted in the McGee's book, highly recommended. Apple in China once likened Dell to a grocery store. He said they're not in the PC business any more than Safeway's in the food manufacturing business. And I think that's a very big distinction between the PC makers, those appliance makers, Alex, that you were talking about, and Apple. Apple really takes ownership of the whole chain. They are growing the food.

[Jason Snell]

I think one of the insights, I mean look, there are a lot of insights in that book. I really highly recommend it to everyone. Obviously the headline story is how Apple got further and further kind of enmeshed in China to the point where it's going to be almost impossible for them to get out and how they were at the same time also basically creating skills that will allow China to be excel at electronics manufacturing for decades to come. But I took away another one too, which is Apple. And Apple's always kind of been this way, but even more so now. Now Apple has this, like, Apple has a vision for what products it wants to make. And so many of the tech companies that don't have visions for products, they are assembling parts. Parts are available. They buy the parts, they put them together, they put them on a circuit board, they buy a screen, they, they get a chassis and they assemble them. And you can see that for the last 25 years, Apple has these designers who are like, this is what we want to build. And then they go to manufacturers and basically make them invent processes or they invent processes to do it, from cutting glass to making different parts out of different materials. And like, it's a real contrast and it's why Apple has been so successful in so many different ways, is that Apple culturally seems to just be unwilling to be told, no, you can't do that. And if they are told they can't do it, they're like, okay, we're going to send them some guys and we're going to figure out how to do it and then we're going to do it. And, and, and sometimes, like in the early days with the IMAC, the original G3IMAC, you know, they had a whole prototype and, and the manufacturing guy comes back and says, we can't make this. It's not the physics of it. That handle will just fly right off. We can't make it. And, and Jobs is like, get out of here. You're going to be, you know, pack your bags, you're out of here. He goes, bring in, bring in the next guy. And the next guy come, bring in my X expert from. And he comes in and he's. And he looks at it and he goes to Steve and he's like, steve, Laws of physics. The guy was right. You can't do it. And then they're like, okay, get Johnny, I've in here, get Johnny, Ivan here. And then Johnny, I was like, all right, physics fine. And so they had all these learnings and they changed, they changed how they built the iMac G3 and they were able to make that iMac G3. There's one behind me now. That's great. But like, over the years, you can see them building this, this whole process where like, instead of saying that glass on the iPhone is impossible, you can't make it like that because nobody's done it. They say, this is how we want it, now let's figure out how to make it. And then they do and then everybody else can make it too. Right? Because that knowledge is out there. And like I hadn't really thought about Apple in that way and that that is absolutely a thing that's been consistent for a couple of decades at least with them is they are just not willing to settle for stuff that's not good enough for them. And if they want to make something new and interesting and fancy, they'll just force it to exist in the world. It's wild, wild stuff.

[Alex Lindsey]

And that was part of the irony of again, the book. It's not only lots of great information, there are a lot of business books that contain a lot of good information. This one tells a really good linear story story. And it points out the irony that one of the things that was sinking, that sunk apple in the 80s was that they did have that idea of we're going to build exactly what we want using components that only we have that and only we can manufacture it. Meanwhile, IBM said, yeah, you know what, let's subcontract out a special team that says build us, design us a PC made of off the shelf components that we can source from anywhere that can be built anywhere. And as a result, they were able. They didn't have half the troubles that Apple was having trying to build, assemble, test, configure and ship everything that they were trying to ship at the same time. It's one of the reasons why the IBM PC, as much as Steve Jobs disdained it for being tacky, immediately ate the lunch of the Apple II in the Mac.

[Leo Laporte]

Mac Break weekly on the air, Alex Lindsey, Andy Inako, Jason Snell. We're glad you're here. If you're not yet a member of the club, well, you should thank a club member for making this show possible. 25% of our revenue, our operating costs now come from the club. And it's such an important part of keeping Twit and the whole network going and keeping the shows on and paying our wonderful contributors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Advertising goes a long way. 75%, but it's not the whole thing. Thing. If you would like to join the club, we would sure love to have you. And it's not just your 10 bucks that we want. We want you as part of our club. Twit Discord, which is a great hang for all the people in the club. Pretty great place to be with the shows and the special shows and programming things like our coverage of the keynotes at wwdc, Build Google IO. You also get ad free versions of everything we do. Because I hate it when somebody charges you money and then shows you an ad too. That's we're not. No, I won't do it. So we cut out the ads. So you don't have to listen to ads. You don't even have to listen to this plug. And you just get that warm and fuzzy feeling that you're helping us do content that you love. If you listen to a show or two, I think it's worth 10 bucks a month. I hope you do too. Visit TWiT TV Club TWiT. We would love to have you a member. We have family plans. We have, you know, company plans as well. And of course there's an annual membership as well. Twit TV Club Twit. Oh, and by the way, once you join Club Twit, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter. I often hear from people who don't. You don't have to be in the Discord. A lot of people don't go in the Discord. Discord's where you see what's coming up. They say, well, how am I supposed to find out if I don't join the Discord? That's the newsletter. Every week we put that out with here's what's coming up and that's free Twit TV newsletter. And no, we don't sell your address. Of course not. We wouldn't do anything like that. Thank you so much to our club members. We appreciate it. We really appreciate it. On we go with the episode here. There's so much stuff. Have I left anything out that you guys wanted to talk about?

[Alex Lindsey]

I wanted to talk about the custom iPhone camera that Apple built for the F1 1 movie. Wired had a really fun, really interesting article about it that really shows how committed and involved Apple is on some of their own produced movies. It describes that for the on car footage they were getting F1 cars have an actual TV camera.

[Leo Laporte]

Many cameras they have a helmet camera, they have a driver's point of view. Last weekend I saw, I've never seen it before, a camera view of the wheel well.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So part of those are for of course the teams to keep an eye on what's going on.

[Alex Lindsey]

Is for the COVID for broadcast. But none of them are like film quality. So Apple actually built a camera that is completely identical in weight and aerodynamics and shape to the standard onboard camera so it wouldn't affect the. The dynamics of the cars that it was mounted on. But essentially they rebuilt and redesigned what they think is probably an iPhone 15 with the same lens, same battery, same everything into this hardware.

[Leo Laporte]

Notice it's aerodynamic. It's actually a wing.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah, exactly. Again, it's the exact same pod that they put that is standard on F1 cars because again, they could not change the weight, they could not change the airflow or anything. It was controlled via usb. So they plug in an iPad into it to change, like the camera settings and things like that. One interesting tidbit was, I'm going to quote here. They of course, created custom firmware for it for the needs of the production. And this custom firmware inevitably led to two new features in the iPhone 15 Pro log encoding and the support for the Academy color encoding system. Color workflow. So specific. So these were built for this custom camera. And then they said, hey, let's just port this over and make this an iPhone 15 feature. It's a really interesting article. Shows you exactly how indeed. This wasn't just. They wrote a check and hey, wow, great. We get to have our picture taken. Tim Cook gets to have his picture taken with Lewis Hamilton. Like all the. Obviously the marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing hype is they're making Tim Cook and a whole bunch of other people available for all kinds of interviews. There's a really long one in Variety, for instance. So obviously this is part of the. Of the hype. But it is really interesting to say no. They even went so far as that. No. We will lend our engineers to build. To build you a camera based on the iPhone. If that's what you need to make this happen, that is.

[Leo Laporte]

They did a funny thing too with the trailer. If you watch it in the Apple TV app, they use the haptics of the phone.

[Andy Inatko]

It's pretty interesting. It was one of those things, like it didn't work all the time, but there was enough of it. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. I don't know if I'd want to watch a whole movie that way, but as a trailer or a commercial, it was kind of fun. I. I do feel like it was like they turned something like vibrate here, vibrate there, vibrate more or less.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Andy Inatko]

It'd be really fun to connect some kind of sensor to the. To like the, the. To the car itself and then measure the vibrations and then turn those back into vibrations on the phone for certain things, like to so feel. Even it didn't feel quite like that's what they did.

[Alex Lindsey]

Like, what it made me think about is remember that William Castle movie like the Tingler where they put like seat buzzers? Like what, what if like they made. So you can put your, you can put your phone underneath your, Underneath your seat. Yeah, underneath your seat cushion and it's linked to what you're watching on your outfit.

[Andy Inatko]

You leave your phone in your back pocket and you're going to have a whole. Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

I have to. My neighbor works at Lucas Sound and he, I remember a few months ago was working on the trailer. I wonder if they built that into the soundtrack for Apple. So, so that there's, so that there's vibration. I don't know.

[Andy Inatko]

I'll ask. I don't think. Yeah, I don't think there's a, I don't think it's publicly available to be able to do that with anything. I think that it's, it's a custom, it's a custom thing right now for Apple. But I, but it does feel like they, I, hopefully for them F1 is successful because man, they put, they went all in.

[Leo Laporte]

$200 million plus. No one really knows the real cost of it. That's a lot of money to get a picture with Lewis Hamilton, but he looks so badass.

[Alex Lindsey]

The Variety article is worth watching just to see how badass Tim Cook looks and not just because he's standing as to one of the coolest men in the world right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Lewis is not only a seven time champion of F1, he's also a fashion icon and he's a great guy and that's pretty cool. So the movie comes out in just a few days, June 27th. I wish I were able to get IMAX tickets, but as you pointed out a few weeks ago, Alex, there's only one IMAX theater in our area and it sells out instantly.

[Alex Lindsey]

It's like in seconds.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, it's a pretty hard, hard thing to get good seats there. Yeah, the. I think it's going to be interesting to, you know, I think that what people often get caught up in is this whole like, well, how well did it do at the box office? Doesn't really matter. Like the box office gravy, you know, it's, it's like, well, get some of the money back. But that's not why they're doing it. I mean they're doing it to position what they're, you know, it's positioning the channel. And you know, while this is, you know, Apple may be behind right now. One of the things that we're seeing is that if you look at the data for a lot of these shows, people are basically gravitating to really high quality shows and YouTube. So if you're making schlocky kind of in between like $75,000 minute you're in, that's, that's like a, not a great place to be anymore, you know, because. And so Apple's pathway of we're going to spend a lot of money on, on high quality stuff has turned out. I don't think when they started it it looked as smart as it does now, which is that they're, they're hitting the high mark on lots of their movies and, and they're going to probably. F1 is probably one of the final. And they're not going to do, they're going to do like one. It feels like they're going to do one or two of these a year.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the biggest push I've seen for a movie since Wicked, since last year. And I was know Wicked was so over.

[Andy Inatko]

And that usually means that they feel, feel like they have something, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Like they're not going to spend that money unless it's going to be.

[Andy Inatko]

You watch a lot of, you can tell what happens when like everyone's talking about something and then suddenly all the PR disappears. That means somebody saw it and was like, let's move that to February.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, like, you know, Eddie Q says he's got different goals. I hope when people go see the movie, they walk out wanting to be a race car driver. Okay.

[Alex Lindsey]

Tim Cook.

[Jason Snell]

Tim.

[Leo Laporte]

Tim's quote from this Variety article is it's the perfect, and this is really interesting, the perfect vehicle to test Apple's power to affect culture.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah. I mean I think that if you. That's interesting, you know, because F1 is trying to push into the United States. They're, they're doing more races here and suddenly if, if there's some kind of major uptick or major change in interest, I think that's what they're trying to measure, you know, as far as like do people. Because I'm like, I'm a good example. Like I, I don't, I barely know the difference between F1 and Indy. Like, you know, like they're, they kind of, they're fast cars.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Inatko]

You know, but if you talk to someone from F1. Oh, there's a big. And you mentioned Indy, they're like, oh, come on now.

[Leo Laporte]

Like I was, I was on a cruise with the Stig from, you know. Yeah, the original Stig. And there were a number of Brits on the cruise ship who were really miffed that America had Miami, Austin and Los Angeles, Vegas, when legendary tracks like Silverstone were struggling to keep their franchise for F1 races. But Liberty Media, an American company, owns Formula One. So there's a reason for it. In fact, Liberty's. The rights for this in the US Are up. ESPN has them right now, but they're up at the end of this year, this season. And I'd be very interested to see if Apple. I think they. This would be, you know, as much as Major League Soccer was a big deal for Apple, this could be a really big deal for Apple.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah, The Variety article is very much worth reading because, again, make sure you keep it in context that Tim Cook and Eddie Q are being interviewed to promote a movie and to promote Apple. So this is, you know, a very, very.

[Leo Laporte]

Every race has 28 cameras running simultaneously, 5,000 hours of film. I mean, this is a big. This is a big business, he's saying.

[Alex Lindsey]

But in the interviews, he CE basically talking about how this is sort of an offshoot of what we do at Apple where we can't. I know he doesn't say this explicitly, but he knows that we can't get like 82% market share like, like Windows or other platforms, can we want to do something that is special and unique and at the intersection of liberal arts and engineering.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't have, quote that before.

[Alex Lindsey]

Exactly. I don't have it in my mind. I'm going to sell more iPhones because of it. Cook says. I don't think about that. I think about it as a business. And just like we leverage the best of Apple across across iPhones and across our services, we try to leverage the best of Apple tv.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm not a gearhead. I don't like the smell of fossil fuels burning in the sun. But something about F1 attracted me. It's high tech, it's high drama. And I think the Drive to Survive show on Netflix, probably Apple looked at that and said, that thing's doing big.

[Andy Inatko]

And I think, I think that Ford versus Ferrari, you know, I didn't.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a great movie.

[Andy Inatko]

I like that movie. It was like, just sat there waiting for a year for me to watch it. You know, like, finally I watched it, I was like, oh, it's pretty good. And so I think that. But I mean, I do think it'll be really interesting to see if Apple keeps on running with this. But I think they're also. I think one of the reasons they jumped in so heavily was because they were given so much access. I think that was part of the front end. You give Apple access and look at what we do.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, Brad Pitt was.

[Alex Lindsey]

They had their own paddock at all these races.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsey]

Amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

One of one of Red Bull's drivers, Yuki Sonoda said, I enjoyed racing with Brad Pitt but for some reason he was always ahead of me. F1 drivers do not like to be second.

[Alex Lindsey]

He did not. He did not. He did not. You undergo a lot of training and a lot of, A lot of exercise. He did not have the handsomeness training required.

[Leo Laporte]

Although if you look at this picture from the Variety article of Tim Cook with Brad Pitt and Lewis Hamilton. Tim's much more enamored of Lewis than he is of Pitt. It's pretty funny.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah, he did. They did a surprise drop in at an Apple event to promote severance as a matter of fact. Which makes, which makes you think that Brad Pitt was a maybe for the event. And so they wouldn't, they didn't want to promote it beforehand. But yeah, it's a big picture of so many smiling Apple employee faces in the group.

[Leo Laporte]

And who was at the Canadian Grand Prix this past weekend but Ben Stiller of all people highlighted many times in the broadcast for some reason.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. The Variety article actually talked to anybody who has a successful show on Apple TV and who has not given an interview in the last two, three years about how horrible their experience was with. With producing something for Apple TV is quoted and talked to in this article.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Lindsey]

It's really entire platform.

[Leo Laporte]

Get ready for the hype train.

[Andy Inatko]

I will say that I, I actually know some people pretty well that work on some of the Apple stuff and I'm always surprised when people say, oh, it was horrible to work on the Apple thing because they're like, oh my gosh. Like working on an Apple movie is for at least the guys below the line. They're like, everything is done the way it's supposed to be done. They said, no, no, just like.

[Leo Laporte]

But.

[Andy Inatko]

But though the production is. The schedule makes sense, the budget makes sense, everything makes sense. Everything. And then they go, but they. I had a friend who, who went from a Apple to TV production to Hulu right after it. It was like dropping off a cliff.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Inatko]

He said the Apple ones are hard. They're still hard work. They're still long hours, but everything is just working, you know, because someone said oh, we need a little more money for this or we need to do it. And someone said okay, right.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, but we've Always said this, that Apple doesn't need to make money in their productions. It's about a much larger strategy. So they have a real advantage over.

[Jason Snell]

Apple and Amazon, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, and Amazon. So solar solo streamers like Disney, I mean, I guess it promotes the park. I don't know.

[Andy Inatko]

I mean I think that, I think that Apple, Amazon, Netflix, just because of its sheer size, Apple and Amazon are the, those are the three that I feel like are a lock to do this for quite some time. I think Disney and Max are probably the next two. And then after that I think it gets real dark real quick, you know, like it's, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, even Max, which is now rechristen.

[Andy Inatko]

They keep on trying to figure it.

[Leo Laporte]

Out as spun off the streamers. They say go away, go away. We don't want any of these anchors on our business.

[Jason Snell]

No, that's, that's not true. The, the guy who spun it all off, he's staying with the studio and the streamers and they spun off a cable company.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what I mean.

[Jason Snell]

While they're profitable, they are going to decline in assets.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the CNN and the like.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's too many. There's too many. And there's going to be consolidation for sure. But Apple and nobody's watching tv.

[Leo Laporte]

Tv. Did you see that latest? For the first time ever, New York Times, more people watch streaming than watched all network television combined.

[Alex Lindsey]

45 versus 44 for broadcast and cable combined. That's the first time it's ever happened.

[Andy Inatko]

And when you dig into it, the number one thing that they're watching among those things, because a lot of times they don't include YouTube into it. But YouTube scales out everybody and I YouTube, I get up every morning, like I get up to bike every morning and I, all I'm watching is YouTube. I'm just bouncing around YouTube, one thing after another.

[Leo Laporte]

So what's Apple's YouTube strategy?

[Andy Inatko]

I don't think there is that. I think that they're, they're moving as far away from YouTube as possible, which is that we're going to spend a lot of money on things and have it be really, really high end. And you know, so we're the place that you go when you. Because where more and more. Where I find myself going for a really high quality, you know, non YouTube experience is Apple TV, you know, like Murder Box as like a destination for my family. Really good.

[Jason Snell]

It is so good.

[Andy Inatko]

It drives me crazy that it's every week like because you're just like.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's only like 22 minutes every week. It's crazy.

[Andy Inatko]

What makes me sad is that the model works so well that, you know that we're now going to go to weekly. We're going to go back to the old days of weekly 22 minute episodes. Because. Because they can spend less money and hold you longer for a subscription. You know, so it. I understand why they're doing it, but it's still like, oh, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

From the Variety article, Cook believes strongly the road to success is focusing on achieving the exceptional. Apple products have to be great, not just good. The movie business is no different. Quote, we really only do a few things. We have a few products for the size of the company we are. We pour all of ourselves into each one of these and we do TV and movies the same way.

[Andy Inatko]

Well, and I think that there are so many things that Apple has not started to milk out of this system, which is that they don't have to milk ads like Amazon. What they have is a headset that could give you immersive scenes. They have interactive components that could be added. They have behind. There's all these other things that Apple could be doing that I feel like they're not. You know, they're barely touching what they can do if they actually build all this kind of content that people want to see and want to see the behind the scenes of and all those other things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. All right, let's take our final break. Get your picks of the week ready. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Yanako. Alex. Alex. Lindsay. Jason Snell. No beards in a bunch. Although I bet you those sideburns might cause some difficulties. Andy. I don't know. With the Vision.

[Alex Lindsey]

I should tap into the friend who owns one and try to borrow it again.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's see what happens.

[Alex Lindsey]

Still don't have 3500 bucks to spend on a headset.

[Jason Snell]

I think actually you've got the clear part that is necessary, which is the under the nose angle is solid there.

[Alex Lindsey]

That's a good point. So if it screws up my face, I know that's been done. Done out of spite.

[Leo Laporte]

It's aimed at you. I am so. I am this close to buying a Vision Pro. They've slowly added enough things that it go. I go, oh, it might be.

[Jason Snell]

I hear there's some pretty good deals on used Vision Pros out there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I bet there are. Yeah, I bet there are. All right, well, we'll see. I. It's not quite there yet.

[Alex Lindsey]

Wow. This battery's only been recharged four times according to the SAP. Wow.

[Andy Inatko]

All I gotta do is just take your favorite movie and watch. Watch it on Envision Pro. Just watch the whole thing and then decide whether you want.

[Leo Laporte]

I like to watch movies with my wife. That's the difference.

[Andy Inatko]

I watch it with other people, but I fly, I do other things and I'm in hotel rooms and it's nice to.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I understand. If you travel a lot, that would be a great thing.

[Jason Snell]

I was watching a movie this morning for a podcast after my wife left for work and I had a little bit of time because I'm cramming because we're doing it tonight. And I watched it in vision Pro and with a giant, you know, giant, much bigger than my TV and I'm like, that's pretty good.

[Andy Inatko]

It's like a 20. It's like a 20 foot. It's a 20 foot monitor, not like a 20 foot soft screen. It is like 20 sharper than. I mean, I spend a lot of time in theater theaters. Sharper than the theater screen.

[Leo Laporte]

It is.

[Andy Inatko]

It is very, very sharp in that.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe I'll buy it to watch F1 because I can't get the IMAX tickets.

[Andy Inatko]

I'm still going to try to go.

[Leo Laporte]

Or Superman.

[Andy Inatko]

You just have to go on like a Monday afternoon.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the. Yeah, I can do that. If you get tickets, let me know. Add one for. For Leo. We'll go together.

[Jason Snell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Sounds good. I saw you hanging with Renee Richie last night, Leo.

[Andy Inatko]

They. They. Lauria and Renee and a couple other folks came over to. Came over to the house. So we, we did some souven and some veggies and some.

[Leo Laporte]

That's great.

[Andy Inatko]

I got to hang out. It was great.

[Leo Laporte]

In case people don't know, Luria Petrucci and Renee Richie are an itam. Yeah. Nice. How fun.

[Andy Inatko]

We had a great time.

[Leo Laporte]

How fun. This is MacBreak Weekly. I am Leo and you are watching twit. We're so glad to have you.

[Jason Snell]

Hi, Zoe Saldana.

[Andy Inatko]

Welcome to T mobile. Here's your new iPhone 16 Pro on us.

[Jason Snell]

Thanks.

[Andy Inatko]

And here's my old phone to trade in. You don't need a trade in.

[Leo Laporte]

When you switch to T mobile.

[Jason Snell]

We'll give you a new iPhone 16 Pro. Plus we'll help you pay off your.

[Andy Inatko]

Old phone up to to 800 bucks and you still get to keep it.

[Jason Snell]

There's always a trade in.

[Andy Inatko]

Not right now.

[Leo Laporte]

@ T Mobile.

[Jason Snell]

I feel like I have to give.

[Andy Inatko]

You something in return for karma.

[Jason Snell]

That's okay. I don't really have much in my purse.

[Alex Lindsey]

Oh, let's See?

[Andy Inatko]

Hand sanitizer.

[Alex Lindsey]

It's lavender.

[Jason Snell]

I'm good.

[Leo Laporte]

Seriously.

[Jason Snell]

Let me check this pocket.

[Alex Lindsey]

Oh, mints.

[Leo Laporte]

Really, I'm fine.

[Andy Inatko]

Oh, I have raisins.

[Alex Lindsey]

I'm a mom.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait, wait one sec.

[Alex Lindsey]

I've got cupcakes in the car.

[Jason Snell]

It's our best iPhone offer ever.

[Leo Laporte]

Switch to T mobile.

[Jason Snell]

Get a new iPhone 16 Pro with.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple intelligence on us.

[Jason Snell]

No trade in needed. We'll even pay off your phone up.

[Alex Lindsey]

To 800 bucks with 24 monthly bill credits. New line $100 plus a month on.

[Leo Laporte]

Experience beyond Finance Agreement 999.99 and qualifying.

[Andy Inatko]

Forwarded for well qualified plus tax and $10 connection charge.

[Leo Laporte]

Payout via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days credits end in balance due if you pay off earlier.

[Jason Snell]

Cancel CT mobile.com Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and safeway.

[Leo Laporte]

Now through June 24th. Score hot summer savings and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags on items like Kinder Bueno cheese crackers, Oscar Meyer lunchables and just Bear chicken bites. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery subject to availability restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details. Now for the picks of the week. Who should I start with today? How about me?

[Jason Snell]

What?

[Leo Laporte]

What? No, I couldn't. I couldn't. No, really? Me? You want me to do it? Oh, I couldn't. I couldn't.

[Alex Lindsey]

Don't hide your light under a bushel, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, I'm stalling because I forgot what it was. I know I wrote something down. I know.

[Andy Inatko]

You hand it to somebody else and then we'll come back to you. Leo.

[Jason Snell]

That's how this works.

[Leo Laporte]

Leo's pick. Let me see if I can find it in my bookmarks. Do you remember Anthony?

[Jason Snell]

Skeptical look from Anthony.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, Jason Snell, what's your pick of the week?

[Jason Snell]

I had a friend who just bought a new electric car and she was asking about car charging stuff because these days eventually it's going to get clear. But right now it's still kind of confusing. A lot of people with electric cars have. It's a non Tesla. It comes with a fast charger called a CCS port. But in the United States, they're going to all eventually turn over to be nacs, which is the what we think of as the Tesla plug, which is a better plug because it's smaller. But as a result, we're going to be living in Dongle town for ever with electric cars. The good news is that even though the Tesla plug is different, there are adapters and Tesla has opened a large portions of its network, its supercharger network to non Teslas. And the problem is that how do you find where to go whether you've got, if you've got a non Tesla, where do you go to get a fast charge on the road and which Tesla chargers are open and which ones are not and what CCS chargers are out there and all and what are available for you? And so the answer is Plug Share, which is a great app that is a database of chargers and you can set filters based on what your car is and you can say show me, you know I have a non Tesla, but show me CCS and Tesla. I have an adapter. And, and so this is what I told my friend is like plug Share is the answer here. I've used it every charger. It's got details of like what the plugs are, how many are there, what's around there. People can send photos so you can see like is this, you know, in a dirt hole or is there, are there, is there stuff around it, what's going on there? Like it is, there's a, an iPhone app, it's a website. It is whether you've got, no matter what you've got, if you've got an ev, this is the app to use because it's not tied to one network or even one plug type. So if you have an adapter, you check in your little filter and say, yes, I've got a Chevy bolt, but I also have a CCS to NACS adapter. So you can show me NACS plugging plug stations as well. And I just, this is the resource I answered her question, so I thought I would mention it here. I keep it on my phone at all times because I have electric cars and sometimes you to want, want to know where to charge. And it's gotten more confusing in a good way because opening that Tesla network means that there are a lot of other cars that there's way more Tesla chargers than there are non Tesla chargers in the United States.

[Leo Laporte]

And they all work.

[Jason Snell]

And they all work. And, and at the Tesla charger you'll find 16 or 24 chargers or maybe eight and you'll at the other one, electrify America, you'll find two. So now that that network is open, it can be part of your strategy depending on, you know, where you need to go to go from point A to point B. Especially if you get an adapter. So plug share is great because it's not tied to any one network. It just wants to have all the data about all the different chargers that are out there. And I find it incredibly useful even now when there's more EV charging stuff in maps apps. It's a good purpose built tool.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

For free.

[Leo Laporte]

And you should be. You probably know that most people who have electric cars charge at home almost always.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, yeah, that's a good public service. Everybody freaks out about road trips.

[Leo Laporte]

What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

[Jason Snell]

But the truth is that you charge at home. And in fact there was a great video on one of my favorite YouTube channels, technology connections, where he talked about and made a very good point, which is it also doesn't need to be the super max fast charging at home. Electric cars will charge on a regular, regular plug and if you, if you can't put in, if you, if it, it takes a long time. But if you're, if you're driving 40 or 50 miles a day, it's enough even on a regular plug. And, and this video is like, you also don't need, necessarily need the full number of amps.

[Leo Laporte]

I found my app, by the way.

[Alex Lindsey]

Oh, I think I know what your pick is. I know exactly what it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you hear that, Sega? Does it give you chills?

[Jason Snell]

So anyway, that's my pick is. Is. But yes, remember that mostly you charge at home.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, I agree. And that's a good pick. Well, I didn't know you had an electric vehicle. What do you drive?

[Jason Snell]

We got a Chevy Bolt. We have Nissan Leaf for a long time and the Nissan Leaf doesn't go very far anymore. It's 10 years. It's 13 years old. So we got a Chevy Bolt. Very nice. Good, good car.

[Leo Laporte]

This might bring back some memories, Andy. So SEGA has decided to get out of the, out of the iPhone business. They're turning off their servers.

[Alex Lindsey]

It's a taxi. But somehow I don't think that man has full control of his faculty. It's a crazy taxi.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a crazy taxi.

[Alex Lindsey]

AKA the Tesla Auto Taxi Service.

[Leo Laporte]

SEGA has announced that it's discontinued support for the nine retro games that ported some years ago to iOS and Android too, by the way, including Crazy Taxi, Streets of Rage Classic and two Super Monkey Ball. Great game. Virtua Tennis Challenge, Golden Axe Classics, Shining Four Classics. I got both the Sonics Sonic CD Classic and Sonic the Hedgehog four Episode two. The servers for, you know, I guess communal play are gone. But the games are now free.

[Jason Snell]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You might want to, you might want to quickly, before they take them off the store. Get all those classic Segas.

[Alex Lindsey]

What a friendly gesture that was. Not to simply like pull the Rub sim and say, hey, by the way, we're going to. It's a land grab. It's, it's, it's like, it's like when you're moving one of those, when the store is moving out of like this property, saying, yeah, by the way, we're going to be leaving behind a whole lot of really cool stuff. Go and grab it.

[Leo Laporte]

I love Crazy Taxi anyway, you know you need this on your iPad. You can crash into things. It rocks, it's fun, and you're a crazy Taxi. Andy and Ako, your picks of the week.

[Alex Lindsey]

I'm so happy to make this recommendation. One of my favorite comics, and that's been one of my favorite favorites for as almost no, probably as long as I've been reading comics, is Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo. And he'd been the same single person writing, drawing, lettering every single step of the way. A consistently told series of easy to assimilate stories. It's not part of this huge like multi dimensional universe where it's like a soap opera drop dropping in. Each of these stories is pretty much designed so that you can drop in at the start of the story of one of these stories at any point and you can simply pick it up as you go. It's a. Essentially it's set in feudal Japan during the Edo period where there's a samurai who has lost.

[Leo Laporte]

Is he a ronin?

[Alex Lindsey]

He's a ronin. He's lost his master in battle and now he's doing the warrior's pilgrimage of going from town to town to town, village to village, occasionally hiring his. Hiring his swords out, sometimes just simply getting caught up in a situation, sometimes seeking out good things to do, running into an amazing amount of characters along the way. You're going to notice that Hisaki Yojimbo is a rabbit. Please don't think that that's weird. It's just think about it. Those of us who are big fans of it and tried to encourage people to understand that this is like a really good, mature, grown up story. It's like imagine like this is a theatrical performance in which the performers are wearing animal masks to convey like on the Lion King, the stage version, like, okay, just go with that. But the great way to convince you to do it is that there's a humble bundle of Usagi Ojimbo trade paperbacks. That is you can pay $1, $10 or $18 for a buck. You get two really good books for $18, you get like a big whole collection of them. And all, all of the money that gets collected is contributed to a very good cause, the Hero Initiative, which is a charitable organization that takes care of comic book creators who have fallen on hard times as creative people often do, particularly later in life. And you'll get open non DRM, I think PDFs of each of these books in full color, full resolution that you can load on your iPad. Load on absolutely anything. And I could not have spent that $18 fast enough to get the huge multivoll collection because like I said, you don't. It's not like, wait a minute, okay, that's Spider man, but that's not Spider Man. Oh well, that's the Spider man from Universe 21:22. And you have to understand that in this. No, it's like if you have never. These stories are like have going on for 30 years. Whether you read like the second book or the 40th book, you can start at page one and, and, and, and Stan Sakai will basically ease you into the story. And, and it's just beautifully done. It's probably the one comic that if I had to give up every other comic in my collection and just have this collection because they're just so immensely satisfying. And of course the next issue, ISAGI U's Jumbo comes out tomorrow. As a matter of fact, it's like part four of like a five part storyline. And again, they're so well done. This is what happens when one creator has absolute control over something, keeps his eyes on the prize at high level of quality, and never hands it off to somebody who doesn't know what they're doing or doesn't know what the character is. It's just masterfully done.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you. Just to keep us up to date, what do you read your comics on nowadays?

[Alex Lindsey]

I read it on my iPad and I use an app called Panels because I do. I'll make a confession here. The Comixology app, when it was comics, Comixology was very good. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good. When Amazon bought Comixology and then later on killed the custom bespoke comic book reading app and said, oh, we'll just add a few comic book reading features to the standard Kindle app, it just absolutely tanked.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Amazon.

[Alex Lindsey]

Once again, I will confess that I buy my comics every single week and then I outsource a non DRM copy of that same comic so I can read it in panels, which is a properly created experience for reading and organizing comic books. The Kindle app is borderline unusable, and I've always held that so long as you have paid for this content, you shouldn't be required to pay extra to read it on another device or to read it in the way that you need to be able to read it. And again, if the Kindle app were even, even 3/4 as good as the Comixology app, I probably wouldn't even bother to do this. I was simply, okay, purchase, download good, I'll deal with it. But it's so terrible that I don't have any ethical qualms whatsoever. I know I'm supporting pirate sites by doing this, but I don't have an ethical issue with it since I'm actually paying for this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

There's probably software that can remove the drm.

[Alex Lindsey]

I would guess that's more difficult now because Amazon made a remove the feature where you can simply download. They used to be able to download the DRM file. And then of course, as Jason has very, very nobly documented on six colors, there are tools that will remove the DRM. But that's why I was abusing like the 1 gigabit Internet here in the library over the course of a week to Download like, all 3,000 of my purchase titles to make sure that I could at least like, at some later date, strip the DRM out of them. Because again, the Kindle app, that just.

[Leo Laporte]

Ain'T that ain't it the same thing? When I decided not to renew my Amazon, my audible, I said, well, at least I can download all of these.

[Alex Lindsey]

Because I don't think there's anything wrong with using audio hijackers to capture the stream. You bought them, you own them.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Mr. Alex Lindsey, you pick of the week.

[Andy Inatko]

So obviously, the iPhone 15 really jumped, you know, from a. From a film level or from a filming level or video level, however you want to call it. And one of the things that it did is that the chip got a lot bigger in it. And it turns out that the chip, when you're grabbing it at Open gate, is very, very close, within 3% of the 16 millimeter film. So you can actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, really?

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, so, so you. So if you get the full gate, but it's very hard to get the. That whole, you know, grab onto it and to give it more of that film look and everything else that people want. So Perla is built for the phone is really built to give you that kind of filmmakers look. This is, you know, if you're doing something for that's more practical, you still may want to use, you want to do something easier. You still may use like Kino or you may use the, the Apple app. If you want to do something that's really technical, you're still probably going to end up using the blackmagic camera. But if you're looking for this kind of film look and you want to put it together there and have it kind of have that classic feel to it, your phone can actually get very, very close to the look and feel of a 16 millimeter.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Andy Inatko]

And it's a relatively simple interface. I would say that it's kind of halfway between the simplicity of Kino and the blackmagic camera which is probably a.

[Leo Laporte]

Bit more heavy but it also distills not just film. That's interesting, huh?

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah. So if you're looking for something, I mean there's lots of things, things that will, you know, a lot of people.

[Leo Laporte]

Don'T like the over sharpening extra stuff that Apple and Google do in their cameras.

[Andy Inatko]

Right. So this is, you know, if you're looking for that look, this is a fun one. It's. There's a, I think there's a small subscription to it per, you know it's like 25 bucks a year or something like that or three bucks. You can get it for like three or four dollars for the month I think so that you can see if you like it or not. So anyway, or maybe per week, I don't know. I just recently downloaded just came out or this update came out and it's really fun.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm downloading it right now. I like the idea. Perla spelled like the pearl. P E A R L A pro filming. Very nice. Thank you. Alex. Alex. Lindsay's at Officehours Global every day of the week. You can ask questions, think and talk about production. The kinds of stuff he's a master of. Anything you want to plug?

[Andy Inatko]

Right now I'm going to be doing some live streaming tests probably starting tomorrow on Substack. I'm trying to figure it out so.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm trying to live stream on Substack.

[Andy Inatko]

You can, you can live stream to Substack and I can't tell you how yet but next week I will be able to.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow, that's the one platform we don't live stream on. I'd like to find out more.

[Andy Inatko]

So I'm working on a couple projects. We're moving Michael KRASNY'S show. We're taking a little hiatus on Michael Krasny show and moving into substack so.

[Leo Laporte]

People can pay for it, subscribe to it.

[Andy Inatko]

We've had subscription, but. But we think that the cross pollination and substack is probably going to be more effective. You know, it's really. There's a lot going. I mean, we did a lot of studying, talked, you know, and we think that that's going to be really interesting to kind of build more of that process around there. So we're going to move it. But I have, I have to figure it all out before we get there. So one of the things I'm going to do is start streaming because we're going to stream those shows and take questions and everything else there. So. So, so anyway, so we're. So if you find me on substack, you can find. I'm. I think I put it out on a tweet or whatever, but I'm. It's Alex. B, B, E, E. Lindsay on substack. My middle name is B. So that's why I do it. Wait a minute.

[Leo Laporte]

Your middle name is not B, E, E? Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Andy Inatko]

So B. Yeah, that would be funny if my name was B.

[Leo Laporte]

It would be very funny.

[Alex Lindsey]

So.

[Andy Inatko]

No, B. You can always tell that's the name I use when I, when someone else. I think I have the other Alex. Thanks, Lindsay. But I.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, you know, my middle initial is G. It'd be nice if my middle name were G. E, E. Yeah. Leo G. Laporte.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

So I think about changing things. Exactly.

[Andy Inatko]

So, so anyway, so. And then also if you are. If you sign up for office hours, we'll be streaming my. My. My daughter's band is a high school band on, on Saturday. And so you'd have to go to Officehours Global slash join to sign up and you'll get announcements inside of Discord. You have to kind of find.

[Leo Laporte]

But.

[Andy Inatko]

And we'll. We'll put out the link. I'll probably. I may tweet it out. We'll see. We'll see how I feel about it. We're gonna. We have a student.

[Leo Laporte]

How the rest of the kids feel about it too. They may not. They may not like the idea.

[Andy Inatko]

We've told them that. That that's the deal. Like, so they're excited. They're excited about this.

[Jason Snell]

All right.

[Leo Laporte]

So they want to be famous.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, they're. They're that generation.

[Leo Laporte]

They all want to be influencers. So.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah.

[Alex Lindsey]

So.

[Andy Inatko]

So there were. We have A little studio that we found in Richmond that's going to. That's going to let us take over for a little while.

[Jason Snell]

While.

[Andy Inatko]

And we're gonna put some Black Magic cameras in there and.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so you're not doing it in a concert venue, you're gonna do it in a studio?

[Andy Inatko]

Yeah, they want to. We're gonna record this. We're gonna record a couple songs as well as for Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

For. For the album.

[Andy Inatko]

For the album. Yeah, exactly. And so. But you'll also get to see them. They're. They're great. It's a great band. So they're. They're doing. They're doing some fun stuff. So anyway, so that's gonna happen on Saturday if you sign up. Probably more of an internal announcement, so you probably have to go to Officehours Global,/join and get into that email list and the. That email will go out.

[Leo Laporte]

Awesome. Thank you, Alex. Andy Inako. I have no idea how to spell his last name, but if you remember, I have no idea, you'll get at least part of the way there. I, H, N, A T, K, O. That's. The rest of. It's easy.

[Alex Lindsey]

Yeah. I mean, but going back to your earlier comment, like, imagine like having the initial AI in this area.

[Leo Laporte]

I know that's pretty good, isn't.

[Alex Lindsey]

It's kind of like every time I.

[Leo Laporte]

See your show notes, I go, is that Andy or an AI?

[Alex Lindsey]

I'm finishing up, like the little bibs and bobs on the new site, the new blog, like in the about. Okay, let me explain who the hell I am. And the joke was. And I was going to. I had the joke for the longest time. I promise you that every single thing is created by AI. And I also promise that nothing on this site is generated by AI. And then I thought that they're probably automated systems that will cause me to regret even joking about Everything is created as AI on this site. And so I should probably not do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, go ahead, Andy. Live it. Live it up. Take a chance.

[Alex Lindsey]

Hey, I can certainly afford to, like, send away traffic from my site. Pishaw.

[Leo Laporte]

I've been doing that for years.

[Alex Lindsey]

I'm wearing a cardboard belt.

[Leo Laporte]

Jason Snell is at 6colors.com. You could find all of his [e-mail] podcast anything or. Sorry, SL Jason.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I'm gonna need to create an alias for slash podcast.

[Leo Laporte]

I just screw it now. I'm sorry.

[Jason Snell]

Just, you know, good. Lots and lots of Emptying the notebook about last week and trying to think about where Apple's going with this stuff. G. Moran and I were both out there, so we've been writing about that quite a bit on six colors. And then there's, you know, podcast wise, talking to Mike Hurley on Upgrade every Monday and here every Tuesday. And so, you know, yada, yada, yada, there's a lot going on.

[Leo Laporte]

The man lives in front of a microphone.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, my goodness.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[Jason Snell]

It's true. Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanks to all of you. We do Mac Break weekly, as I mentioned, every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. Come on by. Watch us live if you wish, but after the fact, on demand versions on the website, Twitter, TV, MBW. Subscribe in your favorite podcast player. There's even a YouTube, YouTube channel which makes it really easy to share little clips of the show. And if you do subscribe in, your favorite podcast client, would you please give us five stars? Tell everybody what a great show this is. You know, when you've been around, when a show's been around for a couple of decades, people kind of, you know, it falls off the top of the charts, as it were. It's not because there are fewer people listening, but you just don't have the same number of new subscribers. So it really helps us if you can, if you could put a nice review in there for us and spread the word. Thank you so much. Thanks to our, our club members who make this all possible, and we will. And by the way, thanks to Anthony Nielsen, who's filling in for John Ashley this week, who's got. How is he going to be gone two weeks? He already did his honeymoon. Yeah. Oh, okay.

[Alex Lindsey]

All right.

[Jason Snell]

Well, I think that's another week out.

[Alex Lindsey]

But he'll be back in the week.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you so much, Anthony, for doing his job. It's really interesting. I know immediately that it's not John Ashley switching the show, that it's you, but even the people in the club, the Discord said Anthony likes the four Up a lot.

[Jason Snell]

That was me. That was me, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, because he.

[Jason Snell]

Because he hits the four Up. And then I realized that I'm taking a drink and put down the drink.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I. Same for me. I was like, caught me putting my battering my nose.

[Andy Inatko]

We're all used to a certain flow.

[Jason Snell]

We're not safe.

[Alex Lindsey]

I still have most of my cookies left over.

[Leo Laporte]

The chips ahoy uneaten. No, I like it.

[Andy Inatko]

You.

[Leo Laporte]

Good job. Thank you, Anthony. Really appreciate it. Thanks to all of you. And as I have said for now almost two decades, it's time to get back to work because break time is over. Bye Bye. Get tech news at your pace with TwitTV's perfect pair of shows for quick, focused insights. Tech News Weekly brings you essential interviews with the journalists breaking today's biggest stories. But maybe you need more.

[Jason Snell]

That's why I'm here.

[Leo Laporte]

Dive deep with me on this Week in Tech, your first podcast of the week and the last word in tech industry. Insiders dissect everything from AI to privacy to cybersecurity in tech's most influential and longest running roundtable discussion. Short or long, streamlined or comprehensive, Twik TV keeps you well informed. Subscribe to both shows wherever you get your podcasts, and head over to our website, TWIT TV for even more independent tech journalism.