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MacBreak Weekly 979: Matt Baloney
02:22:09
Controversy Over Apple's F1 Movie Wallet Push Notification
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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
Andy, it's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Alex, Jason, all here. We'll talk about Apple's trust eroding wallet ad. They're looking at using another AI instead of Siri. Could that be. And how Apple will respond to Germany, the U.S. the Department of Justice. They're in trouble everywhere. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly, episode 979, recorded Tuesday, July 1, 2025. Matt Baloney. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We cover the latest Apple news with the great Mac Break Weekly team. Leading off playing first base, Mr. Jason Snell of sixcolors. Com.
- [00:59]
Andy Ihnatko
Hello, team. Good to be here. Happy to join you.
- [01:02]
Leo Laporte
Nice to have you.
- [01:03]
Andy Ihnatko
Good to be here.
- [01:04]
Leo Laporte
In right field, we've got Alex Lindsay from Office Hours Global batting second.
- [01:10]
Alex Lindsay
Hello. Hello.
- [01:11]
Leo Laporte
And Andy Natko is our cleanup hitter. He's out there in left field. Hello, Andy.
- [01:17]
Andy Ihnatko
That's.
- [01:17]
Jason Snell
That's fine. That's where Carly Stremsky wound up late in his career. I'll take that.
- [01:21]
Leo Laporte
That's okay. We are here. Well, there's a couple things. Let's start with the technically.
- [01:29]
Andy Ihnatko
Leo, by the way, I should say you are a cleanup hitter because the fourth.
- [01:32]
Leo Laporte
I'm the cleanup hitter. I'm forced.
- [01:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Is the cleanup hitter. So Andy's in a very important power spot that you're the cleanup hitter. I don't know the position you're playing. You may be our pitcher for all we know.
- [01:39]
Leo Laporte
I could be the dh.
- [01:41]
Andy Ihnatko
You could be the dh.
- [01:42]
Leo Laporte
I could be the dh.
- [01:43]
Andy Ihnatko
You're a Shohei Ohtani type. We've always said that about you.
- [01:47]
Leo Laporte
I can pitch and hit, ladies and gentlemen. I'm calling it Wallet Gate boy. Jon Gruber is salty over all this. Now, have any of you yet seen an F1 ad in your wallet? Because I still haven't.
- [02:01]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I got one in the wallet app. I didn't see the notification, but I have most of my notifications turned off.
- [02:06]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, me too.
- [02:07]
Andy Ihnatko
But I did in the wallet app. There was a little temporary thing with a close icon on it that you feel about that.
- [02:14]
Leo Laporte
Jason, what do you think?
- [02:16]
Andy Ihnatko
I. I kind of don't care. There are a lot of people clutching pearls about. Sorry to just come out strong. But, like, my take is not that. It's fine. My take is that Apple has been pushing ads to us like everybody else for a long time now. And I don't think the fact that it came from the Wal App instead of the TV app makes a whole lot of difference. I think that it's. You know, my personal philosophy about push notifications is you shouldn't push marketing notifications unless you offer an option to turn them off. And that should be for every app from every company. And the irony is that in the 26 operating systems, you can turn off marketing messages in Wallet, but not in the currently shipping version.
- [02:57]
Leo Laporte
Interesting. So this will be fixed in 26.
- [03:01]
Andy Ihnatko
It will be fixed in 26. That's a nice. Let's just put that on its T shirt. Fixed in 26. But it. So I don't like it, but I don't. I have a hard time creating a lot of anger about it. Just because everybody abuses push notifications. People say, oh, well, Apple's guidelines, I mean, like, their guidelines, they're like, you shouldn't do that. But everybody does it, including Apple. And that's just the way of the world. So is this a slightly sort of beaten down take on my part? Yes. Yes, it is. But I feel like. I feel like Apple has committed so many crimes that on this front, this is just like another one on the list. So it's hard for me to get really mad about it.
- [03:39]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Casey List started the whole thing. And this is the latest one from Claude Zients. Here's his real wallet with a little card in it. That did not happen. That did not happen. But Jon Gruber says it's trust eroding. Jon Gruber says it's. It's basically ruined everything Apple has done.
- [04:02]
Alex Lindsay
I think my problem is I use the wallet so little that I was kind of like, okay, whatever. Like, I don't like, though. I can't really, because I don't use the wallet. Because if you make the mistake of putting a your flight into your wallet, it will remind you of that every 10 minutes for the next six years. Like, it's just like constantly like, your flight's here, your flight's here, your flight's here. And I. So I was like, never want to put anything in the wallet. I used it for a concert on Friday, but. But that was kind of like a new thing. And I couldn't even kind of find.
- [04:30]
Leo Laporte
You, like the Giants games, you put it in your wallet.
- [04:34]
Alex Lindsay
I could have turned it out or I could have printed out where you.
- [04:37]
Leo Laporte
Look like a cave.
- [04:38]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, most of those you can have it in the app. And you don't actually have to put in the wallet. You can just have it in the app. I agree with Gruber's metaphor in the sense that erosion. Right. An erosion is a long term process done by individual drips of water over many, many years. And I agree with that. I feel like this is just another drip in it. And I think the fact that this happened to come out and Wallet, I don't think Wallet is some sort of magic sacrosanct place that should never have anything in it. I don't think it's appropriate and I think you should be able to opt out of these things. But I don't know, maybe it's just me saying it's the way of the world. Like, yeah, should they have done it? Well, no, but they also spent hundreds of millions dollars on the movie and are trying to work with their partners to sell people on the movie. So yeah, I get it.
- [05:22]
Jason Snell
I agree. I think that the problem is that there's still a persistent idea of, oh, Apple is a $3 trillion company with an immense amount of power, but they're not like other super huge international powerful companies that are amongst the most valuable in the entire world. They would never do that. Ignoring that. Well, yeah, they are doing that. They've always done that. They've just done it in ways that we don't necessarily notice or don't necessarily find all that offensive. Which is not me throwing up my hands and being cynical and saying, well, of course it's going to be, they're going to introduce crap and whatever they want. But the thing like they're not, they're not necessarily better than any other company they love, they care about people. Until there's a really good business reason not to care about people, in which case the business plan, as always, has to come first. And that's not an evil thing about Apple. It's not even necessarily an evil thing about businesses. It's just the way things work. The business plan always comes first and the user will always come second.
- [06:20]
Alex Lindsay
I'm curious. I don't even know if they're targeting anybody. I mean, I don't think we know whether it was targeting.
- [06:24]
Leo Laporte
That's what I'm wondering. Because I didn't get it.
- [06:26]
Alex Lindsay
But I didn't get it. And I, and I was, I did all the things that you would need to do to get an F1 invite. So, so like, you know, like I, and, and so I don't know how targeted it was as opposed to some random sample to see how it worked. I think that, I think F1 number one is I think Eddie Q wants F1 to be successful a lot. You know, and, and, and I think this is something that he's really interested in. I think number two is, is that that Apple is interested in how far could they. Could they actually make a film release work. I don't think that they're planning to do this for everybody's films. I think they're planning to do this if they do it for their films. And I think that they want to see if they put out a film every six months or every. Because I think Apple's going to probably stop making features in the next, you know, any kind of features that aren't going to theatrical probably this year or next year and then they'll release maybe three to four features, maybe a year. The rest of it's all going to be. That's where most people are going. All series and everything else, because series are better for subscriptions. And so I think that. But Apple also, I think is looking at if we can move the needle. They've said this. If they can move. They want to see what they can do as far as moving the needle towards a cultural push. F1 is not as well known in the United States. They want to see if they can move that needle forward and possibly buy some of the broadcast rights for F1. And I think so I think this is all. This got into the convolution of a whole lot of things that Apple wants to do. And again, I. I don't know. I don't. I think that the press is really upset. I don't know if anybody else even noticed that it happened or cared. Like, I don't even think they thought.
- [07:56]
Leo Laporte
Well, all so many places. Maybe nobody's really.
- [08:00]
Alex Lindsay
I don't even know if they thought that the wallet.
- [08:01]
Leo Laporte
I understand why Apple did it. That's not the question. The question is a, did they target it? In which case the sacrosanct. This is what Gruber's upset about, the sacrosanct privacy of your wallet.
- [08:13]
Alex Lindsay
Well, there's. And there's ways to do that without taking away your privacy as well. Like you can. So you could have the wallet looking for something without you knowing anything about it. So you broadcast it out to everyone. And based on what's sitting in your wallet, it either grabs it or doesn't, but it doesn't. You don't need to know anything about the user to send. You know the way that Facebook works, you need to know a lot about the user. But the way that you can build systems that allow that, it's. It's looking for something, but it's sent to everyone. So if it was they could target it without having any information about you. The, you know, so that. That might be the case. But I don't think they. I don't think that. I say that, but I don't think they targeted anybody. I think it was a random dispersion of stuff to people's wallets. Because.
- [09:00]
Leo Laporte
Would it be different if they did?
- [09:02]
Alex Lindsay
No. Again, if they started, I think it would be right. If what they did is they have a central amount of data about you that they used to then target you, I think that's more problematic. I think that if it, oh, this.
- [09:15]
Leo Laporte
Is the kind of person who would go see this movie. So let's put that little thing in there. But if the wallet is very problematic.
- [09:21]
Alex Lindsay
Right. While it's making that decision and they're sending out an anonymous undirected.
- [09:25]
Leo Laporte
That's a lot of speculation.
- [09:26]
Alex Lindsay
Alex knows what I'm saying. We don't know. And so we can't.
- [09:30]
Leo Laporte
Like the assumption is always going to be by normal people. Well, I guess my wallet's not private.
- [09:35]
Alex Lindsay
May.
- [09:35]
Andy Ihnatko
I think that's a leap.
- [09:36]
Alex Lindsay
I think that's.
- [09:37]
Andy Ihnatko
I think, I think people overthinking it. I think people. I think people don't care. They know that it works this way. They may assume that and not care, or they may not assume it. But saying, oh, a push notification, that's generic. That came out of the wallet app. If you notice, it's in the Wallet app. That's about Apple Pay, by the way. So it has a clear relevance to the wallet app is somehow going to be perceived by regular people as a breach of trust. Like, will there be some people? Sure. People believe anything.
- [10:04]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [10:05]
Andy Ihnatko
We live in a world where people believe conspiracies of all sorts that are nonsense. I'm sure those people, some of those people might believe this about this, but I don't. I think this is a little bit too much tech industry naval gaze for me.
- [10:16]
Leo Laporte
Okay, well, Mike on Twitter agrees with you. So we're going to move on.
- [10:19]
Andy Ihnatko
He says, great, move in.
- [10:21]
Leo Laporte
That's it. You're right. Mike gave it.
- [10:23]
Andy Ihnatko
Boom, done.
- [10:25]
Leo Laporte
But Gruber is pretty upset. I mean, it's interesting. Maybe he's decided, well, if I'm going to be a pariah in the Apple world, I might as well just go all in.
- [10:32]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, he's a real pariah. Getting invited to Apple park and giving briefings and stuff.
- [10:37]
Leo Laporte
Oh, let me tell you what pariah is.
- [10:39]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that's. Yeah.
- [10:44]
Leo Laporte
All right, let's talk about AI because Mark Gurman's big scoop on Sunday was Apple has decided or at least is weighing the possibility of giving up on its AI and Siri and using anthropic or OpenAI.
- [10:59]
Andy Ihnatko
Sounds like they're, they're, they're looking at or talking to Anthropic and OpenAI. Like, look, a few months ago there was that report, I think from Gurman who said with the new Siri team, everything was on the table. And this is that thing that we talked about where there's a real lack of trust, I think, inside Apple to the people who are building their models, or at least if you want to be generous, an understanding that the model building team at Apple is behind on chatbot kind of stuff and they're going to need time to catch up and that every, you know, Siri is burning in the meantime. I mean, Siri has burned to the ground in the meantime. So I, they would be irresponsible not to be saying, is there some existing technology we can use to ship AI Siri, smarter Siri, you know, not now, but like soon, real soon. And so of course you should. Again, I would say it's almost malpractice if you weren't talking to Perplexity or an open AI. And like, I mean, you, you've got to, you got to.
- [12:02]
Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, there's, there's also, like, I'm, I'm a little bit, I don't know, curious about all these discussions because Apple is probably the only major company that doesn't need to be in a huge rush. They can take two or three years to build their core models and rely on them and of course extend to all the other ones if they actually want to. If any user wants to use OpenAI, wants to use Gemini or anything like that. The more interesting thing in that report, I thought was that Apple is having a hard, the report that Apple's having a hard time retaining talent because, I mean, Apple can't match the salary that other companies are offering, the opportunities or the prestige that come with offering competing companies. The report also said that one of the core, like Siri teams actually threatened to walk if they weren't given like a huge bump in compensation given the volatility of the AI workforce right now. So that shows that Apple is facing threats on multiple fronts trying to get this thing shipped out. If they do want to keep all this in house, they're going to have to like, keep their researchers happy. And this is not, this is not a marketplace where you can be Apple and simply say, oh, well, you're going to be sworn to secrecy. No, you can't share on your LinkedIn all this wonderful research and breakthroughs you're doing to raise your own profile and raise your own career outside of the, outside of Apple. And you'll take basically what we, what we think is the fair market rate. Like, no, you're going to have to keep making us, giving us enticements to stay here because we can make so much money working for anybody else right now. Excuse me, it's not, that's not a fact. But like again, they're so hot in the app, in the employment marketplace right now that Apple really has to give them pretty much whatever they want if they're going to keep this core team together.
- [13:55]
Leo Laporte
According to Apple Insider, Tom Gunter, one of Apple's most senior large language model researchers, has left the company after eight years. And of course there is a revolt, as you said, it is speculated among Apple's AI researchers. What Gurman says is that Apple has asked both Anthropic and OpenAI if they could train their models to work on Apple's servers. So they would be basically saying, yeah, Siri's not working out so much on our cloud infrastructure, so could we use yours? I think that's a big deal. I mean, it seems like this is a well sourced story.
- [14:40]
Alex Lindsay
And again, the other thing though is that a lot of times large companies will use a outside vendor to solve a problem while they're figuring it out. Like they're not. You know, when Google Hangouts came out, it wasn't necessarily all Google's infrastructure.
- [14:56]
Leo Laporte
But does Apple do that? I know other companies do that, but does Apple do that?
- [14:59]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, I think they do, yeah. So, so they, you know, so I think that, that they, you, you outsource things until you have it working internally and then you slowly pull it back into the system. You know, actually that's the story of.
- [15:12]
Leo Laporte
Apple in China is how they outsourced. After a long time, Steve Jobs did not want to ever have anybody make Apple Macintoshes but Apple. But when they started outsourcing it to contract manufacturers, it worked so well. Tim Cook became the master of it.
- [15:26]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I was, I was under the impression that Icloud was running on Google servers and I think Amazon servers as well. And I think it probably still is in part. That's a good point. Right. They have to build up server capacity of their own, which they have done, but like they had never had an issue with doing that. And why would they? It's not their business that they're in.
- [15:45]
Leo Laporte
Well, I would actually welcome especially now that I've used Amazon's Echo plus and it's so bad, I would welcome seeing OpenAI or Anthropic.
- [16:00]
Jason Snell
I'm sorry. The only trouble is that Apple from day one has been saying, oh gosh, we're going to be privacy focused. Privacy focused. Privacy focused. How can it's not.
- [16:11]
Leo Laporte
Well, if it's running on their servers, it's the same. They would just be using the models on their servers. So we'll still have the same.
- [16:17]
Jason Snell
Okay.
- [16:19]
Leo Laporte
It doesn't exfiltrate stuff to those companies.
- [16:22]
Jason Snell
As long as OpenAI doesn't like make requests, let's say that would violate that initial covenant. I mean they certainly, they're interested in making money. Certainly. And the same reason why Google is more than willing to sell them Cloud compute, because they are in the business of serving cloud.
- [16:41]
Leo Laporte
I don't think it's a stretch. If Apple's saying we want to run on our infrastructure, they're also saying that means no access we have.
- [16:49]
Jason Snell
We have, yeah.
- [16:50]
Leo Laporte
Otherwise they would do what they're already doing. I mean that's. You can already send information to ChatGPT. If Siri doesn't like your question and she says, well, okay, but you can use ChatGPT if you must.
- [17:02]
Jason Snell
Exactly. That's it's second class citizen status.
- [17:04]
Leo Laporte
This is not what they're talking about.
- [17:06]
Jason Snell
If they're elevating it to like a, like an Apple level status. And again, it's not unprecedented, people. Again, Google search shares data on device and it is the preferred search tool like on Android. So it's not unprecedented, but it is something. We shouldn't just simply assume that if Apple were to strike a deal to run OpenAI models on Apple intelligence server hardware, that it would absolutely have the exact same controls, the exact same privacy.
- [17:35]
Leo Laporte
That's a good point. Google gets a lot of information by steel.
- [17:39]
Jason Snell
Yeah, it's a good guess, but we shouldn't absolutely assume that would be true.
- [17:43]
Leo Laporte
And by the way, Gurman says Apple's investigation into third party models is at an early stage and the company hasn't made a final decision yet. But I think it is kind of interesting that they would even be thinking about it. That's to me the sound of is it safe to say panic.
- [18:06]
Jason Snell
They touch the hot stove, they don't wanna get burned again. I think they appreciate that they're not gonna solve this in the next couple of years. And as Jason said, it's okay to sort of like rely on a crutch while they develop that model that they want to own and control 100%.
- [18:23]
Alex Lindsay
And I think it's realism. Yeah, I think it was less of a panic of the folks that are putting it together and more of the way the PR was managed last year. So I mean I think that Apple could have very easily been announcing partnerships with all these folks putting those things together, integrating it with what they had. And I think that they just over wanted to oversell the fact they could do it all themselves. And I don't think they needed to do that. And I think that it was, you know, but it was more of a PR disaster than an actual problem for where they're at. I don't think that again, I just don't, I don't see that there's any real fire here other than the fireplace. You know, I think that, I think that they have to figure out how they're going to incorporate AI. But whether they're doing it all or other people are doing, I think that there are massive advantages to Apple building very powerful models on device and onto a server. And I think that being able to provide and I think to be competitive, I think Google is going to do that with the Android, with, you know, with, on Android where they're doing more and more of the models on the phone. So I think that, that, that over a long period of time is something that Apple has to figure out. But I don't think that they have to figure it out today or tomorrow or next year or even the year after. Yeah, and I think it's gonna take that long to do it. You know, it's, it's hard thing to do.
- [19:34]
Leo Laporte
Apparently Apple nearly lost the entire team behind their open source machine learning framework optimized for Silicon. The engineers reportedly threatened to quit.
- [19:46]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, this is the big, this is their big challenge right now is it's not just a brain drain. It's also identifying who your talented players are because I think it's hard to say. It sure looks from the outside like John Jan Andrea when he came over from Google built a team that was focused on certain kinds of machines learning and not others. And that they have, they have a culture that is for whatever reason has sort of like failed to meet the moment, at least in areas that are very visible. And I keep thinking so German talks about this, about that there are a bunch of people who are thinking of leaving or leaving and there was a one group that they sort of like had to make a big offer to. And Mark Zuckerberg is out there offering.
- [20:25]
Leo Laporte
People checks being written right now, your.
- [20:28]
Andy Ihnatko
Checks and all of that. So, so the question, though, if your Apple leadership is do you believe in your ML people or not? And the one way to read Gurman's piece is, oh boy, they're going to have a huge brain drain where they're going to lose all these talented people. The other way to read it is what do you do if you have an organization that you think is dysfunctional and isn't up to the challenge? And the answer is you let them go because they, they failed. And I think that one group that they kept that's building those ML tools, they found the value in them and they wanted to keep them. But I think the, the, the question is still there about how do they feel about John Gianna Andrea and his team and what they've been able to do and what they haven't been able to do. And if this is existential for Apple, you know, do they need a new team? Do they need to do some Aqua Hire kind of things? Do they need to change the management there? And you know that at that point you're looking at norg chart and you've got to be in the, you know, inside the black box in order to do that part. Because, I mean, that's the question, right? The big question is, do you, if you're an internal Apple person, think that Apple can catch up to what these other chat bots are doing for Siri purposes in a year, two years, three years, five years, or never? And, and then choose accordingly?
- [21:43]
Leo Laporte
There's a precedent for this because Meta seems like they're doing exactly that. Mark Zuckerberg, all those big checks he's writing are to build a different team than his llama team, a super intelligence team. And it looks as if he's thinking, llama, llama, shmama, let's move in another direction.
- [22:03]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and again, my whole family uses ChatGPT every day, all day, and doesn't care whether Siri can do it or not. They've given up on Siri. The other thing is, is that how many people really care? Like, you know, the, the. I think that people talk about it like, oh, Siri's got to fix it. I think they could probably throw Siri away or leave Siri the way Siri is, because it's now gotten to the point for most of us that it's as Easy to use ChatGPT as it is Siri to do almost everything that you want to do. And so, so I think that it's, I am not clear that, that again, that it really matters about fixing Siri. I think they just leave Siri the way Siri is and figure out what they're going to do next. I think there's always this mistake of hey, we want to try to fix the thing that we have. Sometimes the best thing to do for the thing you had was to make it obsolete. You know, I think just trying to re gear it is going to be much harder than just to trying getting coming out with something new in two years.
- [22:54]
Leo Laporte
It might be a question for our AI show intelligent machines, which is tomorrow. But it does make me start to think that even though the techniques being used by all the AI companies are well known, that only a handful of companies really seem to be able to do it. Amazon's struggling with Alexa plus Apple's obviously struggling. Meta's struggling. It's OpenAI anthropic and Google.
- [23:20]
Alex Lindsay
But every established company always has trouble fitting the new model. It's the new wine into the old wineskin.
- [23:26]
Leo Laporte
They can't figure out new companies.
- [23:28]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, they're new and they, and this is new way of thinking. And they have to protect their privacy, they have to protect the brand, they have to protect all these other things. They have to make sure that it all ties into this thing and what happens here. And people then you worry about if I make this available over here, everyone's going to want it over there and I won't be able to do that. And so there's all these complex pieces that, that I think that for established companies, this is why companies get disrupted. It's because they can't. This is why Boeing got disrupted by X, by SpaceX, is because they have old ways of doing things that don't fit into the new process.
- [24:05]
Leo Laporte
Maybe that Google's only a player because the technologies were invented at Google and there's just a little inertia they've been thinking about.
- [24:11]
Alex Lindsay
Google's been working on this for so long, they invented it all.
- [24:14]
Leo Laporte
I mean it all started at Google. All these people were at Google.
- [24:17]
Alex Lindsay
It's 15, it's 15. Almost 20 years old at Google. Like, like it's.
- [24:21]
Leo Laporte
Although Google had to acquire DeepMind to get the real talent. DeepMind was also a startup. So maybe you're right. Maybe the incumbents just don't have a shot.
- [24:28]
Alex Lindsay
The other thing that we're seeing is that if you're, if you're a programmer, like if you're a, if you're a junior programmer, you're probably a lot of trouble. If you're in a, if you're a senior programmer or a Very adept programmer. The value of people who can still understand the code, especially related AI.
- [24:43]
Leo Laporte
Oh, big bucks.
- [24:44]
Alex Lindsay
It's like, it's like sports team problems. Like it's, you know.
- [24:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And there's no salary cap in these big companies.
- [24:51]
Andy Ihnatko
And I wanted to say a little thing about that, which is I've seen some people be kind of outraged by these, oh, these outrageous amounts of money that are being offered to programmers who are doing, you know, basically AI researchers. Like folks, do you see what these companies are worth and that how much of their net worth is, is built up in.
- [25:10]
Leo Laporte
They're talking here, Man.
- [25:13]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, that was going to be my, my example, which is people complain about, I mean, first off, people complain about, about people getting paid a lot of money. People who don't make that amount of money complain about that and say nobody's worth that. It's like, okay, but how broken do you have to be in your worldview to look at companies that are worth a trillion dollars and say that, oh, it turns out there are a hundred people who are going to determine the future value of that corporation.
- [25:38]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [25:38]
Andy Ihnatko
And say they don't deserve more than making, you know, $200,000 a year. It's ridiculous. It's just like saying if that baseball team is worth a billion dollars and you've got an all star, you know, perennial, one of the 10 best players in baseball and you're going to sign him to a contract for 10 years for 700 million, that is like he's overpaid. It's like, well, no, he's, he's not. Because his value to that corp, that trillion dollar corporation or billion dollar corporation is enormous. And that is, I mean, so, so I hope those people get paid. I really hope they do because they deserve it. They are, they have. Like, if you're Mark Zuckerberg, I really think his attitude is good here, which is it's only money. Right. Like they've got, he's got plenty of it. All the money. And if it's, if it's only money, you've got all the money.
- [26:26]
Leo Laporte
Venice for the weekend.
- [26:27]
Andy Ihnatko
And it is, and it is critical, you believe it's critical to the future of your business. Why would you not spend the money?
- [26:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [26:34]
Jason Snell
And remember back in the Steve Jobs era, they had all this, all The Silicon Valley CEOs basically had an agreement that, that we are not, we're going to create an artificial environment where that'll keep that if someone, where we won't hire from each other and therefore that will keep the salaries low. Because they can't simply take a better offer from a competing company. So it is exceptionally good that people are getting paid what their work with, what their contribution to the company is valued is actually worth.
- [27:01]
Leo Laporte
They lost that antitrust case.
- [27:03]
Andy Ihnatko
And think about, yeah, I mean the whole poaching thing is kind of disgusting, especially in California where there's a, there's no such thing as a non compete clause in California. And so like to have the Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt agree not to hire each other's people is really gross. But I'd also say it feels kind of broken to me and I know that this is a thing that is broken and VCs make a lot of money on how broken it is because right now the perception is that the only way to, if you're an incredibly talented person in Silicon Valley to make a lot of money is you leave your giant company, you do a startup, you take a bunch of VC money and then you get bought out.
- [27:41]
Alex Lindsay
And then the company that you left.
- [27:43]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, you get, and you get bought out, you make a lot of money, the VCs make a lot of money and the company you left bought you back for a huge amount of money. I mean we just saw that that, that app that is being worked on, that's what software applications that, that it's the sky, which is basically the Shortcuts team at Apple left and built an entire utility that uses AI to let you do automations on the Mac.
- [28:06]
Leo Laporte
Were they the flow people who were bought by Apple, who were bought by Apple, left Apple.
- [28:10]
Andy Ihnatko
They left Apple and they started a new company and you look at their product and you say why is that not part of the system software? And the answer is because they weren't allowed to do that inside Apple. And because this way they get investments, they get money and they'll get bought by somebody. And it's just, it's so I kind of like how old fashioned Mark Zuckerberg is being and saying, you know what, I'm just going to pay you a lot of money to stay here and work for me. Like yes, do that.
- [28:33]
Alex Lindsay
And, and, and Facebook's really good at that. Like they, they give people that work there, like here's a million do of stock for the next couple years and when we get to the end of that we'll give you another million dollars. Scott they understand that that's their currency that they have is currency, you know, and I think that it's literally currency. It turns out they don't need anything else. But the interesting thing is, is That a lot of times you see people go into these companies, they get bought out by the company and they have all these ideas. If only I had the resources of this big company, I could boil the ocean. And then they get, they're drowned. They just drown in the ocean of, of, of process. Right? And they can't get done what they want to get done. They're now, you know, they're. And then they also are not getting compensated as much as they could if they sold, you know, made their own company. So you're, you're 100% right. And then they, you know, they wait for them, they wait for the stock to, you know, to vest. And then once it's vested, they go, okay, well, I'll go out and do it again. I know someone who sold a company to Google. They sold three companies to Google. Like, they got in, they vested, they went out, they started another company, came back in. And for the big companies, sometimes it works because the fluidness. For Google, that works because the fluidness of how people think is different in a big company, there's just too much. You're protecting your 401k, you're trying to figure things out and there's things you'll do in your garage that you won't do in a big company. And so I think that's the hard part that all these companies have to kind of manage right now. But I think that Apple is going to have to like everybody else if Apple doesn't get aggressive. They have the money. As Jason said, Facebook's got the money and Apple's got more money, and they are going to have to spend it on the talent or they're not going to be able to keep. They're not going to be competitive at all. They might as well just outsource it if they're not going to be ready to spend 20, 30, $40 million a year on a handful of people, because not all the programmers the way they think. Not. You know, we have a huge feeder system for quarterbacks in the United States. And you get to the end of the year and there's maybe six out of 10, you know, 10 million, 20 million that started at five years old, there's now six that we think that can actually make a team go forward. The programmers are the same. You know, like there's a handful of programmers that they're not all interchangeable. It's not like, oh, you can code now, you can do the same thing. The way they think, the way that they approach it, how they innovate. There's a handful of them that are way better than everybody else in the vertical that they're in. Right. And. And it happens to be the sun is shining on AI right now.
- [31:08]
Leo Laporte
It's a good time to be an AI guy. Yeah. You said 10, 20, 30, 40 million. Could be a lot more than that. Actually looks like might be even as much as 100 million a year.
- [31:19]
Alex Lindsay
Facebook walked that back and said that's a multi year contract for 100. They didn't say that they weren't paying 100.
- [31:24]
Leo Laporte
They said for some people they. I think there's weasel words in what Facebook said. It sounds like some people did in fact get a pretty big if they.
- [31:31]
Jason Snell
Make it into the postseason.
- [31:33]
Alex Lindsay
Right, right. Exactly.
- [31:33]
Andy Ihnatko
There were the bonuses.
- [31:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. All right, let's take a little break. More to come. IOS updates, iOS updates. We've got beta 2 for the new operating system. We also have some trouble in the eu, but Apple's got a solution and more coming up in just a bit with Andy and Ako. Jason Snell, Alex Lindsey, you're watching MacBreak Weekly, brought to you today by 1Password. Oh, I know you know that name. But 1Password is more than just a password manager. Let me tell you a little bit about it. Over half of IT professionals say that securing SaaS apps is their biggest challenge. With the growing problem of not just SaaS sprawl but shadow it and we're talking chatbots, but a whole lot more, it's not hard to see why. Thankfully, 1Password has a solution. Trelica by 1Password can discover and secure access to all your apps, whether you've got them under management or not. Trellica by 1Password inventories every app in use at your company and then pre populated app profiles. Assess SaaS risks, letting you manage access, optimize, spend and enforce security best practices across every app your employees use, including Shadow It. It's also great for securely onboarding and offboarding employees and meeting your compliance goals. Trelika by1Password provides a complete solution for SaaS access governance. It's just one of the ways that Extended Access Management EAM helps teams strengthen compliance and security. 1Password's award winning password manager is trusted by millions of users at over 150,000 businesses from IBM to Slack. And now they're securing more than just passwords with 1Password Extended Access Management. And of course 1Password is super secure. ISO 27001 certified with regular third party audits and the industry's largest bug bounty, 1Password exceeds standards set by various authorities and is a leader in security. Take the first step to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, even unmanaged. Shadow it. Learn more@1Password.com MacBreak that's 1Password.com MacBreak all lowercase 1Password thank you 1Password for supporting Mac Break Weekly. We really appreciate it. Second betas for but why are we calling it iOS 18.6 Mac OS 15.6 WatchOS 11.6?
- [34:18]
Andy Ihnatko
Those are, those are uninteresting betas that nobody.
- [34:20]
Leo Laporte
These are not the 26 betas. These are the existing OS betas.
- [34:24]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, who's running these? I guess people have to who are testing things. But we've all. The rest of us have all. You've all moved on cutting edge betas. These are just. Yeah, this is cleanup work at the end of the old cycle.
- [34:37]
Leo Laporte
So how soon before the public beta is for 26? What do you think they said this month?
- [34:45]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, it's, it's, it's any day now, but my guess it'll be in a couple of weeks.
- [34:48]
Leo Laporte
July 30 could be as late.
- [34:53]
Andy Ihnatko
Honestly, it's so solid already that I would imagine it would be soon. However it is. It is. However, usually what happens is the public beta happens like a week after the same developer release goes out so that they can check and make sure there's nothing really bad.
- [35:09]
Leo Laporte
Last chance.
- [35:10]
Andy Ihnatko
There hasn't been a developer beta this week yet. Maybe it'll come, but it hasn't happened yet. So if that's the case, maybe it's next week that comes out and then maybe the following week. Also, you probably don't want to do this over the fourth of July weekend. So if I had to guess, and I don't have any inside knowledge of this about when it's going to be released, but if I had a guess, I'd say, you know what, July 15th sounds pretty good. But then again, if something weird happens with Developer Beta 3, they might say no, no, no, no, no and push it off a little bit further and they have the whole month as a target. But my guess would probably be smack in the middle.
- [35:49]
Jason Snell
I'm just wondering what we haven't seen yet, what haven't they implemented yet? Are there big hunks that they haven't even announced yet? I don't doubt you at all. I'm just saying that we're still beta process and I don't think they've shown all their cards yet. So I'm hoping things progress. Well, I've been using the Dev beta on a daily basis on my iPhone 14 Pro. And I concur. I have not even seen any problems with battery life, which is usually the biggest thing you can count on on a developer beta, because that's before they do all the fine tuning for extending battery life. And it's been very, very stable. I'm having so much difficulty resisting the urge to install it on my iPad because I use my iPad all the time. It has to work and everything has to be compatible with it. But it's been so stable on every other platform that I've been using.
- [36:45]
Leo Laporte
That's like Jason, should Andy do it?
- [36:48]
Jason Snell
Whopping the wild side, dude.
- [36:50]
Andy Ihnatko
I am entirely on the betas now. Entirely. All of my devices are on the betas now, other than, I guess my Apple Watch isn't yet. Although I probably should just do that too. And part of that is because of what my job is. But also in previous summers I have waited because I've been like, you know, do I really need. And I realized partly for my job and also partly because I, I mean, I have some extra hardware that I installed it on, but after the first week of the experience being pretty solid, I just went ahead and just jumped in. So it's not for everybody. But I, you know, my, my hope is that, especially when public beta time happens, that it will be not an unpleasant experience for people.
- [37:29]
Leo Laporte
And most apps work pretty well. There's no.
- [37:31]
Andy Ihnatko
I haven't had any. Any real incompatibilities. There are occasionally apps like I have one app that. But I used to just do. It's an audio app and I used to be able to process audio in it and do command S to save it. And I realized, oh, command S doesn't seem to save it. But exporting that file works fine. And that is literally the only thing that I've noticed across all of my apps. So, yeah, it's pretty solid.
- [37:57]
Leo Laporte
Nice.
- [37:58]
Jason Snell
And ipados is a significant enough update. Like, that's where the temptation comes. I'm definitely not with. Yep.
- [38:06]
Andy Ihnatko
Although macOS is too. Like, between the new. The new Spotlight and menu bar stuff, I would say macOS has got a lot going for it too. But yes, iOS is number one. IPados. Yeah.
- [38:19]
Leo Laporte
Well, if you're in the EU, I have bad news for you. You're going to get some of them. But you know, this. This is a very. Almost a Trumpian thing. Well, you could forget about all the new iOS 26 features € till you cooperate with us. We're not going to cooperate with you. Is it retaliation? Why We've already made the decision, says Kyle Andere, vice president of Apple Legal, to delay the release of products and features we announced this month for our EU customers. The changes that the EU has forced on Apple, quote, create real privacy, security and safety risks to our users. So it does sound like a little bit like so there.
- [39:06]
Jason Snell
Yeah, it's a little bit complicated though because one of the problems with again I'm consistently not necessarily universally pro regulation but I'm definitely not against it. The thing is the regulations in the digital and the DMA and other and other stuff, it's not as specific and clear cut as to how Apple should comply with this as it should be. That gives I think Apple a certain amount of credibility in saying we don't know how to comply with this, therefore we don't want to be hit with another half a billion dollar fine. Now we've also seen just last week the environmental nutrition label law that went into effect where they said hey, we're complying with this and we're actually going to publish this paper on. Here's how we came up with these numbers in hopes that it will help you, the EU be more specific about how to make these labels more efficient and more accurate and more useful for the consumer. But again I don't think they were facing a half a billion dollar fine. And also this is a very. Printing up a bunch of labels is not all that difficult. Whereas re engineering your app store is a very big deal. Rewriting policies in a way that even if Apple did was interested in making a good faith effort to do what it was clearly telling them to do, which they are not doing at even if they were making good faith efforts, this is not the sort of stuff that you can just simply drop a penny and you get the candy out and it works.
- [40:32]
Leo Laporte
It's kind of a back and forth negotiation. Right. The Apple has changed their terms in the originally Apple said developers you can add one single static URL in your app and they restricted tracking parameters, redirects intermediate links.
- [40:49]
Andy Ihnatko
It's pretty, it's a pretty dramatic change.
- [40:52]
Leo Laporte
They've opened it up.
- [40:53]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, they've opened that up like they have in the U.S. although there's some commission things and they changed all the terms. I mean essentially Every in the EU the terms are totally different starting either now or January 1st where like it goes to a max of 20% and small business it's 15 or 13% and that what they're doing is they're doing a much lower commission and then they're doing a 5% core technology commission on top of that for revenue, whether it's in or out of the App Store. And so that means you're not penalized if you opt to also be available either on your own website, which is also a new feature. If you qualify as a developer in good standing, you can just offer your app on your website. You don't need to be. Remember there was that weird construction where it was like, let's free the users from the App Store by making it mandatory that there be other app stores. It's like, well, what about no app stores? They're going to do that now. So it's a huge restructuring of the developer terms that might be good. It's complicated, right? And I think in many ways Apple is trying to say, okay, you want it the way you want it. We're going to show you the complexity of what we're doing here. There's also a weird tier where you get like no App Store promotion or reviews or stuff, which is very much Apple saying, this is, we feel we add value that you are not paying attention to. And we're going to point out that we add value beyond just hosting this. And it's not just about us having control. I think they kind of overstate it, but it is, is, it is fair for them to say it. Go ahead, Alex.
- [42:24]
Alex Lindsay
I think that that's also, that 5% is also for the Tim Sweeney's out there that say they don't really need Apple to do anything for them. So for a very large company, Spotify makes sense. Spotify, they've got their own pipeline, their PR pipeline. So this is kind of the. No, no frills version.
- [42:41]
Andy Ihnatko
But we're not going to help you either, right? Like it's like literally we're not going to help you.
- [42:45]
Alex Lindsay
And these companies have said they don't, they don't need any, they don't need the help.
- [42:48]
Andy Ihnatko
I think there's a fair point that says that there are certain giant companies that, that do not need Apple's help, that Apple's not substantially contributing to their business. I mean it really is just a place for them to put the app that's extruding from the service that they sell. And I think that that's fair. I do think also though, they're making the point that, you know, that they've said all along, which is, look, we, we offer value to developers, that. And so now we've created this tier one that offers no value to developers and you can, other than access to the platform, other than access exactly right.
- [43:21]
Leo Laporte
And you get app dist and delivery, trust and safety features, app management. You lose automatic app updates, automatic downloads across devices. So actually this is really more of a pain for customers because I download Spotify on my phone. It doesn't go to the. It also doesn't include promotions, search suggestions, ratings and reviews on product listings, including occlusion and personalized recommendations.
- [43:45]
Alex Lindsay
Right.
- [43:45]
Leo Laporte
Developer.
- [43:46]
Andy Ihnatko
Almost nobody is feature, but they're basically like, if you want to collect the money and not have any help from us, go ahead. I think it's kind of of pointed to the EU as well where they're saying, look, we're charging that same core technology commission to everybody. Which I should say also is a.
- [44:02]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a big change, the core.
- [44:03]
Andy Ihnatko
Technology fee, because they used to count it per install above a million and it was really a mess and it had. It basically created enough potential harm to keep people from opting into the new rules. Now everybody's going to be on the new rules, but those aren't the rules anymore. It's based on revenue. It's not based on. And it's based on new revenue. So it's not based on counting app installs or anything like that anymore.
- [44:31]
Leo Laporte
That's huge. This is very controversial.
- [44:34]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, a lot of these things are actually good. It just took them like a second, A second take to get there. But they did, they did get there dragging their feet.
- [44:44]
Leo Laporte
Apple said the European Commission is requiring Apple to make a series of additional changes to the App Store. We disagree with this outcome and plan to appeal.
- [44:52]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, I object, sir.
- [44:54]
Leo Laporte
It's grumpy. Yeah.
- [44:56]
Jason Snell
Even though that's like, that's. That's been one of my biggest, biggest complaints about Apple and why I side so heavily against them on so many of this that you're. You can't convince me that they are bringing new customers to Amazon Kindle Books. They are not bringing new people to Spotify. They deserve, they deserve something for developing the platform but however, I keep looking for a rational explanation from Apple about if I want to buy a comic book, why do you deserve a huge cut of that sale? And not finding any answer that really makes sense to me. So this is a really, really positive thing. Time will tell whether what the end result is going to be for the user experience. But I find it hard not to be very, very happy about this. And I will simply end by saying that. And Apple also gets to say, hey, if we're mo. Removing stuff from the eu, isn't that like a divorced parent saying, sorry, kids, I I wanted to buy you the brand of the brand new Xbox, but your mother said you can't have it so.
- [46:00]
Andy Ihnatko
Well.
- [46:00]
Alex Lindsay
And I, I think that the, the issue is also, I do think that we have to remember a little bit of Apple's past. Whether we remember it or not. I guarantee everyone at Apple does. That's there, that's running the company is. No one forgets 1997. Like, they're at Apple. Like, it is something they think about all the time and their services are slowly building up to a larger and larger percentage. And that is a survival mechanism for Apple. That is a, if the iPhone doesn't work out or if China, if, if the tariffs become too hard or everything else, there's this other thing that doesn't require those things. And so from when you're, when you're, when you're pushing against Apple's service fees and what they're doing to them, I think it's an existential threat. You know, like, it is a, it is a. They are looking at it. It's fine to say that they shouldn't have to worry about it because they have all this hardware sales, but we don't know how long those hardware sales will last. And, and so, and so I think that they look at it as an existential threat because if they give an inch, they have to give a mile. And so what they're going to do is they're going to fight every inch. And if it was my company, I would fight even harder. So I would, I would drag my feet. I would, I would be, I would be calling Trump every day going, how about we do 300% on wine until they get rid of the deal? I don't like, you know, I don't.
- [47:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Think you would fight harder because I think they are fighting at 100%. I think you're absolutely right. My, my counter argument would just be that they might have been able to mitigate if this is inevitable, they might have been able. If they win, it's different. But if it's inevitable, they might have been able to mitigate it by treating it differently. I wanted to throw out though, I think that story that we started with here, which is features not coming to the EU that are in the 26 operating systems. Like, that's the one that really gets me in a way where I agree with Apple. Like the idea that if Apple wants to roll out iPhone mirroring or live activities in the menu bar or who knows what else. The implication is if Apple wants to add new features to macOS that integrate with iOS since iOS is a gatekeeper platform that either based on their interpretation, it's not just a gimmick, they believe that either they'll be fined or they'll be forced to build those features either for Windows or for Android and open those features up instead of just doing a nice feature, that synergy with their phones. And like, like, I can, you can make the arguments that the EU would make, which is like, oh, you should play fair. But if I'm Apple and I look at that, I think they're well within their rights and I think it's not unreasonable to say no, we built the feature we wanted to build for our products. You're not going to legislate us to force us to build it for other products. Going to leave it out, especially when.
- [48:38]
Alex Lindsay
You'Re 14% of our market. Like, you know, like at some point the EU doesn't make sense for Apple. Like, like. And so if they, if they cause enough trouble, you know, at 14, they're 14% of Apple's market, it's like they just leave features.
- [48:49]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, you know, yeah.
- [48:50]
Jason Snell
And that's. But that's part of what makes this such a complicated argument that like, for instance, I've absolutely, you're absolutely right. It's like, it's one of the benefits you get from Apple is the Apple ecosystem, is that things work so well together, they are so intimate in how they work together. And it would be very, in so many cases, it would be prohibitively difficult to make that feature to put your Android phone on your Mac desktop. However, there's also the idea of, okay, but why are you absolutely locking out every other smartwatch pretty much from the operating system where no, you can't get notifications, no, you can't get actionable stuff, no, you can't get access to biometrics, all the sort of stuff that basically says you're stuck at pebble watch circa 2014, 2015, even if you have the fanciest $500 Samsung watch.
- [49:41]
Alex Lindsay
It's, it's difficult job to make that. Like, it's not their job. You know, you can't. Government, this is the distortion of all these regulations is we're now going to make all these companies write things for us as opposed to the company. And again, if Apple had, I think that the argument would be completely different if Apple had 90% of the market. If Apple had 90% of the market, I would say, you mean you can make them do whatever you want them to do? Even 75% of the market, you can Make Apple do whatever you want. I think the problem is, is that Apple is at less than 50% of the, than 50, about 50% of the United States and far less than 50% of the world. And so the thing is, they are not a monopoly. They are one of the phone companies, one of the phone providers. There's all kinds of other people manufacturing phones. If people don't like it, they can go somewhere else. And again, if they got to 75 or 80%, I think that all of the things we're talking about are valid. But at 50%, I don't think so.
- [50:32]
Andy Ihnatko
The EU disagrees with you because they defined it this way. I know you two don't get along that much, but here's what I would say saying, because I agree with both of you in a, in a weird way. And here's the difference. The watch thing that, that Andy mentions, iOS is closed. There's no way for anybody else to build that connection in the same way that Apple has. MacOS is open. And this would be my argument if I was Apple at the eu, which is Google or anybody is free to write Mac software that enables Android screen sharing and puts things in the menu bar bar and puts out notifications. But we're not going to write it. You're not going to make us write it. If, if, now, if it's impossible to do that on Windows, to do screen sharing with an iPhone on Windows, maybe there's an argument there that's like you need to allow Microsoft to write software that will show your phone screen on, you know, and give them access to iOS in that way. But from, in my mind, the difference is not should you be forced to do it as Apple. The difference is can anybody else interoperate with your devices? And if it's impossible, then in the long run that's probably an issue. But, but you know, some of these things that they're asking are literally, if we boil it down, some of them are don't launch a new feature unless you've built compatibility for, you know, the universe on day one. And that is too much to ask.
- [52:02]
Alex Lindsay
And I, I think that I, I do think that something's interesting that is kind of going under the radar is as you watch how Apple's handling private IPs and you know, hide my email and all those other things, you are slowly watching them build an infrastructure in which a person doesn't have to be in a certain place. This will mean that, hey, if you register eventually this could mean, hey, if you register that you're in the eu, you don't get any of this stuff. But if you say, I'm willing to, this phone is going to not be in the eu, even though I live in Luxembourg, you know, and I can hide where I'm from and I can hide all the other bits and pieces. You won't get any of those app stores, but you won't get any. I know the EU doesn't like it, but the thing is, is that Apple's building that all into the. You see all these, all these private IP things that they're adding, that's what eventually it's capable of doing is basically saying, you want. A person doesn't have to declare where they are in the world, and if they want to live by US rules, they can just live by US rules. And so the, so the. So I think that there's. I think Apple has been playing this. They're slowing it down, but I don't think that they're ignoring the fundamental fact that a lot of the stuff may go through, but they're building a bunch of ways that Apple users can work around it. I don't. I think that that's kind of a. As you start to look at where. Why do those bricks make sense? They make sense if you want to get around all of these things.
- [53:22]
Leo Laporte
Well, if you're in the eu, you have our deepest sympathies.
- [53:26]
Andy Ihnatko
I love it. Leo, here's a pro thing. Pro host move. Throw out the EU as a topic and then go eat some lunch.
- [53:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. That's how, you know I was doing.
- [53:35]
Andy Ihnatko
That well, because I can see you even when you're not on camera. And it's. It is. It's like, I. I got it. You disappeared and I'm like, oh, yeah, you threw us a bone. And then. And then we are.
- [53:45]
Leo Laporte
You guys could handle it. I. I didn't need to interject in any way.
- [53:48]
Andy Ihnatko
That is why you are the king right there. That's it.
- [53:53]
Leo Laporte
Germany, speaking of the eu, has asked Apple and Google to pull Deep Seek from the app stores. Probably because it's the Chinese AI. Right.
- [54:07]
Jason Snell
Yeah. That's exactly the reason why.
- [54:09]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Do they have TikTok in Germany? I wonder. I bet they do. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
- [54:18]
Jason Snell
It's tough. Well, it's. It's tough.
- [54:20]
Alex Lindsay
This is.
- [54:20]
Jason Snell
These are. There are going to be more and more problems that Apple has to deal with where, as apps become more and more politicized, to have individual regimes across the world decide that for national security reasons, we want you to. We need you to remove this app. It doesn't matter what our reasons are. We are telling you to do that. You, you have to do that. And then when Apple gets asked to do something that is legitimately a very, very weird request for them to comply with, Apple is always going to be forced to think what is the political blowback, what is the commercial blowback and what is going to be the PR blowback of complying with this or resisting this? And we're going to see this in the United States as well as much as any other country.
- [55:06]
Leo Laporte
Apple has not responded to Reuters about what they're going to do with this request. They haven't responded yet, nor has Google.
- [55:14]
Jason Snell
If Germany were to make that app illegal within Germany, that gives Apple a clear. While our hands are tied.
- [55:20]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they need cover. Brazil. Let's come back across the Atlantic, ladies and gentlemen. Wants a piece of the App Store. Anti competition fines that Apple is facing worldwide. They're looking over there at EU saying that's a nice packet of change you got there. So now the Brazilian regulator, Conselo Administribo di Devensa en Economica CAID has opened an investigation. Actually they opened it a couple of years ago. They said Apple's conduct constitutes an infringement of the economic order.
- [55:55]
Andy Ihnatko
Wow.
- [55:57]
Leo Laporte
This is particularly over restrictive practices over third party marketings. It's the anti stirring stuff Apple in trouble for in the eu. The new recommendation follows a series of moves by Brazil to find Apple. So I'm not sure how much they're asking for. They haven't said Apple responded in a statement repeating that Cade's proposed measures for preventing anti steering would pose. Guess what, Just take a wild guess. Privacy and security risks for users. We will continue to discuss this with Cade. They say apparently they have to take it to court if they're going to pursue a fine in the in Brazil. Ah, let's. Let's. Should we? I'll tell you what, let's do a little break and then it's the Vision Pro segment. I am told there are many things to talk about, at least more than one. Our Vision Pro gurus will join us in just a bit. Jason Snell and Alex Lindsay, Andy Inako and I. We will have lunch this time. Our show today, brought to you by ZOC Talk. Hey, you remember that doctor's appointment you were supposed to make a while ago? You remember that? The one you meant to book and completely forgot about till now. You know that one? Oh, how about the dentist appointment? You're supposed to go in there twice a year. That biannual Cleaning your annual checkup. How long has it been? Three years for the annual or the dermatologist visit. As you get older, we gotta keep that mole that you keep meaning to get looked at. You gotta go. That rash you diagnosed by googling it but you still don't really know what's going on. Why not book a doc today? Because I've got a way to do it easy. Zocdoc. Zocdoc makes it easy to find the right doctor. Right now it's all online. In fact, in many cases you'll be able to book an appointment before the end of this ad read. Oh, don't rush, don't rush, it's okay. But do it today. Zocdoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. Yes, I'm talking with Zatac appointments. More than 100,000 doctors. Not just MDs, but every specialty from mental health to dental health, primary care to urgent care and more. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance, who are located nearby, who are a good fit for any medical you need. You have. And this is the thing I love the most. You know, I use Zocdoc for both my parents because they're getting on and I needed a gerontologist, a specialist in aging adults and in different parts of the country Zocdoc was so great with, you know, I, it's amazing. And the thing I like the best is the hundreds of patient reviews, verified patient reviews, where you could find the type of care and support you're looking for. Whether it's a perfect bedside manner or somebody who's like data, just, you know, very focused on just the facts. Everybody wants something different. Everyone's something different. Some people want fast you to don't want know short wait times. Sometimes they want doctors with good listening skills. Those reviews will tell you exactly what you're going to get. And once you find the right doctor, you could see their actual appointment openings. You could choose a time slot that works for you. You click boom, instantly boom, you got a visit. Appointments made with Zocdoc happen fast too, by the way. Typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking, that rash ain't getting any better.
- [59:37]
Andy Ihnatko
Better.
- [59:38]
Leo Laporte
Maybe you want to do that right now. More often than not you can even get same day appointments. You ever think of that? I use this and you should too. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com MacBreak to find and instantly book A top rated doctor today. That's Zocdoc.com MacBreak Zocdoc.com MacBreak all right, time for the Vision Pro segment. Actually, we're gonna talk to Vision Pro. We're gonna merge the Vision Pro jingle with our Quartz docket jingle, which we don't have. But if we did. Senior Vision Pro engineer allegedly took a massive volume of secret plans to Snap.
- [60:30]
Andy Ihnatko
Oops.
- [60:31]
Leo Laporte
Oh, snap. D. Liu said, I'm leaving Apple because of health reasons. But what he did instead was he went over to Snapchat as a developer in what Apple calls a substantially similar role. He wanted to spend more time with his family. Well, maybe his family. Maybe his family's a Snapchat.
- [60:51]
Alex Lindsay
When he can, with a loan, with a load of cash, he's gonna be able to.
- [60:54]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, he stole a massive, massive. According to Apple, which is suing, he stole a, quote, massive volume of trade secrets, quote. Because Mr. Liu did not inform Apple he was departing to work on another company's product, Mr. Liu was permitted to stay on at Apple for the standard two week departure period, rather than immediately losing access to Apple's proprietary information. Three days before he walked out the door, Apple alleges he used his company credentials to download thousands of Apple documents. That's so dumb. Containing trade secrets.
- [61:25]
Andy Ihnatko
Super dumb.
- [61:26]
Leo Laporte
Putting them on his personal cloud storage. I think nobody will ever notice this.
- [61:30]
Jason Snell
Yeah, he's gonna be known as the guy who ruined it for everybody. Like, that's what I mean. Like, like, hi, I'm gonna be leaving in two weeks. And then suddenly, slam. You get duck walked. You know, picked up by the by. By the, by the collar and just thrown out.
- [61:44]
Andy Ihnatko
That's why they do it.
- [61:45]
Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah.
- [61:45]
Leo Laporte
But even. Let's, Come on, let's be honest. If you know that you're gonna give notice tomorrow, you download the documents today.
- [61:52]
Andy Ihnatko
That would be smarter. Wouldn't.
- [61:55]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [61:56]
Leo Laporte
Or you don't.
- [61:56]
Alex Lindsay
Smarter.
- [61:57]
Leo Laporte
Would not memorize them.
- [61:58]
Andy Ihnatko
Because when you quit, you're gonna. When you quit, they're gonna look at your access anyway. Come on. Like, and if they didn't before, they will now. They're like, oh, we quit and shut off access. Oh, but he downloaded a thousand documents yesterday. Like the J. Like, don't, don't commit this kind of act. That's the answer here.
- [62:17]
Jason Snell
You think that his new employer basically was. Oh, no, no, no, we don't. We want. What we want is that brain inside that incredible brain. We don't want any. Then. Then, like, then like late, late, late. Said. Actually, you know what? Before we give you that signing bonus if you could bring, let's just call it 2500 documents in.
- [62:36]
Alex Lindsay
Well, and the question is it. It also could be that he took them all just to make sure that he kept on having the brain, like, you know, you download them all and you go, oh, I thought of something last night, and it's.
- [62:45]
Jason Snell
He's got the most amazing notebook. LLM Doc.
- [62:47]
Alex Lindsay
It's like Yesterday. It's like Yesterday with the Beatles. I thought of another song.
- [62:51]
Leo Laporte
You know, that is such a good movie. I love that movie.
- [62:55]
Alex Lindsay
I love that movie.
- [62:55]
Leo Laporte
Especially when he meets John Lennon, who never became a star, and he's had a. A good life.
- [63:00]
Alex Lindsay
And he loves his version of the Long and Winding Road. I like better than the Beatles version. Long and Winding Road. Like, it's much.
- [63:08]
Jason Snell
Okay, the. The. The D Wall of Sound version or the release version with the Wall of Sound. Because they did. They did Let it Be Naked.
- [63:16]
Andy Ihnatko
Let it be naked.
- [63:17]
Leo Laporte
That's true. Phil Spector ruined Let It Be. He did. Did.
- [63:20]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. I don't know. I know the one that I want when I. Because I was like, what did that. I don't remember that song being like that. And I listen, yeah, it's whatever Apple music handed me when I. When I said. When I put that in.
- [63:30]
Leo Laporte
If you have not seen this movie, the premise of it is this guy gets bonked on the head and suddenly wakes up in a world where the Beatles never existed.
- [63:38]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [63:38]
Leo Laporte
But he remembers all the songs, so he starts writing. Writing.
- [63:42]
Alex Lindsay
He's a musician, you know, and so he.
- [63:44]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, he's got a guitar. And. Yeah, it's directed by Danny Boyle. Richard Curtis wrote Is. It's really good. I like it.
- [63:51]
Alex Lindsay
I love that movie. I love the movie.
- [63:53]
Leo Laporte
My favorite. I think one of my favorite scenes is he's on a talk show. The guy says, I just love your music. Could you just write one today right in front of us? And the guy says, well, all right, let me think. Yesterday, all my Troubles. And it's like, okay, wouldn't it be cool if you could.
- [64:10]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, Wouldn't it be the parallel universe? That's the classic. Stephen King wrote a story at some point where a character gets a Kindle, and it turns out that it has access to amaz in a parallel universe. And so it's got all these books that were never written or by people who died, but then they later wrote these books. And it's just such a fun exercise to think about that. Like, what if things were just a little bit different and there was a In fact, there's one of my favorite bits is in the TV show counterpart, which is a classic, one of the best shows of the last decade. Find it somewhere. I don't even know where it is these days, but two seasons, 20 episodes. It's great. It's about two parallel universes that are connected together by a tunnel in Berlin. And somebody gets pulled aside for trying to smuggle something from one side to the other. And it's the new Prince album. Oh, oh, that's so rough. That's so rough. He's fine over there. He's still making music over there.
- [65:06]
Leo Laporte
That's frustrating.
- [65:07]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, yesterday is a good mood. What were we talking about again?
- [65:10]
Leo Laporte
Don't download. Before we go on, I do have to a dissenting opinion from the YouTube chat. My friend Norman Matt Maslov, who is a beetle ologist and has beetle lunch boxes, Beetle wigs, he's a beetle guy, says Phil Spector saved Let it be.
- [65:26]
Andy Ihnatko
I don't know about that.
- [65:28]
Leo Laporte
Beatles wouldn't think so.
- [65:30]
Andy Ihnatko
I would counter with that, with that. There's a YouTube video going around of Brian Wilson sitting down with George Martin, the Beatles producer. And, and it's from like a special from like the 90s or something. It's just like standard deaf captured off of broadcast tv. But George Martin, they, they sit down at a mixing board with Pet Sounds with God Only Knows and George Martin starts mixing it in front of Brian Wilson and Brian Wilson says oh my God, that sounds so much better than the version we did. And George Martin goes hahaha. Oh Brian, that's very silly. It's like it's totally true because he took the wall of sound out of it and made the George the Beatles version of it instead.
- [66:10]
Leo Laporte
George, George. I wish I'd have to look for that.
- [66:13]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's, it's really brief but you hear just a glimpse of it and you're like oh God, that was. And you know, if you like the wall of sound, you like the wall of sound. Again, don't download trade secrets. That's what we're really trying to.
- [66:26]
Alex Lindsay
What we're saying here, especially not around the headset.
- [66:29]
Andy Ihnatko
Don't download trade secrets.
- [66:31]
Alex Lindsay
You know it's one thing, it's one thing to leave knowing what you know. That's, that's pretty clean. You know, you're smarter because you worked at that company.
- [66:37]
Leo Laporte
That's right.
- [66:37]
Andy Ihnatko
You have freedom of movement. That's all good are crappy.
- [66:40]
Alex Lindsay
Start sharing non disclosure stuff stuff once you left. That's a little, that's A gray area. Most people, Documents.
- [66:47]
Andy Ihnatko
Right.
- [66:47]
Alex Lindsay
But documents that is like, oh, you're screwed.
- [66:51]
Leo Laporte
You're going to jail.
- [66:52]
Alex Lindsay
The Rubicon. Yeah.
- [66:53]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [66:54]
Leo Laporte
So Apple sent out surveys. Did you guys get one of these to Vision Pro users asking them about the meta Ray Bans? Did you get one, Jason?
- [67:06]
Andy Ihnatko
I did not.
- [67:07]
Leo Laporte
I think I did.
- [67:08]
Alex Lindsay
I just ignored it.
- [67:10]
Leo Laporte
Like, I was like, you could have a scoop, man.
- [67:12]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I don't.
- [67:13]
Leo Laporte
I think that Nose for news, Mr.
- [67:15]
Alex Lindsay
Lindsay, you know, the problem is you get so much mail and you look at it and go, is that real?
- [67:19]
Leo Laporte
I know.
- [67:19]
Alex Lindsay
And then you just keep going like, oh, I don't have to do that right now.
- [67:22]
Leo Laporte
It's like last month when I got the email from Audible saying, hey, we're going to cancel your account in two weeks, but if you want a free year of Audible, we'll give it to you.
- [67:30]
Alex Lindsay
I mean, there's so much spam now.
- [67:32]
Leo Laporte
What am I spam? And then. And then what? Didn't go. My spam is the email from Audible saying, your account has been canned, canceled. And so I called them up, I said, hey, what about that free year? They said, no, no, that offers expired. You had till May 31st, dude.
- [67:48]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [67:49]
Leo Laporte
Okay.
- [67:49]
Alex Lindsay
So much. There's so much phishing and spam that you just kind of. I just kind of ignore everybody.
- [67:53]
Leo Laporte
This is how you decided to communicate email, really?
- [67:56]
Alex Lindsay
Exactly.
- [67:56]
Leo Laporte
So anyway, Apple is. Apparently, it's kind of like a focus group. Most of the survey asked for feedback on screen resolution of the Vision Pro fit and other factors. They asked about guest mode, whether the iPhone app is useful, what accessories you're using.
- [68:13]
Alex Lindsay
I need to use the iPhone app for it. I find guest mode is one of the hardest things for me to put people in.
- [68:18]
Leo Laporte
See, I think you should get in there and answer that survey.
- [68:20]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [68:21]
Leo Laporte
But then users would ask if they owned a Meta Quest 3 Meta Quest Pro. I used to have one Meta Quest headsets, PlayStation VR, Valve Index or ByteDance Pro, Meta Ray Ban, Amazon Echo Frames, and the Snapchat Spectacles.
- [68:36]
Alex Lindsay
I have almost all of those.
- [68:37]
Leo Laporte
I have two out of the three.
- [68:38]
Alex Lindsay
I probably would have been. I probably should have filled out the.
- [68:40]
Leo Laporte
Form because I. Yeah, I'm telling you, Apple wants to know. So the question is, why is Apple asking this? Ming Chi Kuo says it's because Apple is planning to release its first smart glasses in 2027. Mark Gurman says it's going to be in 2026.
- [68:58]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's. This is. This is. So Ming Shi Kuo basically laid out the roadmap he said they're going to do a rev of the Vision Pro that has an M5 in it instead of an M2 to that may just be expediency sake. They may not be making a lot of M2s but that they're following that up with two products which are, I mean I know this, we've talked about it a lot. The two no brainers, which is, say it with me, everybody cheaper and lighter. That's. Those are the things. And so they want to do a high end version like this that's cheaper and lighter and they also want to do a kind of decontented version that maybe has a little bit lower specs but can be even more cheap and even more light. And that those, those are their next steps there. And then at the same time they're working on a, a couple of equivalents to Meta Ray Bans, one of which has support for again Siri, which is another part of this that they've got to get right, but also some hand gesture stuff that they'll be able to do with the cameras. And then that's step one and then step two. Following that is to do the, to do the other part which is have a little screen projection thing so you can start doing that. Feels, feels real late to me. This is one of those cases where they, I think they poo poo probably the Snap product and said oh that's silly. And then Meta did, did it better and they missed the boat which is a shame because they literally have all the tech to build this product today and they just, they just got distracted. I don't know.
- [70:19]
Jason Snell
And not only that, but we've seen how good they can be with a, with designing like personal style wear with the, with the Apple Watch. And you hear about Google announced a couple, was it last month about how they've acquired or they've, they've entered into exclusive deals with like some really top end eyewear design firms. Ray Ban has also, Meta has also announced deals like that. Apple could definitely do that sort of stuff in house. I mean we've already seen them quote design eyewear because of on the Vision Pro how they basically you pick a pair of synthetic eyeglasses to wear for your avatar. So this is absolutely within their wheelhouse. The people remember that Apple's a company that convinced the entire world to see say how about you stick these two popsicle sticks in your ears visibly and walk around and I feel good about.
- [71:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Myself that tech is so good. And it's largely that tech that would be in the glasses like AirPods are so good and then they, and so, I mean, I hope it's next year and not two years like Ming Chi Kuo says, because I think it's really, it should be, it should be now because that, you know, other than the, other than the Siri limitation. But I like that they're, they're working on that and then, and you can see if, if it's got gesture supported in it, like that stuff that they've learned in building Vision Pro. And I think their goal here is to converge those products eventually. But that's going to take another who knows how many years.
- [71:42]
Alex Lindsay
I think Apple just needs to focus on one thing at a time. They're just not very good at this multi. Like I'm going to put out six products. You know, I think the Vision Pro, it lets them figure out a lot of things and they'll get to where they're going. Oftentimes Apple starts a little behind and then ends up somewhere in the.
- [71:57]
Andy Ihnatko
I think, I think saying. Because I don't think, I think it's two different groups, right? I think people building Vision Pro are doing that. This other product feels like an AirPod to me. It's like more like AirPods. And then you go down that path and eventually they share knowledge and they build from there. But I like that they're working on both of these. You know, what we've been saying all along in the Vision Pro segment is the whole point of the Vision Pro is not now, it's the future. And as long as they keep kind of driving forward, like the OS is improving and is, and it's pretty good, but it keeps getting better. And then on the hardware side, you know, they just need to relentlessly push forward to get it to be cheaper and lighter because those are the two things that really kind of kill it as a product and have more content for it. But if more people could buy it, that would take care of that.
- [72:40]
Jason Snell
I just, I just feel as though the. With smart glasses, that's a case of Apple leaving money on the table if they don't make that product because that's. They. That's like again, big bag of money right there.
- [72:51]
Andy Ihnatko
So many tech nerd friends who have, who don't like Meta and have switched to those Ravens because of the content, the context of it as inconvenient as is for so many things, things they would, they really like having that experience over wearing AirPods in certain circumstances. It's like it's just another option, right? It's kind of like AirPods, it's kind of different. It makes sense as another sort of wearable iPhone accessory, essentially. So I think it's. I think. I think they would kill it. That's the shame of it, is that I think AirPods are so good and I think some of their other tech is so good that I think. Think I would much rather see them make that product than have it be out there with Meta, because then you're enmeshed in Meta's ecosystem and like, I mean, that's. I think Apple could make a great job.
- [73:39]
Jason Snell
Yeah. That is.
- [73:39]
Alex Lindsay
I think they have to figure out where. Where does that content go and who watches it and how that. How do they watch it, you know, if they're. If you're shooting with it. And I think that you get back into, like, when I had lunch with somebody with the. It took me halfway through lunch to realize they were wearing the Meta glasses. I just wasn't paying much attention. We were just talking and then I was super weirded out by the entire. They hadn't tr. Turned it on. They told me they hadn't turned it on, but super weirded out by the entire lunch that I had with someone with those glasses on. I was like. And I think that that's the thing that Apple still has to figure out with these. When you have cameras in the glasses. And, you know, I mean, and, and I, you know, still have the, you know, original of that right here. You know, like, still.
- [74:17]
Andy Ihnatko
Still.
- [74:17]
Alex Lindsay
Still got it. Yeah.
- [74:18]
Leo Laporte
And he's holding up his Google Glass.
- [74:21]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah. The, the problem you got into is.
- [74:23]
Leo Laporte
That like 15 years old now. I mean, that's like, it is.
- [74:27]
Alex Lindsay
It's probably like 15 years old.
- [74:30]
Leo Laporte
Was it 2011? When did it come out? 2011.
- [74:33]
Alex Lindsay
2012. June12. I know because I worked on some stuff there. So anyway, the, so the. But it was. I think that the problem with that camera is just that it kind of weirds people out. And I don't. I know people will get thick, thicker skin. But I'm. I had Google Glass and I'm still weirded out by it. Like, I don't want to have any conversations with you. I don't want to do those things around. Around that. I don't to want. You could. There's a thousand ways you could record. But there's something about your glasses. Serotypically.
- [75:05]
Jason Snell
Serotonin.
- [75:06]
Alex Lindsay
Serotypically. I can't say it right now. So. But. But having that there really bugs me, you know, And I think that's.
- [75:14]
Jason Snell
That's the issue I think, I think that's what. That's one of the many reasons why I'm looking forward to Apple trying this. Because you know that they're aware of that. And remember the very first eyesight camera, it actually had a built in privacy iris on it. That was well before anybody was even.
- [75:26]
Alex Lindsay
Considering the light on the I on the. For a long time, the light on the MacBook Pro, it was wired. You could not power the sensor without turning the light on.
- [75:37]
Andy Ihnatko
All of those are hard. Hardwired after a while. Yeah, yeah.
- [75:42]
Leo Laporte
I know we already talked about MotoGP and you know, the black magic Ursa, but YM Cinema magazine, I thank you, Andy, for this link. Has an entire article about how the Ursa Cine immersive has been used to shoot the MotoGP with pictures.
- [76:00]
Andy Ihnatko
Oh yeah, look at that. So you Canal plus offensive continues.
- [76:04]
Leo Laporte
Yes. By the way, thank you for saying it right. I thought it was plu, like the French word, but I was informed no, it is plus. Jason was right.
- [76:12]
Andy Ihnatko
So I called the Canal plus a bunch of times and somebody said it's plus. All right, fine.
- [76:18]
Leo Laporte
But it's weird because plus is an English word with the S. If it.
- [76:21]
Jason Snell
Needs an French, put an umlaut on it.
- [76:23]
Andy Ihnatko
We like seeing French only. Only accents in French. Andy. How dare you, with your German umlauts. Keep that across the border. Alex. You're. Alex. You're totally getting one of these soon, aren't you?
- [76:36]
Alex Lindsay
I sure hope so. So, yeah, I hope, I hope I have one.
- [76:41]
Andy Ihnatko
I know, because I'm optimistic about it. Yeah. Oh, man, I can't wait.
- [76:45]
Alex Lindsay
I'm going to go crazy. Like if I, if I get, if I can get a.
- [76:48]
Jason Snell
Hold on, Alex. I keep.
- [76:49]
Alex Lindsay
I keep imagining you and I will talk, we'll shoot some stuff.
- [76:52]
Leo Laporte
Are you gonna get that little green doohickey that they put it on the top here? What is that? Is that a level? What is that?
- [76:58]
Alex Lindsay
It's probably a level. The levels are really important because if you, if you're shooting in spherical and you get a little.
- [77:04]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, the horizon needs to be funny.
- [77:06]
Alex Lindsay
It's funny to watch because if you do it really slowly. We did, we used to do it with 360 as a joke. We would slowly turn the camera like this and we put it in the.
- [77:14]
Leo Laporte
Put it tilt.
- [77:14]
Alex Lindsay
You see people's head go like this?
- [77:16]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they tilt.
- [77:17]
Alex Lindsay
And what's really funny is if you're on a steady cam, you turn it 90 degrees really quickly, they'll take their headset off. It's just like, immediately, like a little.
- [77:24]
Leo Laporte
Throw it across, you know, like.
- [77:25]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, like it's too much. But. But the. But you can get people to tilt their heads back and forth, and you can get people to do all kinds of things. So the level is really important because you got to make sure that it is. That's why on your spatial camera, on your phone, if you're using a 15 or above, you got to keep. It'll. As soon as you get a little on a level, it'll go, hey, you gotta come back here. So definitely makes a difference.
- [77:48]
Jason Snell
I keep imagining you, Alex. Like, remember the. Remember the movie, the Box? Like, imagine, like a mysterious gentleman coming up to you, knocking on your door with this mahogany box with a big red button on it saying that, Alex, if you push this. If you push this button, somebody. You will receive this camera immediately instead of having to wait three months. However, someone you do not know who has an equal or greater need for it, will never receive it.
- [78:18]
Leo Laporte
So Canalis. Oh, wait, that's the Vision Pro segment.
- [78:22]
Andy Ihnatko
Nancy, now, you know, we're done talking.
- [78:25]
Alex Lindsay
The Vision Pro.
- [78:27]
Leo Laporte
And I just wanted you to know, this whole time, Alex, I've been wearing the meta Ray Ban glass.
- [78:33]
Alex Lindsay
Is. Oh, man.
- [78:36]
Leo Laporte
Surreptitiously.
- [78:38]
Alex Lindsay
Surreptitiously.
- [78:40]
Leo Laporte
Mr. Surreptitiously did not want to say that word, Alex.
- [78:42]
Andy Ihnatko
You're saying it like maple syrup. I think that might be the problem.
- [78:46]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, exactly.
- [78:47]
Leo Laporte
Syrup. Tiously. How about sneakily? Sneaky.
- [78:50]
Alex Lindsay
Sneakily.
- [78:50]
Leo Laporte
Sneakily. Anyway, there's. By the way, I don't want to say anything, Alex, but the next time we mention the Earth. Marissa, do not take the surreptitious look to the left that you did.
- [79:04]
Andy Ihnatko
It's just.
- [79:04]
Leo Laporte
It's making people a little suspicious.
- [79:06]
Alex Lindsay
Don't have it.
- [79:08]
Andy Ihnatko
Just a little suspicious.
- [79:09]
Leo Laporte
Like, what's he looking at over there?
- [79:11]
Alex Lindsay
You'll know, because the very first day that I have it, there's going to be Instagram pictures, there's going to be little streams, there's going to be, like, a box opening. And, you know, there won't. There won't be any.
- [79:21]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, no hiding.
- [79:22]
Alex Lindsay
No hiding.
- [79:23]
Leo Laporte
You could be NDA'd, though. I guess it's. They're not doing that anymore. It's out, right?
- [79:28]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [79:31]
Leo Laporte
Not helping. You're not making people less suspicious.
- [79:34]
Alex Lindsay
I'm just saying you could. You could. You could have both.
- [79:36]
Leo Laporte
So.
- [79:37]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, but. But the. So the. But I. But I think that one. If. If I. If I eventually get a hold of the camera, obviously there'll be lots of videos. So I'M pretty excited about it.
- [79:46]
Leo Laporte
Look forward to.
- [79:47]
Alex Lindsay
I've been waiting for this camera for about 20 years. This is so the pipeline. So I'm super excited about it.
- [79:53]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So Canalis, which is a market research firm, says that Macintosh shipments in the first quarter of the year, January, February, March, grew faster than any other PC brand. A year on year growth of almost 29%. That is remarkable. Canalis, I guess, you know, they call around, you know, they do the footwork because Apple won't say, well, we have.
- [80:20]
Alex Lindsay
To remember that the max sales are a very small percentage of the overall market. You know, so when they say it grew, like it grew from.
- [80:27]
Leo Laporte
Ah, it's a good point. It's not absolute volume, it's just the percentage growth. Okay, good point.
- [80:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Was great. Yeah. Apple has been. Go ahead, Andy, go ahead.
- [80:38]
Jason Snell
Okay, I'll take it. So. But it's interesting. It's interesting in context of like a couple weeks ago, excuse me, this week there was. People noticed some language in Microsoft talking about the Windows business that implied that they've lost about. They've got, they've got their, their general PR boilerplate is Windows is the operating system of Choice Powering over 1.4 billion desktops, all worldwide. And now they're saying Apple Windows is the desk of choice. It's powering over a billion desktops worldwide, implying that they've lost 400,000, 400 million users, possibly due to attrition to mobile devices and Linux and Mac.
- [81:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised because there is some negative stuff about Microsoft Windows.
- [81:24]
Jason Snell
I would say so lately. I would say so.
- [81:27]
Leo Laporte
If you think ads are bad on your Apple Wallet.
- [81:30]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, and whatever Apple's Mac market share is, and think about the iPhone market share in a particular region. That difference is an opportunity for Apple to get people to buy Macs. It is a. You know, it's not just they work better with iPhones, which the EU doesn't like, but it's also just the halo, brand halo of people who try an Apple product and they like it are more inclined to buy another product from Apple because it's familiar, because they know the company because they're going to the store or whatever it is. There's a huge opportunity there for the Mac. And there has been. I mean, I think the Mac has largely outpaced PC sales for like a decade now. And it's not a huge thing. But like for those of us who.
- [82:13]
Leo Laporte
Remember, that's been laggard. That's part of the reason.
- [82:15]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. And. And Mac sales are generally Mac sales have been good for the last five years and, and those of us who remember the darkest days when Mac market share was super tiny. And it's not all about market share, but it was super tiny. It's grown a lot. Like the Mac is bigger than it's ever been essentially at that point. It doesn't mean that there isn't room for growth. It's probably Apple's product with the biggest room for growth. That's not a brand new product that might come out of the gate. I mean there's a lot of room there for the Mac to keep growing.
- [82:45]
Alex Lindsay
I think we're just seeing the M4 or the M series really maturing into something that, I mean the microphone 4 mini is an incredible box. Like I don't know, I don't know what, you know, it's, it's, it's probably the nicest desktop machine, you know, for pound for pound that I've ever had. I have a lot of machines but it's, it's an incredible little box that's not. That can do everything. But for 600 I just can't believe what it produces.
- [83:10]
Leo Laporte
So, hey, reverting quickly to the vision pro segment, Mav's guy842 in our club Club Matt was in Paris and he took these pictures for you, Alex, of an Ursa in the wild. They said they were doing some tests for the Vision Pro. I don't see the green bubble level.
- [83:32]
Alex Lindsay
On it, but it's extra. It doesn't come with the camera.
- [83:35]
Andy Ihnatko
Hey Leo, you know what would make Mac sales go even better?
- [83:39]
Leo Laporte
What is.
- [83:40]
Andy Ihnatko
What if there was a low cost Mac laptop based on an iPhone processor.
- [83:45]
Leo Laporte
That's a really good rumor. Thank you for bringing that up, Mr. J. What if this is Ming Chi Kuo at work again? He says there will be a laptop with an A series processor in it.
- [83:57]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, really interesting story.
- [83:59]
Leo Laporte
How much are you sacrificing if you put a iPhone processor in it? Not that much.
- [84:04]
Andy Ihnatko
They were putting iPhone processors in a lot of places. So here's my short version of my theory which is Apple, I think with Apple silicon it's so good that Apple realizes that their base look, the M4 MacBook Air is a amazing for 999, what you get is amazing. And I wonder if Apple's like, wow, the 999 error used to be the worst computer we were willing to build and now we could build something worse than this. I mean, you know, lower the bar. I'm not trying to say lower the bar make it worse. But like our quality standard goes to here at 999 and then they look at like the speed of their iPhone processors and how good that 999Air is and, and they say we could probably make a computer that was up to our quality standards for way less than this and maybe we should do that.
- [84:52]
Leo Laporte
And it's like for what, five, six hundred bucks?
- [84:54]
Andy Ihnatko
I mean who knows? Or for 999 when all the prices go up, who knows, right? I mean who knows?
- [85:00]
Leo Laporte
Could be a response to tariffs.
- [85:02]
Andy Ihnatko
Also if this is on a, on a, an older chip node, it's a product that they could possibly make the processor in America and maybe even do a little, a little made in the USA they build.
- [85:11]
Leo Laporte
It's the solid gold Trump MacBook maybe.
- [85:14]
Andy Ihnatko
But like so Quo says it may happen with those A16, A16 Pro and which is in the iPhone pro right now.
- [85:21]
Leo Laporte
Ming Chi Quo says It'll be an A18 Pro. I mean yeah, that's what's in the.
- [85:26]
Andy Ihnatko
Are they all 26s now?
- [85:29]
Leo Laporte
And that's 13 inch screen. Ending mass production at the end of this year, early next year.
- [85:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, maybe. Colorful. And the question is, is it a low end MacBook Air or is it just a Mac MacBook? It's not the 12 inch MacBook. This would be a 13 inch Mac book. But like my, my, my, sorry I'm talking about this a lot. But I think it's really interesting and exciting. I'll just throw out one other data point which is Apple keeps selling the M1 Air at Walmart for 699 and eventually they got to stop selling that computer because it's five years old. But I think it's telling they want that the M1 air is good enough to sell to day because it's so good. And I would bet that the A18 Pro is better. Right?
- [86:12]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [86:13]
Andy Ihnatko
So, so really interesting of like they can, they don't need to stop at a 999 air. There is room below it for a very good computer for people who don't do super nerdy stuff like the rest of us. Like it really is.
- [86:25]
Jason Snell
Doesn't need all the, all the IO of.
- [86:28]
Andy Ihnatko
Doesn't need Thunderbolt probably.
- [86:30]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I mean there's, there is a, there's definitely an opportunity here for Apple. I think they look at Chromebooks, they look at all these other things that are sitting down down below and Apple has a history of we take a high ground and then we start filling in all the, we slowly start filling in all the Way down. And I think that them getting to your point, down to a new 699 is a great solution. There are so many people that I know that have airs that could easily do everything they're doing on an iPad right now or less.
- [86:57]
Leo Laporte
And it would be compelling even competing against the Chromebooks which are now 6 to 700 buc rate.
- [87:02]
Andy Ihnatko
Right.
- [87:02]
Alex Lindsay
And if they were, and if they were able to get to 499 for schools or, or something like that, it starts to get into a much, much more interesting place.
- [87:10]
Jason Snell
If Ming Chi Kuo is correct about ramping up for end of this year to put to announce it early next year, that's in time for the fall 2026 buying season for education. Yeah, and I don't, I don't. I think we can conclusively say that Apple has, has lost the bid to get all school systems to switch to iPads from whatever they're using now. I also don't think that they're gonna have a whole lot of success in convincing schools to spend $500 per seat, 600, $700 per seat, as opposed to a $300 Chromebook, $250 Chromebook that's going to satisfy the legal requirements that they've got state by state for education. However, the idea of putting, creating new seats for kids saying guess what kid, you can get your own, not 1,000 bucks was no, we're not buying you $1,000 notebook. That's definitely, that's, that's nudging the edge of, of premium notebook, but high end medium range notebook. Yeah, we'll give you, we'll give it to you for six or seven hundred dollars. That's great.
- [88:12]
Andy Ihnatko
There's some parts of the education market that do spend more money and are not like that. I mean and Apple, that's where Apple still is. And so I think that they've got, they're never going to like blow out Chromebooks, but they could have a maybe more effective argument for those who would rather not go that route. And yeah, this is all just to bring it back for a moment to Apple Silicon. Like this is all based on Apple Silicon. That Apple's Apple Silicon transition has been so successful in so many ways. But one way we may not have noticed it is just how it's raised the bar and like to take it back to that M4 MacBook Air which they now have gotten all the way down with a new look. MacBook Air back down to 999 as a starting price. And everybody pretty much agrees is like it is such a good deal. It is such a no brainer to say if you want a Mac, the 999Air is such a great value. Most people, it's probably enough just on its own that you know, then you look down and you're like, actually we could put a little bit cheaper of a processor in something like this and pull some stuff off of it and go below where Apple's been willing to go with a laptop in a long time. That's really interesting and exciting. The only, I mean the pause that they would get get is how many do we cannibalize MacBook Air sales? But I think if that product is, you're gonna, I think you're gonna pick up more from people who would otherwise not buy one. Yeah. Get down there.
- [89:37]
Alex Lindsay
And the question is, is, will it be just like a MacBook Air? Once you start going down this path, you can say, well, I can make it an iPad that runs Mac os. So, so I can have an, I can have a keyboard or not have a keyboard. I can have a, you know, it doesn't have to be, it could be a Mac, you know that, you know that, that, you know, you could get down there and you think about the features. I mean the hard part with Chromebooks as a parent of high school students is that they, you know, Google took the past and poured concrete into it. You know, like it's, it is a, it's a horrible book for any kind of innovation. Like it just solves old problems badly. And so, so the thing is, is that it costs less and that's great for schools, I guess, but the, the ability to generate media and to create things. I mean the other market for this is parents like me who buy their kids, kids hardware to make their job easier at school. Because my kids don't really build anything on Chromebooks, they deliver them in Chromebooks because they're required to. But that's not where they build their presentations or they build anything else. They build those on a Mac or on an iPad. And so there's a pretty big market out there for parents who can afford it. It's unfortunate that can afford it, that that market is still there. So it's not just the school systems buying these things. It's the parents buying real machines to make up for the crappy ones that the schools are doing giving them.
- [90:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [90:52]
Jason Snell
And just to defend Chromebooks slightly, that kids, kids are going to think, hey, wow, I can make this thing smoke and catch on fire if I stick a paperclip in The USB port.
- [91:02]
Leo Laporte
Yay.
- [91:03]
Alex Lindsay
Well, but that's also.
- [91:04]
Jason Snell
You want them to do that with a cheap thing that they're going to simply swap out.
- [91:08]
Alex Lindsay
But they also hate, they also hate the Chromebooks. So, you know, and the problem was is that Google spent a whole bunch of time talking to teachers and talking to administrators about what they wanted and then built it for him. That's oftentimes not the way to innovate is ask people about how they've been doing things and figure out how to automate that. It's really figuring out what that what do they need next and building towards that. And that was the fatal mistake for the Google classroom, which eventually will be problematic. It made him a lot of money right now. But that's the. But that's why it holds back an enormous number of things from happening. It's been pretty catastrophic. It's why the one to one is failing is because of Google Classroom.
- [91:45]
Jason Snell
What you're saying makes sense, but one of the constant problems in bringing technology to education, bringing any sort of change to education is people, especially tech people, informing teachers on the front lines. Here is how the, here is what the future is going to be. Here is how we're going to improve your classroom as opposed to teachers feeling, well, here's what we need, here's what we are required, required to deliver. And here's. So it's a good thing that Google started Apple and Google really came out from different, from different sides. They created an aspirational product. Apple did. Whereas Google said here, what do you need to satisfy your mandates and to be able to teach your curriculum? And what do you need to administrate it? What do you need to be a teacher who's operating a class with everybody on Chromebooks? And they basically delivered what they needed. I don't think it's necessarily a sin to simply say here is you're hungry, we're going to feed you a meal right now, as opposed to to take your idea about what we want to give you in the future.
- [92:47]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [92:48]
Alex Lindsay
And I think the fundamental what killed Apple in my opinion was not so much that their product was too far forward thinking, it's that they didn't handle the one thing. To your point, they didn't handle the one thing which is fleet management. That's what when the iPad came out, everyone was on board, everyone wanted to play hard. The price wasn't that big of a deal. But Apple's inability to manage fleet, you know, when it in the first couple years just gave Google this huge opening to just roll in there because they couldn't manage the, they couldn't manage all the iPads trying to install stuff on them was it now works but that you know, they missed that window. And I think that, you know, I think Apple has a great education team but I think that the central design of how they build that stuff, they could invest a lot more in it in Cupertino and, and you know they, they do better you know to show people but I think that it is night and day when you see someone using a lot of the, the tools that are on an iPad or you know, other things like that that they built it's night and day from a Chromebook. So I agree.
- [93:50]
Jason Snell
I, I like the idea of a mix. You have, you have a lab that has like the good stuff so you can use all the creative tools but still everybody getting a balanced meal every single day. If it's not turbo exciting I just.
- [94:02]
Alex Lindsay
Think it's unfortunate again as a, as a parent that can afford to augment my kids experience I feel it's just unfortunate for the kids who can't, you know that they have something that is pretty much a brick and, and they, and you have other, other students that are able to do much bigger things and much better things than they can. You know, because that baseline is so low.
- [94:28]
Leo Laporte
Could be worse, it could be used in Windows.
- [94:31]
Andy Ihnatko
ZHANG that's true.
- [94:33]
Alex Lindsay
You don't see a lot of that in schools anymore. I mean you see it every once in a while.
- [94:36]
Leo Laporte
Well, you know it's funny, it's been a while but when my kids were in high school I was on the board of the high school and they had a one to one program which was MacBooks. And when Apple's MacBook price went up because I think it was 899 at the time, they said we're going to buy Windows machines. And they did. I don't know what they're doing today though. I feel bad for any kid to ask to.
- [94:57]
Jason Snell
Well I feel, I feel bad for the person who has to administrate a class full of them machines.
- [95:02]
Leo Laporte
That guy left.
- [95:05]
Jason Snell
I gave my administration enough problems with an Apple 2e without any network connection. So I can't imagine how bad it is to administrate high school kids who think that they know more than you do and that they can basically hey, I installed Linux in a partition on this without telling you.
- [95:22]
Alex Lindsay
I had a classmate break into Pittsburgh national bank with their, you know, like, you know from there you go.
- [95:28]
Leo Laporte
What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're watching Mac Break weekly. Alex Lindsay Andy Anako, Jason Snell6colors.com thank your co host. I'm trying to get him on a show but he's he Sunday's not a good day for him. But Mike Hurley was very kind when Apple did a little retrospective of all the wonderful podcasts over the last 20 years. It made such a difference in podcasting and left a couple of my favorites out. Mike Hurley very kindly on LinkedIn pointed that out and so just thank him for me. I appreciate his, his thoughts.
- [96:06]
Andy Ihnatko
He's a new, he's a new dad and also eight hours in front of us and that makes it kind of.
- [96:11]
Leo Laporte
Hard for him to do a late night show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand.
- [96:14]
Andy Ihnatko
So I do a podcast with him on Monday morning, which is not the.
- [96:17]
Leo Laporte
But it's what we have podcast. You could see it@sixcolors.com Jason thank you. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I love hearing those words. For 35 years, the electronic Frontier foundation has been fighting to make sure when you go online, your rights go with you. I'm a proud member. You should too. I also listen to their great podcast how to Fix the Internet. Internet. I don't know how I would sum up what the EFF does. It does so much. Their lawyers protect security researchers from companies that don't want them to do the research. EFF's technologists develop open source software to combat surveillance. If you use privacy badger, you oughta. And their activists push companies to build tools that work for you, not against you. The EFF's podcast How to Fix the Internet has some of the best guests ever. People from like minded groups including the Digital Defense Fund, the Tor Project, the Freedom of Press foundation foundation, leading thinkers in post quantum crypto, AI neurotechnology. And with every guest they ask the question, what does the world look like if we get this right, visit eff.org podcast and listen to how to Fix the Internet. And by the way, join the eff. I'm a member. You should be too. Thank you eff.
- [97:31]
E
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- [98:02]
Leo Laporte
On we go. Apple has, by the way, updated pixelmator. So Apple bought pixelmator, pixelmator Pro, which everybody loves. And there was some concern that they might let it languish or perhaps close it down and roll features into photos. Maybe not. They have just released a new version of pixelmator Pro and they have built in Apple intelligence. Well, they built in writing tools and image playground. I don't know. Is that how intelligent is? Oh, I don't know. What do you think?
- [98:37]
Alex Lindsay
It's a place for them to experiment with it and you know, it'll be interesting to see what. Whether Pixelmator at some point becomes Pixelmator eventually becomes something part of the iWork platform. You know, like it, it. It literally could be something that they released.
- [98:51]
Leo Laporte
They should.
- [98:52]
Alex Lindsay
Eventually that becomes part of that. But, and that's a, that is a shot over Adobe's bow. Like, I mean, because there's a lot of people that, you know, if Apple starts putting real money into a real photo editor, I think that they've taken, I. They've taken photos about as far as it can go. Like, you know, it's. They've added so many features. When it comes to correcting and doing all the other things, there's an incredible amount hidden in. If you haven't, if people haven't used photos, you open up, edit. There is a lot of tools in there that you can really fine tune an enormous number of things in there. But I think they've gone as far as iPhone, as far as photos will go. And I think the pixelmator is the next step. We've always wondered whether there was always rumors that Apple had some kind of Photoshop competitor hidden in Apple ever since they had. Ever since they. Adobe took so long to make the transition to intel. There was kind of this internal. Like that's what we had always heard. But this is. This gives Apple the ability to put out a photo editor that complements what they're doing. And right now Photoshop's really expensive, you know, and I think that, I think it's an affinity now is owned by Canva. So it's a different, you know, so I think it gives Apple the opportunity to have a photo editor and start to add tools. I think these are the early tools that you want add, but they could add a lot more, especially when it comes to dimensionality and so on and so forth. It's going to be really interesting.
- [100:10]
Leo Laporte
Also support for raw from the om1. Do you still have your own one, Andy?
- [100:16]
Jason Snell
Absolutely.
- [100:17]
Leo Laporte
Really nice camera.
- [100:18]
Alex Lindsay
I wouldn't be surprised if we see USDZ in the next year. You know, like bring your objects in like you do with Keynote, like you do with in other apps, being able to render them directly into the. Into the photos.
- [100:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I was. I'm trying to. Trying to figure out how I use Image Playground with. It says you can take one of your photos and, and use Image Playground on it, but I don't. I don't see.
- [100:43]
Alex Lindsay
I don't know if it's. I don't know if that's the deletion tool that. That's already in Photos and I haven't had a chance to try it. So I. But. But it. It could be the. The deletion stuff in Inside of Photos is pretty. Pretty awesome.
- [100:55]
Andy Ihnatko
Cleanup.
- [100:56]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, the cleanup. I want to get rid of this person. I want to get rid of this thing. I want to get. I mean, it should have been there.
- [101:01]
Andy Ihnatko
Several years ago because Google could do that forever. But it is good. It is good.
- [101:05]
Leo Laporte
Okay, so basically what happens is if you're in the program, you can launch Image Playground from it and then modify.
- [101:12]
Andy Ihnatko
Generate an ugly image, and then you can.
- [101:14]
Alex Lindsay
Or you can have dorky photos in PhotoMator as well as everywhere else.
- [101:19]
Leo Laporte
Well, what's funny is I. Okay, so here's a dorky photo of me. And so you'd think it would just open this insert, but it doesn't open it in Image Playground. So I don't know. Basically all it did is opened Image Playground.
- [101:33]
Andy Ihnatko
It's just a generator that then outputs it out. It's not that interesting a feature. It's just a standard API call.
- [101:38]
Leo Laporte
And I don't know why you'd want to use writing tools in a photo editor, so. Oh, yeah, that was nice. Good. I put a lighthouse in there.
- [101:46]
Andy Ihnatko
Awesome.
- [101:47]
Leo Laporte
Wow. Thank you, Apple.
- [101:49]
Alex Lindsay
That's a good start.
- [101:50]
Jason Snell
The power to be your best.
- [101:52]
Leo Laporte
I don't know what I would have done without you.
- [101:54]
Alex Lindsay
Baby steps.
- [101:57]
Leo Laporte
It's a separate layer. There's that.
- [102:01]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [102:05]
Leo Laporte
Okay. Apple Intelligence, once again, just blowing us all away. How do I stop this?
- [102:12]
Alex Lindsay
The hard part is, I think for this especially, do something. PhotoMator is that the AI tools in Photoshop are stunning good, stunningly good. Like they are. So it is probably the number one reason that I'm still using Photoshop is because I clean stuff up so quickly.
- [102:28]
Leo Laporte
So, you know, so when I bought the Project Indigo, you know, the subscription, I Got Lightroom on the iPhone and many of those features are even in the iPhone and iPad version of Lightroom, so.
- [102:38]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [102:39]
Leo Laporte
And fairly cheap. Right.
- [102:41]
Jason Snell
And the, and just the competition, the ability to simply say, have to unlearn everything that I've learned about like masking and selections. Simply say, hi, could you just automatically select the face of the third person from the. Right. Okay, here, here's a, here's a selection mask. Anything else I can do for you? No, that's awesome. Thank you for framing the hair so well too.
- [103:03]
Alex Lindsay
It's.
- [103:04]
Jason Snell
Yeah, go ahead.
- [103:07]
Leo Laporte
Apple filed a motion to dismiss the. The government's lawsuit against it, claiming that DOJ claimed that Apple Apple was unlawfully dominating the US Smartphone market. US District Judge Julian Neals in Newark denied Apple's motion to dismiss. The, you know, summary dismissal.
- [103:28]
Alex Lindsay
And summary dismissal, by the way, is like, almost never happened.
- [103:31]
Leo Laporte
It's pro forma. You ask for it. The judge.
- [103:34]
Alex Lindsay
What's amazing is to see when this court case started and when they've gotten just to the dismissal phase. So if you think about when this is actually going to get decided, probably a couple more years.
- [103:43]
Jason Snell
I'm just, But I just wanted to go. I don't, I know, don't. I don't have an opinion about whether Apple is guilty or not guilty about it for antitrust with the DOJ's case, I just want to make it long enough so there's a discovery process that dumps luscious, luscious internal Apple documents into the public record again. Isn't it fun? It's like, it's like, it's like Easter Sunday and seeing this big basket full of green plastic and plastic glass and internal conversations about the future of a product.
- [104:13]
Alex Lindsay
I think that at some point they would, they would just have an Apple cone of silence where they go in and have these conversations. But evidently not email seems to be okay.
- [104:20]
Leo Laporte
No business. Got to do business. Yeah. This is always the real payoff on, on these court cases, regardless of the outcome is the discovery is always fascinating. Look at Apple. Epic.
- [104:32]
Jason Snell
Yep.
- [104:33]
Leo Laporte
I think it is safe to say now with the additional promotion in the Apple wallet, that Apple's film F1 is a success. It's great movie. Cost a quarter of a billion dollars to, to make, but they made 146 million in the opening weekend.
- [104:51]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I saw a piece about this on Puck News that is, you know, among its things is a media insider kind of thing. Matt Bellamy wrote a piece where he said, look, if this was a different kind of movie, it would probably be getting Barbs for its. Its fairly. It's. It's good but not great opening in the U.S. u.S. But it performed well internationally. It's probably going to perform really well over time because of the people who want to see it in IMAX or maybe 70 millimeter and get that full on effect. So it'll probably have legs. And also Apple is playing a different game here. They're going to probably attract a lot of people to Apple TV plus to watch it there once it drops there. So it's like we shouldn't go overboard. Like it's not a blowout hit that's going to make a billion dollars probably. But given Apple's I think what Matt Bellany said was Eddie Q is not going to be able to say we can't do theatrical releases anymore because of what happened with F1. That's not going to happen now. They did. They did a pretty good job and it seems to have good reviews and some. And a good opening and some legs and is not. Yeah, it, it's. We shouldn't go nuts about this. Like it's good. And there are a lot of peripherals that make you think this is kind of going to be a pretty good result for us.
- [106:11]
Alex Lindsay
And I think it might have been the best one from a streamer. I think this might have been, I mean the best performance in the first week from someone that you knew that this was going to end up in the streaming service for free. That is because that's always been the hard part is that when you know it's going to come and you're like why am I paying for it? Why am I going to, you know, go see this in the theater? Now I will say that this is. If you are listening to this, you should see it in the theater. I don't say that very often. I don't go to the theater very often. But this one I don't. Unless you're on an Apple Vision Pro, you're not going to see what was shot. You know, like it's such a big show and so I it it. But I think that Apple had a lot of reasons to push this hard. But I don't think they can put this kind of energy into every film. So I think that the Apple will probably follow the trajectory of if we see more than, you know, next year, not this year, but next year if we see more than six features coming from Apple, I'd be super surprised. You know, like and, and I think. And most of them will just go to streaming and one or two they'll pick one or two that they're going to do what they did with F1. But as a PR, I've almost never seen other than like, yeah, I've almost never seen this kind of PR push for a. For a movie from a tech company.
- [107:19]
Jason Snell
Yeah, absolutely. And the Wall Street Journal had an article that cites sources that Apple is considering actually developing a distribution arm so they can distribute their own pictures. Which, if true, would of course indicate that they're not just so simply making stuff for streaming. Jason might have more. Is more into the business side of show business. I would, but it seems like you're not going to get people like Brad Pitt. They want to be movie stars. They don't want to be streaming stars. And if Apple has the ability to create at least a minor hit like a summer tentpole release, that means that they get more desirable content for Apple TV than simply middle catalog sort of stuff. That's one of my constant disappointments with movies that are designed for streaming, that they really don't go for gold. Oftentimes. It's like if. Even if it's from a name, a director you love, you can tell that it's not the script that they're keeping in their hip pocket to make their greatest movie ever about. It's a good project that they can get some good talent about. They can test out a new process that, that they don't want to waste on.
- [108:26]
Alex Lindsay
Well, it's like, it's like, it's like the Russo brothers come back to, you know, they come back home and go, hey, we got a bunch of money. Let's. What can we write here? And they'll write it over a shorter period of time. It doesn't go through the. To your point, I don't think it's the. You definitely don't feel like Gray man was the thing that they always wanted to write, you know, and, and so I think that you're. You're 100% right that that is. And, and I think that Bruckheimer is probably the perfect person to talk to about that kind of thing because he's pretty business oriented as far as, like, like, he's not as worried about that. He doesn't have to prove anything at this point. So I think that. I do think that Apple getting into its own distribution and potentially even its own theaters could make sense. There's oftentimes, there's a lot less control over distribution, owning the theaters at this point. And so being able to have theaters that produce that project the film in the way that you want them to project the film so that in LA and New York and Netflix does this. Netflix has a handful of theaters, own theaters, and Amazon has some incredible led theaters in Culver City that there are some great places. And it's not like they're trying to sell a lot of tickets, but being able to bring the VIPs in for a theatrical release makes a big difference when you're talking to them about the next movies.
- [109:38]
Leo Laporte
It's interesting. F1, only about a third of the first weekend box office was in the US 2/3 of it was international.
- [109:45]
Alex Lindsay
That's because F1 is a lot bigger international.
- [109:47]
Leo Laporte
A lot bigger international.
- [109:48]
Alex Lindsay
And, you know, I think that most people that I talk to that love F1 definitely enjoyed the film. I mean, they pick nitpicked a lot of things that wouldn't have happened, but. But they definitely enjoyed it. And I think that this is a big play. I think this is all being bundled into Apple trying to figure out, I think if this movie had been a complete failure on the. In the box office. I don't think Apple bids on F1. I think. I think if Apple makes a lot of money on this, then this goes big. I think Apple. Apple says, oh, if we can move the needle in the United States and people. More people are talking about F1, maybe we should get broadcasting rights at least for the US for F1.
- [110:24]
Leo Laporte
So did you see the studio Seth Rogen's thing on Apple tv? Matt Bellamy heavily featured in there. So much so that I thought, you know, maybe he'll give him a free ride on Puck News from now on.
- [110:38]
Andy Ihnatko
He's a plot point in that show. Yes.
- [110:43]
Leo Laporte
And they even say his name like five times. And even I think, think spell it at one point because somebody mispronounces it. No, it's Bellow, nee, B, E, L.
- [110:50]
Andy Ihnatko
L, O, N, I.
- [110:51]
Alex Lindsay
Probably. It's probably a pet peeve of his that everyone says it wrong. They're like, let's put it in. Let's put it in the script.
- [110:56]
Leo Laporte
Well, it's funny because two episodes.
- [110:58]
Andy Ihnatko
Otherwise you're Baloney. Right? Nobody wants to be Matt Baloney.
- [111:01]
Leo Laporte
I'm Matt Baloney. Maybe that's what happened two episodes before Ted Sarandos. Sarandos of Netflix was heavily featured. And there was some speculation that then it was weird that Tim Cook was not.
- [111:12]
Andy Ihnatko
Apparently the joke doesn't make any sense if it's Tim Cook. It only makes sense if it's Ted Sarandos, because. Yeah, yeah.
- [111:19]
Leo Laporte
Anyway, Baloney says Apple has exactly zero wide theatrical releases planned after F1.
- [111:27]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, they have been very successful doing TV shows and they have not been successful doing movies. And this will be. Yeah, I think they make some decisions. Like Andy was saying, a lot of mid movies out there. I think the idea of spending a little less money on some nice small movies and then occasionally putting your chips in for something that you think is really legitimately going to be big. But they're just streaming in general. It's not just. Apple has been full of a lot of mid movies that cost too much, are not that good and are something that's out of the. Out of the trunk of the writers and the directors and all of that. And like that's not a business they should be in.
- [112:03]
Alex Lindsay
And really where the industry is going right now is if you're not making destination content, there's so much content out there. If you're not making must see TV, you're competing with YouTube. Like no one's filling their time with oh, I'll just go watch a random movie. You know, no one's watching random movies anymore to fill their time. They're watching YouTube to fill their time. And so the thing or some reality show or something like that. But it's not. But you. So the problem is is that building something that if you're not going to go all the way, don't bother. I was talking to someone about this recently that there was like it's, you know, I've talked to a couple people about it where the, that distance between the low end and the high end is massive.
- [112:41]
Leo Laporte
Apple does have a lot of stuff on the slate, but none of it's really going to be big. Theatrical. Spike Lee's highest to lowest is coming up that with Denzel Washington, a smaller romantic comedy, all of you will debut exclusively on Apple TV in late September. Nothing else dated for 2026, including a movie that's done John Cena in Matchbox Box an adaptation of the Mattel Cars.
- [113:07]
Alex Lindsay
That's funny.
- [113:08]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah. I can't wait for the Kool Aid movie.
- [113:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Speaking of the studio. Yeah.
- [113:14]
Leo Laporte
Mayday. A Ryan Reynolds survivalist thriller and penis animated film.
- [113:18]
Alex Lindsay
A lot of these were most likely greenlit before they made the decision like hey, we don't. We shouldn't be playing this game anymore. And so they, you know, they're already in. You gotta remember these. What's coming out now or this year was in pre production three or four years ago. And so it's, you know, I think that the. And you can't tell Ryan Reynolds that you're not going to release his movie, you know, that kind of thing.
- [113:39]
Leo Laporte
Who's gonna call him? Who's gonna get Seth Rogen to call him? Seth can do it.
- [113:44]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
- [113:45]
Leo Laporte
Fountain of Youth was God awful. The Natalie Portman, John Krasinski movie which they did not put in the theaters. And it's a good thing.
- [113:52]
Alex Lindsay
Well, I, and putting a theater is a big commitment. Like it is so expensive to put things into theaters that you know to.
- [113:57]
Leo Laporte
You got to put stuff in Apple wallet to promote people to show up.
- [114:00]
Alex Lindsay
You know, everything else. I think that again, I think that the F1 has a lot to do with potential broadcast rights and, and the fact that, that there was a lot of, a lot of movement there, you know, and I think that that's the. But I don't think that we're going to see very many releases from Apple like that. I think maybe if we see one a year, I'll be impressed. But I think what you're also seeing is the other direction. Murderbot is 22 minutes long and it's awesome, you know, and it's, and it's really good, but it's really, it's really short. And you know what? That has the same impact on the revenue. So a 22 minute show, you know, has the same impact.
- [114:36]
Leo Laporte
People subscribe to watch, the show drops.
- [114:39]
Andy Ihnatko
To 10, it'll binge really well. But it's also, for now, it's a 10 week drop. And that means that there's always something new coming on Apple TV every week and that I was going to mention Murderbot earlier, like there's a new model for a lot of stuff. Unless you can do that spectacular thing that Alex is talking about, there are better ways to spend your money. And Apple and the guys who run Apple Studio who came over from Sony, they have done a good job with their TV stuff. So like keep it up and calculating out stuff like Murderbot that is going to drop every week. Murderbot will be an excellent binge because those episodes are so short and they all end on great cliffhangers and it's funny and it'll be great like that. But also it's giving them 10 weeks of coverage where there's a new drop every week.
- [115:22]
Alex Lindsay
And I think you can see something that's not never ending too. I mean I think that like Penny Dreadful, which was three seasons long on show time, one of the best. Just like we're going to end it, there's not an open ended like, oh, we ran out of things. It was like it had a beginning. And an end. But it had you waiting every year for another six episodes. Not that I'm bitter. Six.
- [115:45]
Leo Laporte
Six. What else? Any other stories before we get to your picks of the week? Swift is going to move, is going to start supporting Android app development, which is kind of interesting. The thing is, Swift isn't really just Apples, it's an open source project as well. So it's not necessarily that Apple is saying, oh, we gotta make sure that we develop for Android.
- [116:12]
Jason Snell
But it's good for like skill portability. Yeah. Like how much time?
- [116:17]
Leo Laporte
If Apple is something Apple's not interested in, though, why would Apple want people to develop for Android?
- [116:21]
Jason Snell
But they want people to develop for. To develop using Swift. And that's going to encourage more people.
- [116:26]
Leo Laporte
To say, well, they can go the other way.
- [116:28]
Jason Snell
Yeah, if I, if I'm going to spend time learning a new language, I want to make sure these skills are going to be portable for not just stuff I'm writing for Apple hardware, you.
- [116:37]
Alex Lindsay
Look at the expense of the programmers. It'd be great if a lot of, there's a lot more of them and they're writing in the, in the platform that you'd prefer them in as opposed. I mean, like right now you talk about to programmers, what is their favorite platform to write in? A lot of them will say Python. And what is the, what is the most documented with the best training and the best support Python. You know, and so, and so I think that's, you know, that's part of it. Although it'll be really interesting to see. You know, for me, I'm writing when I write Mac apps now. I don't need to know that. I mean, I just say I want to write this in Swift, like I, you know, because I want to and it doesn't, you know, so that'll be an interesting thing as AI takes over or does a lot more of the basic app development. Whether you're, whether it matters what language you're writing in.
- [117:21]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [117:22]
Leo Laporte
Let's take a break and your picks of the week coming up next. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inocco, Alex Lindsey, Jason Snell. I hope you enjoy this show and if you do, I hope you'll consider joining Club Twit. It's how we keep this network on the air. 25% of our operating expenses come from your club membership. Doesn't go into my pocket, or at least his pocket goes into the pockets of all the people who make our shows possible. And you're one of those people making our shows possible. You get ad free versions of all of our shows. Access to our Club Twit Discord. All the special programming we do in the Discord, including Apple keynotes. We do those in the Discord because we don't want to get taken down. Other keynotes like Google I O and Microsoft's keynotes, we also do special programming like last week's music show, which was great with Mazzy's music from YouTube and Steven Witt, who wrote a book about the advent of digital music and itunes. It was just great. That was on Friday. If you didn't see the live version, you're gonna have to wait till it comes out in a month. But Apple Club members can actually watch it on our Twit plus feed. All of that special content goes out on the twist plus feed. 10 bucks a month, $120 a year. Is there still a two week trial? I'm not sure. Chat there is. Twit TV Club Twit Free two week trial. Also memberships, plans for businesses and for families. And thanks in advance. Really makes a big difference to us. Twit TV Club Twit.
- [118:52]
E
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- [119:22]
Leo Laporte
I'm going to make this my pick just because I want to piss people off. How about that? It was one of the stories we were going to do, but there is a new app in the App store called Ice Block. It's an iPhone app that'll alert you to nearby sightings of Trump's Gestapo, also known as Ice. Interesting. CNN did a piece on it which caused the administration, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, to say, we're going to investigate the people who created this app. Okay, okay. Joshua Aaron created it. In case you didn't know, Pam, it is available in your store and perhaps not a bad idea if you're worried about ICE knocking on your door. Ice Block.
- [120:22]
Jason Snell
Yeah. That's kind of like what I was thinking about when I was we were talking about like Apple is often going to be confined, confronted with no win situations where the CNN report came out just last night. The app's been around for a few weeks now, but the CNN report just came out last night. And so the administration is being asked for lots and lots of reactions and of course they're very upset about it. So what happens if Apple gets put under pressure to remove this app? Yeah, again, I don't, I do not know what they could, would or should do because there is no way you win this scenario without having suffering a huge, huge loss.
- [121:00]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Stay informed about reported ICE sightings within five miles of your current location. Look, if you can have, you know, next door neighborhood on your phone, you could warning you about suspicious people of color in your neighborhood. Certainly you can have this ICE block a lot of good reviews. See something safe, something. It is number one right now in social networking. Not, not bad. Probably because of the CNN report yesterday.
- [121:31]
Jason Snell
All right, get it before it gets taken down.
- [121:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, ICE isn't going to come after me, but I do have some people working on my house right now. I don't know Mr. Jason Snell, who has carefully stayed out of that conversation. What's your pick of the.
- [121:46]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I don't know. The. My pick of the week is. It's kind of a twofer. Mac Whisper is a very nice app that's free.
- [121:54]
Leo Laporte
Recommended this before, right?
- [121:55]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it does. It transcribes audio and turns it into text, which is very nice. Their Pro versions, which is. Which cost about $70. Added support for the Nvidia Parakeet model of speech to text, which is exceedingly fast. It's faster even than the Apple new Apple speech to text framework that they're adding in the 2016 six releases. And so you can do that or you can actually somebody has built an MLX version, MLX being basically Apple Silicon version of Parakeet, if you're trying to.
- [122:30]
Leo Laporte
Well, see, I was wondering because you don't have Nvidia so it doesn't require Nvidia hardware to run.
- [122:35]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it doesn't. They built a model more recently than Whisper, which is the OpenAI model. And it's out there and it's available and yeah, you can run it on Apple Silicon. And yeah, it runs faster. The speed is amazing. It's like, it's like 90x or something. It's. When I tested it, it was an absolutely ludicrous speed. And I've got the numbers here. So I used Whisper on my. And this is on an M4 Pro MacBook Pro. Whisper was 31x. This the original recording Apple's new thing was 74x, the original record recording and parakeet 97x, 97 times the runtime. So like, yeah, you take an hour and a half audio file and you'll get a complete transcript in a minute. And so, yeah, if you're comfortable with GitHub and Python, you can get this running using like PIP in Python in your command line.
- [123:36]
Leo Laporte
So you don't have to use MacWhisper. It just makes sense.
- [123:39]
Andy Ihnatko
What MacWhisper does is, yeah, is put it in an app with an interface and they've got a, a model where if you, you know, if you have a podcast audio with both speakers on separate audio tracks, you can put them both in and it like interleaves them and makes something that says who said what? That works. Okay. It's not great. It's okay. But if you just want the pure power of it, you can, you can get that for free by going to the Parakeet MLX project. If you just search for Parakeet mlx, you will find it. And I didn't know about this model until MacWhisper and added it and wow, it's fast. It's. I would say it's also a little bit better than Apple's model in terms of punctuation.
- [124:21]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's the question. Yeah. How good is the speech recognition?
- [124:24]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a little bit, I think maybe its context windows a little broader. So I think it's a little bit better. It's not as good as the V3 Turbo of whisper in terms of accuracy, but it's good and it's a little bit better than Apple's. And the thing there is just the context window. The wider it is, the, the more it can say, oh, well, that sound that person made in context of everything around it. They must have meant this, right? It allows you to be more accurate by understanding what people are saying and it does a little bit better job with punctuation, like accurately reflecting. But if you're not comfortable using command line tools to do this, that's the great thing about Mac Whisperer is you. It's just wrapped in an app and you have to pay for the Pro version, but you'll get all of that. But if you're, if you don't need that, you can get it straight up from the MLX project that's on GitHub.
- [125:14]
Leo Laporte
And I'm running it on a hugging face so you can try it on hugging faces.
- [125:17]
Andy Ihnatko
You can, Yeah. I mean, but it is like I mean again, the, the, the 100x almost on a. That's on an M4 Pro. Right. So. Or M4 Max. So it's going to be slower than that on other but like appreciably faster than Whisper V3 Turbo, which is the higher quality Whisper setting. So it's pretty cool. We're getting some final, finally some forward movement on the whole speech to text thing. If you're generating YouTube captions, if you're generating podcast transcripts or even just searchable backlog of a, of a podcast. I cranked through a whole bunch of my old podcasts. It's just. Yeah, it's real fast. And, and, and I recommend it.
- [125:54]
Alex Lindsay
It's.
- [125:54]
Andy Ihnatko
It's cool.
- [125:55]
Leo Laporte
And I've already transcribed your entire review almost in real time. It looks pretty good.
- [126:03]
Andy Ihnatko
That's also why you're the king. Look at that.
- [126:05]
Leo Laporte
Look at that. Looks pretty good.
- [126:07]
Andy Ihnatko
Pretty good.
- [126:08]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. MacWhisper is fantastic. If you do a lot of transcription, it'd certainly be worth paying for. Although you have to pay for the higher level.
- [126:14]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. And if you don't want to pay and you're technical, you can just use command line to do it. Works great.
- [126:20]
Leo Laporte
Or hugging face.
- [126:21]
Andy Ihnatko
I wrote a shortcut that I can click. I can. Using shortcuts, you can right click on a file and say do this. And you just kind of do the shell script stuff in there and the command line stuff and it just does it. So a lot of ways to skin this cat.
- [126:37]
Leo Laporte
Have you used. Speaking of shortcuts, the new AI thing that.
- [126:42]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, Dan Moran and I wrote about that on six colors last week. We both used it for different tasks. I used it to generate a thing where when I'm uploading a file to my website to six colors, it now uses Apple's private cloud compute to generate the alt text for that image. So I don't have to write alt text. It's not always perfect, but I, I see it so I can edit it. But it, it gives me a starting point that's really, really nice. And then Dan built a system where like, if he gets an invoice in, it actually like looks at the PDF, figures out what the, the fee is, adds it to a spreadsheet and files it in the appropriate folder, which is like, that's pretty awesome because again, without the AI step, it's very hard to build a piece of code that will be flexible enough to look at any PDF invoice and figure out what the fee is. Right. Like that's super squishy and that's what AI stuff is good for. So he's using it that way and it's a good start. Private Cloud Compute's got some advantages. It would be really nice if you could process images locally, but Apple's local model currently doesn't let you attach an image. So I use Private Cloud Compute and it works great.
- [127:52]
Leo Laporte
The article is experimenting with Apple's AI models inside shortcuts at 6 colors to by 6 colors staff.
- [127:59]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, because we don't. We haven't set up a joint byline in our WordPress. There's a plugin for that. Of course there is, but I have to change my templates. So we just mark it as staff and then have little taglines for Dan's piece.
- [128:10]
Leo Laporte
You and Dan are staff?
- [128:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, we're on the staff.
- [128:13]
Leo Laporte
Andy and I co Pick of the week.
- [128:16]
Jason Snell
What an interesting coincidence. A couple weeks ago we were talking about digital comic books and how the ever since Comixology was bought by Kindle, bought by Amazon and Al, you can't use the Comixology app. You have to use that terrible Kindle app. Oh, isn't that terrible? That exact same day the two founders of Comixology, apparently they're no compete with Amazon ended like a few weeks ago because they are launching a brand new digital comics platform called Neon Ichiban. N E O N I C H I B A N and it's not open yet, but you can sign up for the wait list at Neon Ichiban and they. According to what you see on the site, they've got Marvel, they've got dc, they've got all the major players.
- [129:00]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [129:01]
Jason Snell
And I've. I mean I've. I've known these guys for, for quite a while since again since the launch days of Comixology. They absolute, absolutely get comics. So I'm really, really, really keen to see how good this app is because if it is, I'm not necessarily terribly pleased about having to buy into another DRM platform. But if you can sell me comics in a form that I can actually read with a reader that is lets me organize them and access them and is again built for people who read comics, not for people who were reading books 15 years ago and just simply shoehorned in a comics reader there, okay. They'll get my money. I'd much rather they succeed.
- [129:40]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. The David Steinberger. I'll co sign this David Steinberger and Chip Mosher who did the original Comixology. They did great work. Yeah. Then sold it to Amazon Amazon and, and went off and did some Other things, they, they did like a weird NFT comic thing that I did called Distillery that. But clearly, like, they were biting their time. But this is. They get it. They get it.
- [130:02]
Leo Laporte
So you guys, which publishers should. So I got D.C. because I'm a Superman, Batman kind of.
- [130:08]
Andy Ihnatko
I mean, I put down Marvel and, and, and Image and I don't know, idw and boom. Probably, you know, it doesn't matter. They're just there. It's a survey. They're trying to gauge who their audience is there. But like, those guys.
- [130:21]
Leo Laporte
Oh, they're even.
- [130:22]
Andy Ihnatko
Those guys are really good. That's kind of nice. That's really cool that they're coming back into this space because they did a great job with Comixology in the early days.
- [130:30]
Jason Snell
And there shouldn't be a monopoly on an entire art form. It's either Kindle or you have to know the individual publisher and hope that they actually are selling PDFs or CBZs. I'm glad to see that.
- [130:44]
Andy Ihnatko
Like, to.
- [130:44]
Jason Snell
You don't. If you want, if you want to see the X Men, you don't necessarily have to. Have to absolutely go to Amazon as a comic.
- [130:53]
Andy Ihnatko
As a comic collector, I like this. As a creator of stuff. If I was a publisher, I would so hate the stranglehold that Amazon has over the comics. Digital distribution of comics. And they've got their own things too. But like, to have another storefront to compete with Amazon is a really good thing. Very much.
- [131:11]
Leo Laporte
I completely agree, 100%. All right, that leaves but one. Mr. Alex Lindsay, your pick of the week.
- [131:20]
Alex Lindsay
So I finally. I'm very fascinated by the whole glucose monitoring, as people have heard. And you know, it's not on the, it's not on the watch. Who knows when it'll come on the watch. But I'm very curious, like how it affects behavior. And so, but you have to get a. Unless you're diabetic, you have to. You have to get a. You have to get a prescription to do it. Or so I thought.
- [131:38]
Leo Laporte
No, you don't. I have a Dexcom Costello and I have a watch complication. So I can see my blood sugar right. At all times.
- [131:46]
Alex Lindsay
And, and I. So I got the lingo, which is, I don't know, it's about.
- [131:50]
Leo Laporte
They're all the same.
- [131:51]
Alex Lindsay
About 50 bucks and 50 bucks for two weeks. You put it.
- [131:54]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is 100 bucks a month. Exactly.
- [131:55]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, exactly. And, And I put it. I put it on. And I was just curious, like, will this actually affect how I eat? And the answer is, yeah, 100%. Like, the food industry has no idea what's about to hit them. When, when some, somebody's. When the, if, if the Apple Watch hits it. Because you, you see these, you know, you just get curious. You, like, eat something and then you come back a half an hour later and look at it on, on, on the app and you go, oh, what's going on here? And, you know, and anything that goes over the top bar that they give you is kind of like, well, I'm not gonna eat that again. Like, you know, it's, you know, and, and, and so it's an interesting. But if you're interested in doing it and you've been kind of caught up in trying to find, figure out where to get it. I mean, I just literally bought it on Amazon plugged into the back of my, you know, downloaded an app in a second and, and was getting data, you know, a couple minutes later.
- [132:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I wear one. I wear one right now.
- [132:46]
Alex Lindsay
I was concerned that it would hurt. You can't even feel it.
- [132:49]
Leo Laporte
You don't just go, punk.
- [132:50]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I was waiting. I was kind of like waiting for, like, this is gonna feel. It doesn't hurt when you look at it. It's a big needle. Yeah, you go, you go.
- [132:58]
Jason Snell
That's.
- [132:59]
Alex Lindsay
I'm. That's got to feel. It's got to feel like something. It doesn't. I swim in it, I work out in it, I do everything with it on. And, and it's been, it's been really fun. I will say, more than anything else because again, my, my, my levels are pretty normal. It's just. I find it to be fascinating to watch how your body's reacting to the food that you're eating.
- [133:21]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. You get a graph and you can see.
- [133:23]
Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. You see the little grass stuff.
- [133:24]
Leo Laporte
It's really useful. Yeah.
- [133:25]
Alex Lindsay
So anyway, and you do learn very quickly. You start. What's happening for me is that I very quickly tie in because I'm looking at it after meals. Like, I kind of put in what meal I ate, you know, because it'll, it'll say, hey, what happened here? You know, like, you get this little highlight over your graph. Like, was there. Would you do something here? And, and did you eat something like berries or. Or whatever it is? Right. And, and anyway, I find it fascinating if you're interested in doing that. It's not, I don't think. Think I'll do it. I'm not planning to do it forever. I kind of decided I'm going to do it for a couple months and It'll give me enough data in my head to understand what I'm looking at and what I. And that, you know, to see the skyrocket that Little Caesars has on my.
- [134:06]
Leo Laporte
Oh man, I don't do that no more.
- [134:08]
Alex Lindsay
It doesn't taste sweet but man, your blood sugar.
- [134:13]
Leo Laporte
So Abbott makes the lingo, Dexcom makes the steelo. I think you're Stella. I think they're probably a number of different and they all look the same.
- [134:19]
Alex Lindsay
When you look at the applicator you kind of imagine them all coming out of the same Chinese factory. You know, like they're, you know.
- [134:24]
Leo Laporte
So what's changed is it used to be NFC so you would have to tap your phone to your arm and no, no, now it's continuous and you just does it all the time. So you always know.
- [134:32]
Alex Lindsay
I will say it does affect your, your phone battery life. Like I definitely noticed in my phone battery life because it's constantly talking to it. But it's, it's cool, it's cool, it's fun.
- [134:42]
Leo Laporte
I agree 100%. Of course I'm a type 2 diabetic so I kind of has to, I.
- [134:46]
Alex Lindsay
I was the last time time I was into have something looked like they said you're pre diabetic.
- [134:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. That's when you should do it. Now's the time.
- [134:53]
Alex Lindsay
So I was like okay, now's the time. Start pay attention to it.
- [134:56]
Leo Laporte
Good job. Yeah. The other thing is take a walk after those carb rich meals. It really helps. Yes.
- [135:03]
Alex Lindsay
When I, when in those few times after since like since getting the sensor in the few times that I have a car fridge, meal.
- [135:08]
Leo Laporte
Exactly. It's like oh well again it's going to tell on me.
- [135:13]
Alex Lindsay
I do think and again part of it was this like what will happen when eventually when Apple figures out how to do this on a watch. I think it'll have a bigger impact on the food industry than Atkins. You know like it will because it's not that everyone will pay attention to it but I think a certain number of people are going to pay attention to it, you know and that number, that small percentage of watch users that do it will, you know I'd be selling stock if Apple released is a watch with it.
- [135:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think it's harder to do than that sounds to be honest with you.
- [135:49]
Alex Lindsay
I think it's really hard to do.
- [135:50]
Leo Laporte
I think that's in your arm.
- [135:53]
Alex Lindsay
I think it's really hard to do and I think that's why Apple's trying to do it is because if they can Figure it out. It has a. You know, it has a pretty big. It's hard. You know, Apple likes to do things that are hard because it's hard also hard for other people to make it too.
- [136:06]
Jason Snell
True.
- [136:07]
Leo Laporte
True that. Thank you, Alex. Lindsay. Officehours.com global that's the place to go every morning. Alex is there streaming on YouTube at office hours Global and if.
- [136:17]
Alex Lindsay
If you want to see a little music. We had another. I put up. We put up another stream. I just made it public because we were. I just clipped off some fun stuff. But the. We had a Oakland band named Perhaps and they were in the Airship Laboratories which is in Richmond and we've been kind of experimenting. So it's. It's a pretty rough edit. We're going to put together a cleaner edit with better sounds and everything else. But if you just want to see us playing around in a studio, in a music studio, recording, you can. It should be up pretty close to the beginning of videos and I don't have it right in front of me here, but you can look at it. I think it's under, perhaps under Swell. Swell is the audio team that we worked with there and we're going to keep on doing these. The next one's on the 26th, I think. So we're working with Airship Laboratories to figure out ways to stream. At first we're just trying to figure out how to stream from a studio but the goal is of course very high end versions of streaming. You know, whether it's spatial or HDR 5.1. Those are all things we're slowly adding to the pipeline. So you'll see more of that added on the 26th and then of July and then more through August. But by September we should be producing some pretty high quality stuff. But if you want to see the. The early days of that. The first one was with my daughter's band with. With Joystick Failure and this one is the. Is the next one. So that's what we're.
- [137:42]
Leo Laporte
Swell. Perhaps live. There they are. What kind of music is it?
- [137:47]
Alex Lindsay
Oh, it's very eerie, I guess I would say eerie really. You know, kind of heartfelt, eerie, moody.
- [137:56]
Leo Laporte
Nice.
- [137:56]
Alex Lindsay
So it was. Anyway it's. It's a. But really good, really good, good quality video too.
- [138:02]
Leo Laporte
Look at that.
- [138:05]
Alex Lindsay
These are Blackmagic 12Ks.
- [138:07]
Leo Laporte
Nice.
- [138:07]
Alex Lindsay
Yes. We had I think three Blackmagic 12Ks and a 6K doing one of the wide shots and then we captured all of that in log. So we're going to re edit it. They're going to do some Work on some of the audio and then we're going to re edit it again to push it a little even harder than what we had there.
- [138:24]
Leo Laporte
Nice. Thank you, Alex. Andy. And not code. Did it, did it?
- [138:29]
Jason Snell
Not quite yet. But I want to tail back to. Remember you're talking about. Hey, I want to see that video of George Martin and Brian Wilson.
- [138:37]
Andy Ihnatko
Yes.
- [138:38]
Leo Laporte
Did you find it that.
- [138:39]
Jason Snell
No. Actually it's in your inbox right now. As a beta tester, I wrote and posted a 3,000 word piece about God only knows.
- [138:48]
Andy Ihnatko
That's where I heard about it. It was from Andy's blog.
- [138:51]
Leo Laporte
And he's blogged. Yeah.
- [138:55]
Jason Snell
Can I just. Can I just say this is one of the reasons why things are. Things are like. It keeps creeping back because every time I sit down to write something, oh, I can knock this up about 400 words one week later. Like I had to delete a 2000 word. Like. Okay, I, I think differently about. I have different opinions now than I did when I started this. I'm going to start rewriting this all over again. But yeah, I'm basically, I'm just making sure that there's plenty to read which you get there. So imminent, soon.
- [139:21]
Leo Laporte
Imminent.
- [139:22]
Jason Snell
But please read that piece because I'm looking forward to seeing. I'm very proud of it once it was done. But I was also aware of. Okay, Andy, how many hours did you spend on that and how many other things could you have written during that time? Let's have.
- [139:37]
Leo Laporte
Never think about that.
- [139:38]
Jason Snell
Let's have an old staff and just. We're proud of this. We're happy with this. Let's just make sure we stay on our posting schedule, shall we?
- [139:45]
Andy Ihnatko
Oh.
- [139:48]
Leo Laporte
Come on. Don't become one of those. No, you can't be a bean counter and a creative. You got to pick one. Pick a lane.
- [139:56]
Jason Snell
Well, Jason didn't pick a lane. He did pretty well. That's true, actually. He left screaming.
- [140:00]
Andy Ihnatko
But still I picked so many lanes. Oh my God. So many lanes.
- [140:04]
Leo Laporte
All the lanes. Yes. Jason Snell, six colors dot com. And if you want to see all the lanes he's riding, go to sixcolors. Com. Jason. Jason.
- [140:15]
Andy Ihnatko
Yes, please.
- [140:16]
Leo Laporte
You will find a whole bunch of shows including the one we mentioned. Mike Hurley and Jason do upgrade every Monday. There's the six colors show, there's downstream.
- [140:26]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, good point.
- [140:27]
Leo Laporte
Julie is back, right?
- [140:29]
Andy Ihnatko
No, she. Speaking of Matt Bellamy, they decided that they want to put her on all their podcasts and she is a full time employee there, so they stole her back. I'm using Joe Dallian. Who is great from Vulture and occasionally usually Will Carroll, who was one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus, talking about sports streaming. And so that's going on. So yeah, people can check that out. And the Total Party Kill, our actual Play D and D podcast at the Incomparable just started a new storyline today that is one of my favorites actually. We had a lot of fun playing it. So if people want to listen to nerds playing D and D on the Internet, there's lots of podcasts. Ours is one of them.
- [141:02]
Leo Laporte
You have to go to the Incomparable Mothership to find that.
- [141:06]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, just go to the incomparable.com and you'll see Total Party Kill there.
- [141:09]
Leo Laporte
Awesome. Total Party Kill, yes. Along with the Agents of Smooch Doctor who Flashcast, we got lots free the screen. Holy moly.
- [141:24]
Alex Lindsay
I think what I need to do though is I need to come and sit while you guys are doing those and sit in mid journey and just produce scenes like. Like the scenes of the. Of the. That's how I got into computer programming was trying to. To write software that would draw characters from the Dungeon Master's Guide. Oh yeah. So that was. That's what got me.
- [141:43]
Leo Laporte
That's a good idea.
- [141:43]
Alex Lindsay
Into programming. Anyway. I don't know. We'll see.
- [141:46]
Leo Laporte
Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Andy. Thank you Alex. Thanks to our club trip members who made this show possible. Thanks to all of you who listen. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. We stream it live in eight different places. Of course, for the class members, we stream in the discord behind the velvet Rope. If you know, you know. Otherwise you can watch Everybody can on YouTube, TikTok, X.com, twitch, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. So watch wherever you feel like it. We watch the chat from all of those places. Great to have all of you there after the fact. On demand versions of the show available at the website Twitt TV MBW. There's a link there to our YouTube channel that's good to know about the videos there and you can use it to share clips with friends. Good way to spread the word about Mac Break Weekly. And we appreciate it when you do that. Of course, the best way as a regular to listen to the show, subscribe and your favorite podcast player because then you don't even have to think about it. You'll get the audio or video or both automatically the minute the show is over. By the way, if you do that, please leave us a nice review, will ya? The reviews make a big difference in our total audience. Maybe in another 20 years, Apple will feature us as one of the original shows in the podcast sphere. Thank you everybody for watching. We'll see you next time. And as I have always said, it's my sad and solemn duty to tell you now to get back to work because break time is over. Bye Bye. Get your tech news exactly how you want it with Twitter tv. Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent delivers quick hit coverage and exclusive journalist interviews, giving you the inside scoop on breaking tech stories in under an hour. Now for deeper dives, I hope you'll join me, Leo Laporte and a great panel of tech industry experts. That's every Sunday with this Week in Tech. We'll break down everything from AI breakthroughs to privacy concerns to cybersecurity alerts in the tech world's longest running and most trusted tech news roundtable. So efficient or in depth, the choice is yours. Subscribe to both shows wherever you get your podcasts and head on over to our website TWiT TV for even more independent tech journalism.