B (2:31)

Dropping.

A (2:32)

And of course, Marquez, with a little flex, had the. Had the one that says, please join us in person. First, a special Apple event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park, September 9th. Correct. You get the prize, Jason.

B (2:45)

Yeah, it's logical.

A (2:46)

10:00Am Pacific Time. RSVP. Please note. Marquez Brownlee, we know you and invitations are non transferable.

B (2:54)

Yeah.

A (2:55)

Don't send a producer. You be there.

C (2:58)

Now should we be worried that the graphic this time is like a version of the Apple logo that looks like it's overheating and we're looking at it through a thermal imaging camera?

A (3:06)

Very poor choice to be honest.

B (3:09)

On the apple.com it pulsates.

A (3:12)

It's.

B (3:12)

It's all.

C (3:13)

And oh my God, it's overheating.

B (3:14)

And if you move your mouse over.

C (3:16)

It it like I will say if.

D (3:18)

They somehow decide to add something that's related to Fleur, that would be cool.

A (3:23)

Flir, you mean? Yes. The infrared imaging cannot have ate my butt. Apple.com I gotta see the pulsing.

B (3:33)

This is.

C (3:34)

Yeah.

A (3:34)

See this just looks like an overheating iPhone. I don't know if you're.

B (3:37)

Now move your mouse over it.

A (3:41)

It's like that thing, the plastic you can buy at the novelty stores.

B (3:46)

Yep. They're just having fun. Whatever.

C (3:48)

I'm sure that battery's fine. I'm sure we're just really hot in the middle.

A (3:53)

Oh, there's your fingerprint reader.

C (3:55)

Just because they'll probably introduce a brand new super super thin iPhone with a battery composition they've never tried before. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

B (4:03)

I admire Apple's commitment to the bit everybody knows it's an iPhone that's coming and Apple Watch. And they won't ever say that. It's just a media event. We're not saying you assume iPhone. But I don't know, it could be something else. We all. But they're not going to talk about it. This is what they do. Just like we know that it's always going to be. We knew it would be September 9th. We also know the iPhone will be there and Apple Watch.

A (4:29)

You're right.

C (4:30)

It is kind of adorable. It's kind of like when the parents. When the kids know that they're getting a PlayStation and the parents know that they know but they have to be coy about it.

B (4:40)

Yeah. Can I get this game for whatever I get? Yeah, sure. Right.

A (4:46)

Searching for apple.com, all I got is an office hours newsletter, tidbits and garbage day.

D (4:52)

So.

A (4:55)

I don't think I got the invite anyway. I wouldn't have gotten the join us in person type one. I'd get the one that's on the front page. The Apple site, which is.

C (5:03)

We have already banned your IP address.

D (5:05)

Don't even bother.

A (5:06)

Don't even try to watch it online.

B (5:07)

Just stream it on YouTube. Whatever you do.

A (5:09)

Well we know that we can't stop.

C (5:11)

You from watching it if it gets uploaded to dailymotion, but we will do what we can to prevent you.

A (5:16)

I'm not going to take it personally. You didn't get an invite either, did you, Jason Snow?

B (5:20)

I never last three years. I haven't gotten an invitation on day one.

A (5:23)

I know why. It's your association with moi.

B (5:25)

But, you know, but then I. Then I find a way. I. Nature finds a way. So let's say the last three. I think it's last three years I have on day one, been invited to watch. And then I send an email to people I know at fpr and it usually works out.

A (5:38)

Jason, you were so busy proving you could do it, you didn't stop to think of whether you should do it. That's the problem right there.

B (5:44)

I mean, the truth is, it would be easy. Easier to cover it. The pandemic taught me this.

A (5:51)

Home in our. In our discord.

B (5:52)

Talking about endeavor to be there.

D (5:55)

Yeah, I prefer to. Yeah, I prefer.

A (5:58)

You're going to be doing the office hours.

D (6:00)

Yeah, we just hang out and pick at it.

B (6:01)

The advantage of being there is that there is the. It is a zoo, but you can actually touch it and see it and see the colors and take some pictures and then you can dine out on that for a week until the reviews come out.

A (6:14)

You nailed it. You can dine out on it.

C (6:16)

Why, yes. Kwxt and Iowa, I'd be happy to be.

A (6:21)

I've touched your holy.

D (6:22)

I.

B (6:23)

If I had a nickel for every piece that Macworld had me write, that was like hands on. With a new iPhone, it's like, well, only whatever. Hundred people, you know, 400 people, 800 people in the world have had their hands on the new iPhone and can talk about it for that week until the embargoed reviews drop. And so, I mean, there are some advantages to talking about it and saying, yeah, I mean, the following Tuesday that, you know, I can say, yes, I held it. And here's what it is like, but it's fleeting, you know? Right. And there are advantages to not going, but I'll try. I'm local. That's my great advantage here, is that. Is that I can just reserve. I don't have to make any plan or hotel reservations. I can just stand by and I'm sure that there's some, you know, there's some TV journalist from Japan who really wanted to go, but then she couldn't make it, and they're like, oh, that seat opened up. Let's bring Jason.

D (7:16)

It'S totally, it's. They're not out of space. They just have to figure out how many employees are sitting in the back. So the, you know, like, so there's, there's always a flex.

B (7:24)

No, it is, I will say though, I mean there is a capacity. It is not necessarily the seating capacity. It's the capacity of Apple PR to.

D (7:33)

Talk to you while you're walking around.

B (7:34)

That little room to set that up and who's going to be there. But I will say there is a limit and it is Steve Jobs theater. So it's not like wwdc, it's a much smaller limit. And the thing that, I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about this, but like we all get interested in all apps. What is happening?

C (7:51)

I'm not ready. I haven't done my.

B (7:54)

We're not talking about the vision. There's no Vision Pro segment.

A (7:57)

This is how you become what is the number one Vision Pro podcast in the world randomly. I know we give you some leverage.

B (8:04)

We are excited about the Vision Pro, but what I would would say is the iPhone is important to the world in a way that no other product announcement is. And so when you do go to this event, you see so much international media, especially broadcast media, but also just.

D (8:21)

In general, do they have like an open area for the broadcast media to broadcast from? Is there so the Steve Jobs theater outside?

B (8:27)

Right, Steve Jobs theater. You enter at the top and then you go down the stairs and there's a hands on area. And then from there you go down into the theater and you enter at the top. So it's way down inside the earth with the people.

D (8:38)

Do they have stands outside?

B (8:40)

So a couple things they. At that top level, it's a big glass circle and so you'll get people who are doing standups outside the glass circle with the backdrop of that. And there is an area that I think that there's restricted access but there's also an. Just above the theater where from standing down at the theater you can look up and see like behind some plants there are the backs of a bunch of people's heads. It's totally another video area happening up there. So yeah, they've got, they've got place for broadcast. And this is my point is this is a tougher ticket than any other event Apple does because they are bringing like broadcast media from all over the world, plus print media, you know, web media from all over the world. There's a, it's a, the level of interest for the iPhone is beyond Way beyond anything else that Apple does still, because it's that big a product and important. I mean it's, it's one of the most important tech products. Even if we're all kind of inured to just little incremental updates to the iPhone, the fact is it's a big problem and it's a big.

D (9:40)

So many products in the world where 75 million people will spend an average of a thousand dollars on it within the next three months. You know, like that's good point. It's a big product. Like that's a lot of money that moves pretty quickly, I think, I don't think there's anything, any other physical device that moves at that, at that velocity.

A (9:55)

Amazing. Really amazing. Well, congratulations Apple on your great success. And I'm sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you, but I have other things to do that day. So is that a Tuesday? Yeah, actually we're going to be doing Mac Break weekly right after the Apple event. So yeah, we'll cover the Apple event as usual. Now because of, oh, I don't want to say, I don't want to be churlish, but it might be a little.

D (10:24)

Late because a lot of times now they've been running like 90 to a couple hours.

B (10:29)

The slot they keep is two hours.

A (10:30)

Yeah, well, okay, so well, maybe we'll start.

D (10:32)

I really think they could make it into an hour. Like, you know, it's funny, it was an hour and it was like, this is amazing. And now they've kind of like, let's put a bunch of extra stuff in there.

A (10:41)

I'm always like, but did you guys watch the Google event last week?

D (10:47)

The 12 minute highlights? So.

C (10:49)

Oh, you missed out on, we talked.

A (10:50)

About this on a couple of shows and the consensus was blame Apple, which I don't, I don't think is fair.

C (10:56)

Nope, nope. This is totally on Google. And as I'm watching this, I immediately regretted just the day before on this show I said, you know, I really think after seeing Google do like two or three of these events, I think they're doing a better job than Apple of figuring out how to do these quote, live events post Covid. And then what do they do? They get Jimmy Kimmel. Sorry, Jimmy Fowl.

A (11:16)

I kept calling him Jimmy Kimmel too, which is hysterical. He's got the unfunny Jimmy. Jimmy Kimmel is who they got to.

C (11:21)

Do this really weird stilted show where like it was like, where it was like, did they say like when it's going to be shipping? Did they say how much it's going to cost.

A (11:31)

They left us.

C (11:32)

They basically. It was just like it really was just a 45 minute hour long talk show in which I mean, it's clearly not directed towards the usual audience, it's directed towards the youths of America and the world to say, hey, this now this would be a great time to buy yourself a Pixel phone. And knowing that the people who have to actually figure out like okay, but does it charge wirelessly or not are going to get stuff like during briefings or during. By reading blog posts afterward.

D (11:58)

I think the fundamental problem is that they thought that people that that younger generation is actually going to watch.

A (12:04)

You know, like they like Jimmy building tone deaf.

D (12:07)

You're building it towards an audience that isn't going to watch that format. And so the thing is, is that it's, you know, rather than think of the gates, I do think it makes sense. I mean I get bored with a lot of stuff and I think that the problem is they saw like. But as someone who's probably worked on a couple hundred keynotes for a variety of big companies, this is why I don't like to do live.

C (12:31)

Wait a minute.

A (12:32)

That would not have been any better if it were canned.

D (12:35)

No, it would have been. No, no, no, you're right. No, that, that was not the problem.

A (12:40)

Live versus.

D (12:41)

Well, there were some uncomfortable situations that happened.

A (12:46)

They had a PVC table where they basically vomited every product in a random order. And then. And by the way, they have a really talented chief marketing officer who was standing there with a jet lagged Jimmy Fallon trying to show some enthusiasm. Adrienne Lofton, she's great, but it was a QVC segment and Jimmy picked up the wrong phone.

C (13:13)

I'm sorry, Alex, but it was one of the funniest part is when like Jimmy recognized a tech term and he was so excited to jump in and go off. I was, oh, IP68. That means like dust and dust and water resistant. That means you can take it on a construction site and say there are lawyers watching there. We can't. There are things we can't say about that.

D (13:32)

Well, yeah, and I think that the challenge is, is that when you. The hard part that we've had when we, when we bring in talent for keynotes and other things that we've done. The higher the talent, the more national the talent is, the less time you have with them.

A (13:44)

And so they care because the less they care.

D (13:47)

Like it felt like Fallon. I only watched.

A (13:49)

Oh, sorry. Never ask Bugs Bunny, by the way.

D (13:53)

Yeah, y. Yeah, he'd be. Yeah, he'd be all over the place. But I think the challenge you have is that, A, you don't get much time with them, so you don't get to do all the prep and you don't get to do all the practice, and you don't get to do all the other things. B, they, you know, they don't care about this. And. And I really felt like when you watched it, Fallon was kind of making fun of it a lot. You know, even I was his style.

A (14:11)

I mean, that's what you're going to get when you have Fallon.

D (14:13)

He's not always making fun of things. Like, if you look at him, a lot of times his. He's building up whoever. I think that's how they got. They thought of him as he builds up the people he's interviewing, everything else. But he didn't feel like he was building things up there. And so. And I, And I do applau. Applaud Google for like, thinking outside the box and trying to do something different. I mean, I think that the format. I think the format of Keynotes became what it is because of Steve Jobs, and no one else has been able to do it very well. I think that Salesforce is probably the second best at doing it. I don't. I don't understand their products, but I. But I will commend that Marc Benioff is very good at talking about them. But the. But I think that outside of that, it's just painful to watch. Like, if you're used to.

A (14:56)

It was terrible.

D (14:56)

But they're all painful to watch, you know, And I think that that Live.

A (14:59)

It was Samsung level terrible. I mean, it really.

D (15:02)

The live is just so. It's so hard.

A (15:05)

Again, that wasn't live. That wasn't the. I mean, it was. But. I mean, that's not the issue. The issue was just poor choice of people. Although there was. There were some demos that didn't go well. When they had Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy attempt to demonstrate the camera coach, she inadvertently showed some previous pictures. I don't know where they came from. They edited that out, by the way, in the version you'll see on YouTube. So only if you watched it live did you see that. And she kept telling Fallon, stop. She said, close your legs. Close your legs. And he never. He couldn't, apparently, could not close his legs. So they shot him from the waist up. And then the real problem was the picture wasn't any better. So they didn't even show it full screen. They just went oh, look at that. And then moved on. It was. So that's where live did. Definitely. So I will grant you that. But it would not have been any better if it just tight.

D (15:56)

When things get. I don't know, I'll argue that it probably would have been better. It wouldn't have been great. It would have been still weird. It just would have been. The problem is that, like, when someone's not listening to you, you can stop and have a conversation about it when it's not live, you know, like, you know, and when they're not doing what you want them to do or you get these off, you know. And I know people love, the people watching, love to see things not work or be edgy or whatever. The people doing it, like me, do not like that well.

A (16:21)

And my biggest complaint, which you already referred to, is it didn't really demonstrate the phone properly. It didn't show the information. Andy was saying, you know, when's the shipping? What does it cost? You know, all of this stuff was kind of buried right in the razzamatazz. And that's not what you want because it's. That's. Who. What is the audience for that? I don't know.

C (16:43)

I'll say one thing that's one thing positive about that. I was. I actually went back and I watched like the first 10 minutes of the previous, of the previous Pixel Impact event and still started with Rick Osterloh, who was their head of hardware, of consumer hardware, but he started talking about, oh, because of AI and our end to end tech stack, blah, blah, blah. This one was. It wasn't like it was a totally nerdy event, but there were a lot of technical tech stuff that they wanted to talk about. The phone that wasn't going to be relevant to the people who are going to be buying the phone. One positive thing I'll say about how they did it this year is that it really was feature, feature, feature, feature. And yes, they mentioned Gemini and yes, they mentioned AI, but they weren't trying to demonstrate AI. They were trying to demonstrate a feature where you could just simply have a natural conversation over phone lines with somebody who speaks Spanish and it would translate it not only on the fly, but also that was impressive, but also create a version, a synthetic voice that approximates the speaker's voice. So I'll give them points for that.

A (17:40)

Yeah.

D (17:42)

The feature I thought was amazing. Like, that was the. I think that that feature, when I saw it, I was like, oh, man, Google has the closest Star Trek I've ever seen.

A (17:48)

Demonstrate simultaneous translation in every event they've had for the last 10 years.

C (17:52)

I know, but that was another level. This one was. At this level, you're having a conversation on the phone. It's not like Google Translate. It's. You're having a conversation on the phone. Yeah, we'll see. I think embargoes lift this week, so we'll see.

A (18:02)

Are you getting a 10?

C (18:04)

I'm. I'm on the fence. It's either going to be a 10 or 11, because I'm on. I'm on my last OS update for my Pixel 6. And so. But it's very, very tempting.

A (18:14)

I want you guys to tie me to the mast because I don't want to buy anything Apple announces on September 9th because I'm going to save my pennies for the next year. Because. And you saw this on Sunday, Mark Gurman's Power on newsletter. Bloomberg said the next three years are going to bring big redesigns. So next year we're going to see the folding this, according to pure rumor and speculation. Folding phone the year after, of course, the 10th anniversary iPhone. And then he says in 2020. Now my math's off. 2028, is that. That we're going to see a. Finally, the phone Apple's always wanted to make. I couldn't. Is it clear?

C (18:56)

Yeah. They're talking about either transparent, like all glass body, meaning that there's no, like a metal frame around it. I've heard another.

D (19:06)

They're a little bit, I think, coy.

C (19:07)

About how the specifics are. One of the things they're suggesting is that it's going to have like a curved front, which I don't really like because my Pixel has like curved glass on the side of the screen.

A (19:17)

Yeah, I agree.

C (19:18)

And yeah, especially if you have it in a case you basically have this gutter on the side of it.

A (19:22)

Anyway, time into the mask, boys, because I want to hold off. I don't want that slim thing, which we think now is going to be called the air, according to the rumors. I don't want the 17 Pro Max XL. I want to save my money for maybe the folding phone next year. Maybe next year, right? Is that smart?

B (19:43)

Yeah.

A (19:44)

Can I do it?

D (19:45)

Yeah.

A (19:45)

Here's the test. Watch along with us. Mike and I will be streaming it on Discord only.

B (19:51)

You can't do it. But that's okay. That's why we love you. You just. Please, it's your job. You need it for your work.

A (19:59)

Just handcuff me.

D (20:00)

As always, as always, I just wait until the end because the Last thing that they'll talk about is the only thing that most of us care about, which is the camera.

A (20:07)

Okay, one more thing about Google that I have to mock. They attempted a One more thing.

C (20:13)

But.

A (20:14)

The problem was the one more thing they had already released as a press release that morning. So maybe a little hint to Google the one more thing should be something no one knows about.

D (20:24)

I also don't think that, I think that it's even uncomfortable if Apple tries to do one more thing at this point.

A (20:29)

Yeah, it is.

D (20:30)

It was a moment.

A (20:30)

It was Steve's thing.

C (20:32)

Let's let that also bring it back to Apple. This was probably the most. I think they mentioned or reflected Apple more in this, in this event than they did a lot of, A lot of shade and also a bunch of hey, and don't worry, we're supporting Apple this way. And hey, we're. If you've got an app, if you've got an iPhone, this will work like this and not just the usual, hey, we finally arm twisted Apple into supporting rcs so messaging will work fine. There was when they talked about their version of Qi2 like magnetic magnetic accessories and charging, which of course MagSafe, which, exactly, because Apple actually said, hey, this consortium, you can have this, damn it.

B (21:12)

Hey.

C (21:12)

And it'll work with, it'll work with MagSafe accessories too, just like Apple. So it's, it's. I mean, it was interesting that they mentioned Apple so many times during.

D (21:19)

I think when, when you look at the, not the, the 18 to 25, but the 12 to 25, you know, it is, it's dark for Google and they have to figure out how to again engage that audience.

A (21:29)

I mean, I think they said they're 4% of the market. I mean, really, it is a Samsung Apple.

D (21:34)

Yeah, but even then, it's even, even when you Compare Android to iOS in that 12 to 25 range, it's a pretty rough area for them to be in. They have to be, you know, they.

A (21:44)

May be forced to kind of divest Android anyway. I don't, I think Google doesn't really see the value, that much value in Android at this point. This is why they're pushing the Pixel like crazy.

C (21:57)

Android is such a lush source of signals for their search business and their advertising business. They want Android going as long as they possibly can.

A (22:06)

Or just get those Google apps installed on the iPhone and they can.

D (22:11)

I think the biggest benefactor of Android is Apple. Like, and the reason for that is that it's kept Apple.

A (22:18)

I say, see, we're not A monopoly.

D (22:20)

No, that's exactly. You're exactly right. That is Apple's. The number one thing that Android has done is allowed Apple to go this as far as it could without having to deal with antitrust. Because they would have been an antitrust 10 years ago if Android didn't exist.

A (22:32)

It's funny, they're doing with Google what Microsoft did with Apple when Steve Jobs came back and they gave him $150 million just so that they wouldn't go under, so that Microsoft could credibly say, well, there is a Mac.

C (22:45)

Yeah, it is getting a little more.

D (22:47)

That was a pretty complicated thing when they gave the money. Because they gave them more than 150 million.

A (22:51)

Yeah, maybe it was more. They saved it Anyway. Was it 400?

D (22:55)

It was.

A (22:55)

They had some of it.

D (22:56)

That was a couple different ways.

C (22:58)

They made their money back. They're fine. But it's interesting, Google is finally at least deciding that, hey, perhaps Android should not look like a big phone when you put it on a large screen. And they're making so many partly to support all of the foldable phones and different displays, but they're trying to finally make tablets a thing. I thought it was kind of interesting. I think it was last week or the week before Amazon announced that their fire tablets, which are the. For what they are, they're great. Just, I want a cheap tablet I can give to the kids in the backseat so that they can play games and they can watch videos. And if they lose it or if they drop it, I don't really care because it's only $100 tablet. They decided that at least for the premium versions of these fire tablets, they're going to go off of their own custom fork version of Android based on the Android open source project and they're actually going to switch to one like Google Android. So have access to the Google Play Store, have access to Google services, which I'm still not sure that they'll have any. I still don't know the argument that I could make to anybody to get an Android tablet instead of an iPad at any price level. But it's interesting that Amazon, having a mature version of Fire OS based on open source Android for a number of years, have decided that, okay, now it's time to stop and cast my lot with Google.

D (24:17)

I own 10 Samsung tablets and the argument for those is that they are interfaces for specific Things and they're $110. They were $110 when I bought them whenever they play a page and it's cheaper than an iPad.

A (24:31)

But that's to Samsung's credit. They make the only decent Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab. It's much more expensive, it's iPad price, but that's the only, as far as I know, the only decent one Android tablet.

B (24:42)

You know, Android's tried a lot. The tablet experience isn't great. I spent the last couple of years trying a bunch of Andro, E readers, E Ink and some other screen based ones and every time I launch an app in a tablet configuration I just think, oh, like it's just a phone app because Android is about, about phones. I would, I would read Amazon's decision the other way, Andy, which is at this point throwing your lot in with Android is probably easier for them because it's probably not worth it for them to make more engineering effort in the premium tablet area because like it's not going to be a huge business for them. And I think, yeah, their huge business is actually the cheap tablet that they've got, that they've wired. But the whole, if you ask them today, would you do the Amazon App Store and all of that, I think they wouldn't.

D (25:25)

Well and the problem is is that I, I mean I bought an Amazon app, an Amazon tablet, you know, when I was trying to get a bunch of tablets together to do these controllers and it was so limited that I sent it back, I took it back to Best Buy or whatever, wherever I bought it. And the problem that you get into is that I don't know the difference between the high end version, the low end version. All I know is I got an Amazon Fire or whatever that was. It completely was frustrating and I was like, I'm never buying that, like that was it. But you can't like this whole like the painfully broken os, you know, limited to all the stuff with all the ads and all the other stuff, it was so it was such a bad experience that there was, there was no way like I never like it just I don't, I can't even see it.

A (26:07)

But this, so this is the Google Pixel tablet, which would presumably be the best Android tablet out there. And it's not.

C (26:13)

Yeah, but even then that's not, it's basically a smart speaker display that you can pull off of the display. It really isn't designed to be something you put. It's not designed like this beautiful iPad Pro that I've got used as an external display that I often use just as a primary, not just a content consumption device, but a creation device.

A (26:33)

We all acknowledge that the iPad is king of the hill. And Google actually has said in an interview, they said, yeah, one of their executives said, yeah, we're not really working on tablets, we're not really working on rings, we're not really headsets. Yeah. They said, glasses off. Which is funny because they showed glasses at Google I o. But he said, yeah, we're not working on those really either. I don't know, you know what?

C (26:57)

But they are working on an operating system to enable other people to make good, smart glasses and good goggles.

A (27:02)

They want to be Microsoft. They want to be.

C (27:05)

They have one department that makes hardware and they found success as they choose to define success in that niche. But no, they're not. I mean, they don't need that kind of trouble.

D (27:14)

The challenge is we're going to build tools that other people can use is that a lot of the hard things to do take an incredible amount of investment to get it off the ground, to push it through. If you look at whether, whether it's Apple or Meta on the headsets or whether it's, you know, anybody else, anything that matters, that's going to take a lot of market share in whatever vertical it goes into. Oftentimes takes a huge amount of risk to get there. And big companies can do that. When you hand people just the materials, A, they're not going to take. Oftentimes no one's going to take the risk that they had to take to actually get it done. And B, they fork it to a point where it doesn't make, you know, like, it doesn't serve the use that it originally was designed for. And so I think that, I just think that that, like, let's just like, I think this is the same problem Apple has with HomeKit, which is that they keep on wanting to make an environment that other people can build tools into, and no one's really doing that very well.

A (28:05)

That was another announcement Google buried in that ridiculous event, which is that they've got actually a pretty credible Google home strategy going forward. And maybe it is Google that's going to start because they do have Gemini and they are building it into all the things, including the watch now in a way that I think is going to be maybe could be very useful.

D (28:26)

It'll be interesting. It does feel like Apple's getting more serious of, like, and we'll see. But over the next year, there's a lot of rumors that Apple's may be going down the path that some of us have been talking about, which is like, hey, why don't we just build all the stuff?

B (28:38)

Well, for building the home stuff. For the home stuff. They seem to be taking the home category seriously.

D (28:43)

I think once they build the hub, I think that they'll let other people play with it. But I think eventually they're just going to build out the five or six things that all of us want and it'll all talk.

A (28:51)

Will they use Siri?

D (28:53)

I don't know. I don't really care.

B (28:55)

Yes, but what will drive it? What will next gen Siri actually be? That's the real question there, I think. I mean we, we kind of meandered through a bunch of topics there. And I just wanted to say that when I think about that rumored folding iPhone for next fall, I think that is Apple's greatest asset for that is they put 15 years into the iPad and that unfolded version will be a little iPad. And we all know what that means and it's, we all know how that's going to work and they've had a lot of time to think about what a tablet app is like on, on, on their devices. And I think that makes that product like, that much more compelling because it is not, you know, Apple, Apple is good at phone and tablet and Android is weaker on tablet by quite a bit. So it's an advantage Apple compress. Even though Apple's been sitting on the sidelines with folding devices up to now, when they jump in, they can take advantage of the 15 years of the iPad.

A (29:51)

Yeah. And that credit to not just Apple, to developers who embraced for sure on the Apple side but did not on the Android side side.

C (29:58)

And also if developers have been listening to Apple for the past two or three years, that basically you get whatever app you've been building for the iPad, you get a free iPhone fold version as soon as it gets released, whether it's tomorrow or two years from now. So yeah, I mean, it's a lush, rich, fertile topic, Apple's relationship with developers. But they are very, very good at saying, well look, if you invest, I know we kind of make this, they don't say this explicitly, but that the deal is that we will make it a pain in the butt, but far more than it has to be. But the thing is, your investment in learning how to build apps using our APIs is going to pay off in the form of we've got things that we are just in the planning stages right now that your app is going to be working with four or five years from now.

A (30:40)

All right, let's take a break. That was one story. The Apple event is officially the ninth. But there is so much More to talk about. We will get to that. That with Andy and Ako, Jason Snell, Alex Lindsay. The Mac Break Weekly team is on the case. We are brought to you this week by Pantheon. And I don't just mean our advertiser, Pantheon, our website, our workflow, our backend, all runs on Pantheon. Pantheon is our web host, but more than a web host, they host the Drupal that runs the entire workflow. Of course, what's nice about this, we created this beautiful headless Drupal that they've been running flawlessly now for, I think, five or six years. They do such a good job, and it is something that's so reliable, we rely on it not just for our website, but for everything. So when this show is over, John Ashley will go into the headless Drupal instance, the content management system running on Pantheon servers, and publish the show, do the show notes, everything. It's all done with the help of Pantheon. Of course. A website is probably the most important thing that you run in your business. Your website is, I would guess, in many businesses, your number one revenue channel. And when it's slow or it's down or it's stuck in a bottleneck, oh, man, you hear it. It can also be, at that point, your number one liability. That's why you need a host like Pantheon. Pantheon keeps your site fast, secure, and always on. Better SEO, better conversions, no lost sales from downtime. It's not just a business win, by the way, it's a developer win too. Just ask Patrick Delahanty, our engineer. He loves Pantheon. Your team gets automated workflows, isolated test environments. That's super important for us. We move stuff into test, then development, and then production. And it's seamless. So we get zero downtime deployments, no late night fire drills. No. Hey, it works on my machine. Headaches.

B (32:48)

Just.

A (32:48)

Just, you know, pure innovation. Marketing loves it. They can launch a landing page without waiting for a release cycle. Developers love it. They can push features with total confidence. And your customers, they don't care if they just see a site that works flawlessly, smoothly, rapidly. 24. Seven Pantheon powers, Drupal and WordPress. Sites that reach over a billion unique monthly visitors. Visit Pantheon IO and make your website your unfair advantage. Pantheon, where the web just works. P A N T H E O N PANTHEON I O We love Pantheon. Thank you, Pantheon, for supporting us for all these years. Every time I mention Pantheon, Patrick goes, yeah, yeah, Love those guys. All right, so I didn't even ask Alex and Andy. I know. I didn't get it? Even the invite that says you could watch online if you want. I presume you guys are still waiting for your invite.

D (33:52)

Yeah. Every day I'm going out to the mailbox and I open it and I wait for the glow to come out of the mailbox.

A (33:59)

I go, would it be nice if they mailed paper invites? That would be kind of cool. I would like that.

D (34:05)

Imagine if they make out a metal. There should be something you could put like the gold leaf.

B (34:09)

I want. I want a footman with a top hat to come to my door and say, sir, your presence is requested.

C (34:17)

I want a huge, like, case of chocolate bars and one of them has a golden ticket in it.

B (34:22)

I take. I can take it all back. What I want is a marching band to march down my street.

A (34:27)

Him, Travis Tillman at the head in the. In the drum major position.

B (34:33)

That's right.

A (34:33)

What's his name? Is that. Is that his name? Tillman, the guy in severance?

B (34:37)

Sure, it could be.

A (34:38)

You know what's funny is a little tie in.

B (34:40)

Little tie in.

D (34:41)

You know what's funny is that how much Apple did not stream these in the early days out of the fear that the press wouldn't come if it was streamed. They wouldn't.

B (34:51)

That's so weird.

D (34:52)

And they didn't want anyone to see it. They wanted to keep it all to the press. And so we're so funny.

B (34:57)

Yeah. Now the press goes and just watches the same video that the rest of the world does, but on a bigger screen.

D (35:02)

But you still get just as many people, more people than watching what end up showing up, you know?

B (35:07)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

A (35:09)

We will. We will stream it, of course, in the club only. So if you're not a club member, please join now, because September 9th, Micah Sargent and I will be there at 10am we'll go until the end and then we'll do Mac Break weekly. And since we expect Jason Snell will be out of pocket that day, probably not be there.

C (35:27)

Yes.

A (35:28)

We will have Micah continue on and do the show with Andy and Alex. And of course, if you're an Office Hour fan, you can. And do you have to be a member of the Zoom? You don't put that on YouTube probably.

C (35:39)

No.

D (35:40)

Yeah, it's just in Zoom. So we go into. We have an after hours which runs 24 7. So we all go in and hang out. And so we just go into there. We have a couple extra, like, rooms, viewing rooms. And so we'll jump into one of those. And so if you're in Office hours. That's where you go.

A (35:54)

That's a fun way.

D (35:55)

And a whole bunch of us sit there and pick at it.

A (35:57)

Yeah. Yeah. The Foxconn is ramping up factory hiring in China, which is interesting because didn't we. Didn't we hear that all of the new iPhones will be made in India.

C (36:08)

Only the US Ones. In the last call, Tim actually said that China is still going to be all the international malls and all the US Malls are coming out of iPhones and other devices are coming out of either Vietnam or India.

B (36:20)

Yeah. Mark Gurman said that. Saying all is not accurate. And it's going to be many. My gut feeling here is that as many as they can make and verify from India, India will come to the US and then they'll backfill with iPhones from elsewhere, but every model will be made in India. They're not making just some models. So the question is just can they fulfill all of the US Market with India production? Mike, again, my gut feeling is maybe not, but. But that's the goal is as much as they can get from India, and then they'll backfill for the rest.

A (36:54)

If you read Patrick McGee's amazing apple in China, which I think we've all.

D (36:57)

Read and love, great book.

A (36:58)

He talks about how this happens seasonally in China. Foxconn hires recruiters which go out into the countryside because they need to staff up dramatically for these production runs. And they. And they offer new hires a bonus. In this case, it's the equivalent of $1,113 if they stay for all three months. Apparently that's a big jump, according to Apple Insider, for. From the incentives offered a couple of weeks earlier, it's a lot of money. And then these thousands of extra workers flock to Shenzhen to get on the assembly line. Many of them make enough money in those three months to go back home, and Apple doesn't need them all year round. In fact, one of the incentives Apple has for spreading the iPhone releases out is they don't have these big ramp ups.

B (37:54)

Yeah, I think actually that is all this talk that they're going to split to a spring event and a fall event for the iPhone. That's one of my thoughts, is it makes everything smoother.

D (38:04)

Right.

B (38:04)

Because you've got the people who have to build the new production line or modify an old production line to be new. You've got to have everybody who designs all the boxes, everybody who does, like, every part of it. If you load almost every iPhone into one launch day, it's better to Spread it out, do it over two. It saves you people in your factories, it saves you people back in Cupertino. It saves you people all over the world. You don't have to qualify. The new version of your OS's on, you know, four different pieces of hardware. You can only do it on three. Maybe that's a good thing. There are a lot of reasons. And what did we say earlier? The iPhone event is the most watched Apple event. The reason that it's bloated, as Alex said, is because so many people are watching that it's the perfect place to introduce other things because everybody tunes in for the iPhone and then you sell them on other things. So you know what? Why not do two? Why not do two? I mean it makes. If Apple is increasing the number of phones that they're selling, they're going to add a fold. They've added the air, they added the E. I love this idea from like across the board, including production. Just think of how much they have to turn over every summer when they flip over production to new models. Wouldn't it be nice if they could spread that out over, you know, over a full year?

A (39:16)

So likely September 9th they'll announce an iPhone, a thin iPhone, which I guess leaks from the case manufacturers. They're making a bet it's going to be called the air.

B (39:27)

Yeah, we don't. I mean the marketing is the last thing to leak because marketing is coming from Cupertino.

A (39:32)

Right.

B (39:33)

But yeah, yeah. And we should say there are lots of rumors out there about, about stuff happening next year. The rumor is that next year they might only do the pro models in the fall and the non pro models in the spring. This year it'll all be on the 9th. This year it's all coming. It's going to be, you know, the last, maybe traditional, all iPhones in event, but that's what's going to happen this time.

A (39:55)

So the 17, let's say air, the 17. 17 Pro and the 17 Pro XL. The four models.

B (40:01)

Pro Max.

A (40:02)

Yeah, pro max.

B (40:03)

Exactly. And we don't know 100% that it's 17. They renamed all the OS 26, so it could be 26. We don't know.

A (40:11)

They've numbers before. In fact, Samsung has skipped like whole, whole, whole decades.

B (40:16)

My argument, my argument that they won't and Mark Gurman reported about this on Sunday is that they are not next year but the year after they are talking about doing an iPhone 20.

A (40:28)

That'll be the 20th anniversary.

B (40:30)

It would be less fun if that was the iPhone 28. Than if it was the iPhone, double x or something like that. So they might want to keep those numbers that way. Although, boy, I would like them to sync up all their numbers. I'd like the A processors and the M processors and just let's year all the things because I'm really tired of saying that the 16 has an 18 and it runs, you know, 26. Like, let's not.

C (40:55)

You think. You think that they. Is the. Is the term 20th anniversary product cursed enough for the 20th anniversary Mac that they're not going to want to even go close to reviving it for the 20th anniversary iPhone? I would love it.

A (41:07)

No, nobody remembers that.

C (41:09)

Yes. I mean, I would love it if they decided that this isn't the 20th. If they did something that was so special, it was truly a 20th anniversary iPhone and not necessarily the upgrade to the previous year's iPhone. If they said, we're going to have a separate sku this year for this one that is super, super, super stylish that you're going to sacrifice some features. It's not going to have as nice a camera, but oh my God, you're going to have like the slickest iPhone.

B (41:35)

This is what gurman says is that the goal with this is kind of like with the iPhone 10 to be a cutting edge new design that won't be on all the other models, but points toward where all the other models are going, which is what happened with the iPhone X. I mean, basically all the iPhones are the iPhone 10 now because the iPhone 10 showed the way. But when they launched it, it cost way more than the other iPhones and it was sold as a separate thing. I will. It's that nerd thing. I'm going to do it here, Andy. The 20th anniversary Mac was the 20th anniversary of Apple and not a product. So they. They dodged that bullet. Right. I'll also point out Next year's the 50th anniversary of Apple, so. So let's start a rumor about a 50th anniversary Mac. What would that be?

C (42:12)

Open source. If I'm going to start a rumor that intimidates Apple into doing something, they open source the original Mac roms and the original Mac os. So that'd be cool if you want to do an emulation. It's absolutely free.

A (42:24)

We love that idea.

B (42:25)

Let's ship a new classic Mac os.

A (42:27)

Bill Atkinson would love that idea. That's a fantastic idea. Anyway, apparently India is only 14% of current iPhone production. That's again from apple insider.

D (42:40)

So that still sounds like China continues to Try to like, oh, let's make it hard.

A (42:45)

Yeah, they pulled back. They pulled even more engineers. And Apple had a, you know, Foxconn had to go to Taiwan.

B (42:51)

And I think it's interesting, though, that the Tata is taking over a lot of that production in India now. And that means that instead of it being this Taiwanese company with heavy roots in China, it's an Indian company, Indian country, Indian company that's going to be doing that, contracting and like they are. Look, nobody said this would be easy, but this is Apple diversifying its product. I think if you ask TIM COOK, In 10 years, how would you like iPhones to be produced? I think he would probably say something like, I want them produced in, like, five different places all over the world, so that nothing is, you know, including China. Not trying to get out of China, but just. It's healthier if Apple is producing phones in, you know, in China and in India and in Brazil and maybe in the United States, wherever, like in other places, because it makes everything a little bit less. But it's not going to be easy because so much expertise is in China, as that Apple in China book said. I will say, though, how do you, how do you get Indian manufacturing to meet those standards? This is how, this is how you do it. Because this is what happened in China. Tata, as you have Apple people, because all these factories, remember, are, are, are run by Foxconn or Tata, but like, they're run by Apple. And, and Apple and China showed us that, that the Chinese manufacturing learned from Apple's strict standards how to do this stuff. And if Apple applies those same ideas in India, one of the things they're doing is teaching Indian manufacturing how to adhere to Apple's standards. And that works for Apple in the long run and it works for India. So I, I mean, it, it, it's hard, but they kind of have to do it and everybody knows it.

D (44:30)

Yeah, and, and it's, and just, just to kind of put in perspective, I mean, Tata is a big company. A third of the Internet goes through there. The Tata Internet services. And that's just the Internet services. And then you have the car services and you have the other. You know, there's so much to Tata. So this is a really big company, but learning.

A (44:49)

They also own Jaguar Land Rover.

B (44:51)

Oh, yeah.

C (44:52)

They're enormous.

D (44:53)

It's an enormous.

C (44:53)

This isn't.

D (44:54)

Yeah, this is, this is a big, big company. And I think it. And a global company. And so it's going to be interesting to see again what Apple did in China. It's not as Jason's pointing out, it's not just that they are going to get phones made. They're going to change the way tech gets built in India. You know, like it's going to be because all these people that work there for some period of time are going to go out and start their own companies and everything else. And that's also why India has so many restrictions on having to build things in India, because they know that it'll build skill sets in India that they want. And you know, we saw that with, you know, with visual effects when they started doing. When visual. When Indians started doing rotoscoping as an example, it wasn't very good.

A (45:36)

Did they get better fast?

D (45:38)

Oh, yeah, yeah. But.

A (45:39)

But what it took was something in China. Right.

D (45:41)

American specialists went over there, trained them and picked at it for a while and took a couple years.

A (45:45)

Exactly what happened in China.

D (45:46)

And then, and then everything. Everything. You know, you know, anybody can do any of this anywhere. The big thing that'll be interesting is as AI picks up is where, you know, it's going to be a smaller and smaller pool of labor that's required to build any of these things. As the machinery and as you start to end up with articulating error correcting robots, it could be reassured. I mean, I think that's what Apple would love if you asked Tim Cook, is to do these out of Phoenix, but have it be 99% machines.

A (46:19)

All right, so we'll watch with interest. We got another Update to the 26s. Tahoe was updated. IOS, iPad, OS, Watch OS, Apple TV, OS all updated. Was it yesterday? I feel like everything came in. This is beta 5.

C (46:40)

It's like, I know it's Monday because there's a new public beta or another beta to download.

A (46:44)

Right. So that means what Is this the one or are we still one or two away from the release candidate?

D (46:51)

It.

B (46:53)

This is close to the end. Not the end. I wouldn't be surprised if this builder a build very close to it is the one they load on the phones and call, you know, call the release.

A (47:06)

They do have that ability though, don't they? Now in the stores, date the phones in the stores.

B (47:10)

Yeah, there's pro. There's probably a placeholder build that is on the devices.

A (47:15)

Right.

B (47:16)

And then when they get to the stores, you. You put them on the little thing and it. And it auto connects to WI fi.

A (47:21)

Without opening the box.

B (47:22)

Without opening.

A (47:22)

Amazing.

B (47:23)

Great idea.

A (47:23)

Yeah. So clever.

D (47:24)

Yeah.

B (47:25)

But it feel. I mean, this is for those waiting for more dramatic changes at the end of the beta period. Stop. Because it's not. And this is it. And this is. I mean, I was listening to a couple of podcasts talking about this. I'm like, we're just going to have to live with it and it's going to be a mess and it's going to bug app developers more than it bugs users. But it, but it. Some users are going to get bugged and then it's going to be a process where there are going to be updates over time. And, you know, it's going to be a year or two of unsettled. And like, this is all exactly what you could have guessed, right? Anytime you have a big design like this, you can like the design or not like the design. Apple kind of doesn't care. It's kind of. Apple's just going to do what, what it wants to do. And then inevitably some of what it does is going to be dumb. They're going to fix it in the summer, but it's not really fixed. And then there's going to be a point one that kind of tweaks something and then a point to that fix. And then like next year, wwdc, they'll do a bunch of stuff and people be like, oh, that's better. Like this, we're just in it. This is just what it's like. Although I will say most of the people who use these devices will not care as much about it as we do. And that's, and that's why I've seen some people are like, this is going to be a disaster for Apple. I was like, I just don't think it is. I don't think it's going to be a big deal. However, I will say if Apple screws something up badly, it can really backfire. I, my, my mom came and visited me last week, very nice to get her out of the desert for a week. We had a good time. But while she was here, we updated the software on her phone and she said, oh, no, I guess I have to do that. It's just going to move things around. And I realized she's still feeling the trauma of iOS 7. Right? So the danger here is Apple pulls out this push, you know, pushes out a new OS design. And the danger is people really freak out and feel like Apple screwed around with them. But Apple doesn't roll things out immediately to everybody on day one. There's a period where unless you ask for it, you're not going to get update. And I would also say for people who haven't used Liquid glass. Yet functionally it's the same. It looks different, but all the behaviors are basically the same. And I think that was the problem with iOS7 is like, people are like, I don't even know where to tap anymore. I don't think it's going to be an issue. So a lot of talk, it's good to talk about it. There are a lot of things that are kind of busted and developers are unhappy. I mean, it's good for us.

A (49:44)

What are they unhappy about? It?

B (49:46)

It's, there's a lot of inconsistencies. There's APIs that don't work quite right. It's, it's exactly what you'd expect. It's. Apple built its own apps using this and then there are edge cases that Apple just seems to have never thought of that all the developers are finding. And so it's, it's. They have to put in. Developers are grumpy because they have to put in a lot of work just to get their apps not to look broken when this version ships.

A (50:08)

And they get blamed, and they will get blamed.

B (50:11)

So that, that I, I was listening to Accidental Tech Podcast, which has got a bunch of developers on it and they were mar. One of the hosts, he said, be nice to your app developers, right? Be nice. That app that you're using do this every year. Be nice. And this is a hard summer for them. They are trying very hard. But like, yeah, but this one especially is like that. And again, there's not going to be a lot of sympathy out there for app developers, but those of us who can feel it should probably feel it for them because it's going to be a lot of work for them. And that's just. It happens, you know, an OS redesign goes through these stages and I think it's really funny that when you're looking at a week to week, you're like, oh, it's so dramatic. But if you step back and look at the big picture, you're like, yeah, of course. That's what, it's, what's happening. I mean this is just how it goes.

C (50:56)

You speak of stages and that's interesting because we're at the end of the first phase of a major redesign in which all those responses that you're seeing are responses to reactions from developers. And yeah, there are a lot of us that have, that went into the public beta and yeah, we have some feedback too, but most the of Apple is responding most immediately to concerns about developers, not just the APIs, but also, I don't know how to redesign my app to do this or this feels very wonky. The next big lamppost is going to be, let's see how 26.1 looks. Because that's when you stop getting feedback from people who are actively interested in checking out whatever the new thing is. And you start getting the feedback from the tens of millions of people who just want their iPhone to work. And they don't necessarily care about the design philosophy and they don't necessarily care that. Oh, but look how seamless the experience is in user experience between this device and another. They're like, how come in the Photos app, I no longer know where to go to find my most recent photos? So that's always the most interesting evolution to look for. Say, what did Apple think better of once they started getting feedback from tens of millions of users instead of hundreds of thousands of users?

D (52:09)

And sometimes they'll just keep on doing whatever they're going to do. I mean, I. I've kind of become resigned to the photo. The way photos work on my phone. I still don't like it as much as it was before. And, you know, I. You know, and I. So that's always the danger.

B (52:25)

You're gonna love this. They undid it. And I think that goes to Andy's point. Right?

D (52:29)

Which is.

B (52:30)

Which is. Which is then. Then it meets the enemy, which is the users. And. And they really know that they stepped in it. And like, Photos is a great example of that.

D (52:39)

Like, Photos.

B (52:39)

You're gonna win that one.

D (52:40)

Yeah. Cause I just. I literally. The use. My use of photos dropped by 90%. But on. In one version, like, I was just, like, it just wasn't. I used to open it just to see what it would show me. Like, I would just be like this exploration and everything else. And then I. And then I just was like, oh, this is. It just holds my photos now. So that's good. It's good. It's going backwards.

A (53:01)

There is. Somebody's pretty unhappy with the icons. It would be one John Gruber, daring fireball, who. He refers to Steve Jobs famously talking about how a good carpenter paints the back of the cabinet. The part that nobody sees because they care. Gruber says these icons are not the work of carpenters who care about the backs of cabinets they're building. These icons are so bad, they look like the work of untrained. How hard can it be? Dilettante carpenters who only last a few days on the job before sawing off one of their own fingers. Fingers. He's referring to disc utility, which, you know, it's gone. These are, have all gone from skeuomorphic designs with real looking wrenches and screwdrivers and stethoscopes to a generic wrench with different icons inside.

C (53:58)

I agree with him. In the wrench, it's like if you're going to decide that your theme, overall theme is going to be a wrench, make it look like a freaking wrench. Not like someone who is just, just Learned Mac Draw 1.0 and is trying to draw a wrench for the first time. It look, it looks like the damn thing's going to break off.

B (54:14)

Yeah, I was going to say the disk utility. I mean, I agree. I think these new icons aren't very good, but you never see them because.

A (54:22)

They'Re in the utilities folder.

B (54:23)

A couple years ago, Mike Hurley and I did a tier list of Apple icons and I'm reminded that we laughed so hard at the disk utility icon because it's like stethoscope, it's on a platter and there's a stethoscope and there's a hard drive of like it's a surgery with a dot. I mean, and I get the metaphor, but it's a terrible icon. It's a terrible icon. Like, but what they replaced it with is like a weird wrench and an Apple logo which doesn't say anything about being a disk utility at all. It's bananas. Just, I mean, yeah, somebody got assigned to this job and they, and, and they probably were overworked. And I would even say like this, this doesn't strike me as being somebody who's bad at their job. This strikes me as somebody who is given a task, task to generate 15 icons very quickly.

D (55:10)

I don't know. I mean most things in big companies like this, every icon, there's a lot of, a lot of meanings, you know, like, and I think that they're, you know, and there's definitely, I think that one of the things you were seeing a pattern of is simplifying everything, you know, so that when it's in a small icon it's easier to read quickly. I think that's kind of the direction that it's going. All the, if you look at all those icons, they're going from being complicated to being something that you kind of glance at that. And so I think that that might be the, the use of it. But yeah, it's not very inspiring.

A (55:39)

Yeah.

C (55:39)

But I mean the thing is like these aren't, it's not like these are going to be installed on an Apple watch. These are all going to be desktop icons. So they're going to be big enough that you may as well make them more. More explanatory. I didn't. I, I agreed with it. I agreed with a lot of the stuff that, that he said in that piece. One of them being. That doesn't look. It looks like a developer who basically created a stopgap icon that he knew that. Well, I knew that at some point and a real designer is going to be giving me the real one. But this is, this is what I got.

A (56:09)

Not too late. It still could, right?

C (56:11)

Yeah, yeah, it still could. It's good. But he. And the. It was. The reason why this article kind of got my attention was that he, Gruber was at the end, when he winds up, he implies that this could be the canary in the coal mine that Apple designed. Apple's. Apple's period of history of being known for their great design might be over if. Or might be waning or if this is the beginning of the year.

A (56:34)

The utilities folder is full of a lot of dead canaries.

C (56:38)

I mean, and also, and also, to be fair, we all have our areas of particular interest. John Gruber's. One of Jon Gruber's particular areas of interest is in design. And this is why, like, I roll my eyes when there's like, not, not I don't specifically talk about him, but when you. When I hear somebody talking about, oh my God, let's talk about the technical. Technical, technical term. With how they change the distance between the dot on the I in the system font and the baseline and I.

A (57:08)

Straight line through this icon and the.

C (57:10)

Well, that again, he's also.

A (57:11)

I looked at it. I didn't even understand who he was, what he was complaining.

C (57:14)

He's showing off that the Apple. The Apple script utility icon like It's. Now the AppleScript logo is rotated. I also did like the fact that it's harder to read as an object. But this, I mean, this is not. But this isn't just, you know, a person who's a big fan of design nitpicking. This really is. I understood the comment that he was making immediately.

A (57:32)

That, okay, so I'm looking at this. Would you explain it? Because I looked at this and went.

B (57:36)

Yeah, it's leaning backward now. They rotated it and it's hard to say why. The original icon, it stands up straight.

D (57:42)

Yeah.

A (57:43)

And now it's leaning backwards.

B (57:44)

Leaning backward. It's just why. Why is it like that? It is an incredibly nitpicky thing and I love rumor for it.

A (57:50)

But as John says, it's wrong.

B (57:53)

It's. It's. Yeah. Why is it. Why is it like that? I. I don't. I mean, there was a meeting. The meeting was, let's use the wrench, this toy wrench as a. And we'll have a whole bunch of little hexagons and not cytomorphs on them.

A (58:05)

We don't want to look real world. We. We've abandoned that.

B (58:08)

Yeah. And. And have the hexagons with the different objects for all the utilities in there. I guess it. I get it. It's. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I'm. It's just a little. It's a little thing. But I. I think what a lot of us longtime Apple watchers would notice is the people building stuff at Apple today are there primarily because they are excited about the iPhone and the Mac is also present. And, you know, I love it when I talk to somebody who really, really cares about the Mac at Apple. But there are a lot of people for whom the Mac is a product in their lineup. And I think that that is something here where, like, the Mac has all these weird, fiddly areas that are never going to be anybody's priority. And I think this is grouper raging at that a little bit. And I get it. Even though, you know, it's. It's probably. It's more of a symptom of the larger disease.

D (59:05)

And sometimes a lot of these aren't just making an icon. There's a whole bunch of rendering requirements of how it renders and how it's used and how it goes into this other thing and everything else. And then that combined with trying to pull them all together so you know that you're always looking at some utility. So we're going to make them all look this way. So that says that every time I look at it, I know that that's a utility, and then I just know which one. Which one it is. And I. I think that they probably thought about it a lot. We may disagree with their design, but I don't think that they didn't spend time on it. I think that they just. They very consciously decided this is what they wanted. I bet you there was a bunch of people working on that for a long time.

A (59:38)

All right, we're going to take a little break, but I do want to give as a kind of meta to this story, Uncle Leo's Media literacy tip. We've mentioned before that when you look at analysts reports, that the analyst's audience is investors and they're not writing for Enthusiasts, people care about the product they're writing for investors, about whether they should buy the stock. When you read a blogger, and this is no disrespect for any blogger, but they have a certain mission. They've got to create copies. That drives traffic on a regular basis. And sometimes they need to really gin up some outrage to drive that traffic. And when you watch a YouTube video, it becomes very important that you click the link. And then having clicked the link, so they have that thumbnail that you continue to watch the video at least for, you know, a minute or two, so they get credit for it. All of these are perverse incentives that don't have a lot to do with the content and more to do with is monetization.

B (60:42)

Not everybody, not every content creator on the Internet is aligned to engagements. Okay, if you're saying that about a Jon Gruber post, I will tell you, Jon Gruber doesn't care about engagement at all. And his business model isn't tied to engagement.

A (60:55)

It feels like a little faux outrage to generate.

B (60:59)

He's that guy. I would. I would say that there are lots of. There are lots of creators who are trying to farm engagement, but when you say bloggers, a lot of the. A lot of us bloggers, we do this because we are broken in very particular ways to care about things.

A (61:14)

I would submit those are the ones to follow and pay attention to. That's part of being media literate, is knowing who's who.

B (61:20)

Complaining about Mac icons is about as Gruber as it gets. So that's all I'm saying is that's not because he's engagement farming. That's because that guy is hooked up that way. That's just how it is.

A (61:31)

I think you could say with some confidence that nobody on this panel is an engagement farmer, or we would be much more successful.

B (61:38)

Yeah, exactly.

D (61:39)

We're all like, we do what we do.

C (61:41)

We do what we do. We're wearing a coat belt.

A (61:44)

We are broken in a special way, as you say, Jason. And we do it because we love it and we love covering the content. All right. I will grant you that this is. Every once in a while, though, I feel like, John, there's a lot of outrage behind stuff that I think he's.

D (62:01)

Just outraged by it.

B (62:03)

He's a grumpy old man now. That is how it is.

C (62:05)

He's a grumpy guy. When it comes to design, particularly, we have to remember this.

D (62:10)

He posts stuff all the time. We only talk about it every once in a while. So it's not like like it just happens to be.

A (62:14)

No, but I.

B (62:14)

His site just isn't demonetized like that.

A (62:16)

I read a daring fireball religiously.

D (62:19)

Yeah.

A (62:19)

And I do see a certain amount of that. But I think you're right. I think it's more. John's outrage is legit.

B (62:25)

Yeah. I mean, he doesn't make more money. I mean, honestly, he doesn't make more money. If he has a post go viral like that, something is rotten. He just doesn't make more money on that. That's just not his business model. He does it because he's grumpy, he cares, and then sometimes it works.

A (62:37)

The system works him. God bless him. All right, we're going to take a little break and we have lots more to talk about. You're watching Mac Break Weekly, where we are far from engagement farming. If we were, the show would be punchier, it would be shorter and we would have all be much better looking. But you know, hey, this is what it is and you came here to watch this and God bless you for doing that. We appreciate it. Our show today brought to you is fun. Actually, both of our advertisers today are our infrastructure brought to you by our content delivery network, in this case Cash Fly. I mean literally, if you're watching the show, you're watching it. Unless you're watching it on YouTube. But if you're watching on our website, you're watching it through Cash Fly. If you download the podcast, you're getting it through Cash fly. For over 20 years, Cash Fly has held the track record for high performing ultra reliable content Delivery serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. And we know because we're one of them. Cashfly saved our bacon. In the earliest days of twit almost 20 years ago when we could not figure out how to deliver, we had surprising number of people who wanted to download the show. And it turned out the website could not do it. Matt Levine at Cashfly came to me. Thank you Matt. And saved us. And we have been using Cashfly ever since. We love their lag free video loading, their hyper fast downloads, their friction free so site interactions. See, Cashfly is the only CDN built from day one. For throughput they offer ultra low latency video streaming for instance. It delivers video to over a million concurrent users with under 1 second of latency. Lightning fast gaming delivers downloads faster with zero lag glitches or outages. That's hard to do, but Cashfly does it. Mobile Content Optimization this is super cool. If you've got images on your site or you're delivering images in it any form. It gives you automatic and simple image optimization automatically so your site loads faster on any size screen, on any device. The thing we loved about Cashfly, they understood that we didn't really know our business very well and we didn't have no idea where the bandwidth would be in demand where it wouldn't be. So they gave us flexible month to month billing for as long as we needed it. They'll do the same for you, which is awfully cool. And then once you know, they'll give you discounts for fixed terms. The point is, you design as we did, you design your own contract when you switch to Cashfly. Cashfly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content in their cloud, ensuring a 100% cash hit ratio. And with Cash Fly's elite managed packages, you get the VIP treatment. Your dedicated account manager will be with you from day one, ensuring smooth implementation and reliable 247 support when you need it. Beat your competition with faster content delivery anywhere in the world. CashFly provides reliable CDN solutions fully tailored to your business. Learn how you can get your first month free at cashfly.com Twitter that's C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT. How many years have you heard me say this? Bandwidth for Mac Break weekly is brought to you by by cash fly at c-a C-H-E f l y.com twit and how often have you heard me say this? Thank you, Cash Fly. Thank you. Oh, it looks like baseball may be moving on, moving on up. Apple is, according to some rumors, considering abandoning their Friday night baseball deal.

B (66:21)

Yeah, this, this was reported. No, nothing is official yet. This was reported that NBC is making a deal for Sunday night baseball and there was a report that they were also going to get Friday. And so that's been going around. But I'll say that John Oren did Puck in his newsletter yesterday said that Apple is keeping Friday night.

A (66:39)

Okay, so I trust Puck because they really follow this.

B (66:42)

John Orange is about as good as it gets in sports business and he says that Apple's keeping it now. Nobody's announced anything. This is one of those things like everybody basically says Apple has got the F1 deal in the United States, but no announcement has been made. So we don't, we don't really know. But yeah, the, the baseball rights are up for the next three years and then they're going to have all their rights expire at once. And we're going to see what happens. And it looks like Apple was con in a conversation about Sunday Night Baseball, which is currently on espn, and ESPN dropped it. It sounds like that's not going to happen. But according to Oren, they're keeping Friday night and then Sunday night baseball will go to NBC, which gives NBC for those in the United States, NBC is basically doing sports on Sunday nights every week for the whole year because they've got Sunday night basketball, football, and baseball now, apparently. So that's actually really great for branding. It's Sunday night. There's a premier sporting event on NBC on broadcast tv. So I think that that's a pretty cool way to. To extend their brand of Sunday Night Football, which is the number one TV show. It's like most of the top rated shows of any given year are Sunday Night Football, so it's a big deal.

D (67:52)

Do we know if. If the MLB has been successful for Apple on Friday nights?

B (67:56)

I mean, nobody says a word about it. I would say if it continue says something, if it does continue with Apple, that it says something. I think Apple is viewing it as an experiment with sports. They're just seeing how it goes. Just like mls, everything is a little experimental for Apple at this point.

D (68:11)

Yeah. I feel like there's just so much they could do, you know, like once you aren't tied down to broadcast, there's so much you could do. And I just feels like there's so little, well, real progress that's happening.

B (68:23)

They're just using MLB Network as their production team, and I wonder if that might change in a new deal.

A (68:31)

Doesn't ESPN now. Didn't they just acquire mlb?

B (68:35)

No, no. ESPN acquired the NFL Network. They may end up with a deal for the MLB Network at someplace down the road. But this is. They're buying the MLB TV license, which.

A (68:48)

Have access to MLB tv, which.

B (68:50)

Yeah, so we'll see. But Alex's point is he'd like to see Apple put push the production. And the problem with that is that that's much more expensive because they would basically need to hire their own crew. And instead they've been contracting with MLB Network to do to broad those games. So they're using existing announcers, existing crew, all of that. So they could. But it would be more expensive to do that.

D (69:12)

Yeah. And I wonder whether, you know, again, I still feel like. I know that we haven't started into that thing, but I think that keeping their foot in the door on some of the sports also is related to the Vision Pro because I think there's lots of things that they'd like to. I think that many interactive folks that do immersive style things love sports as an opportunity. The problem with it is we've talked about this before is large field fields, hard to shoot in. They're just hard to get anything compelling. So yeah, it'll be interesting.

A (69:38)

How's the MLS deal going?

B (69:40)

Nobody knows.

D (69:40)

10 year deal it is.

B (69:43)

So a lot of the controversy and this actually came up with F1 and it came up with Major League Baseball as well, is Apple is not. Apple TV plus is just not one of the bigger streamers. And so there's a worry about money versus visibility, that Apple is often willing to pay a lot of money money, but what you lose is visibility just from people kind of randomly flipping around or whatever. Right. And so MLS, I think is the same issue. They pay pretty well and the game's production values are pretty good. But they do, and they do export some games and have them on cable tv. But there is this sense that by going with Apple, MLS has sort of lost some visibility. And that was the challenge with F1. Right. ESPN would give them more visibility, but not as much money as Apple. And so they're going to go with that. I do wonder though, over time if visibility, you know, you can do some visibility, but like we are in a streaming world and so in some ways the money, take the money and see how it goes. So it sounds like MLS is pretty happy with Apple in a lot of ways. But I think there's a general sense in the league that they're not as visible as they used to be because everything is kind of locked around, locked behind Apple's paywall.

A (70:57)

Well, and now Apple TV plus is going to be more expensive. They've raised the price three bucks to.

B (71:02)

1299 just for the monthly plan. And this is the thing Apple TV plus is famous for being high, according to analysts, high in Churn, which is basically people subscribe and then they cancel and they subscribe and then they cancel.

A (71:17)

It's tied to what is on. Like they.

B (71:19)

Yeah, it's tied to what is on. And they don't. They don't have as big a catalog, so it's a little bit harder of a sell. Their catalog gets bigger all the time. But what they didn't do is change the, the annual rate or of course raise Apple one at all. And so the thought process here is they're basically doing this to try and reduce Churn. They're trying to give people a deal so that they can save on an annual plan and then commit to Apple for the year. And if you want to only do.

A (71:44)

It, I, when I wrote about discourage monthly subscriptions.

B (71:48)

Yeah, that's exactly because that discourages churn by making people make a longer commitment. It's a little like how it's cheaper to go across the Golden Gate Bridge if you're a local than if you're just a random person who drives through the toll plaza. Like you can if you want to. Yeah, if you want to do it for a month, you can, but you're going to pay a lot more. The other thing that I think it does, and nobody's going to like to hear this, but I'm just going to put it out there, is the more you raise the price of. And we should say Apple is ad free, right? And if you look at the prices of the ad free plans of their competitors, Apple TV plus is actually priced pretty well because those prices are going up and up and up. What it also does is give Apple room, room to sell a cheaper version with ads in it, which I think is inevitable. So we'll, they'll get there at some point. But you raise the price, you reduce your churn, you give room. If you want to do an ad tier later, this is what's happening.

D (72:41)

And a lot of, a lot of companies are trying to raise that price for the subscription because they make more money on you, on ads, on the ad. So they want, they, you know, and I think that, I think that Disney set it outright like it was flat out like, like we'll make more money. We want people to stop with the subscriptions, with ad free subscriptions. And we want them to go to ads because we'll make more money per head.

B (73:00)

They don't want them to stop. Right. But what they, what they're doing is they're raising the price because of arpu average revenue per user. Right? They use this term arpu. Arpu. The ARPU should be the same, right? Like your premium subscribers should not be less profitable than your non premium subscribers. But what that has resulted in, that's why all of those ad free prices are skyrocketing, is because they will raise that price until the ARPU ARPU of that price matches the ARPU of the cheaper ad plan. And the fact is they make a lot of money from ads. So that's why, and I'm an ad free user, I will not do the ad plan. I've tried it, it's terrible. I can't do It. But that's why they raise those prices is because that's what you're seeing. The price between the ad free plan and the ad plan is literally the money they make putting ads in it. And if you don't want it, you got to pay for that instead of the advertisers.

D (73:49)

You know, I can listen to reads like, like we do in this show. And I can, you know, I can listen to those even if, even if it's a read by person that gets cut in later. That doesn't bother me. It's the, hey, we're going to suddenly destroy your senses for the next 10 seconds while you're watching something else. Like, I just, I'm.

A (74:05)

That's a big problem with YouTube TV. FCC regulates the volume of ads on broadcast, but they don't do it on streaming. And YouTube TVs ads are really loud.

D (74:17)

But every ad is too. Well, it's either. It's usually three clicks on your controller. So like, to me, like, I see the ads on, I go click, click, click, click, click.

A (74:26)

Me too.

D (74:26)

Click, click, click. I count them.

A (74:27)

Don't do that on your podcast though, kids, because I don't want Engagement Farm or anything. But.

D (74:33)

Yeah, but on YouTube TV, when you're watching broadcasts and you don't want to watch all those ads unless I'm waiting for something, it's just like three. It's like 12 clicks will usually.

A (74:41)

Unless you're live. So you don't watch live tv.

D (74:44)

I don't watch live TV because then I wouldn't be able, like, literally, I feel like I'm paying for live. Even like a Steeler game. I start 20 minutes late and then I go out and I take an hour for halftime and everything else. And that way I can always make sure that I can just jump. I even get my. My wife can't watch football with me because I skip between the plays.

A (75:03)

Oh, man, I would.

D (75:05)

And so I just go, you know, like, as I do it, like if I'm. If it gets intense, you know, and so she finds it too chaotic to.

A (75:11)

Watch, you know, there's only 11 minutes of actual action in NFL.

D (75:15)

What will happen is that if it's the other side and they're on their own side, like, if I see something happen, that was really. Then I go back.

C (75:21)

But.

D (75:21)

But I kind of like, I don't need to see the first 20 yards of most drives.

A (75:27)

Wow. I wouldn't watch football with you either.

D (75:29)

But no, no one likes watching.

A (75:30)

How's that wrong with you?

D (75:32)

I'm just used to scanning for information. And I've been empowered with all these tools to scan and I use them.

A (75:40)

Or you may be a little add.

D (75:42)

I like to call it multiplexing. It's not a disorder.

A (75:46)

Not to cast dispersion.

D (75:48)

I think that there's multiplexers and I'm a heavy multiplexer.

A (75:53)

So you may remember last week we said Apple has figured out a way to put blood oxygen sensing back in the Apple watch by round tripping it to the phone. Massimo says, well, hey, wait a minute. First of all, they said they didn't tell us ahead of time.

D (76:06)

That's because someone handed somebody a big gold thing.

C (76:09)

Yeah, exactly like that's how they keep.

D (76:11)

Massimo out of the August 20th they.

A (76:14)

Filed a federal lawsuit. The press release was the first Massimo had heard of such a deal. The US met with Customs and Border Protection on August 1 by themselves, without Massimo's attendance. And surprisingly the custom and border protection said, yeah, you know Apple, you're right. Massimo says this violates our fifth amendment rights and bypasses due process and we don't like it. One cotton pick and pick bid.

C (76:45)

Yeah. The lawsuit that they filed actually stops just short of saying that Apple bought this ruling. They, they mentioned how cute the timing is between the $600 billion announcement and the solid gold thing ceremony and how they did this. What this Bloomberg, Bloomberg law has a really nice breakdown of exactly what happened here. So apparently this started off about a month ago when customs seized five column five Apple watches coming through the border. Apple, Apple decided to contact customs directly, not talking to the itc, which is the authority that had the authority to actually modify this original order and said, hey, can you give us an advisory on if we did this? Do you think that that would be okay with Customs and customs gave them a formal investigative advisory. So yeah, that sounds like it would be cool to us. And without talking to the itc, without talking to Mass, Apple just simply decided to move forward with this. So even the ITC apparently is up. Is not pleased about this. And so the people being sued is.

A (77:48)

Actually Kristi Noem and U.S. customs and Border Protection being sued, not Apple.

C (77:53)

Yeah, exactly. And so the ITC is also, according to Bloomberg law, invested in this saying, look, you don't have the authority to modify our orders, only we have the authority to modify our orders. This is bs. So maybe enjoy that blood saturation saturation feature while you've got it because this is still very much up the air.

A (78:13)

We're still grandfathered in though with those of us who had the older watches that already had that feature. They didn't remove it from our watches.

C (78:20)

If it was sold. If it was sold to you with that as a feature, then Apple has to keep that intact. Otherwise you're done.

A (78:27)

US Government is also doing what it can to protect us. Big tech. The FTC and, and the President are threatening companies in other countries when they try to censor or demand data or demand encryption breaking from American companies. You may remember last week we told you the UK had backed off their icloud surveillance demand. Now the FTC says they sent formal letters to over a dozen technology companies, Apple, Microsoft, Meta Alphabet, BET and Amazon, saying, hey, dudes, it's your responsibility to safeguard the privacy and data security of Americans. Yeah, thank you. Even when foreign governments request compliance. So now you're caught between a rock and a hard place here. And I imagine that, you know, the other, the other shoe on this is the tariffs threat. And we've already seen the President say, hey, if you continue to punish our tech firms, we're going to punish you right back.

D (79:35)

Yeah. And most of the, most of Europe couldn't really afford that. If the United States decides it wants to take the gloves off it, it can make them do whatever it needs to do, like anything that Europe thinks it can do. If the United States turned the faucet off, and which it could, which this administration would be more likely to do than any other one.

A (79:51)

Right.

D (79:52)

If the United States decided that we're just going to turn the faucet off or threaten to turn the faucet off, Europe has no choice but to back off. You know, they're not going to. Well, we can talk about principles, but you see, the UK got into this thing. They've been working on that for a long time and it got squelched because someone just said, hey, how about we just whack you on the head really hard and see if you can still stand. And that's, you know, and again, if the United States continues to overuse their position, then people will figure out other ways to not have that be a problem. But right now they have. The United States has a lot of leverage and it has chosen over the last 50 years or 80 years to not use that leverage at the level that it's using it at now. But Europe has to kind of, I mean, they're not in a position, especially with everything else that's going on there, to get into an argument. If the United States decided that we're going to pull our gloves off and actually just say, you're going to have to do it the way we say.

C (80:42)

Yeah, but there are limits to how long that get out of conflict free card is going to last. They're not going to put up with that forever and they won't. The US is burning up a hell of a lot of goodwill.

D (80:51)

Oh yeah. I am not going to last forever. Not disagreeing with you. And there's, you know, they'd have to put up with it for X number of years until they wouldn't have to put up with it. Maybe not even you're 100% right.

C (81:03)

They might, they might suddenly say, hey, you know that agreement where we allowed you to basically have rite of passage through our waters for your armies and navies and whatever. We decided that we don't like that. Yeah, I know we have an agreement, but the power not going to let that happen anymore.

D (81:17)

They've underinvested in so much of what they do. If the United States pulls back, it just becomes really complicated for them. So, so it's a lot of that. The United States, because it didn't do this before, all these countries kind of lived in this little bubble for a long time that they can't really afford to get out of just yet. So you're right. But it's probably, they would have to put up with it for probably a couple years.

A (81:40)

I think it's interesting, the FTC is threatening American tech companies don't cooperate. So really it's a two pronged assumption.

D (81:49)

Well, I think the American companies want that letter to be sent to them because then they have to go to the European hey, we're in this country. So they want that letter. They don't. They're not caught between a rock and a hard place. They're caught in their own briar patch.

B (82:00)

This is a good, I mean this is a good outcome of the whole UK situation in saying the US at least is going to say nobody make a rule that you can spy on our citizens because you want to because some company has the cloud service that they offer in your country. Right. It's like the UK saying if we want to look at somebody's data, data anywhere in the world, you have to let us. Was such an overreach. And so, you know, I've got to say it's a good, it's a good thing for the US to say nuh. And we'll see how long that goes. But, but like it just the idea that there are no borders and that any country can just grab data anywhere in the world if it says it's okay, somebody needs to say no.

D (82:42)

The other thing is, is there's a lot of tension here because the, There are definitely organizations, the NSA and so on and so forth, that would actually prefer to have the UK law go through because it allows them to do data. So what you're really looking at is that the public side of the government sees this as a political opportunity to protect, quote, unquote, protect Americans. The intelligence side is not necessarily. The intelligence side is not necessarily behind this. In fact, many people have argued that our own intelligence has used various versions of the five eyes, whether it's New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Canada, the UK to do things that they can't do in the United States to try to crack that open. And this may have been, yeah, the five eyes may have been using the UK one to open, you know, to try to pry that open. But the public side of this, this is the tension, especially right now, between the public side of the government and the, you know, it's not secret side.

A (83:33)

It's actually even within the nsa, they have two factions. One saying, encrypt everything, boys, because you can't trust anybody. And the other saying, saying, and here's some tools to help.

B (83:43)

Alex is exactly right. It's an interesting era where the, usually the protect Americans thing gets carted out in saying we shouldn't have encryption, we should break encryption, we should have backdoors into encryption. But the other way to think of it is protect Americans by not letting other countries look at their data. I know which one I agree with. Right. The idea that people should keep their data quiet and that governments shouldn't make it illegal for people to encrypt their own personal data, but usually the argument is the other way around. And I mean, I'm not saying that there's a lot of coherence going on in the current administration because they, they are so forceful about law and order and all of those things. But this is a case where they've for some reason decided to go the other way and said, no, no, we don't want anybody spying on our people. Maybe the, the quiet part is, except us. But, yeah, I don't know. It's an ugly issue.

D (84:35)

Yeah, I mean, I think that. I think that it's most. It's not. This is not like a moral fight that they're having. This is just a political chip that they think that they, that they feel like they could pick up. Like, like we can. We're fighting for Americans. We're fighting for their privacy. I don't think that. I think that that side of it is just looking for. Oh yeah, you know, for points. They're not, this isn't like, this isn't something they truly believe in. It's just something that they see as an opportunity to make a fight that they can win.

B (85:00)

Yeah. The UK thing really gave them an opportunity to, to look.

D (85:03)

Yeah.

B (85:04)

Tough defending Americans from a foreign company, foreign country that was going to try and look at their stuff. And so they scored the points. Even if they it doesn't it's not necessarily coherent with a lot of their other strategies. So here we are.

A (85:16)

You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Alex Lindsay, Officehours Global and 090 Media. Andy Inocco coming to you from the library. That's your plug and Jason Snell, six colors.com so glad you're here. Today's show is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting podcast game? Well, with a name your price tool from Progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states. Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

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B (87:26)

Listen.

A (87:28)

Okay, this was a big kerfuffle when it happened. Apple pushing notifications what looked like ads into the Apple Wallet. Remember the Fandango ad? Well, here's some Good news. In iOS 26, there is a switch to turn that off.

B (87:46)

Yeah.

A (87:47)

Yeah. See, Apple cares and an unrelated announcement. So of course it's on by default. Right. So you want to. I guess I haven't even looked at it. Is it in the wallet settings? Is it. Where is it located?

C (88:04)

I don't know. It's a toggle that just appeared in the Lace beta.

A (88:07)

Yeah, it's brand new. Yeah.

B (88:08)

Notifications, notifications, Wallet. Maybe something like that.

A (88:13)

Oh, there it is. Notifications, transactions, savings, pre authorized payment.

B (88:17)

We should call it the Fandango fiasco, by the way. That would be fun. Fandango fiasco.

A (88:21)

The Fandango fiasco is no more. Thank you very much, much. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time.

B (88:30)

Oh, no.

A (88:31)

For the Vision Pro segment. Vision Pro.

C (88:40)

Oh, Vision Pro. Vision Pro.

A (88:47)

Please don't go. And it bends abruptly. Even better. Andy, though, you do look good in those shades. Those are great. Are there cameras built into those or should we care or ask?

C (89:02)

You don't know.

A (89:04)

How would you know?

C (89:07)

Unless Walgreens can do a hell of a thing for $20, I don't think so.

A (89:12)

Ladies and gentlemen, there is but one story in the Vision Pro and it's thanks to HBO Max, who has added a Harry Potter environment to your Vision Pro. So now you can watch. Actually, it's pretty cool. It's Hogwarts dining room. It looks like that's the one with the candles float by the ceiling. You can. And of course, where the Sorting Hat maneuver occurs. But there's no Sorting Hat in this one. You can watch the movies in the environment. Yes.

B (89:43)

Yeah, that's the only thing you can do with those environments is watch whatever video is in that. And as Alex will point out, the screen isn't big enough in those moments.

D (89:51)

Like, you just like.

A (89:51)

So you don't even want to use it.

D (89:53)

But maybe like I'm not even.

B (89:54)

Yeah, fun. Fun idea, though. I mean, and this is. We talked about Alien last week, and Max is leaning into Harry Potter because that's intellectual property.

D (90:03)

Which means that somebody, somebody at Apple is. Is meeting. Having lots of meetings with folks of like, hey, you could build this environment inside the Apple Vision Pro. You know, like, that's the.

A (90:10)

But you have to be using the HBO Max app. Right. So you're watching it in the HBO Max app and Vision Pro.

B (90:16)

Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, Disney, who added the alien environment, they have some 3D content max. HBO Max still doesn't have any 3D content on their stream service, which is kind of a bummer.

D (90:28)

Isn't Max Letterbox too? Like, isn't it always. I think that Max. I thought that it was Max that do they actually have.

B (90:35)

At least some of it is. Right. Because I remember putting Casablanca on. On HBO Max and it was in four by three as it's supposed to be. But yeah. So anyway, it is. It's a shame you can't make these environments that you can live in anywhere in the Vision Pro, because environments are cool, but instead Apple hasn't built that in yet. So instead you're tied to just that app. Just like how Disney has a bunch of environments. So, yeah, they had the, like Game of Thrones, the Iron Throne Room was already in the HBO Max app. So this is another one of those.

A (91:03)

Oh, okay.

D (91:04)

It does feel like there's that again. Maybe Apple views us all as experiment, as a big experiment, so they're not pushing it that hard. But those environments are so cool. It'd be great to have 20 more like. Or have an open way for people to create some or something. You know, even if Apple went through heavy approval or whatever, it just feels like, I mean, the Joshua Tree is great. It's the one that I generally use for Joshua Tree at night is kind of my thing, but I would love to have other ones.

B (91:30)

My theory, my theory, which I've said here before, but I'll just say it again really fast, is that that Jupyter environment that is not yet in the betas but is coming in in vision OS26 is interactive and it's got a lot of other interesting things we'd never seen in an environment before. So my theory is that app is like slow playing the environments right now. They know that they're good, but they're also, I think, not good enough. Like the one they built for 1.0 isn't good enough. Jupiter feels like a very 2.0 kind of environment. I. I would not. I would expect that at some point they feel good enough about how environment building works that they'll create an API for it. That is because all of these apps that have these environments, I think Apple works with them on them. Right? Like, I think. I don't think somebody just rolls in with an environment. I think. I think Apple is out there working with them on it. I do think at some point it's gotta be that you apps can contribute environments to the system. But I think the reason we're not there yet is that Apple seems to be tinkering with the format and Jupiter is the best example of that. So once they get that out there, maybe then we see Apple say, okay, now we're gonna let. Because I would love. Like there's that Tatooine environment in the Disney app. Like that would be really cool to do something else in Vision Pro on Tatooine, but you can't. You can only watch Disney movies and only at the size of the scre. At the drive in at Tatooine.

D (92:46)

Yeah, that's the thing is that the size is just. Is unworkable. You know, like, that's the, like it just. Yeah.

B (92:51)

Because it's like a full screen mode so you can't read. There's no resizing of Windows in that mode.

D (92:55)

Yeah. I can't imagine anybody. Yeah. Using it.

B (92:58)

Yeah. Yeah. So. But it is one of the cool. This is one of those things about Vision Pro being a, you know, an experimental platform that's really for the future and they're just trying stuff out is. I mean, this is one of the things that everybody who's tried it said, yeah, those are really cool. And you should do more. You should lean into that more. And it's great that, rolling out new environments, but as long as they're locked in media playing apps, it's kind of a bummer.

D (93:21)

Yeah.

A (93:22)

Have you watched F1 in your vision Pros yet?

D (93:26)

I haven't.

B (93:27)

I'm waiting for TV plus for that. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna rent.

A (93:30)

What is it? Is it 20 bucks or is it.

B (93:32)

Yeah, it's in the. It's the. It's that middle where you pay a lot of money to render buy and.

A (93:36)

It'S gonna be on Apple TV plus soon. Will it be then in the Vision Pro as well?

B (93:41)

Yeah, I imagine it'll be in vision Pro in 3D if it's. If there's a 3D version. Yeah.

A (93:45)

Right. Well, there was an IMAX version. It seems like it would be a natural to take the imax.

B (93:49)

IMAX version would be nice. Yeah.

A (93:51)

Put it on the Vision Pro. Yeah, look, I'm stretching here. I mean.

B (93:56)

No, I mean, that's it.

A (93:57)

I got nothing. That's the Vision Pro segment now.

D (94:02)

You know, we're done talking.

A (94:04)

The Vision Pro. Take off the sunglasses, back to work. F1 has been a success. $600 million global. Global revenue.

D (94:15)

Not bad for something we all thought we all knew we're going to get for free. Yeah, it really is. I mean it's one of the few. I said it when it came out. It's one of the few movies that you feel like you had to see on a big screen. Not me.

A (94:27)

I'm fine watching it on the.

D (94:29)

I was glad I was able to see it and I will admit I was. I had the opportunity to go see it for free at a real. At one of the nicest theater.

A (94:36)

I'm so jealous.

D (94:37)

It was a little different for me, but, you know, but, but I think that, um. But I was glad that I got to see it on a big. On a big screen because it, it did. It did fill up the, the space in a way that I think a lot of movies don't do anymore. Like, like I, I just saw a good movie, Black Bag. I don't.

A (94:54)

I think it's the movie. I liked it. Yeah.

D (94:55)

I thought it was really good. I would have never felt like I need to see that in the.

A (94:58)

No theater anywhere.

D (94:59)

Like it was. You can see it anywhere. It wasn't, you know, it was a great. I thought it was well written, it came together well. It was well acted, you know, good, good stars. Yeah. So. So I thought that that was good. But it's a good example of something that as a piece of content, I love to watch it as a. I would never pay to watch it at a movie theater.

A (95:14)

Right. Okay. There's a whole bunch of rumors about Apple releases in the iPhone event. But you know what? We're going to know in two weeks. It's not right. It's not going to kill us to wait.

B (95:33)

I feel like we know all the important parts anyway.

A (95:35)

And the other stuff is so speculative that I don't know. Camera button changes, who cares? I don't know. We'll out, find, find out.

B (95:40)

We'll know. Right? Exactly. I feel that same way that some of these things are so weird. Final details to have. And like we. If you didn't look, if you didn't know it in June, I don't believe that you know it. Let's just wait and see.

C (95:54)

The sweet spot is always July because that's when they have to start telling people that they don't necessarily trust about certain details and stuff. That's exactly. Well, you have people that like, okay, you were. We, we. We waited to the last possible moment to tell you. And after, by August, the things that are being told to those people are just Trivial things like, oh, who wants to sit on this hot new piece of rumor about the color of the new Apple official iPhone cases? Like, I'm not interested in that at all. I'd much rather talk about immersive environments in Vision os.

D (96:33)

Really?

A (96:34)

Yes. Okay, here we go. Let's see what else? Oh, I guess this is a story. I don't know what it means. Elon Musk has decided to Sue Apple and OpenAI. Hey. He says, what about Grok? Grok's really good. But he does. Why is OpenAI in this suit? He says it's being artificially suppressed in Apple's app store. Is it collusion with OpenAI and Apple? Is that in the suit?

C (97:04)

He's kind of hysterical. He's basically saying that Apple, Apple has. Has entered an exclusive agreement with OpenAI for ChatGPT integrated into the iPhone and is locking out all other AI platforms, which is patently ridiculous. It's like, why was this suit even fired? It's not going to last at all.

A (97:22)

Yeah, well, when you.

C (97:25)

Very colorful opening paragraph, though, it basically says that Apple did not. Was not as wise, essentially, Apple was not as wise as Lord Musk and realizing how important AI was would be, they put all of their faith in the iPhone and to their almost immediate ruin, realize the folly of their.

A (97:41)

The folly. You know, he is in, of course, a lawsuit with Open AI over on separate occasion. So, yeah, I don't. Yeah, I imagine this would be thrown out immediately, but it is in the northern district of Texas where Elon is a big employer, so I. Maybe not. I don't know.

D (98:03)

I don't know.

A (98:05)

It's hard to follow, to be honest.

D (98:09)

It feels like. Like we can't just let companies do what they do.

A (98:13)

Right?

D (98:13)

Like at some point, every childish attitude.

A (98:17)

Like, I don't like what you're doing, so I'm going to sue you is just, I think, a childish.

C (98:22)

And you. And you don't have. Usually at that level, you have staff and lawyers who say, yes, honey, I know we're all upset about it, but you know, we can't. Here are the reasons why we can't sue about it. And it's not going to make. It's not going to make you look good. And then you get all pouty and you throw your toys out of the pram and say, I want a lawsuit anyway. Promise me I can sue anybody I want.

A (98:42)

Like, okay, honey, it's your money.

C (98:46)

Yeah, I suppose, I suppose, I suppose we can't argue that. It'll be. It'll. It'll affect the your public perception and your dignity. So I guess we we're out of arguments now.

A (98:54)

Yeah, really there's nothing, nothing to do there there. I'm just scanning through all the. There's so many little, you know, rumory kind of things. You know the information had a story saying Apple discussed buying Mistral AI the French AI company Open weights AI company and perplexity meaningless. Eddie, we know this. I don't know why it's a story Eddie. Q's been pushing for this for a while. I Apple does not and this was the information point part with billions of dollars readily. In fact there have only really been two big billion dollar acquisitions. The $3 billion for Beats and the $1 billion for Intel's modem business. So in fact the headline in the information is Apple's aversion to big deals could thwart its AI push. Or maybe not. Or maybe not. I don't know. It could or could not, which we don't know. It's a non story but it is August.

C (99:55)

The headline was interesting. It basically asked the question like is Apple handicapping itself by virtue that they don't like making acquisitions of larger than $100 million? I mean when you. It tandems well with another story that I think Gurman had.

B (100:13)

No.

C (100:13)

Yeah, Gurman had is a feature article in Bloomberg not as a newsletter item that they're in talk talks with Gemini to not just put Gemini as one of the models that's supported by Apple intelligence but also what if we were to just throw out all the work we've done on our own language model for Shlomo and just use Gemini for that instead which if true would be astounding if at this stage they had so little confidence in what they're making for Shlomo that they said we don't even want to chance it anymore. We want something that's tried and true.

A (100:47)

And they're would be also antitrust issues and it just feels like that's the last company they're going to go to.

C (100:57)

The thing is though, it's the LLMs are black boxes and could Apple continue to make all their statements about privacy if they didn't? If they weren't able to vet this model and say that we know for a fact what it's doing, we know all the promises that we've been making about what we will allow and not allow on our platform we can still honor. And also the would Google be satisfied with a the amount of money that they're being paid, the amount of cloud services that they'd be charging Apple for anything that they can't do on device as well as the additional training for its models by having it as basically built hard baked into tens and tens of millions of extra devices. Or would Google say we want to bail, we want to access this, we want this provision, we want this exclusivity, we want this information. So again it would be.

B (101:50)

It's.

C (101:50)

I don't know if it's, if it's, it's. I'm sure that they're, they're talking to everybody at this point. I'm sure that they're given the amount of churn they've had in the entire project, I'm sure they're considering every single option that's out there, at least to figure out what would be the ups and downs of doing this. But it would be amazingly remarkable if half a year before they are promising to actually start to ship the new start of Schwab they believe to slimo. They basically said we're throwing away all the, all of our in house work and we are going to base this tire thing off of a third party project.

B (102:20)

I think throwing away is a little dramatic because I suspect that if they get a third party to drive Siri, they're probably going to keep working on their foundation models with the hope that they will be able to drive it later. But I think this says something about the big shakeup that's happened over the last year which is the, the old thing wasn't getting it done right. And so they brought in new management to be empowered to make tough decisions about Siri. Mike Rockwell came in to do that. And this is one of those tough decisions. Right. Is there apparent apparently doing a bake off where Siri could be driven by Apple's models or by a third party model TBD that they tried. They've had several, they had Claude in there. I would imagine if they made an acquisition that would be one fast way they could do that as well. And then now apparently talking to Google about Gemini, the other piece of that story that I found fascinating is Gurman says they're talking to Google about building a version of Gemini to drive Siri. So probably trained at least to a certain degree on app intents because that's a big part of this and to run on Apple's private cloud compute servers, which is really interesting because that means it's, it's in Apple's hands, it's private. It means Apple's also spending the money on the data centers and not Google which changes the price of using Google's models. It doesn't eliminate the price, but it changes it because Google's not paying for the hardware at that point. It's, it's running on Apple's hardware. It gives Apple a privacy promise. Also makes me wonder if we're not seeing the big picture of this being a multi tier process where there is like the private Siri that you get with your iPhone and then you could opt to, to log into maybe Gemini, maybe OpenAI, you know, maybe Claude, maybe something else and then use their model. If you've got an account or a pay, you know, paid account or whatever it is, there may be some tiers like that. But Apple has to be concerned with the out of the box experience. What's the default experience? And I think talking to Google about private cloud compute for Gemini, I says something really interesting about the fact that I don't think Apple can do Siri out of the box with data going to someone else's servers. I don't think they can. It kind of has to be private. If you're doing Siri out of the box you can opt maybe into something else. But I think out of the box it has to be private. And if that isn't Apple's own models, maybe it's somebody else's models on Apple servers. So you know, I, I think this is a good sign because I think it's Mike Rockwell saying we're going to ship this thing and we want it to be good and our models aren't up to speed, we won't use them. And that's the right call. That's the right call.

D (104:54)

A lot of companies have used other people's services to get off the ground until they backfill with their own technology. Even, you know, when Hangouts came out, it wasn't based on Google's servers. When, when YouTube Live came out, it wasn't based on YouTube's servers. When. So Google does that too. Apple, you know, reportedly uses, you know, AWS for stuff. Stuff. It's not like it that they always have to do everything themselves. And I think Apple, the biggest thing that they need to do is not necessarily create their own thing, but make AI really easy and seamless for people regardless of how it works. Now they may backfill something over the next three to five years that's completely different and they roll it out in, you know, in whatever I, you know, iOS 29 or 30 or whatever. But as long as they make it seamless, you know, again for, for most of Us who have figured out how to use a shortcut for ChatGPT, it's already seamless, but a lot of us want to see the next generation of integration with you know, I think that like Xcode, you're starting to see some of the immigra integration there is. You want something that's highly trained for a specific mission that does it really well and you don't have to think about anything. And I think that that is. And so I think, you know, as far as figuring out how to use it and how to integrate it with your daily life. But I think that's Apple's real mission needs to be how do I make, how do we make AI seamless? And then they can figure out how to do it themselves. And I think that, I think this Google conversation is part of conversations that exist include Anthropic and chatgpt. And I think that now the other conspiracy theory thing is if Apple got shut off from making money from Google and Google was providing other services to Apple, they might even out.

C (106:29)

So like it will trade.

D (106:30)

If there wasn't cash going back and forth, it could be services going back and forth where you know, where it's, you know. So that $20 billion may seem like a lot of money, but if you start doing an AI in the back end of Apple's infrastructure for their users, it would be maybe a wash.

A (106:49)

If you're wondering why, given that we are starting to get the betas now pretty quickly of 26 you got a. But you haven't applied the betas yet. You got a bunch of quick in succession patches on the existing versions of Sequoia and iOS and iPadOS. It's because there was a big bad zero day being exploited and Apple patched them with 1862 on iOS and iPadOS, 17,710 on the older iPads. They even patched Ventura and Sonoma sequoia up to 1516. This is weirdly this year the seventh zero day that has been in actual exploitation. When the company issued patches, this one patched the image IO framework which could result in memory corruption when processing a malicious image. Apple said in an advisory. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals. And if you wonder who those are, those are nation state attacks, usually zero click attacks via text message. And there is a brisk business. There was a new, a new zero day company started up this week offering $20 million in bug bounties for exactly these kinds of attacks against iPhones, countries are willing to pay a lot of money.

C (108:28)

This is about as bad as it gets. Not only zero day, but also zero clicks, zero hours.

D (108:32)

Click.

C (108:33)

That's no good.

A (108:34)

Yeah. If I could send you a text message. And now I own you. Yeah.

B (108:38)

Yikes.

A (108:41)

All right, one last break and then folks, it's going to be time for your picks of the week. So ready those, if you will. We are in the midst of Mac Break Weekly, the show. We cover all the great Apple news every week. Every Tuesday from 11am to 2pm actually usually around 11 to 1:30, 30pm Pacific. That's, let's see, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. And I mention those live times because you can't actually watch us live if you're in the club and we hope you are in the club. You can watch us live in our club, Twit Discord. But there's also streaming versions of the show at that time. In fact, most of our shows we stream live on YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, XD and the Australian streamer Kick. So watch us live if you want. If there's a chat in those streamers and most of them do have it, I see the chat. So thank you for the comments. I'm paying attention. We like that. That's always fun. You don't have to watch live after the fact on demand versions of all of our shows available at our website. There are club only shows and those are available through the club Twit Discord. But otherwise at Twit T TV there are usually YouTube channels dedicated to the video. All our shows are audio and video and there's also subscription possibilities for free in most cases. If you just go to your favorite podcast client, do leave us a good review if you, if you do that because we appreciate the publicity. When you've been around as long as we have, it's nice to, nice to get some new eyeballs watching or listening. If you listen with your eyeballs to the show. If you're not a club member, can I invite you to join? I'd love to have you. It is 10 bucks a month. It is a very big important part of our monetization is 25% of our operating costs. Frankly, I'd love to make that more. I'm. I'm a little worried about recession and inflation and problems in the economy and so forth. And we've seen a drop off in advertising in general. So I want the club to be there to, to backstop it. And if you are not yet yet a member, let me encourage you to join not only because you support what we do, but also because you get ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to that club Twit Discord, which is a wonderful place to hang out and chat. Not just during the shows but but 24 7. Right now they're talking about Rocky Horror Picture show for some reason. There are sections in the chat for all kinds of content, conversations. There's also by the way events that we do coming up on Labor Day we're doing an unusual off hours interview because she's in Hong Kong. It's the only time she could do it. Karen Howe, the author of Empire of AI A real indictment but also a fascinating history of open AI Paris. Jeff and I will be interviewing her at 5:30 Pacific on September 1st and you as a club member, you're invited to watch that live. We'll roll it into a show later of course. Chris Marquardt's photo time is coming up. September 15th delightful is the assignment. Our AI user group follows immediately after on the 5th. We do a lot of other things in the club as well as oh look at this. We are. Thank you. Anthony Nielsen. He's immediately posted that we will be covering the Apple Awe dropping event. Tuesday, September 9, 10am Pacific but that's club only. Micah Sargent and I will be breaking down the iPhone 17 announcements and whatever Apple else Apple talks about. But you must be in the club to watch this because we, you know, we don't want any more strikes on our YouTube channel. So club only. September 9th, 10am Join the club. Come on man. What's holding you up? TWIT TV Club twit. And thank you in advance to all our club members. We really appreciate it. Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

B (112:38)

Honestly Will, I didn't plan any trips but I did switch to T Mobile with their new family Freedom offer.

A (112:45)

That's not the itinerary we're following.

B (112:48)

Well, I'm departing from AT&T and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.

C (113:01)

Bon voyage.

B (113:03)

Introducing Family Freedom.

D (113:05)

Our lowest cost will switch our biggest.

A (113:07)

Family savings all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800.

D (113:17)

Per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days.

C (113:19)

Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits.

B (113:21)

With finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16128 gigabyte 82999 eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile.

A (113:29)

Now time for our picks of the week. Let's start it off with Jason Snell.

B (113:35)

All right, I am doing an unusual pick this time. My pick is a website service called Nick's Fix. It's a guy named Nick N I C S F I x dot com. What does Nick do? He fixes old homepods. He fixes first gen homepods which like many classic Apple products have a fatal flaw that stops them from working. Sometimes they just die, won't take power anymore. It's just a little thing on the board. Getting to the board is incredibly hard. But Nick knows how to do it and for 70 bucks he will fix it and ship it back to you. And I want to really recommend this because. And, and there's a link in our show notes to, to this. His. He streams it live on YouTube and send you a link when he fixes. And so if you.

A (114:22)

That's brilliant.

B (114:23)

If you check out his. His YouTube blink. I put the one that I put in the show notes is of my home pod that I sent to him. You can see first off, you can see what gets taken apart. How do you take a home pod apart? It's terrifying. But he's done it enough that he knows all the details of how to do it and he does it all like while he's talking on his YouTube stream. But he squirts some weird stuff in and rolls it around. He takes a bunch of stuff off. He's. He's de soldering and re soldering while he's in there. He's noticed that there's like this really bad foam thing that he replaces with a rubber thing so that the bass sounds better. He'll do that kind of on the fly. He replaces this one bad part as well as the DC filter which can lead to some bad power issues. Those things go bad after five or 10 years, he says. So we. He fixes those. If you have other problems like mine was. Does not. Does not power on. But this is a rare thing where like if you have these things and they were not cheap and one of the frustrations, frustrations is they are in the age now where they just die. I've had two that just stop working one day and, and you're like, ah, you know, I could recycle it but you know, would you for 70 bucks just get it back? And I decided, yeah, I would. I used to have a stereo pair, and now I only have one. And I'd really like to have that stereo pair back. And I sent it to Nick and I watched as he fixed it. He does it so fast. I'm telling you, this guy has done so many of these now that he can disassemble and reassemble a home pod in his sleep. Yeah, he knows how to do. Oh, by the way, if you've got a white one, he will dye the fabric another color. If you would like, even the cable.

A (116:04)

He'Ll offer that same price.

B (116:06)

There's slight differences in price. The other thing is, he'll diagnose it before he charges you. So he will be able to tell you whether he can fix it and how he can fix it and what the price is.

A (116:16)

He does this so much, he's. He's permanently plugged in his electric screwdriver.

B (116:21)

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it is. It is a hole. Whole system that he's got there to take. Take the whole thing apart.

A (116:26)

He uses the top of an old home pod to hold all his tools, which I love.

B (116:30)

It is amazing. And he will also, you know, take donations and all of that. And I think it, for me, everybody needs to decide. But, like, I had two homepods, One of them died. I'm like, you know what? I feel really bad. I would like that stereo pair back. And the fact is, it, like original Macs, often there's like a part that breaks. And he said in this case, if you look at his site, like, there's a certain. There's like a couple of weeks where they. They had this one particular part and they've all failed. And there's no way to tell whether you're in one of those without disassembling it. But if your HomePod was assembled during that period, they just stopped working. And then he knows about some other stuff that he can do as well.

A (117:12)

Does that fixes.

B (117:15)

They're too old. They're. These are. These are outmoded products. So this is the way.

D (117:19)

When was it released?

B (117:20)

Oh, this is like 10 years ago.

D (117:22)

Is it really 10? Literally, it sits in my kitchen. It is used every day for hours and hours.

A (117:28)

We have two in the bedroom, a stereo pair. That's how we listen to music in the bedroom.

B (117:32)

Yeah, yeah, 2017. Okay. So not quite, but eight years ago.

A (117:37)

And it's really good.

B (117:38)

Look how they're not.

A (117:39)

He's torn this down.

B (117:40)

He's so good. It's amazing. And he's talking to people on his live stream. While he's doing it like he's got it. And then you should see when he does his soldering and his unsoldering, it is just. We won't. Yeah. Like it's like he's, he's doing it in his sleep. It's amazing.

C (117:53)

So anyway, this is why right. To repair is such an important thing. Because you look at it, you look at a bare board, say, okay, clearly it's not like these things are in sockets. It's not like you can just. But the thing is, especially if you hide out in YouTube and you look at like people repairing things, there are people who are like, here is a, Here is a MacBook that was totaled because they want $1,000 for new logic.

A (118:13)

What is that schmutz? Here was something that was inside your AirPod, your HomePod.

B (118:17)

I think maybe. I don't know. I, I have, I have lots of pets around. He cleans, by the way, he cleans the fabric a little bit as a.

D (118:24)

Part of the process.

A (118:25)

All that stuff came out.

B (118:26)

Yeah. Yep.

A (118:28)

Wow. Jason 4048 and 4093.

B (118:33)

Well, 4093 he didn't get to because his, his wife and kid came home and so this was the last one he did on his live stream on Friday night. But, but, but like N I C.

A (118:41)

S F I x dot com.

B (118:43)

Yeah. Yeah. So I, he's fixed one for me, fixed one for John Syracusa. I've known some people who've, who've gone through this process that is such a deal.

A (118:50)

Apple would charge you 150, 200 bucks.

B (118:52)

If you got a box and some wrapping. You can send it to him. He's also happy to send you a box with wrapping in it and then you. And a label and then you just mail him back. He's. He's a really nice guy. He takes payment in all sorts of different forms.

A (119:04)

Look at that, look at that. Those are surface mounted. How do he just. Holy camoly.

B (119:11)

Right?

A (119:11)

I mean this guy is Burke. What do you think? I mean Burke does this. Look how he's desoldering these surface mounted whatever doohickeys.

B (119:20)

Yeah, yeah, he. It really is, it's. It's. I love that he livestreams this.

D (119:25)

Wonder how many he went through before he got it all working.

B (119:28)

Well, yeah, he's clearly done thousands now. So he, he went through. I guess he, he saw a tear down on document on the web and decided, decided that he would like to do that. And then he's sort of like. I mean that's the Brilliance of this is like the only way it's worth it to fix a home pod is if there's somebody who knows exactly how to fix a home pod.

A (119:48)

Desoldering surface mounted components, folks.

D (119:52)

I wonder, by the way, those are fun.

A (119:54)

I can see now that's not dirt, that's not schmutz that came out of your home. But that's, that's, that's solder burn solder.

B (119:59)

On, on his little desk mat there. Yeah, yeah, but it's, yeah. And then he lays on the new.

A (120:06)

Look at that.

B (120:09)

How could that work? He works so fast that like he doesn't even wait to like check to see the solder is okay. When it cools, he's like moved on to the next thing. He does what? Blink and you miss it. Like he's testing like, oh, is this one dead? Yes, this is dead. That's why this is like this. And then he takes it off and he just replaces it. It's, it's, and also. Yeah, right, to repair. It's a good point. Like if, if you could spend 70 bucks and have a HomePod work so you don't have to recycle a HomePod HomePod, maybe that's worth it to you. And I, I, I would also say.

D (120:36)

I would absolutely pay 70 bucks.

A (120:39)

I want mine to die now so I could send it to Nick.

B (120:42)

Send it to Nick, exactly. Well, he'll do it, you know, he'll do a refurb for you regardless if you want to send him one. But I'd wait for it to die first.

A (120:48)

Yeah, I have a bunch of these big ones. These are the big ones too.

B (120:52)

He doesn't do the little ones and he doesn't do, he says if it's a second generation you should talk to Apple. But that first generation is basically, it's only at the end of its life. And those are the ones that he knows. Knows exactly. And he says, he says on the second generation HomePod, they fix this. They replaced that bad part that dies in all the first generation homepods with a more resilient one that they do. They figured it out, right? They, well, I mean, because the bad ones go back to Apple and they're like, oh yeah, it's this again. But Nick knows it too. So anyway, and I, I think it's worth it just to have the entertainment of watching him fix your thing lock live on YouTube.

D (121:29)

I, I, I would, I would love to take my car to someone who would stream it.

B (121:32)

Right.

D (121:33)

You know, watch, you know, this is look over.

A (121:35)

Brilliant. Oh my Gosh, Yeah. I love it.

B (121:39)

It is. And also there's, it's charming. Like when he was doing this, his, like I said, his wife got home and his little kid ran in. And so like he goes away for a little while and is talking to his kid and he's talking to his wife and he comes back, he's like, all right, guys, this has to be the last one.

A (121:52)

It's just, this is what YouTube was making, made to do. This is brilliant.

B (121:56)

Right? And he's got a good setup. He's got two cameras. He's got like a zoom in. You can really see what he's doing.

A (122:00)

You really can see what he's doing.

B (122:02)

He's a pro at this. Yeah, I, I, I think it's delightful. So Nick's fix.

A (122:08)

Nick's N I C S F I x. No, no, k n I c-s f I x.com.com. jason, you win the pick of the week award for this year and I.

B (122:19)

Get a working home pot out of it.

A (122:20)

That's all right. Well, I'll tell you what, I think we could probably find some other great picks of the week. Let's try Andy Inatko next. Andy.

C (122:28)

Well, Labor Day is coming up, which is both a fact and also the start of one of Studs Terkel's like most famous and best stories.

A (122:36)

This is one of my favorite books of all time.

C (122:38)

Yeah, I mean, it's basically a two part recommendation. Just go to YouTube and do a search for Stud Sterkel T E R K and just. It's Labor Day. He tells a story about, He's a, he's lived to be 90, in his 90s.

B (122:56)

You knew him?

A (122:58)

You knew him?

C (122:58)

Well, I, I knew him, I knew him through Roger and I'd met him a few times. I, I act, I once act. Asked as his, acted as his living hearing aid. Slash, like Svengali.

A (123:12)

Oh, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C (123:13)

There was. Where he'd spoken at, at an event and like we were hanging out in front. Of course, he's a legend inside Chicago. So everyone was around him. I don't know what it was about my voice, like my baritone, but he can understand my voice in that environment a lot better than all the other people that were talking to him. So basically. Hi, Studs, my name's Millie. I think you interviewed my great aunt Estelle when she was in Ogdenville. And he would then turn to me and I would say, he says that he's a nephew of Aunt Millie. You interviewed him. I would repeat the exact Same thing. And this went on for like 20 minutes of people coming in to say. Coming over to say hi to. I always, always wondered what people thought, like I was to him. But anyway, but to get back. So he tells us. So basically he wrote this. One of the many monumental works he did as an interviewer was published this book in 1974 called Working Love in which he interviewed hundreds of people just to talk about what they do for.

A (124:08)

Work, to honor them for their labor neighbor. It was amazing.

B (124:11)

Yeah.

C (124:11)

And there's all the way from just desk clerks at hotels to people who work makeup counters and department stores, to professional baseball players, to, like corporate managers. And it really is a celebration of the value of work and how these people all valued the work that they did for a living. Obviously it's a longish book, but the thing is, it is episodic. So you can just keep my copy is like in the easy to access part of my bookshelf because oftentimes when I don't know what I want to read, I'll just grab working off the shelf and just start reading anywhere.

A (124:42)

Yeah. Because it's just a bunch of interviews.

C (124:44)

Yeah.

A (124:44)

And I did not know this, but I found on Libro FM there's apparently an audiobook that is the interviews themselves excerpted. Have you heard that?

C (124:55)

Yep, I've seen. There are lots of collections. Again. He had a radio show for about. Again for like decades in which. And they. And most of those tapes are preserved. Which is why he is basically the living history of Chicago during that period. Which is why there are so many people who are so eager to praise him and meet him and say hi to him and say, yeah, my grandmother was like on your show like in 1951 and talked and she kept. And she always tucked. Every year we. Every year almost she'd take out the tape and we'd listen to it. And he was just such a human directed interviewer where just these. Everyone has great stories inside them. An interviewer who is as empathetic and insightful and knowledgeable by humanity as Stud Sturkel will get those wonderful stories. Stories out of them. And it is a celebration of labor. And in an environment where the value of labor has been sometimes not so much respected, it's good to go back and realize that these are the people who are going through their life basically. We all have jobs. We all do things each and every day, and each one is worthy of respect. No one is disposable. No one is interchangeable because this person is doing their job in exactly the right way. On the YouTube video, he tells a story about waiting on the bus. And he basically. And there's a yuppie that's sort of next to him that he's never talked to for the past three weeks. And he just decides to be like the king tanker, the weird old man that the young person has to deal with. He said, labor Day is coming up. And it's such a great story because he gets this kind of conversation and the guy says, oh, I hate labor unions. And he basically points out that, so how many hours do you do you work today? And he said, oh, about like nine. So why aren't you working? 16. And he says, well, the reason why you're working nine hours a day and five days a week instead of seven days a week, 16 hours a day is because of these four people who are labor organizers who were killed for their labor organizing in Haymarket Square in Chicago some decades ago. It's like, oh, wow, this is again, Labor Day is a holiday for a reason. Because there's so much that we get to enjoy as the standard of how a work relationship with an employer is defined and was because of a lot of people who either were severely injured or had to be run out of town or who gave their lives for this. So that's why ever since hearing the story and ever since reading that book, Labor Day is kind of a really cool holiday.

A (127:24)

Loved working. Loved it. Thank you for that. A great recognition recommendation. Finally, Mr. Alex Lindsay, your pick of.

D (127:34)

The so an app that I'm just starting to play with a little bit and I'm excited about the idea of it and I think that we've talked a lot about the idea that you'd be able to just talk to your phone or talk to your computer and build apps. And I feel like there's always been this shortcuts wasn't quite enough. It works and I use a lot of shortcuts. But you always feel like I want to do more. I want to be a little bit more open range, but I don't want to start writing code either. And there's a new app from ex Apple employees that called Bitrig and Bitrig app and what it does is it. It's an iPhone app and you tell it what you want an app to be and it makes it so and. And it can submit it to test flight. It can do all, you know, like it is and it's. And it's all in Swift and swiftui it. You can grab the code if you want and Take a look at it again. I've just. It was I think announced last week, so it was kind of one of those things that I haven't really dug into it as deep as I'd to like, like to. But I love the idea and I think it's worth people paying attention to it because this I think is going to be part of a future of people having, you know, open ended, thinking of something, being able to create it. I have a couple friends that are building apps that are now, you know, for, especially for production related things where I need something that's a single mission. I'm not trying to build the next Facebook. I just needed to do this thing, you know, I think these kinds of apps could be, I mean this kind of app and this kind of environment could be really powerful for a lot of people who have just something that they need to get done. And it's a little bit more than what shortcuts can do and a little less. And it has the potential of being able to actually sell it, like if you actually get it running and you keep it simple, keep your elbows in. But it's called bit rig and so.

A (129:15)

It'S vibe coding, but you do it on the phone.

D (129:18)

But it's vibe coding on the phone, but very specialized and very trained for Swift and SwiftUI. So this is where you start to see this kind of focused mission.

A (129:29)

That's very interesting.

D (129:30)

Yeah, I just think that being able to just sit there and talk to your phone or type in this is what I want to do. So I've got a little app that I have. The one that I'm working on right now is I need an app that manages sync that I've been thinking about for. We tested in Office Hours years ago and it's been one of those things like, oh, I'll get around to it. I'll get around to it. I've decided that that's the thing that I'm going to try to build on here because Absync is a.

A (129:56)

So it's free to install. But then if you wanted to, I.

D (130:00)

Paid for it, I paid 20 bucks. It's something light with it for free. And it's like 20 bucks. Oh, sorry, it's 20 bucks a month. So it's kind of like what we all know is the number that everyone like, oh, it's AI. We'll do that. And if it, if it's not useful for me in a couple months, I'll stop.

A (130:14)

Yeah, that is, that is the price, isn't it?

D (130:16)

For the price And I look at, I look at all the AI stuff now I've gotten a little bit more aggressive about. The nice thing is, is that you do do the subscription through Apple so it's easier. It's you know through the think so I don't. I can.

A (130:30)

We're going to be. We're going to. I think this may be something we could talk about on one of our shows. So if not our AI user group which is coming up in a couple of weeks, a week from Friday maybe on intelligent machines. Good tip. I'm going to, I'm going to look into this. I'm going to download it is what I'm going to do. Wouldn't it be fun if I developed an app to listen to our show?

D (130:53)

Just exactly. That's like that's the kind of thing like I just want to build an app that does this one little thing or I want do something there and I don't know how far I can take it, you know.

A (131:00)

Do you know what model it's using? I mean does it say anything about that?

D (131:04)

I didn't see what model but it my guess, if I'm going to guess blindly without any knowledge, I would say Anthropic. Just because Anthropic has really built their system around Code is the one and Anthropic has really built themselves as the back end for a lot of other people's apps. Not.

A (131:21)

And these guys by the way, I didn't know this are the co creators of SwiftUI.

D (131:26)

Right.

A (131:26)

So they do know a little bit about about all of this.

D (131:30)

It's not just someone who just like I'm going to throw together an app. I mean these are ex Apple folks that worked on this thing and they're committed to it and so they're.

A (131:38)

I think so it's the SwiftUI team basically that did this.

D (131:42)

Right.

A (131:42)

Wow. But it's not an Apple product. It's their company, their startup, Bitrig. It's on the app Store. Wow. Can you use it on a Mac or is it you have to do. Or an iPad?

D (131:54)

I've only been. I've only downloaded on my phone.

A (131:56)

I think it's really just the phone.

D (131:58)

It's really designed. It's like you're going to develop this on the phone for the phone. What's crazy is that you can develop it and then be using it right then or really quickly after.

A (132:08)

Talk about taking shortcuts and.

C (132:12)

Wow.

D (132:13)

And imagine being able to incorporate shortcuts and incorporate other things. But I still feel like there's this place we're about to get to, where you start to go. I have an idea and I can develop that idea based on the weird thing that I'm trying to do in my life and then I can very quickly put it on the. Put it on the App Store and, And potentially make money with it. And, and it doesn't. And the thing is, is that it, it just didn't make sense when you have to write it for the next six months or three months or two weeks, you know, but, but being able to write something that you work on with regular language, not as a technical programmer and able to generate an app that solves your own problem that you're willing to spend time on anyway, but then also potentially generate some revenue. It's pretty. It's pretty interesting.

A (132:57)

Very good Bitrig at Bitrig app. And I will be installing this right after the show and if you don't see me in a couple of for a while, you'll know why. My pick of the week is the congratulations to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, who have announced their engagement in a Instagram post. That said, it's like your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married. This is such a big story. They have a live breaking news on the BBC site where you can watch this as it happens.

C (133:37)

That's another invitation that I don't need to check my inbox for, I think.

A (133:43)

Well, that wraps up this thrilling, gripping edition of Mac Break Weekly. My deepest thanks to Jason Snell, the hardest working man in podcasting. He's got how many now? 20, 30 different shows.

B (133:55)

Who can count? I've lost count. I can't count that high. No.

A (133:57)

6 colors, Jason, for a. Just that, just. That's just the beginning because then if you click the incomparable, then there's a whole bunch more shows. Busy guy.

B (134:06)

I'm not on all of those shows, but yeah, doesn't matter. And I write things too, so, yeah.

A (134:10)

And he writes six colors in Mac world, so there you go. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Leo and Iannotko. Anatko is the guy.

C (134:21)

Soon, soon, soon.

A (134:22)

I'm not gonna say anything. I am not. Because I don't want to put pressure on you. He's up the blue sky. Go to the blue sky. I H N A T K O And Alex Lindsay Officehours Global where questions are asked and answered every morning.

D (134:39)

We get up every morning and off we. Off we go. We will have. I'm following Andy's guidelines here of getting close to releasing something, but not quite but our immersive my immersive channel will be next week so I wasn't quite.

A (134:52)

Able to finish learn from Apple's we should have fun example and do not mention anything until it's time I know.

C (135:01)

Exactly and copy wait for someone else to prove that this business, this this product or business is viable and then copy it.

D (135:10)

It's just taking the half half baked bread and putting it back in the oven for another 20 minutes. That's all.

B (135:15)

That's all Apple does.

A (135:18)

All right, thank you everybody for being here. I guess that's all I need do to to say except we appreciate your support. Join the club if you're not yet a member and we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. But now, unfortunately it's my sad and solemn duty to tell you get back to work cuz break time is over. See you next week. No matter how much spare time you have, TWiT TV has the perfect tech news format for your schedule. Stay up to date with everything happening in tech and get tech news your way with TWiT TV. Start your week with this Week in Tech for an in depth, comprehensive dive into the top stories every week. And for a midweek boost, Tech News Weekly brings you concise quick updates with the journalists breaking the news. Whether you need just the nuts and bolts or want the full analysis, stay informed with Twitt TV's perfect pairing of tech news programs.

B (136:20)

How do you make an Airbnb a vrbo?

D (136:23)

Picture a vacation rental with a host who's showing you every room like you've never seen a house before. Now get rid of them. There you go. No host ever.

B (136:32)

Now it's a vrbo.

D (136:34)

Make it a vrbove.