MacBreak Weekly 995: Fuhgeddaboudit!

Summary

MacBreak Weekly Episode 995: "Fuhgeddaboudit!"

Date: October 22, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Jason Snell (Six Colors), Andy Ihnatko
Absent: Alex Lindsay (on secret assignment)

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Overview

This episode of MacBreak Weekly covers a slew of new Apple product releases now that embargoes are lifted—specifically, reviews and deep dives into the M5 MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and the Vision Pro (now with an M5 chip). The hosts focus on reviewing these "Pro" devices and explore Apple's ongoing hardware and software strategy for the Vision Pro, MacBooks, and iPads, as well as discuss Apple's strategy (and struggles) in spatial computing and AI. Other topics include future Apple products (like a potential Home Hub), the ongoing issue of streaming hardware pricing, and touching on commemorative coins, smart home devices, and grammar checkers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Embargo Lift: The M5 Era Begins

• Main Products: M5 MacBook Pro, M5 iPad Pro, M5 Vision Pro.
  • The M5 upgrades are largely incremental, with only the base MacBook Pro model updated. No M5 Pro or Max yet (41:44).
  • iPad Pro M5 model is basically same as M4, except for the chip (42:13).

“If you've got an iPad Pro with an M on it, you're probably okay.”
— Jason Snell, 54:35

2. Vision Pro: State of the Platform

M5 Vision Pro Upgrades (04:00–29:30)

• Hand Controller Support: PSVR2 controllers now supported for Vision Pro via VisionOS 26 (05:03, 16:08).

  • Jason Snell tested Sony controllers; variable app support, works great in the PicklePro game (06:23).
  • “Nobody in their right mind should pay $3,500 for a Vision Pro and then 3 or $400 for PSVR controllers. … Just get a Quest 3 if you want to play games. … It comes with hand controllers. They're included. It's amazing.” — Jason Snell, 07:17

• M5 Performance: Main differences are more pixels rendered (about 10% more) and higher refresh rate (up to 120Hz), improving clarity in features like Mac virtual displays (11:52, 17:14).

  • M2 was not strong enough to fully utilize the Sony OLEDs even with foveated rendering.

• Content Dilemma: Despite technical improvements, the content remains thin. The killer use case is still being sought, possibly immersive sports (NBA/F1), movies, or professional displays.

  • “This thing needs content. It's hungry, it's desperate for content. And games is content just like immersive video is content.” — Jason Snell, 19:03

• AI, Gaming, and Apple’s Approach: Apple is still hesitant to market Vision Pro as a gaming device, unlike Meta (19:12). Gaming support is being enabled behind the scenes, rather than emphasized.

• Immersive Sports: Upcoming immersive broadcasts—live Lakers games and, more notably, Apple’s $750M acquisition of US Formula 1 broadcast rights—could become the “killer app” (20:46–25:42).

  • “You just need one real good reason to do it, whatever it is … there are people who — that will sell the headset.”— Jason Snell, 24:09

• Platform Prophesy: Vision Pro remains a faith-based initiative waiting to justify its existence. Apple’s investments are laying groundwork for future AR/VR/smart glasses, but most agree the mass-market breakthrough is far off (29:39–34:48).

  • “I still say it's yet to be demonstrated that this is even a viable product. Which is not to say that it isn't…” — Andy Ihnatko, 29:39

Vision Pro Memorable Quotes

• “Benchmarks would indicate that it is now 40% faster at sitting in a drawer doing nothing for months on end.” — Andy Ihnatko, 16:40
• “We're what? I, I don't know if we're ever going to be at ‘most people want to strap a big thing on their face.’” — Jason Snell, 35:40

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3. M5 MacBook Pro & iPad Pro Reviews (41:40–60:00)

• Hardware: M5 MacBook Pro refreshes only the base 14-inch model; new iPad Pro is essentially a re-chip of the previous generation (42:13).
• Displays: The iPad Pro’s tandem OLED is still considered Apple's best screen (43:09). Rumor: touchscreen OLEDs for the next-gen MacBook Pros (43:23).
• Apple Chips for Wireless: Apple’s proprietary Wi-Fi and cellular chips are only in iPad Pros; MacBooks do not have built-in cellular (still). Wi-Fi 7 available only in iPads (43:59–44:58).
• Machine Learning: M5 brings major ML acceleration, especially on GPU, but most use cases remain in the cloud for now (45:58).
• Upgrade Advice: Upgrading is only recommended for those on much older hardware, or specific users needing the absolute best displays or incremental performance gains.
• Platform Convergence: With iPad hardware rivaling MacBooks and rumors of future touchscreens, speculation continues on the future cross-pollination between iPad and Mac (58:40–63:58).
  • “If Apple makes a convertible MacBook Pro that turns into a tablet, then I think we have a problem. Or maybe it's great, but it certainly is an identity crisis.” — Jason Snell, 59:27

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4. Apple’s Smart Home Strategy & AI Progress (69:42–83:48)

• New Home Products: Rumors of a HomePod mini with a screen (“Home Hub”) and a wall-mountable version, with potential release pushed to 2026 when new Siri launches (70:48).
• Competition: Apple's approach is framed as privacy-centric, versus Amazon/Google's more functional but less private voice assistants (73:21).
• AI Turbulence: Ongoing executive departures from Apple’s AI teams raise doubts about its strategy and timeline for a “smarter Siri” (76:09).
  • “These are the people who failed to ship a good model... it’s not surprising that [they] are leaving Apple, when they're told ‘you failed and we're going to try something different.’” — Jason Snell, 79:33

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5. Apple TV & Streaming Hardware Rant (84:53–101:33)

• Apple TV 4K: Remains the best streaming box if you dislike surveillance and advertising in products from Amazon, Roku, etc., though many, including Snell, wish it was more affordable (<$100) to compete with sticks and be a better home hub (85:03–89:15).
• UI Critique: The tvOS interface is in need of modernizing; Apple’s focus has been software-light, relying on hardware performance (86:09).
• Killer Use Cases: The panel debates whether Apple is missing an opportunity to “lead” in the affordable streamer box space, especially with its big investments into live sports entertainment (95:34–99:05).
  • “More people should have the Apple TV. It's a good product.” — Jason Snell, 100:27

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6. Miscellaneous and Lighter Moments

• Commemorative Coins: Steve Jobs to appear on a commemorative California state coin; discussion on U.S. commemoratives and the cultural quirks of currency (113:25–121:25).
• Fun Quote: “There’s something about gentlemen of a certain age and the two dollar bill.” — Jason Snell, 115:02

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [07:17] Jason Snell:
  “Nobody in their right mind should pay $3,500 for a Vision Pro and then 3 or $400 for PSVR controllers... Just get a Quest 3 if you want to play games. … It comes with hand controllers. They're included. It's amazing.”

• [16:40] Andy Ihnatko:
  “Benchmarks would indicate that it is now 40% faster at sitting in a drawer doing nothing for months on end.”

• [19:03] Jason Snell:
  “This thing needs content. It's hungry, it's desperate for content. And games is content just like immersive video is content.”

• [29:39] Andy Ihnatko:
  “I still say it's yet to be demonstrated that this is even a viable product. Which is not to say that it isn't ... but I'm saying... this is still a faith-based initiative on Apple's part…”

• [54:35] Jason Snell:
  “If you've got an iPad Pro with an M on it, you're probably okay.”

• [100:27] Jason Snell:
  “More people should have the Apple TV. It's a good product.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Vision Pro Review, Hand Controllers, M5 vs. M2: 04:00–29:30
• Immersive Sports (NBA, F1 deals): 20:46–25:42
• M5 MacBook Pro & iPad Pro Review: 41:40–60:00
• Platform Convergence, Touch Macs?: 58:40–63:58
• Home Hub & Smart Home Products: 69:42–83:48
• Apple TV/Streaming Hardware Discussion: 84:53–101:33
• Commemorative Coins & Currency Banter: 113:25–121:25

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Picks of the Week (From 128:08)

• Leo Laporte:
  • Craig Hockenberry's Tahoe Electron Detector
    Identify Electron apps on MacOS Tahoe that are vulnerable to system slowdowns.
  • Notepad.exe for Mac
    Lightweight, native Swift and Python code editor for MacOS.
• Andy Ihnatko:
  • Harper
    Minimalist, open-source, privacy-respecting grammar and spell-checker; works as browser plugin, Obsidian plugin, etc.
• Jason Snell:
  • Tapo Smart Outdoor Plug-Dimmer
    Matter-compatible, dimmable, waterproof plug for automating/decorating garden lights (and more), $23–30.

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Apple Ad: "Save It" (106:38)

• Apple launches a new ad campaign centered around the creativity unlocked by a Mac, narrated by Jane Goodall (recently deceased), focusing on the positive message that every great idea starts with a blank screen.

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Closing Thoughts

The panel agrees that Apple’s latest "Pro" refreshes are solid but not must-upgrades, and that Apple's Vision Pro remains a slow-burn "bet" on the future of spatial computing. Enduring wish lists include a more competitive Apple TV streamer box, cellular MacBooks, and a true “killer app” for Vision Pro. Amid skepticism about Apple’s AI trajectory, the hosts still recommend Apple’s privacy-forward approach—when paired with best-in-class hardware—as a unique market strength.

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Listen to the next episode for Apple's Q4 results, more analysis on the M5 era, and speculation about the home's growing role in the Apple ecosystem.

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Hosts:
Leo Laporte, Jason Snell (sixcolors.com), Andy Ihnatko
Episode: MacBreak Weekly #995 – "Fuhgeddaboudit!"
Date: 10/22/2025

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[Show notes structured and summarized by AI.]

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Jason Snell's here. Andy Inako is here. Alex has the week off. The embargo has been lifted. So Jason Snell's review of the M5 MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro, all the Pros with M5s coming up in just a little bit. We'll also talk about Apple TV and how it could be better, chiefly with the price and how to figure out if electron apps are slowing down your Macintosh. That and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is Mac Break Weekly, episode 995, recorded Tuesday, October 21, 2025. Forget about it. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover. The latest news from Apple. Jason Snell is here from sixcolors. Com. And I am here, longtime editor in chief at Mac World.

[Jason Snell]

Many, many moons ago now. But, yes, it's true. And a birthday picture back when magazines existed and roamed the earth.

[Leo Laporte]

He has a little plastic ax to prove it. Also with us, Mr. Andrew Inocco. He's in the library. Hello, Andy.

[Andy Inako]

Hello.

[Leo Laporte]

Hello.

[Andy Inako]

It's nice to be supporting local infrastructure. Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

That's not a queen wave. That's a princess wave. Yeah.

[Andy Inako]

As, yeah. Jimmy Stewart described that wave. The screw in the screw in the light bulb wave.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Once you see that, you never can stop seeing it. And no. Alex Lindsay again this week. He is on Assignment Secret. We shall find out where that assignment is someday.

[Jason Snell]

Someday. No, I don't think we will. I think it might be declassified by a future president.

[Andy Inako]

No, he was at a no Kings protest. The zipper got stuck in his frog costume. They don't want to cut it off of him because that's like, $18.

[Leo Laporte]

I was shopping for inflatable costumes actually for Saturday, and I found one where you can wear a chicken suit and walk, but you're out of the chicken suit. You're like walking chicken. And I thought, that's a perfect one because I can see what's going.

[Andy Inako]

I just keep, I keep remembering, like, in the, in the lore of the DC graphic novel the Watchmen, like, there's a reason why, like, superheroes, like, started wearing, like, masks and costumes. And it's like, it absolutely tracks with what's, with what's happening right now. It's like, it's because first the police officers, like, didn't want their identities to be known, and then the criminals are like, well, if you, the criminals, like, start masking up and then the cops Were like what? Well, like if we were at a disadvantage of our identities and then it kind of spiraled up from there. So I don't know what's going to happen 15 years from now. It might be cool. We never know.

[Leo Laporte]

We could all be wearing inflatable costumes. I actually have to get a costume for. There it is, by the way. I just think that would be so fun, especially in Petaluma, the chicken capital of the world. It would be appropriate. So maybe I should just order that. I presume they come with a little fan built in. Yeah, that's what keeps it. I used to have a sumo suit like that.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Andy Inako]

Adam Savage on his tested channel, had on a couple of cosplayers who, like, specialize in making inflatable costumes and was showing off, like, all the technologies that they figured out that, okay, well, this. We used to use a leaf blower, but it was a too much and also too loud. We found these little circulating fans and it's like, oh, wow. I imagine that engineering was part of it, but I didn't realize how much trial and error had been involved.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen, can you hear that sound? The creaking sound of chains and metal? That's the embargo being lifted.

[Jason Snell]

What a relief.

[Leo Laporte]

Hanging over our heads now, the M5 iPad, the M5 MacBook Pro, and the new double knit band, all amazing.

[Jason Snell]

M5 Vision Pro.

[Leo Laporte]

Whoa.

[Jason Snell]

It'll change nothing, really.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, let's start with the Vision Pro because then we can play. I forgot last week to play the Vision Pro theme. Ladies and gentlemen, what do you see?

[Andy Inako]

What do you know?

[Jason Snell]

It's time.

[Leo Laporte]

With only half the Vision Pro users of our normal complement.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

This means that Jason Snell has the.

[Jason Snell]

Onus, the burden, really bearing the burden here on the Vision Pro.

[Leo Laporte]

You did. You went out and bought PlayStation VR 2 for your review.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I have PSVR controllers that I bought because I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that those were officially supported. Now, I know Apple said they were.

[Leo Laporte]

We talked about it on the show.

[Jason Snell]

Well, Apple said they were, but I had. I have never seen anybody talk about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they weren't selling them separately.

[Jason Snell]

Well, so. So that's it. But. But I didn't know that they worked and they do. And so I bought a PSVR2 and just took the controllers and paired them to the Vision Pro and they work just fine. There are only about four apps that use them and one of them is in beta. But, you know, it's the Vision Pro. That's not surprising.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you get the vision the VR2 helmet as well, even though you don't know.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, I did. Because they're, they're not sold separately yet. Apple's gonna, here's the deal. If, if you're a Vision Pro person who's curious about this and you have a PlayStation, the PSVR2, how much is it? Just the PSVR2, you can get them used now. You can get them used and reconditioned for like 300, 350. And it's 250 for just the controllers when Apple and Sony sell those separately. So if you've got a PS5, you should just, you should just pay the extra $100 or whatever, especially since you can find a lot of these out there used on ebay or as a refurb on Amazon. And I haven't even tried the helmet yet.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't need it. You've got a VR Vision Pro. So how do the controllers, how responsive are they? How do they work? Tell us about that.

[Jason Snell]

They're pretty good. I mean, it's hard. I have a quest 2 and 3, so it's familiar. I was wondering, here's the funny thing. So there's a ping pong game on vision pro and 11 table tennis is my favorite game on Quest. It is a ping pong game that uses the hand controllers that come with the Quest. Quest is like, you know, 500 bucks and it's great. And the ping pong game on the Vision Pro I'm using with my hands, you know, like holding an Invis paddle and trying to do it that way. And like, it's got adjustments and stuff. It just doesn't work. I, I, it's so frustrating. I get it like perfectly lined up with my forehand and then I turn it to the backhand and it's completely wrong. And it's like, this doesn't work. So I thought, okay, the hand controllers, I'm going to get those. And now it's going to make sense. And I pair the hand controllers and I go into that ping pong game. It's, and it's not very good. And I realized, oh, I think it's the app. I think the app isn't, isn't as good as 11 table tennis. I don't think it's the Vision Pro. I don't think it's the hand tracking. I think that is not a very good app. Sorry to, but I've used 11 table tennis and it's very good. I did get to use Pickle Pro, which is in beta, right now in Test Flight, which is a pickleball game for the Vision Pro. And it was great. It was at the level of quality. I would say it had a few bugs, but it is still in beta. But I'd say it was at the level of fun of 11 table tennis. And it's really well done. So there's. Look, nobody in their right mind should pay $3,500 for a vision Pro. And then on top of it, pay three or $400 for PSVR controllers. It's just. Or 250 if you get them. Like, don't do that. $500 Quest 3. It's really good. And I'm the guy who likes the Vision Pro. Just get a quest 3. If you want to play games, it comes with hand controllers. They're included. It's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

But I spent $1,500 for the quest, whatever. The Quest.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, the Quest Pro, which they discontinued. You can buy three. Quest is for that now. So here is what I would say, though, if you have a Vision Pro or also if Apple is trying to build out content, because we, as we've detailed here for the last year here on the world's leading Vision Pro podcast, one of the big struggles with the Vision Pro, yes, it's too heavy and too expensive, but the other problem is there's just no content on it. Even people who like it, all of us who like it say, when I'm using it, I keep trying to find excuses to keep using it after I put it on. And the problem is it's work, right? Because there isn't a lot of content for it. Well, if you have hand controllers, at least you could port games to it. At least the games would be there, along with the immersive video and all of that. And if Apple is building a platform and one day there's going to be something that's cheaper and, and lighter and fits better on your head, then you would like there to be games built for it at that point. So it's a good step in that direction. Apple's not making the controllers and they're only these weird Sony controllers. But when it's all said and done playing that Pickle Pro game, I was like, okay, this is acceptable. It basically is. This is like what I thought it would be like. You can navigate the interface with the controllers. You know, if you're using the controllers, you don't have to put them down in order to like navigate around the Vision Pro. It works just like the, you know, the Quest. You can, you can point a Laser beam, basically. And click. Or. But if you get an eye tracking mode and Vision Pro is all eye tracking. You look at something and then you click the trigger and it's like you tapped your fingers together. You can navigate through the whole Vision Pro even when you're holding the hand controllers. So by the way, for those who are not watching the video version of this, I'm holding my hand controllers right now. And I know enough about the people who work at MacBreak weekly to know that they're going to take a still of this and use it as the thumbnail for this episode. So anyway, the people.

[Leo Laporte]

The people are. John Ashley.

[Jason Snell]

John Ashley.

[Andy Inako]

Go back.

[Jason Snell]

I smiled. You just write.

[Leo Laporte]

Should we all do it?

[Jason Snell]

Write the time code down?

[Andy Inako]

No, no, I need you to do back one more time. I know direct, good directors don't give notes, but. Okay, good.

[Jason Snell]

Because you were holding the control on.

[Andy Inako]

Your left the wrong way. That's why I'm making you redo it again.

[Jason Snell]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was it.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. You should do a three shot though, with us all holding our controls.

[Jason Snell]

Ah, yes. Anyway, so it works. It's impractical, like everything in the Vision Pro, but. But I'm glad they did it. And the, the. The non bundled version will be out. The real story is they announced this months ago.

[Leo Laporte]

Why is it taking so long?

[Jason Snell]

I think it's because Sony has to go into their warehouse and rebundle all of those. Unbundle and rebundle all those things. So they also released the NIT band for 100 bucks, which is available to anybody who's got a Vision Pro, the double dual knit band. And it's very good. And it's the one they should have shipped with the first product.

[Leo Laporte]

A headpiece.

[Jason Snell]

It's got both of them above and behind and a single dial that can adjust either one of them. It makes it much more comfortable.

[Leo Laporte]

A lot of people bought it third party aftermarket.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, there's a Belkin one that's pretty good. This is, I think nicer than the Belkin one. But the Belkin one was. Is pretty good. That's the best one I ever found. And then this one that I'm holding is also the M5. And I think the. Again, nobody should upgrade. If you have a Vision Pro, stay where you are, remain in your seats, everything will be fine. But I think one. Apple wanted to stop making the M2 chip. Right? Like so. And it's. And it's a two. It's a kind of a free thing to keep it rolling. And they can keep selling them and they can keep it existing, but without, they don't. They're not ready. And we know they're not going to be ready for a long time to come out with something that's like a real rethink of this. Because I think the tech is just too far out to make it actually lighter and cheaper the way they want. So it keeps the product alive. What the tidbit that I thought is interesting is it turns out, funny, Apple didn't talk about this when they released this product, but it turns out that the M2 processor is not actually powerful enough to fully use the resolution of those Sony OLED displays that are in the Vision Pro.

[Leo Laporte]

You're kidding.

[Jason Snell]

No, no. So even though, even with foveated rendering, which for people who don't know, that's the idea that if you're not looking straight at something, your brain doesn't actually, you know, right. It's like the detail, it doesn't notice a lack of detail off to the sides. And so VR headsets, that's why I.

[Leo Laporte]

Keep running into cars as stop signs.

[Jason Snell]

VR headsets are know this. And so they don't. They save processing power by highly resolving things in your direct field of vision, which they know you're looking there because of eye tracking, but off to the side, it's all a little fuzzy. And if you take a Vision Pro screenshot, you can see it. You can see that there's a clear part and a not clear part. But even in the clear part, the M2 couldn't, was not resolving it at the full resolution of those Sony displays. Now is the M5. I don't know. Apple won't say. But they did say it's resolving it with 10% more pixels being rendered. So everything. And here's the. Well, I don't know. The M5 might not even be powerful enough at, at full frame rate to do that. I think that.

[Leo Laporte]

Are they 8k, 4k? What are the.

[Jason Snell]

I don't know. I don't know what they are. I think they might be 4k. But here's what you notice in practical terms by going to the M5 and increasing the rendering. The place you notice this the most, honestly, is in one of its best features, which is the Mac virtual display. Because we're all used to what. We all know what a Retina display looks like, right? And so if you're looking because the reality is all weird shapes and shadows and stuff and like you may not be like, ah, that's not as sharp as it should be but on a Mac display, you know and so they there it looks clearer because when you're looking at your Mac display that you expect to be sharp. It's sharper on the M5. So I don't think it's a reason for anybody to upgrade again because you should.

[Leo Laporte]

Do movies do that?

[Jason Snell]

I don't. Not that. Not so that I noticed.

[Leo Laporte]

I always seems by the way to be.

[Jason Snell]

They also always look good.

[Leo Laporte]

One use of the Vision.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. No, this is movies immersive or 3D or even just big movies that look beautiful on a giant screen. So yeah, movie theater theoretically they will look better if they have the resolution for it because the foveated area is going to look better. Right, but so, so that's, that's something.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean if you're looking at a movie they don't bother rendering the edges as precisely.

[Jason Snell]

I think not because. Because they have to. Because. Because they're rendering in a virtual space. Right. They're not just rendering the, the, the rectangle, they're rendering your whole virtual space. The movie theater, the environment, whatever it is.

[Leo Laporte]

And as you turn the rest of the environment static. Oh I guess it's not if you move your head.

[Jason Snell]

Well that's right. Exactly. Exactly. And the way it works is it's refreshing so quickly that by the time your eyes move to focus on something different, it's moved where it's rendering at the high quality. That's how the foveated rendering works. I'm never ever, ever like looked to my left and gone aha, I caught you. You're not like that. No, it happens that fast. So anyway. That's funny. It's a funny little quirk and it's good. But there's almost nothing in the Vision Pro that I ever thought. If only it had more processing power. Obviously all the power is being used to create that virtual environment. But like the only place I noticed that it was faster like in a computer terms is making a spatial Persona which usually makes you wait like a minute and it wait. I only had to wait like 20 or 30 seconds. But I mean it's really not the point of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody would Upgrade their no M2 to M5.

[Jason Snell]

Maybe if you were a. Maybe if you were a developer or something and you and you. But.

[Leo Laporte]

Or the company's paying.

[Jason Snell]

No, it's really there. It's really there. So that Apple going forward will sell this instead of the other one. And the I think first time buyers. Yeah. And is the experiment continues because that's really the story Here is. It's just they're continuing this weird platform that is not a platform from people right now just in the hopes that it will evolve into something and they'll find content and they'll find a purpose for it to exist. And it's so, you know, if you bought one today, you'd get a nicer strap and you'd get a better processor. And it means that when this is still on the price list in two years, it's not using a processor that's six years old. Which is, I think, the real sense.

[Leo Laporte]

And we should point out the PS2 hand controllers also work with the original Vision Pro. You don't need to upgrade for that.

[Jason Snell]

No, no. It's a Vision OS 26, supports the Sony hand controllers. And so yeah, you compare those. All this stuff, the strap like Apple is not leaving. Apple knows that the people who are in Vision Pros at all are their astronauts. They are their explorers. Everything that they're making available is also available on the older model.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but don't put things down.

[Andy Inako]

I mean benchmarks would indicate that it is now 40% faster at sitting in a drawer doing nothing for months on end.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Andy, that's not what. I'm trying not to bully Jason. Trying not to bully him.

[Andy Inako]

Well, that's why I've been forced.

[Leo Laporte]

Because we could gang up on him now that he doesn't have his partner.

[Andy Inako]

We don't have to play a zone defense. We can play Amanda offense.

[Leo Laporte]

Here is a Reddit video.

[Jason Snell]

It's offensive. All right.

[Leo Laporte]

From spatially me, that shows the difference in rendering speed of the M2 versus the M5.

[Jason Snell]

The other funny thing is it goes up to 120Hz, which is what we learned. Apple trying to differentiate the M2 to the M5. And the vision Pro has actually revealed all the places where the. Their much vaunted Apple silicon processor actually couldn't keep up with the quality of their display that Sony displays. So they, they couldn't do the refresh rate or the rendering, use all the.

[Leo Laporte]

Pixels in their knock, really on the M2. It's a not. It's just doing a lot.

[Jason Snell]

It's do well. That's right. It's what, what it turns out is the most advanced piece of tech in the Vision Pro are those Sony screens. They're tight. They're like the size of a postage stamp. And they're like 4K OLED screens.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And the processor can't run them at 120 frames at 1 to 1 resolution because it's Too hard because that's a lot in real time. So with the M5, they're closer to. It is basically.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't imagine spending the money for a second one.

[Jason Snell]

I guess maybe you.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there a good resale price for the M2?

[Jason Snell]

I mean, you see them. There are a lot out there and you see them, I don't know, 1500 bucks. I mean, there are people who are unloading them.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there an apple tree? Can you trade in the M2?

[Jason Snell]

You cannot. They don't want them back.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. All right. So it's. I mean, I'm looking at this video. Thank you. Spatially, me, and it's clear that it is faster for rendering. I mean, the pizzas appear much more quickly in your space.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, everything's going to be a little bit faster. But like I said, I never really felt like I was waiting around for a lot of stuff in the Vision Pro. I think that the biggest changes are going to be that the rendering is higher quality and that the frame rate is able to peak much higher. Which in a. If Alex were here, he would say something about 120Hz being much more realistic and.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And the idea that the reality around you will seem a little more real if it's able to update at 120 on today's show.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry to say.

[Jason Snell]

Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Why did Apple not embrace gaming? That's what meta did and it certainly sold a lot more meta quests. Why did they not embrace gaming?

[Jason Snell]

I think part of it, I think maybe they were too proud. They're like, no, no, no. We're revolutionizing computing with this. It's also possible that they knew that the thing they wanted to build, this super high end, all these sensors, three, $500 thing, could not even plausibly be described as a gaming thing. But I think they just didn't want to have gaming in the conversation that that was where what Meta was doing and that they were trying to build a spatial computer and not a game playing device, which the quest is. I mean, the quest is. That's what it is. Right. But I think it's a mistake because like, like I. This thing needs content. It's hungry, it's desperate for content. And games is content just like immersive video is content. And so, you know, I'm glad at least there's an option for it. It's still not like in the box or anything, but at least you can do it. That's a start. We'll see what they do.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Somebody in the discord pointed out the iPhone really wasn't a gaming platform until the market made it, so. Right, yeah.

[Jason Snell]

Apple, Apple. Apple's relationship to gaming is basically it builds platforms and then hopes games happen there. But. But with the hand controllers, they had to enable support for third party hand controllers before you could even go down that path in Vision os, which they have done now or at least for Sony. We'll see. I don't know if that opens it up for other controllers or if it's explicitly wired to the PSVR controllers right now. It would be nice if there was some competition on the hand controller front.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Do you want to talk about the NBA? This is something that is planned. Apple's going to shoot a basketball game with.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, so. So I can't wait for Alex to be back so we can talk about this. But it has been announced that there are going to be some Lakers games that are going to be broadcast in immersive, which will be the first live immersive using the Black Magic.

[Leo Laporte]

Whole game.

[Jason Snell]

The whole game live. We don't know how that will work. Nobody knows it's going to happen early next year and then. But there'll be several Lakers games and they'll be live to people who get access to the Lakers. So it's like live in market. But then they'll be also available for playback on the NBA app afterward. So we'll all get a chance to see sort of like what is it like to have a whole live sporting event happen. And you know, are you, are you courtside? Are you, you know, can you choose a view courtside or behind the baskets? Does it choose for you or do you just. Just sit there? We don't know, but I think the NBA is the perfect platform for that because, you know, courtside, you're right there.

[Leo Laporte]

But you're looking back and forth.

[Jason Snell]

The three dimensionality of it means something. I mean, there's just big sweaty men right in front of you. Like it's a whole thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I sat courtside once at a Warriors game.

[Jason Snell]

Scary.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a little scary because they are tall and they're big and they're right there in your left app. It's a little scary. Anyway, Spectrum Sportsnet will power the live immersive streams for Lakers fans through a new Sportsnet app right on Apple TV or on Vision Pro Megabits. So that's interesting. You know what? Actually, I hate to even say this, but I would consider buying a Vision Pro. The other story is Apple spent $750 million and announced on Saturday that they'd have indeed purchase the US Broadcast rights for Formula One racing.

[Jason Snell]

It's true.

[Leo Laporte]

ESPN has those rights right now and doesn't do a very good job. In fact, for a while they were sticking ads in the middle of the race, which really was not a good thing. And there was some concern. The reason this took so long, $750 million for five years, by the way. The reason it took, which is like twice or three times what ESPN was paying. The reason it took so long is Apple wanted Formula One to stop using its F1TV app as streaming service in the US and they agreed. So Apple's taken the whole kit and caboodle off over. Now. I know I'm the only one in this show who actually watches Formula One, but I do really love the streaming app. And if they were, somebody briefly made a demo of this, which I think Apple asked them to take down of Formula One because F1TV streaming has. You can watch the broadcast pictures, but you can also watch. Each driver has a camera and there's driver radios. There's really a lot more going on. There is a view of the track where positions are on there. There's a lot of data that is. And you can watch all of that. I use something called F1 viewer on the Mac to watch it. It's incredible.

[Jason Snell]

It would not surprise me if Apple works with F1 to bring the data that's in F1T to the vision Pro. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

I would hope so. And that mine might actually spend 3,500.

[Jason Snell]

That's the thing is the killer app we talk about Vision Pro, like if the killer app. That's why I think the live basketball is so interesting is if. If you're a huge basketball fan and your team says next year all the home games are going to be courtside, immersive or whatever like that. There are people who. That will sell the headset. Oh, absolutely. You just need one. One real good reason to do it, whatever it is. If there was a. A comprehensive live like a comprehensive Broadway content package with lots of great shows that were like it only takes one, but nobody's really found the one yet. So. But it's all still experimental. But Apple's partnership with F1 makes it possible that that will be part of the experiment. Is some stuff with. With F1, I think not like immersive video. Like you're there because the speed of the cars going around the track, it kind of doesn't make sense. But a thing like some of the apps that we've seen, including the one that was there and they got pulled. The idea that you've got all that F1 data and all those different camera angles and it's all kind of in F1TV. Could you make an immersive kind of cockpit of all of that around you in Vision Pro? Maybe, you know, that, that could be interesting. So we'll see what they do with it. But it's a big deal. This is Apple's, you know, end to end. They're going to get all. In the US they're going to have all rights, like the F1 TV subscriptions. You get it if you're an Apple TV subscriber watching the live races. You get it if you're an Apple TV subscriber. That's it. Period.

[Leo Laporte]

I pay 150 bucks a year. Actually, it was less. It was like 80 bucks. But they've raised it to watch F1TV.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, you won't have to do that anymore.

[Leo Laporte]

It's 24 races. There's a lot of races. And it is really a fun way. Much better way to watch than on espn. Yeah, I hope Apple does justice to it. I mean, they spend enough money that one hopes they will. One thing you should not do is shoot the F1 race with an Ursa, because I think maybe there's one Ursa at the finish line or something. I, I, that doesn't, I don't really want to.

[Jason Snell]

I, yeah, I think, you know, I, I was talking to somebody who said that maybe you do an immersive lap at every track or something like that, but the actual race viewing immersive doesn't make sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Throw up if they did that and.

[Jason Snell]

The cars are just zooming by and there's not. No, I think you, I think what you do is you put, you're in the, like, ultimate cockpit of like, I've got video and I've got data and I've got, I've got a virtual. Maybe there's a virtual track beneath you that shows where everybody is. And like, it's more like data overload, not immersion with being there. It's immersion with the data. And, and that's a very different thing than Ben Thompson. The analyst was talking about doing a courtside immersive for the NBA. And he's like, you don't need anything. And he's kind of right. When you think of it, it's like you don't need graphics because if you want to know the score, guess what you do. You look up at the scoreboard. My, like, yeah, that is a really good place for immersion. Because you're there and you can just look at the scoreboard if you want to see the score. But F1 is not like that.

[Leo Laporte]

No, this is a. I guess there is an app. I didn't realize this. This is Laps Lap Zed.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

I think, I think it died though. Didn't. Isn't that the one that got pulled from the store? And, and there's a lot of conspiracy theories. I, I would not be surprised if it comes back as an official something.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

But I don't know about it.

[Leo Laporte]

They would sell me a Vision Pro if I could do this.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. And this is why they want to experiment with this stuff. Because maybe that's a killer app for race fans in the US Anyway, so we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel a little sad that. I don't know, I feel like the Vision Pro, I don't know, it's. It's just not, it's not going anywhere.

[Jason Snell]

You know, I feel like it's going, it's moving forward in terms of development, but it's a, it's a years long thing. I mean like all. Everybody needs to be. Everybody at Apple needs to be accepting of the fact that like the whole idea here is you're building a platform and exploring something, but it's like it's not going to be a thing for a while. I think that's true of all of the big helmet things. Right. The big nerd helmet things. Like, they're just too expensive and too clunky right now and they make too.

[Leo Laporte]

Many people ill. Yeah. To be honest, I think that's never the thing.

[Jason Snell]

I've never had anything like that with a Vision Pro and really even with the Quest, but people do and it's an issue. So. Yeah, it's just. I hope Apple keeps with it because I will tell you, the OS updates and the content updates, they are happening. It is progressing. But. But it's going to take a long time. There's no, there's no, like, short of a, you know, killer app thing. Whether it's F1 or the NBA or, or something else like that. It's going to be years because this technology is so far out there. The fact that Apple's chips, which are so advanced, even struggle to drive the display, that's interesting. It's the current display that Alex wishes were higher resolution even than that. Like, like we're talking. This is like our conversation last week about the coming from the glasses side. It's like you can't just wave a magic wand and make this stuff happen. Getting that kind of processor power and being able to update those kinds of displays or getting the, the vision path to get true AR overlays on the actual world out there, like this is all so hard and, and all the willpower in the world can't make it happen. That stuff needs to get invented and it's going to take years.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, yeah. And just to. We have a lot, we have, we have a lot of fun arguing about this, but I still say it's yet to be demonstrated that this is even a viable product. Which is not to say that it isn't a viable product, but I'm saying that this is still a faith based initiative on Apple's part, on Samsung's part and on everyone else's part. Yep, it's, I mean and I also don't think that Apple is pouring billions of dollars into the Vision Pro with the idea of oh, we know that this isn't going to go anywhere. This is just a platform that we need to create so that we create the smart glasses that we want to create. So it's, it's a, it's. Steve Jobs used to speak of the Apple TV after it failed to immediately set the world on fire to say, oh well, we're sort of experimenting with it or we're, we're dabbling with it for now. And I think that's def, I think it's similar, it's a similar thing where it's a face saving sort of thing where people who, people who can afford it and can buy it when they can like it and that's great. They were always going to be display component limited and how many they could shift any ship anyway. So they definitely didn't expect us to ship in iPhone numbers. But even all of that said, this is not the only time that I kind of figure, oh this is, this is a good place to have a discussion about it is when people think, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. As soon as they get the price down on those goggles, as soon as they get the, make them light enough. As soon as the content is there for the goggles. That's why when everybody's gonna have one and you're gonna wonder, hey, remember those days when we used to do things over smartphones? Who can even remember like okay, again, it's good to have, it's good to love things, it's good to have faith in things. It's a good thing to be excited about things. But just keep one foot in reality that I do believe that this is a Faith based initiative, especially if you're.

[Jason Snell]

From Minnesota, I wanna say.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's what it sounded like to me.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I mean, I think you can look at spatial computing and you can look at immersive and you can look at like all these different things that are sort of being tried on this platform. Part of that is like, is this a thing? Is this a thing?

[Andy Inako]

Is this anything?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, is this a thing? And like I, I think that if, if there's something that costs, look, you know, I don't think there's necessarily an all one size fits all kind of product down the road here. But like, could it be that if you're somebody who uses a computer all the time that in five or ten years it's totally worth it to spend $1,000 on a thing that's an extended display because you travel and it's, it's primarily just Mac virtual display, but it means that wherever you're working you can have a high resolution display for your computer. Maybe. Is it for theater? Is it for sports? Is it like again, is it a thing? There may be and there's some industrial things that are, you know, that Apple's trying out to. But you're right, Andy, that the, the, there is a leap of faith about, well in the future will we all just have these VR helmets that we put on versus like a really lightweight AR kind of thing? I think nobody, anybody who is certain that we will, is making it up. Because you could even look at how Apple is approaching the content on the Vision Pro and it's very much like seeking whether it's a thing or not. And while I think that stuff like immersive video and definitely just having a giant screen, where you can't have a giant screen, whether to watch a movie or using your Mac might be one of those applications that you want to follow that thread right now there's no thread to follow right now. They've thrown the whole ball of yarn in and are like, we'll see, you know, let's see what develops. And we don't, we just don't know how to, any of it's going to react. If I had to guess, I've always thought that the spatial computing thing was a little curious. I think that there was some pride on Apple side and like look, it's a complete computer platform and there's a question of like, do we and will we ever want a 3D spatial computing platform? Is that a thing that people want and will find useful? Especially if it's a whole bunch of 2D planes hovering around us. Well, we have. Have. The Mac is pretty good at hovering 2D planes already, right? Do we need more of that in a 3D space? Maybe not. I think I. Who knows? But I do think there's also a quest to like drill down and like find that thread that's like, oh, that could be a product. And maybe it is just a Mac display or a. Or a movie watching thing like the xreal glasses are right, where it's just like, it's way cheaper, it's way less complicated. But it's good because you can bring your Mac with you and have a gigantic display or you can watch movies on the plane. And you don't need a Vision Pro for that. Right. But the Vision Pro is like, let's just pour it all in there and see what happens. And that's where we are.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah. And I will say also that F1 is a really great match for this sort of thing because the people who are into F1 are probably not the kind of. More people who are into F1 are the kind of people who either already have a Vision Pro or are like, wow, that sounds like a really great way. If, again, if the, if the platforms deliver like, wow, you know, $3,500 is not no money. But hey, I'd buy that to appreciate this.

[Jason Snell]

You just need one killer app. And then there's. You'll find an audience.

[Andy Inako]

A killer app for an audience. An audience that can feel like $3,500 is a reasonable amount of money to spend that. Again, $3,500 for most people is going to be okay. Instead of buying a really good laptop and a really good phone and a really good tablet and that watch that I've had my eye on, that's a few hundred dollars, I'm going to buy these pair of goggles instead. And it's. The thing is like, it's not going to be able to live up to the expectations of $3,500. Investment in a group of computing platforms to solve problems, make my life more fun, more interesting, make my work easier to get through. That's a big ask. And right now I don't think the Vision Pro is anywhere near being able to do that.

[Jason Snell]

You're saying most, Most people. I think. I think it's more like, are. Are there 20,000 NBA fans who would buy a Vision Pro tomorrow if they could watch every game of their team courtside and immersive, maybe like. But that's what it would be. It would not be. Most people like we're, we're what? I, I don't know if we're ever going to be at most people want to strap a big thing on their face. I, I.

[Andy Inako]

The other things, like, particularly when you get to like, entertainment and watching sports, for a lot of people, that's a communal activity. And that's one of the simple things that are almost not F1 fans.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no F1 fans watch in solitude, I promise you.

[Andy Inako]

In the middle of the night. That's what I'm talking about. The big difference being like, again, someone could in terms of making entertainment like movies and other things like that, you're still thinking, well, I can only be in my own private little bubble watching this. I can't share watching this movie with other people. I can't be watching the game with other people unless my friend Group also has $3,500 goggles. This is why I'm most excited right now in terms of fully immersive VR is just give me a dumb display that is reasonably good quality display that is good enough at tracking my head movements that I'm not going to get motion sickness. Because right now the killer app for that is again, is virtual displays. That's, I mean, just speaking personally, as much crap as I give Vision Pro, if I could find an $800 pair of goggles like that, that would be for. And if I happen to be in a year where I was doing lots and lots and lots and lots of travel, I could see me saying, you know what? I've had it with, like having to, I want to have a greater experience during these six hour of transcontinental flights and transoceanic flights I'm having. When I'm set up in a hotel room for two or three nights, I want to be able to have two or three displays in front of me without necessarily having to bring two or three displays with me. I could talk myself into that. And none of that seems to be something that requires three five hundred dollars worth of hardware. Apple not knowing what the audience was going to be shot for the moon. Because again, if we can only sell a few hundred thousand of these, no matter what we do, even if it's a runaway success, we may as well make it the biggest and best platform that we can and then scale it back down.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's your Vision Pro segment.

[Jason Snell]

Now you see, now you know, we're done talking.

[Leo Laporte]

The Vision Pro I would buy, I'm not kidding. If they do via F1, and I think they probably will on the Vision Pro, I actually Might. Maybe I'll buy one of yours. You got two now, right, Jason?

[Jason Snell]

Well, this is an Apple loaner, so it's going to have to go back. But yeah, I'll bring mine up and you can try it out.

[Leo Laporte]

How about, Man, I think that would be so cool. And since I do watch it alone in my private bedchamber, I think I could, I could probably enjoy that. We're going to take a break. When we come back, there are other new Apple products to talk about. And Jason has all the reviews. Don't play that song again. Please, I beg. Once is enough. You are watching Mac Break Weekly, the number one premier vision Pro podcast in the entire world. Our show today, brought to you by Framer. If you're still jumping between tools just to update your website, you have my sympathy. You need Framer Framer unifies design, CMS and publishing on one canvas. This is kind of super cool. No handoff, no hassle, everything you need to design and publish in one place. Framer has already built the fastest way to publish beautiful production ready websites. And it's now redefining how we design for the web. With the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas based design tool. Framer's more than a site builder. It's a true all in one design platform. From social assets to campaign visuals, to vectors and icons, all the way to a live site. Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish. This is how this is designed. The way you think, design the way you want it, design the way you would do it if you had a modern platform. And now you do. Framer F R A M E R. It's a free, yes, free, full feature design tool. Think unlimited projects, unlimited pages, unlimited collaborators, and all the essentials. You get vectors, you get 3D transform gradients, wireframes. I mean, I know people don't believe this. Everything you need to design totally free. Framer is your entire workflow in one place. No importing figma stuff, no messy HTML. This is how you want to work. It's faster, it's cleaner, it's more efficient. You can design more than websites. It's really a design tool that lets you create social assets, campaign visuals, icons, site resources, all inside the tool. You've got them now. You can use them anywhere. You don't have to switch back and forth. Framer Framer stands above the others because it's not just a site builder, it's a true design tool that also publishes professional production ready sites ready to design, iterate and publish all in one tool. Start creating for [e-mail] design and use the code code MACBREAK for a free month of Framer Pro. That's framer.com design and use the promo code MACBREAK framer.com design promo code MACBREAK rules and restrictions may apply. I think you'll be impressed. All right. MacBook most of, by the way, what Apple shipped last week and is now.

[Jason Snell]

Next week announced last week.

[Leo Laporte]

Announced last week.

[Jason Snell]

Shipping the end of this week, ships.

[Leo Laporte]

At the end of this week, ships.

[Jason Snell]

Friday or tomorrow maybe. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay. Anyway, the embargo is lifted. So you've got, you've got advanced units.

[Jason Snell]

I do.

[Leo Laporte]

Most of it is incremental.

[Jason Snell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Upgrades of existing products using the M5. Right?

[Jason Snell]

Exactly. The iPad Pro got updated last spring 24. Spring 24, 18 months ago with, and I love my M4 with the new M4 design. And so the M5 iPad Pro is the same as the M4.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Now it's a different screen.

[Jason Snell]

It's a brand new design. I mean, yeah, it's got a. But the, it's the same. It's the tandem oled which is the best screen Apple's ever made. It's super thin, especially the 13 inch is the thinnest thing Apple's ever made, basically. It is, it is that with the M5 in it. And so the M5 chip is really kind of the story. And the same for the MacBook Pro. They only updated the base model. There's no M5 Pro or M5 Max chip yet. It's just the base. So they decided to roll out that base 14 inch MacBook Pro as an M5 as well. But again, that's a design that's been around for a while. That was the, in the M1 generation, that design started and it's got the really bright display with the notch in it. It's really a really good Mac display. It's got promotion.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not as good as the iPad.

[Jason Snell]

It's not as good as the iPad. And the rumor is funny, I find.

[Leo Laporte]

Myself using the iPad Pro just because the screen screen's better.

[Jason Snell]

No, the screen's the best screen that Apple's made, I think, Period. But the rumor is that the MacBook Pro is going to get its update maybe in a year with the M6 generation where they will have some things that are different, including mark garments as a touchscreen. So.

[Leo Laporte]

And OLED touchscreen, although not tandem oled, right?

[Jason Snell]

Single oled. Yeah, well, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting the decisions that they have to make. So anyway, this is a generation for both of them, I think the iPad Pro, it's going to be a while for the MacBook Pro and maybe next year, but this is an interim step and, and they, the changes are minor because of that. The chip is the biggest change. If we throw in the other chips in the iPad Pro, they are also a big change because it's using Apple's chip for WiFi and Bluetooth and it's using Apple cellular chip and the iPad Pro for the first time. And so, you know, I did, I am not a wireless tester, but I did do some wireless testing in the a, a difficult wireless environment, which is my backyard where there's no Verizon and no T Mobile and only a little bit of at&t. And what I found is basically Apple's chip for me in my testing was slightly slower at downloads, like 10% slower and it was like seven times faster. It uploads. So in my backyard in a couple of days, it did pretty well, I would say.

[Leo Laporte]

It even picked up Verizon, which, and.

[Jason Snell]

It got borrowed from Verizon and pulled down some data. And I'll tell you, everybody who comes to my house who's like a solar installer or a plumber or whatever, they're like, like, can I get your WI FI password? Because they can't. They're like, oh, Verizon, huh? Because it's just, it doesn't show here and there. They managed to get a little data through even in my backyard on Verizon. So that was pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's, that's, why are not in the MacBook Pro. They're only in the iPad. Is that right?

[Jason Snell]

I, I, I mean my review on six colors, I took my shots. I think that now that we live in a world where Apple's got its own chips that do those things, why does the MacBook Pro not support Wi Fi 7? Why does it not support Bluetooth 6? Why does it not have a cellular option? Like, they're probably waiting for a redesign next year. But like, I think we got a column on it. Like, you make your own cellular chip now. It's cellular has been in the iPad since day one. And you still don't make cellular Macs. And I just think it's stupid. I think it's a choice people should have. I find I buy a cellular iPad because having that cellular tethering is a very nice fallback. Yeah, but it's not as fast it uses device another device's Battery, it's not as fast. It can be finicky having it on device. Having used the cellular iPad for a while, I'm a believer. It's great. I would love to have it on a laptop. And now that Apple makes their own, they have even less excuse not to do it. So that's kind of a bummer. And Wi Fi 7 as well. Like the wi fi speeds I can get on the M5 iPad Pro, very impressive because they're using the Wi Fi 7 router that I have here and that's an upgrade that the MacBook Pro doesn't get. So that's kind of a bummer. And then the M5 is exactly what they said it was. It's exactly what we found the A19 to be in the iPhone, which is, you know, the CPU core goes up 10% in speed every year it seems like. But the GPU went up more. They threw in some machine learning accelerators. So if you're running machine learning processes Is there are APIs you can write to, some of which are out now and some of which are forthcoming. They're updating all their MLX frameworks and things that a lot of stuff that's machine learning based, that uses GPUs will be like maybe two, three times as fast as it is now. But it's the same old story. Most of the ML applications that people use are in the cloud, not on device and so they won't see any difference there. But Apple's hoping over time that their processors are so powerful that more people will use them for on device machine learning tasks because then it's local, it never, your data never leaves your computer and we'll see if they're successful at that. They've certainly got the chips to do the job. So yeah, so that's basically it.

[Leo Laporte]

I like Mark Gurman. I'm going to wait till next year, I'm going to get an M6 and I want an OLED screen. I think I want touch.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I think there's, there's. If you're in the market for a MacBook Pro today, I actually was thinking about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Should you wait for the M5 Ultra, I mean Pro or Max?

[Jason Snell]

I think the curse, the curse of Apple Silicon for Apple is that it's so good that it actually makes it hard to sell high end systems. And these, these higher end MacBook Pros are starting to feel more and more niche to me. Like it used to be the low end MacBook Pro was like that's not a MacBook Pro. It doesn't have that extra port or that screen or whatever. Remember, it was kind of a lesser computer that they slapped the label. But today I Look at this M5 MacBook Pro and I think how many people really need a faster processor?

[Leo Laporte]

You know where I would disagree with you is AI.

[Jason Snell]

Oh sure. I mean local AI.

[Leo Laporte]

When I say not many people are doing local AI. When I say niche, those who are really.

[Jason Snell]

When I see niche, yes, I think that's true. And if given, given the GPU acceleration on the base M5, if you're a GPU AI person, I've got to assume that the, with the so many more GPU cores on an M5 Pro or M Max, that those things will be screamers when it comes to GPU machine learning stuff. But I think for regular people, even.

[Leo Laporte]

The benchmarks of the M5 showed fairly improved.

[Jason Snell]

Oh yeah, the, the M5 in, in, in machine learning on GPU is, is really impressive if you use the, the ML accelerators that are in the GPU now. Yeah, so, so there's a lot, there's a lot to be said for that. I just, I think for a lot of, you know, maybe that base model MacBook Pro is, is fine. And the question I have about the M6, if it truly has OLED and, and touch and all of that, is I Wonder if the M6 MacBook Pros will be the higher end ones and that this one won't inherit that design right away for margin reasons, basically to keep a low priced MacBook Pro in the line. But it's a good computer. I, I question how many people need it and not just a MacBook Air, honestly. Because the MacBook Air will presumably get the M5 in the spring too. And I mean, I know it's not quite the same.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a MacBook Air with more ports basically. Right?

[Jason Snell]

More ports, better screen, maybe some more. And a fan. Those are sort of the big ones. Yeah, more ports, better battery and a fan. So it'll run.

[Leo Laporte]

Fan means it can run faster. Because it doesn't.

[Jason Snell]

Even with the same chip, it'll run a little bit faster. Yeah, but the MacBook Air, you know, you trade some of that in for thin and light and really nice. So it depends on your priority.

[Leo Laporte]

Pros are still pretty thin and light. I mean, they're not massive machines. They really look good.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, they're really nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Especially when you pose them next to a phaser.

[Jason Snell]

Well, okay, so there's a classic Star Trek episode where there's a. AI that's trying to take People's jobs and is actually very bad. How timely. And it's called the M5. It's the ultimate.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, man.

[Jason Snell]

And when they announced the M1, I was like, well, in five years I'm going to make a lot of Star Trek reference. And today, friends, today is the day. So that picture that you were showing on our video feed, not only is there a phaser next to it, but the, the wallpaper on there, that is the M5 computer from Star Trek. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh man, I missed the whole joke.

[Jason Snell]

Yep, that's it. That's it. The Ultimate Computer was the name of that episode, which is also the headline of my story. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh man, you're really going deep on this.

[Jason Snell]

I'm done now.

[Leo Laporte]

How many people recognize that?

[Jason Snell]

They're old. Older people recognize it. I guess that's. That's what we're left with now. So, yeah, my iPad review has a little communicator. John Moltz, my friend John molt, get it? He 3D printed those, the communicator and the phaser for me.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, nice.

[Jason Snell]

That I used as props in this. And then I will also have at Halloween. And I could be Captain pike for Halloween.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you going to be Captain Pike?

[Jason Snell]

I am going to be captain.

[Leo Laporte]

You're going to be the hell.

[Jason Snell]

I got the gray hair. I got the gray hair, so I can't be Captain Kirk. I got to be Captain.

[Leo Laporte]

You got to be Pike.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. If I were going to do that, I'd probably do Honeymooners references. So it's probably best.

[Jason Snell]

Well, you're older than me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, that's fair.

[Jason Snell]

I encourage you especially I encourage people to find the ultimate computer episode of Star Trek. It's on Paramount plus here in the US it is really interesting because I think what they're trying to talk about primarily is the idea that the threat in the 60s, like are computers going to replace people? So it's sort of about replacing labor and automating. I think it has its heart in like the, in factories and like being concerned that factories are going to replace laborers with machines. But I'll tell you, it has added resonance today. If you think about AI, the idea that there's this smart computer that's going to take Captain Kirk's job and guess what? It starts blowing things up. It's actually really bad and they gotta shut it off. And that's what the episode is. So I think it's a timely watch for today.

[Andy Inako]

And the biggest failings throughout the entire episode. That computer did not try to hit on any of the female ensigns even once. Not even like a little bit of a pass.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what? I love our audience.

[Jason Snell]

You don't know that.

[Leo Laporte]

Our audience is so in tune. Oscar Castillo in the YouTube says, well, you know, Dr. Daystrom went mad, but he loved his M5.

[Jason Snell]

He did. He loved it so much.

[Leo Laporte]

And out of sync says, it's Daystrom's ultimate computer.

[Jason Snell]

The ultimate computer.

[Leo Laporte]

People remember this stuff. I'm impressed.

[Jason Snell]

I've been waiting. Since I was five years old, I've been waiting for this day.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm five, baby. And you're gonna be the. The healthy pike, not the face melted version.

[Jason Snell]

I'm not gonna sit in a chair with beeps. Maybe at the end of the night. I'll be really tired by then.

[Andy Inako]

I'll just sit in the chair.

[Leo Laporte]

Enough candy. Your face will melt.

[Jason Snell]

I'm going to be our active. Strange new worlds Captain Pike. Anson mount is my model.

[Andy Inako]

I know this is a potential red hole, but didn't it bother anybody else watching that for the first time that all they could wire him up for is yes or no? It made me think as though they didn't want to hire this actor in a speaking role.

[Jason Snell]

Well, he wasn't available. That's the thing, is the original act, the reason he's in the chair at all is because Jeffrey Hunter would not come back to be in another episode. He was in the pilot. And then they did the new pilot with William Shatner, and so he was fired.

[Leo Laporte]

The official captain. Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And so they made it. They made it look sort of like him and the beeps and they didn't want him to talk and all, but. Yeah, you think advanced technology, if you wire enough into the brain to beep, you could probably get like a speech synthesizer.

[Andy Inako]

They could have hired someone to like, actually read the lines and sort of even in a computer voice. I think it was like a money thing. I think they did. They did. They did want to hire a voice actor to have to pay them like, union scale for a speaking role.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. You guys spend way too much time.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, she.

[Andy Inako]

Rodbury was a cheapskate.

[Leo Laporte]

So this.

[Andy Inako]

He's also the guy who, like, wrote false fake lyrics to the theme song. Just. We could take half of the royalties. Steal half the royalties.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right. That's right.

[Jason Snell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, Any questions?

[Jason Snell]

Any more questions about Star Trek and. Or Apple Computers? Yes, either way, I'll take it.

[Leo Laporte]

As you say in your review, no one should consider the M5 iPad Pro. If you've got an M4 iPad Pro.

[Jason Snell]

Right yeah, I feel like if You've got an iPad Pro with an M on it, you're probably okay. Also.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's faster. I mean it's surprisingly fast.

[Jason Snell]

It is faster. And. And with ipados 26, I think the truth is we've reached the point where I no longer need to write an iPad review and say it's great hardware let down by software because the software is way more capable and Apple has added a bunch of functionality to it that makes it a much more plausibly professional device than it was, you know, a few years ago. And so I think that it's got a lot going for it and it's got more RAM on all the configurations, not just for AI stuff, but also because there's a multi window mode where you've got a whole bunch of different windows open at once and you actually need RAM for that. So, you know, it's fast, it's impressive. I think if you've got an M4 or even an M2 and probably an M1, you're fine. And the other fact is it's expensive. It costs basically what a MacBook Pro costs. Ish. And I would say the Mac or the iPad air is, is basically what the iPad Pro was a couple years ago, honestly. And I think I have a hard time recommending the iPad pro because for people who like, they need it, I don't think anybody needs the iPad pro. I think the iPad pro at this point, given what it costs and given some of its really, really nice features, it's very much a buy this because you really want the nicest iPad and there's nothing wrong with that. But like, I don't think it's actually really much more capable than an iPad air. It's more like you pay for it because it's super thin. It's got that amazing screen.

[Leo Laporte]

The screen might be worth it. I really love it.

[Jason Snell]

That's the reason you buy it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Also, and it's hugely expensive. We should point out. It is. It is more than a MacBook Pro. I mean it's a.

[Andy Inako]

Especially, especially when you add. Depends on what you buy. Keyboard. I mean I justified the. I think that it can be justified again. We're going back to like if you happen to have 3500 dol and this seems to work for you. But I justified my M1 iPad Pro by realizing that a. I do a lot of travel in which I need a bridge device. I don't necessarily need to bring an entire laptop with me. And also that I felt as Though it was going to fill a lot of different niches, particularly with continuity and its tandem features with my MacBook. It's going to be a really interesting year next year. If I've been like very, very close to upgrading my M1 MacBook Pro and my M1 iPad Pro over the past year now I'm really kind of eager to wait until next year only because a these two devices still suit the purposes that I want them to serve and they also still run OS26 without any problems. So that's not a reason, but also that there's going to be such motion over the next year over the future of the Mac as a platform. I mean, we're seeing Gurman has been saying, okay, there's going to be a touchscreen and other supply chain analysts have been talking about, oh well, there's going to be a touchscreen MacBook coming up next year or the year after that. I don't know how to deal with those rumors because it seems like something where Apple would have to have a really long Runway to make that happen. And you would think that we see some signs of shifts in how they're moving the UI towards that I'm sure we're seeing. And I'm also not sure how an iPad, how iPad OS and macOS can coexist if you have a really, really attractive touchscreen super slim MacBook in the lineup alongside a comparably priced iPad Pro that now has the same kind of UI in front of it, can run a lot of the same apps in different ways. I think that as always, you hold off until you see a device that makes you think, wow, my life will be a lot simpler and I can do a lot more things if I buy this new thing instead of saying the old thing. But I also think that 2026 is going to be a really interesting year.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I would just say I think the big difference will remain the fact that the laptop is a laptop and it's shaped only like a laptop and you can't tear the screen off of it. And that is, in my opinion the number one reason why the iPad Pro is so great is because it can be a laptop when you want it be, but you can also just tear it off and make it a touch tablet. And it works great like that too. Also unknown if they'll do like Apple pencil support, but even if they did, I can't really imagine using an Apple pencil in a laptop configuration where you're kind of leaning over. So the shape of the device is very different. Even if they've got some things in common. And that's, I mean in my, in my iPad review, that's one of the things that I wrote is I feel like the iPad ironically is now more Mac. Like at a time when it's no longer needs to be the replacement for the Mac that I think that they thought it was for a while, I think that it gets to be its own thing and take things from the Mac when it makes sense. And I think the Mac is going to be its own thing and take things from the iPad where it makes sense. But unless, I mean, look, if Apple makes a convertible MacBook Pro that turns into a tablet, then I think we have a problem. Or maybe it's great, but it certainly is an identity crisis. But I think if all it is is a laptop with a place you can touch to do some scrolling and stuff, I don't think it's a big.

[Andy Inako]

Exactly. It's like if you're just saying here's a MacBook that acts as a classic MacBook only now you can do the thing where you sort of like are sitting at the table and you're just hugging like this and using your thumbs to scroll and occasionally tapping things because sometimes you've been using your phone for a while and you find yourself tapping on a non touchscreen screen, then what's the point of it? So if Apple really is developing this, if they really are targeting this for 2026 or shipping late to 2027, I hope it becomes something like a yoga configuration where it is like a permanent mechanical hinge, but you can flip the screen all the way to the other side and either hold it like a tablet in your lap or use it as a sort of an easel that's on your table. For all the reasons why an easel works out really well. So it's hard to figure out and I'm. I doubt it's going to. It exists. It's just that I, in October of 2025, I feel as though the Apple world and their understanding of what the product line is would have to change a hell of a lot in the next 10 to 12 months for us to see that happen.

[Jason Snell]

I can't say I don't think it will happen. I think that Apple, I think if you asked an Apple person and they were being honest, they would say, say we think making a convertible Mac laptop makes the laptop so much worse that we would rather just make a really great laptop that we've been good at making for the last 15 years. And if you Want something that's convertible. There's the iPad, and they're converging in terms of features, but they're coming at it from different directions and they do different things. And I mean, I love the iPad, but one of the reasons I love it is. And I love my Mac too, right? So, like, if I could get two great taste that tastes great to get, that would be great. But I think if you asked Apple, they'd say, we like our MacBook laptops to be good laptops. Not kind of, because if you look at those convertibles, weird physics considerations go into them, right, where they're thicker or they've got weird weighting issues or things like that. And my guess is that they're going to say, nope, nope, we'll give you a touchscreen so you can like scroll and tap and do those things, but we're not going to let you fold it over backwards.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, this would have been a great idea 8, 9, 10 years ago when Tim was saying, oh, no, this would be like having a toaster fridge. These two things don't go together. While all the time in the Windows world, Dell and Samsung and others were saying, no, actually, this is a really great thing that people love and we sell a lot. So we sell enough of them, we keep like making more versions of these. But everybody, I think they waved at that bus 10 years ago and they could have. The other problem is that Apple is the sole supplier of all the laptops and manufacturer of all of the Mac laptops that exist. Whereas Dell and Samsung can say, you know What? We have 10 or 12 or 15 or 18 laptops in our lineup, and we're going to be putting three or four of them into this mode where they are detachable screens or they're yoga screens or touch screens, because there are enough people who are buying laptops that we can serve those people who want them. Whereas Apple has to say, yeah, we don't. We. We don't want to have something that we don't dare call it like the. We. We don't. We don't give it a number or product name because we don't want, want to telegraph the fact that it's been four years since we've updated this because there aren't enough buyers for it.

[Jason Snell]

Dell and Samsung also don't have access to a viable tablet operating system. And that's one of the differences is when, when, when you're a Windows licensee, you make Windows convertibles. If you're Apple and you've got the Mac and the iPad as separate operating systems. It's very easy to see the world as separate. And I'm not saying that any either view is lesser. I'm saying that if you've got, you know this, if you've got a flathead screwdriver, you do one thing and if you've got a Phillips screwdriver, you would do your view based on your priors, right? Apple's got two operating systems, so they make two products. A Windows licensee has one and so they make a convertible.

[Andy Inako]

And also to give justice to both Google and Microsoft, they both, Google particularly, they did a smashing job creating a, updating the UI so that it makes sense. If you deploy this on a touchscreen device, it feels like a touchscreen device. If you have this on a traditional desktop, it feels like it makes sense on a traditional desktop. And it's not as though they're two different modes. They just simply designed a design language where this makes total sense, whereas Apple has not done. That's part, that's part of the sweat equity that I'm talking about. Where I would have, if Apple were really deciding that, nope, we've got the target date. This is going to, we're going to try to ship it in 2026. Failing that, 2027. I feel as though if they'd gone through all the trouble of designing a brand new user interface design language for OS26, we would have seen those kind of little early signals of, oh, this feels like it could really work well for touch spots on this display, even though it's not a touch display and I'm not seeing that yet. So Microsoft and Samsung, Microsoft and Google again, knowing that they have to satisfy OEMs that have to build all the hardware that everybody's going to know, were very, very motivated to decide that, well, we want, we don't want to produce a sidecar version of Android or a sidecar version of Windows just for touchscreens. I mean Windows did that and failed absolutely abjectly. We're going to create a brand new design language that suits both cases and works very, very well. So it's again, I think that again, if Apple had gone on this path 10 years ago, I think they could have done something very, very interesting. And the iPad could be be along the lines of the iPhone touch, where it's mostly a content consumption device. Yeah, we have some big iPhone apps that are available on it, but no one's going to be spending $1,000 for a productivity oriented version of this device. This is just a $300 thing to play games on and watch movies on and read the web on. That's the reality I think we'd be facing had they made that choice 10 years ago. Right now they've got two very, very, very, very, very mature operating systems that can coexist very, very nicely.

[Leo Laporte]

We're going to take a little break. We want to welcome retcon5 back into our chat room. He says it's not M5 on Star Trek, it's M5. Let's get that straight.

[Jason Snell]

I put the screenshot in there. It's actually M and then like almost like a little dot or something and then five in the stylized screenshot. So.

[Leo Laporte]

You do you the pedantic among us just want to let you know it's not exactly the same. More to come in just a bit. Including, yes, we may not have seen all the products Apple has to ship this year. What might else might be they up to? We'll talk about that in just a little bit. Mark Gurman has some thoughts. You're watching MacBreak weekly. Axe Lindsay has the week off but of course Jason Snell is here from sixcolors. Com. That's where all his reviews are and the benchmark marks to 6colors.com. Andy Inacco also here. It's great to have both of you talking about Apple. Our show today brought to you by our friends at Outsystems Out Systems. They're the leading AI powered application and agent development platform and they've been doing this for as long as we've been doing this. They for more than 20 years. The mission of Outsystems is to give every company the power to innovate through software. But OutSystems does not rest on their laurels like we do. Outsystems is always improving and now they've got AI and this is a very exciting, exciting moment in time. IT teams. You know, this is the old, you know, story. They have two choices. The old build versus buy conundrum. You can buy off the shelf SaaS products for speed, but you lose flexibility, you lose differentiation. Or you can build custom software, but that's going to cost you time and resources. AI has now given us a way for a third path. It's the fusion of AI, low code and DevSecOps automation into a single development platform that's out systems. Your team will build custom applications with the help of AI agents. They'll do it as easily as buying generic off the shelf same way. And because it's Outsystems, flexibility, security and scalability come built right in standard so you get AI powered. Low code opportunities. Your team can build custom future proof applications really as fast as you could buy with fully automated architecture, security integrations, data flow and permissions. That's all built in. Outsystems is the last platform you need to buy because you can use it to build anything. You can even use it to customize and extend your existing core systems. It's pretty amazing. Build your future without systems. Visit outsystems.com TWIT to learn more. That's outsystems.com TWIT deploy apps and agents worldwide deliver innovation with outsystems. Outsystems.com It's a perfect marriage. It is. So what is still perhaps on the agenda? Remember Mark Gurman Saying Apple has five products that they could ship by the end of 2025. We've seen the first three M5 based Vision Pro, MacBook Pro and iPad Pro. What about the HomePod?

[Jason Snell]

What about the HomePod? The Apple TV, the new AirTags? I think it's possible we'll see those in the next. I think they got about a week. I think they got until their results, which is a week from Thursday. If not, then my guess is next year, I think. Yeah, that's it.

[Andy Inako]

I mean it's, we've, we've been hearing consistent rumors that Apple is preparing kind of an overhaul or almost a relaunch of their entire like home world of products. And it's possible that they say, well, why are we just doing an incremental update to our $100 HomePod that people, the people who are interested in it already have one. They're not particularly interested in a slightly better version of that. Why don't we introduce this when we trying to get attention for the entire platform of hey, we've got this new device with a screen that has our smart assistant. And hey, we're not even making air quotes around the world's word smart. It's actually, we've got it up and running and it's really, really working. Working great like, and we've got, we've got security cameras, we've got a whole bunch of other like home stuff. They may as well release a constellation of products rather than something try to.

[Leo Laporte]

Get people, yeah, dribble it out, huh? Yeah, show something fully, fully formed. Gurman says that Apple plans to team with BYD. That's a name you might know from very popular EVs in China. You can't buy them in the US but BYDs are huge in China. BYD also also manufacturers. And they will, according to Gurman, take over manufacture and assembly. There'll be final assembly, testing and packaging and they'll be doing it in Vietnam, not China. So this, he says, Apple to build tabletop robot. I wish they wouldn't call it a robot, but all right. And Home Hub in Vietnam. So he's talking about two different products for the upcoming Home Hub Hub. It's going to look like basically a HomePod mini with a screen glued on top of it, according to Gurman. The hardware was completed nearly a year ago, he says, with a 7 inch square shaped display originally slated to come out this past spring because. Because that was when the new Siri voice assistant was supposed to come out. So now he says it isn't going to be this year, it's going to be spring 2026, which I think I agree with you guys. Makes a lot more sense. That's when the new Siri in theory will be coming out. There are two versions. The codename J490 is that one I was talking about. With a display on a HomePod mini base. The J491 is designed to be hung on the wall, which makes a lot of sense. That's what a lot of people do now with their home assistant tablet displays for home automation. Hang it on the wall, you can have it when you come in the door. You can have it maybe in the bedroom or the living room. Both devices will have a FaceTime camera built in a software interface that dynamically adjusts depending on who's using it. The software will recognize users when they approach the display. Amazon's already doing that with their Echo display. So is Google with their displays. This has been around for some time. That's the funny thing, Apple targeting. According again to Gurman, this is none of this confirmed by Apple. $350 for the new device, which is more expensive even than the big boy homepod. And he says, far above competing products from Amazon and Google.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, if all they do is apply Apple privacy to a smart display, they've already got a big win.

[Leo Laporte]

I would abandon all of my echoes and all my Google Dev. As if Apple had a compelling the problem is the voice assistant and there is still trouble in paradise when it comes to that.

[Andy Inako]

Especially because Apple Google just did such a really good flex with putting Google Gemini attached to their smart assistants and their home devices that now you can ask a camera things like hey, what time did my kid get home and did they leave the garage door open again? And it will just simply answer the question or every morning at 6am if there if every morning at 6am I want you to turn on all the lights in the house except for the ones on the first floor and it will actually understand that and do it and figure out how to do automations for you automatically. That's a big. That's where a lot of people I think might think that yeah, Apple's privacy is much, much better than Google's but Google's smart assistant is much, much better than their privacy is worse.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I also don't think, I know I have the I won't say it out loud the A word AI A word plus on my Amazon devices. It is not impressive, it is awful. It's not any much better than the Echo original Echo Assistant and I haven't yet tried the Google Gemini enabled ones. You have I personally presume not yet. No, no. See I think they promise a lot but I think it's hard to do.

[Andy Inako]

Well yeah, it's hard to do but they do tend to actually deliver. Maybe not on day one with their AI stuff, but by the time they start getting people using these things and they've got again those faceless underpaid human people who are evaluating how well these things work and are retraining the model to work even better again. I use Gemini several times a day. There's always least a couple of windows open with Gemini and the stuff that it was not very good at even six months ago are now just 100% spot on reliable. So as a result I simply have a lot of faith, I have a lot of faith in Gemini that if it doesn't work great right now, it will probably work better in a few weeks time. So unlike other chatbots, it's like okay, I've got these apps, I've got these accounts, occasionally I dip into them to see how, how much better they are than they used to be. But I've never seen enough of an improvement to think that yeah, I'm definitely going to have an app like that on my phone 24 7. I'm definitely going to have a couple windows like that open because it's just that useful. Whereas Gemini tends to come through.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Apple is losing more AI talent. Another executive, K. Yang, who was recently appointed to lead Apple's AI driven web search effort, has gone to Meta according to Mark Gurney Sherman. Just more defections like crazy. This is the Apple Answers Knowledge and Information group which was supposed to make Siri smarter. It's getting dumber.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, I mean this is kind of when we started hearing stuff like this, there are a lot of explanations that we could put into the pot including, well, Apple can't compete with these wonderful job offers because they are not an AI first question, company. Okay, that's rational. Or AI or Apple is like, has chosen which parts of its team it wants to keep and which parts it's willing to let go. Okay, again, rational. But the thing is, it's been such.

[Leo Laporte]

A regular drum dozen team members.

[Andy Inako]

It's a lot we really have to keep. Like, we really have to keep like on a separate, like little pedestal with a light on it. Maybe things at Apple are not really going well in terms of AI and they're still looking for their car keys sort of to speak.

[Leo Laporte]

Gurman also says Apple is interviewing replacements for jg, John, Jan Andrea, who was at the time the big get from Google and put in charge of AI and Siri and he's been slowly moved, you know, to the back burner and now apparently they're looking to replace him.

[Andy Inako]

I mean, that, that one, yeah, they, they were an amazing fit. And the only reason why Google lost them is because they did that big reorganization of saying, okay, are we going to. Is the head of our AI going to be the Google guy who's been doing this all along or is it going to be the head of DeepMind, this company that we're now integrating fully into the company? Somebody had to lose and it was John Andrea. That's the one where it's like, you know what? Maybe as he was such an early acquisition, maybe he just wasn't a good fit or he had a vision that was going to work in a structure like Google but was not going to work for Apple. That one I'm not quite so worried about. Again, it's this regular drip, drip, drip, drip, drip of okay, another AI team member left. Okay, another AI team member left. Another AIT DM member left. That's what gets me really, really worried that if Apple is going to ship a brand new smart assistant by spring and it's going to be good, they will. They will surprise. They will. A lot of people will be very pleasantly. I will be very pleasantly surprised. I'm not. Again, I wish the best for them. I also realize that Apple does not have to achieve nearly as much as Gemini or OpenAI does or a whole bunch of these other companies have to because they're not an AI first company company. But nonetheless, I will be pleasantly surprised if the new. I'm not saying the name, but if the new smart assistant ships in the spring and it is Nearly as good as anybody thinks it has to be in order to be an actual, like something they put on the website saying, hey, here's a feature of your iPhone that you're going to use and love.

[Jason Snell]

I mean, we'll see. And it explains why they're also talking to partners. I'll just say I got a couple points here. One is Mark Gurman is obviously very tied into these people leaving. People leave Apple all the time. But Mark Gurman doesn't write stories about them. He writes stories about this because he's got, he thinks that this is a narrative that people want to hear about and he's got sources that are watching as these people leave. And the other thing I'll just say is these are the people who failed to ship a good model.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Jason Snell]

And as a result they got people. People got fired or retasked and are on the outs and Apple changed who's in charge and is changing their approach. So, so I don't know these people. I don't know how good they are. But I will say this. It's not surprising that people are leaving Apple when they've basically been told, you failed and we're going to try something different. And who knows what I mean? What I don't know is who is working on Apple's next generation of models. Because a lot of these people are also in model research where it's like bad for Apple's long term foundation model future, but not necessarily at the implementation of what they're trying to build for the spring. So I agree it sounds bad, but I want to just do a little footnote of things happen all the time that don't get reported by Mark Gurman. But this fits a narrative and it fits his sources. And two, let's not forget that these are the people who built the models that didn't work. And maybe it's not their fault and maybe they're a bad fit for Apple and Apple's looking at this wrong. I'm not trying to say that, I'm just saying it's is. I'm not surprised that the people who are perceived as having made the product that didn't work right are leaving. Right. Because that's a bad whether.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

Because if you're that person, you're like, wasn't us, we did what we were asked. They, they aren't grateful for our work. I'm out of here. I'm, I'm valuable and Meta wants to pay me lots of money. I'm just going to leave. Like I feel like in some ways this was inevitable because what happened is Apple basically said, you blew it. We're scrapping it and putting new people in charge. And at that point, yeah, that team's going to leave. They're going to leave.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah. But that's, it's again, there's so many things that we have. I'm sorry, I know that my frames are dropping. All reset after I make my pithy comment.

[Jason Snell]

Just be very still while you do it.

[Andy Inako]

Exactly. There's again, we have to be very, very where. You're absolutely right. We have to be very, very worried that many, many things are possible. And all of this is conjecture. And one of the things that is possible is that Apple's AI strategy is so messed up that it is just simply not an atmosphere in which great, ambitious AI projects can succeed. And one of the things they're learning is that, okay, we didn't allocate enough resources here, we didn't have enough personnel here, or we thought we hired the right kind of person. We don't need that kind of expertise. We need this kind of expertise. And gee, if we thought that we could do just by simply renting out compute, that's not going to work. We're actually going to have to start taking the reins there at some point. I'm sure that in five or ten years time on a computer history page, we will learn exactly what was going on and what a colorful time it was between 2022 and 2026 to try to get AI going. And once again, as fun as it is to talk about this sort of stuff, and there's no schadenfreude involved in this discussion. But not only that, again, Apple is not an AI first company. They are not betting the farm on AI. They just simply have to make sure that their hardware and their operating systems are as coherent with AI and as are and are as relevant in an AI world as any other platform. And also we still have. They still have some time before pushing people demonstrate that no, I'm not going to buy an iPhone because I'm going to buy this Android phone because this Android phone has much better, has all the AI features that I absolutely love and count on that are part of the operating system and are not simply an app that I can download from just about anywhere and run on just about anything. So Apple has time to fix this. I just hope that they fix it.

[Leo Laporte]

How about airtag? Should I not buy any new Airtags or should. Is that how soon they've been out for so long?

[Jason Snell]

I, I Would say, do you need an airtag? If you do, you should just buy an airtag. If you don't, then don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

And then eventually they'll get updated. I think it's okay. I think they'll, you know, I'm sure they'll be better in some way, but I think they're fine as it is. And if you've got a pressing need, you should, I mean if, if you need an airtag tomorrow, you should buy airtag.

[Leo Laporte]

The prices are gone. Going down too. I mean it's cheaper than ever. So.

[Jason Snell]

So yeah, sure, yeah, they're nice. I probably need an airtag. I should probably do that sometime. I'll wait. I don't think, I think I can wait a little while. But yeah, put them in your bags.

[Leo Laporte]

How much better could they be? I mean, how different could they be exactly.

[Andy Inako]

The future of the platform is an interesting question. Like, can Apple make it better by making it more sensitive and making it easier to get more pinpoint? Oh, not only is it in your sofa, but I can tell you which cushion is actually under underneath. Well, that's 10ft away. I mean that's, that's useful but. Or can they simply say guess what, now it's now you get six for $100 or now the, the minimum cost is $15. And so you can actually afford to like not have to decide which of which of my, which of my four children's backpacks do I want to be more. Have more recoverable or you say no. Every, every kid's bike, every kid's backpack, everything that is going to get could get lost. That would break by if it got stolen. I'm going to put an airtag on.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. What else was going to come out? There were a few others.

[Jason Snell]

Apple TV update, who knows?

[Leo Laporte]

I am all in on Apple tv. I use it like crazy. I don't need any new features, but if Apple releases a new one, I'd probably get it.

[Jason Snell]

You know, it's funny, there are a thousand things that I would improve about the Apple tv. I am so frustrated that they haven't made it better. They seem to just not prioritize that all said, it is the best product in its category by far. Far by far. Everybody else is obsessed with selling you something cheap and they are cheaper that will sell you products or consume your data or watch what you're watching. That seems to be the business model that almost everybody else has. Disappointingly because I did this, we talked about it, whatever. Six months ago I bought all these streaming boxes and I found out that like Amazon's really great except that everything is marketing at you and I couldn't take it anymore and that the goog box is really good. But I think Google is, is not going to make it anymore. Which is sad because the, I thought the Google one was almost as good as the Apple tv.

[Leo Laporte]

And if you're in the Google Shield, which is a remarkable device but I still use the Apple tv.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I think maybe the Nvidia Shield is the best other product other than the Apple TV in this, in the same market. But the Apple tv like it's really good but I wish it was so much better. And mostly that software.

[Leo Laporte]

Right? Is it a hardware complaint?

[Jason Snell]

Cvos? It's like all of Apple's products now. It's totally over engineered. It's got more power than it can do. It can do with anything.

[Andy Inako]

Right.

[Jason Snell]

Like it. That's not the problem. The problem is that on the software side they just don't seem to be doing anything. And like if looking at what Google and Amazon have done on their interface side, Apple TV seems kind of old and behind the times. Like it has this non unified interface where it's kind of got a TV app over here that's sort of the home screen but also the app interface over here. Here which is sort of from back when the future of TV is apps which it isn't anymore I guess but like I wish it was better. They don't have, they don't have good coverage of live. There's so much stuff that is live streaming on fast channels and they just basically don't do it. I have a whole, I mean there's a whole litany of things. The Apple TV should be so much better. Which is why when you brought up Apple tv Leo, I wanted to say, oh, it's so good. It's like no, it's not so good. You're right, it is the best.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah. My problem with it is just that it's not 120. You can have $129 streaming box in your product lineup. When your cheapest streaming box is $129 you need to figure out how to make that same device for 50 or $60 for 100. When you compare even. I mean the biggest difference is that you get a serious amount of storage. If Alex were here, he would talk all about the video codecs and all the different things it does to give you a better picture. My reaction would be yeah, but I've got a TV that works great. That I paid $400 for. It works well enough. When we talked about the Nvidia shields, like for their amount of money that you get their $149 box, the 120 gig storage Apple TV 4K, they will give you a box that will actually upscale HD content into 4K and do it extremely well and give you a whole bunch of extra features that the Apple Box doesn't really, really give you. And I think they'll give you a comparable amount of storage or even more storage than that in addition to having USB ports so that if you want to add on more storage and run like a media server on it, you can do that as well. I mean, I think we can all agree that the Roku streaming sticks and the Amazon streaming sticks are kind of just legitimate trash.

[Leo Laporte]

They're trash.

[Andy Inako]

But you can buy streaming sticks from Google that aren't trash and cost like and we'll give you 4k streaming for 50 bucks or less. And no, it doesn't have 64 gigs of storage. There might be a point at which you have to decide which is the 14th or 12th app that you can install on this without removing a different app. But the thing is, for people who just, hey, I've got, yes, I'm willing to spend $150 for the box that's in living room on a really, really good set, but I just want something in the bedroom. I just want something in the kids room, you know, and I don't necessarily need to feel as though I need to spend $130 for it.

[Jason Snell]

That's. I mean you said needs, needs to, Apple needs to. Apple doesn't need to. Right, Apple. Apple seems perfectly happy selling a 129 streamer box and leaving it at that. I think we would all love it if a company that cares about the people buying their products and not using it as part of a multi tiered surveillance and or marketing strategy strategy could, could be down there other than Google. Like I said, I think Google, I question. I think I read something that Google's commitment to the streamer box is fading, which is really disappointing because it was the best I tested outside of the Apple tv. I think we would all agree it would sure be nice if regular consumers had access to a decent streaming stick or box that didn't surveil their viewing, that didn't endlessly try to upsell them or market products to them like Amazon and Roku. That would be nice. I don't. And honestly, Andy, like I said, it's so overpowered. I really don't understand why there isn't a base model Apple TVOS object that you could purchase for, let's say, $79. Right. Like, they don't, obviously they don't have to and they don't care to go down there. But like, I don't see how it would kneecap the product to be a little bit lesser just to give them, like every F1 fan who maybe they think, I mean, Apple TV, the app is on every connected TV and stuff, so they don't actually have to sell an Apple TV box. But it would be really nice if you're picking up a whole sport in the United States, if you had a really, really nice, affordable thing for you to stick on that TV that you watch F1 on that had Apple's whole ecosystem on it that they could use and that that wasn't 129. I, I share your frustration there, but I would say that at 129, the Apple TV is, is not a terrible deal. It does do a lot of good things. It's just that it is disappointing that that's where you have to go if you want a product that is not devoted to surveilling your marketing to you.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, I get. If, if I did say they, they have to doesn't sound like something. I'm not sure I said that, but if I did, if I did, then that was incorrect. What I meant to say is that it limits the reach of the device. Yeah, it's kind of clueless to think that. No, no. $129 is what people are. Again, there's a reason why people are buying these $30 sticks. It's not because they're idiots who don't care about privacy. It's not because they're not annoyed by the ads that are in a fire TV stick. It's because they look at all the devices that are available to them of all these things, they're hanging off of pegs or behind glass at the, at Walmart or Best Buy or whatever. And they're saying I$129 is not worth, not a worthwhile investment for me for the TV that again, is in the kids bedroom, I could buy Roku for.

[Jason Snell]

For 4K Roku for $30. Right. Like, yeah, that's. And I don't expect Apple to sell a 4K box for $30. Right. But. But for $70, for $50, for $60. Is there something there? It would be nice if they were able to do that because that platform, even though I've said I have a list of Complaints. So many complaints. It is really good. It is very good. And, and, and doesn't it treats you with respect. Right. And it is a shame that the people who are buying these devices are stuck with the boxes that don't treat them.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

With respect.

[Leo Laporte]

And if you aren't going to buy an Apple tv, I have to say that Google TV is probably the next best.

[Jason Snell]

Especially if you're in the, if you're in the Google. I would say if you're in the Google ecosystem. Deep. If you use YouTube TV to watch your TV channels.

[Leo Laporte]

Who doesn't? I mean you have to live in the Google ecosystem if you watch YouTube at all.

[Jason Snell]

No. Yeah, but if you. I'm saying if you use YouTube TV instead, which I do, instead of like Hulu or Fubo or Sling or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a natural way to do that.

[Jason Snell]

If you spend a lot of time watching YouTube TV and YouTube.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jason Snell]

I mean the Google box is great. It really is very good. It is kind of at the Apple TV level. I've got some quibbles, but it also does a bunch of stuff way better than Apple does. So it's a good product. I was surprised that was the one that I. It's frustrating because the one that's got the best features is amazing Amazon. But there's so much junk that you just can't swallow it. It's just so overwhelmingly full of things Amazon is trying to sell you like the, like the echoes and all of that. It's just there's too much pollution in the, in the Amazon ecosystem because they're trying to upsell you. Whereas Google's is nice and pure and it's a good design and they do a good job with it for sure.

[Andy Inako]

And that you point out like the other, the other problem that we're. That Apple's. Excuse me, that I think that Apple's facing here is that people have preferences for. I'm using. I'm a Mac user and not a Windows user because I've tried both. I like the Mac better and I'm also locked in. But that's. But I like the Mac better. Same thing. I use an iPhone instead of an Android phone because there are material differences between the two and I prefer the iPhone. The thing is with streaming boxes, there's a reason why the Apple TV box, manufactured by one of the most amazingly designed forward tech companies in the world, it's just an unassuming black box where even the logo is just like a slightly embossed thing in the side of the plastic. Because for Most people, they barely underst. They barely clock that this is an Apple product. This is just the platform that they launched the Netflix app from, that they launched the YouTube app from, that they launched the Hulu app from. And so it's really, really hard for them to add value in a way that really, really comes through to says, yeah, there's a reason why I spent $130 for this. Because, boy, in those four and a half seconds that I, that when I navigate to the. The YouTube app and click the button before the three hours I spend watching YouTube, Chef's Kiss, great experience.

[Jason Snell]

The other thing that we haven't talked about that we should mention is if you bought a TV in the last five years, it's probably a connected tv, so it's got a Roku or, or something else inside it that's running, that will run apps and play things. Now, if you ever tried any of these, they're slow because guess what? TV processors are poor and the software is bad. And it's also probably going to try to track you. But that's the, that's kind of the baseline. So you could argue that this whole category where the Apple TV plays is for people who care enough to go beyond what's on their TV set. That's true.

[Leo Laporte]

And most people probably aren't.

[Jason Snell]

You're seeking. You're seeking a somewhat discerning customer. And that, I think, speaks to actually what Andy was saying about Apple Opportunity here. I want to frame this for a second. As, you know, they did mls, they've got some baseball, and every time, like, the Yankees are on Friday night baseball. Everybody in New York's like, how do I watch the Apple tv? Forget about it. Or whatever. I don't know, New York, New Jersey, whatever. It's the ankle territory.

[Leo Laporte]

Forget about it.

[Jason Snell]

And it's an opportunity. And F1 is going to do this, too. Ted Lasso is a hit. Severance is a hit there. These are moments where Apple tv, the search service, can sell some hardware from people who are like, yeah, I guess my TV does that. But it's no good.

[Leo Laporte]

Partly because the Apple TV app is terrible on all other platforms.

[Jason Snell]

Well, yeah, and mostly because, I mean, it's okay, but it's as bad as those platforms are, right? Like, if you use, like, I've got Roku on my tv and when I, I erased it, right? I. I decommissioned it. But when I was using it, I was like, it's so slow. So this is an opportunity for Apple to make a sale. And right now they're coming in and their sale is 129. And I guess the argument is maybe they're happy that that's where they're trying to convert people. But I think Andy and I are saying, you know what if it was 79 maybe you would get more people who would actually wire. And once you're in, you're in your their ecosystem. You're renting movies, you're buying movies, you're using their apps. And and I could tell tell you a lot of those apps have features that are either only on Apple TV because it's got so much more processor power or best on Apple tv like some of the multi view stuff, even.

[Leo Laporte]

Netflix is best on Apple tv.

[Jason Snell]

It's like there's so much stuff that, that runs so much better on it. There are reasons but you got to convert them from the little cockamamie, you know, processor that's running inside their TV set. Having an Apple show or sport or something is an opportunity. But right, right now you're going to hit up against 129.

[Leo Laporte]

Price is really an issue. It is, you're right versus $20.

[Andy Inako]

And that is an excellent point that people are getting streaming platforms built into.

[Leo Laporte]

Their TVs or as somebody just pointed out in our discord on their game platforms. 32% of all streaming stuff is done on gaming platforms, says Anthony Nielsen.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, I had a friend who worked at the Xbox Movies service that got shut down by Microsoft and it is fascinating to know that so many people look, if you've got it then you've got a piece of hardware that'll run the app and that's great. Although I would argue that it's a nice upgrade to not have to watch every movie you want to watch with your game controller as a remote control.

[Leo Laporte]

As the game controller. Remote control is literally what I hate.

[Jason Snell]

And so again that's the thing they're competing with is well this can do it. So this is good enough. And then maybe they're partners. Partner is like how do I posit which is it the square? Is it the triangle?

[Leo Laporte]

I think you made an important point. Once people get into the Apple ecosystem, they end up buying more and more Apple stuff.

[Jason Snell]

That's the game.

[Leo Laporte]

It's smart for Apple to have a loss leader that gets you into the system.

[Jason Snell]

I mean Apple's never going to have a loss leader, right? They just are never going to do it. But it feels like the margins for a streamer box are there, right? Like it feels like think how it.

[Leo Laporte]

Would sell if they had a 79 Apple TV. That would be such an opportunity. And then it gets you into home automation. I mean, it gets you into Apple TV plus Home Hub.

[Jason Snell]

And they're trying to push home stuff, right? Like that's. They've got the screen that you just talked about. They've got the. They've got home pods out there. Mark Gurman says they're going to make like a weird tabletop robot, like if you're going into the home. Also a doorbell or a surveillance camera, like if you're going into the home. The one like the TV product is your home hub. It does a lot of other stuff. You want it in people's homes because it fits. Then you're building that ecosystem out. It interfaces well with your iPhone. Once you like Alex, if Alex were here, he would talk about how he hates logging into apps on the Apple tv. Right? Like everybody can. Who's playing the Alex drinking game, by the way? I'm adding Alex.

[Andy Inako]

We're here as a potential show.

[Jason Snell]

Yes, I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

I honestly, I think Apple's trying to solve this, but this is making notice.

[Jason Snell]

This is what I was going to say is like, if you're in the iPhone ecosystem and the Apple EcoSystem, the Apple TV is so much better because. Because these days for apps that have been updated. I don't know if you've noticed this, but like you open an app and you need to log in and it's, oh, just log in with your phone and you literally just face id, unlock your phone and it's like, boop, I'm logged in. Just like that. Like, that's how they built it. Much better.

[Leo Laporte]

More doing that, I think.

[Jason Snell]

And that's Apple's game, right? It's like it's all kind of conducive to like, oh, yes, well, you have an iPhone and you have an Apple TV and, and, and so getting it in more. Yes, more people should have the Apple tv. It's a good product.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah. My other disappointment with Apple TV has always been that, wow, it has so much as a computer that is always connected to the Internet and inside your house and always turned on. Amazing to think about all the things that that could do to enhance the Mac experience and the iPhone experience and every other experience that you're doing. I mean, even just the idea of, hey, I'm on my phone, or I've just spent twelve hundred dollars on my iPad Pro, but I want to run a Mac app and to be able to connect back to your house and connect you to the Mac Mini. That is also a Very, very low power device that is also plugged in and on standby and connected to the Internet and be able to simply open up a window without having to, oh, have you, what is your tunneling protocol? Have you, have you opened a proxy and what is the. No, no. The Apple TV will take care of it. It knows where your computers are, it knows what their IP addresses are. It will make sure that one can confirm to the other and find each other without any problems whatsoever. And that's just one example of what the idea of an always on, always connected to the Internet very, very low power Apple device could do inside the house.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a break. Well, actually, let's not take a break. We have a bunch of little stories we should do and then we'll take a break and get your picks of the week. I hate to prematurely cut this conversation off. There's so much good stuff. But, but I must move on to other wonderful things real quickly. We mentioned the F1 thing. That's good. Tim Cook vows to boost China investment despite governmental pressure. By the way, moving to Vietnam doesn't really cut your tariffs all that much. Okay, but a little bit, A little bit. What else? Just going through, through all the stories you put in a whole bunch of stories, Andy. I want to make sure we get to all of those. Anything that I missed in the future.

[Jason Snell]

They'Ll be available on Andy's website.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, someday. Someday. Andy, do you still do the video recap of Mac Break Weekly?

[Andy Inako]

After Mac Break Weekly, I'm recording them. My focus is on getting the blog launched, but I'm recording stuff and learning the techniques for trying to take, for trying to do this in a way that does not take me eight and a half hours spread across two days. I am actively, I enjoy doing it. I enjoy the end product. What I don't enjoy is that, hey, that's great. So I got eight and a half minutes of video without wasting anybody's time and it only took me a day and a half. Okay, soon, that's, that's, let's, let's improve on that. So it's still there. I like the. So Apple released like a new, I think you actually call it like a new branding campaign with a new video on YouTube called Save It.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a break and then do that.

[Andy Inako]

I like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you.

[Andy Inako]

Lots of good surprises in there. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. And then with a certain person.

[Andy Inako]

A certain person group.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, we will talk about that in just a bit. Andy Anako is here. Jason Snell. Alex has the week off Our show today, brought to you by Zapier. And when I say brought to you by Zapier, I mean it. That's how I work on the show. I love Zapier. Zapier connects all the tools, thousands of different, different tools that you use, no matter what you use together to make workflows, and it does it so easily. I use Zapier to prepare our shows. I'm constantly going through news stories, tech news and all that. Every day I spend, you know, hours looking at the different stories, and when I see one I want to talk about on the show, I bookmark it. I use Raindrop. So I booksmark into Raindrop. Thank you, Andy, for recommending that. But then Zoom, Zapier is monitoring Raindrop because it's one of the apps that I've hooked into Zapier and then sees that I put something new in there, automatically posts it on Twitt Social. We have a news links feed there, also automatically puts it into a Google spreadsheet that our producers then can use to build our rundowns. And now I'm thinking, because Zapier's added a new feature, I'm going to make this even smarter. You know, we're always talking about AI on this show, and over the last few months, that's all anybody can talk about. But talking about trends doesn't necessarily help you be more efficient at work. For that, you need the right tools, and that's where Zapier comes in. Zapier is how you break the hype cycle and put AI to work across your company. So, for instance, I can now use Zapier's AI orchestration in my existing workflows. I can take the stories that I've bookmarked and have maybe Claude summarize them and generate questions to ask about them and that kind of thing. With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you can bring the power of AI to any workflow. Connect the top AI models, they've got ChatGPT, they've got Claude, and on and on and on. And you can connect them to the tools you're already using to even the zaps, the workflows you've already built. So you can add AI exactly where you need it, whether that's AI powered workflows, an autonomous agent, a customer, chat bot, whatever it is, you can orchestrate it with Zapier and now add AI. Zapier is so cool. You don't need to be a geek to use it. It's for everyone, tech expert or not. Teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.com MacBreak that's Z-A P I E R.com When Zapier turned on these AI workflows, it changed my world. It will change your world. It is amazing. Zapier.com MacBreak Great ideas. Start on Mac now. Because this is an Apple ad, I cannot play it for you because I will get taken down. But tell us about it, Andy, because you've watched it. Yeah, it's really cool.

[Andy Inako]

It seems like sort of an ad campaign, at least ad age, the trade newspapers seem to think it was. And it's just all about like, there's a blank screen and there's like a blinking cursor with nothing on it. And a really endearing voiceover talks about, hey, every great idea started off as nothing. Everything started off as a blank page writer's block.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what you identified with this, Andy.

[Andy Inako]

I know that's what that's like. I thought I was okay for the first couple seconds, but the curse, that blue cursor just kept blinking and blinking and blinking and I felt very, very triggered. But it's actually a very, very nice. It's very nice. It's all about the idea. It's all about the idea of. Look, like every great idea that you. Everything you wished existed at one point started with someone like you. Basically starting with a blank sheet of paper and basically positing that while Max.

[Leo Laporte]

Is so much better than crushing cellos and pianos with a giant press. And.

[Andy Inako]

And the voiceover is from. Is by Jane Goodall, who was.

[Leo Laporte]

I didn't know this part of the Think different campaign.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So Jane Goodall just recently passed. Dr. Jane Goodall was studying chimpanzees. Very famous and a great person. So I hope her estate's getting all the money. I mean, I'm sure they are.

[Andy Inako]

There's a. There's a lot of stuff she's. She's also, I don't know if you like the British show Portrait Artist of the Year, but she's having the finale. The winner of that competition, and I don't think the episode's aired yet, is painting a portrait for the National Gallery of Jane Goodall.

[Leo Laporte]

I was like, wow, that's neat.

[Andy Inako]

I'm glad. Lots of good things happened under the wire like that, including that Netflix. Good heavens. So Netflix created. There's a Scandinavian show that Netflix bought or basically decided to Do a series of. In which the most incredible. This has nothing to do with Apple, but you're going to enjoy this incredible concept which is we are just going to interview great people and it's just going to be. Nobody in the booth in the studio has access to the microphones. It's just a conversation that's private between this one host and the individual. And the individual is speaking with a number that none of this will be played back, edited and aired until after they die. I think it's called Last Words. And as it happens, they recorded Jane Goodall doing an episode of Last Words like a few months ago. And again, part of the premise of the show is no, we will not confirm that anybody has ever done the show. After they pass, we then spend a very fast 48 hours playing back the tapes and editing together an hour long thing. And. And there's one segment of it where Jane Goodall is like literally, I believe, alone in the studio, even the host leaves and she's the only one who knew that this is gonna be. For the next five minutes, this is going to be something that only you know, actually exists and it will not be shown to anybody or heard by anybody until after you pass. That is an. For someone who is truly great like Jane Goodall, as opposed to someone who wants to bury a lot of hatchets, it's quite a powerful premise. So that's part of the lineup of things like I'm glad, glad that time was taken to get her comments, get her participation in a bunch of things so that we could. We don't feel as though her passing was quite so abrupt. But this, but getting back to the great ideas.

[Leo Laporte]

She was 91.

[Andy Inako]

She was 91.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly that abrupt.

[Andy Inako]

Well, I mean, I mean in the.

[Jason Snell]

Sense she was very active and speaking.

[Leo Laporte]

All I know she was on a speaking tour.

[Andy Inako]

What I mean is that like at some point we're gonna find out that moment Brooks is dead. And that's not happened today, I'm saying, but at some point. And it's just going to be, oh, at first. And Mel is not going to talk to us about his life after he has passed and we're not going to find out. Oh well, actually that happened like two weeks after there was this amazing like 90 minute like special in which he talks about the producers and he talks about this from a selfish point of view. When there's somebody that, that the society loves and rightly so passes away, it's nice to have a little time to process that and it's nice to have A little something to sit around and talk about while they're going through. But this, but this. Getting back to it, I'm glad you mentioned, like, hey, let's crush all. Let's crush this piano and crush this art.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This is a very much better way to think about it.

[Andy Inako]

This is classic Apple. This is exactly what they want people to think about in terms of Max particularly, and what credibly they can claim to be, because they are. They've veered to the left, to the right, up and down from the central tenet of their founding. But it is a platform that really likes to help creative people create great things.

[Leo Laporte]

Ad Age pointed out, and thank you for quoting it, because I don't have an Ad Age account. Among the creators featured are Bruce Strickhot, an ocean engineer who's been using a Mac since the Clinton years. It's funny, the Clinton years is now a long time ago to share discoveries from the sea floor. It is actually, isn't it? Ruchika Sashdeva, whose brand bodice reimagines Indian workwear through indigenous craft. And Alice Wong, the activist behind the Disability Visibility project. And the robotics team from 1X Technologies. They're designing. In fact, they just released videos of their first human humanoid robots for the house. I don't know if I want a extra strong machine wandering around my home.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, it's like there's so many of these wonderful demos, but it's like all I can see is very, very powerful motors and pinch points in the joints of those motors and thinking there's a reason why every time that Boston Robotics had those Atlas videos of the robot doing amazing things, there is not a sole human being anywhere near the thing. And it's oper inside a chain link fenced cage. Because if once it. God, there are YouTube videos of bots in development where it just, oh, well, it turns out that we should have put a 63 in this value instead of a 52. And it just starts flailing and tearing itself apart because of a certain mistake.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I like the idea of a robot vacuuming the house, but I would like it if it was a small flat disc instead of something that looks like command that the kitty can ride on. Yeah, the kitty can ride on.

[Andy Inako]

Amusing everybody. But there's one other story that I, I, I don't know if we want to wait for Alex, but it's like there. So Steve Jobs is going to be on a commemorative coin next year.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I saw that. Isn't that nice? It doesn't look like Steve I know they're taking it.

[Jason Snell]

I know it's like some other hippie wandered in. Yeah.

[Andy Inako]

And it's like, definitely, Definitely. I'm glad that they showed him, like, not like, in the iPhone, iPad keynote version of him, but the guy who's absolutely just dropped acid.

[Jason Snell]

It does.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. He's in the apple orchard, actually. Probably at Reed. But it's not Steve's face. I don't know whose face it looks.

[Andy Inako]

Well, it's. To be. To be fair, it's really, really tiny. And it's like. And so it's not like.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not. It's not. Is it legal tender? Can you use it?

[Jason Snell]

It's. You can, but it's worth a dollar, and it'll cost you, what, $20 to buy.

[Andy Inako]

It probably shouldn't. Yeah, it's part. It's part of it. There's a. The US Mint is doing, like, a series of. Just like they did the US Presidents, just like they did, like, a whole bunch. A series of coins. Yes, they are legal tender, and maybe you will get some in change that people, like, happen to spend it. But mostly people, hey, give us. Pay us more than face value for this, and then don't actually reintroduce it.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't buy them in rolls of 25 and bags of 100. If you want to hand them out.

[Andy Inako]

I wonder. I wonder if. I wonder if w. Will add that to his repertory. In addition to the pads of $2 bills. It will be like, I saw an.

[Leo Laporte]

Article yesterday that cracked me up that said Steve Jobs prints his. I mean, Steve Wozniak prints his own money and hands it out. And they. They were in on the jokes was buys these uncut $2 bills from the US Mint. They're real legal tender. And then tries to trick people into thinking he printed it himself because he.

[Andy Inako]

He has the sheets perforated by, like, an actual. Put them in a pad, attach it to, like, a gummed pad. So he's actually like, tearing off, like, one of these bills, like, from a. From a perforated sheet. And then maybe, oh, it's $6. Here it is from the. Have the entire sheet from the pad.

[Jason Snell]

So, yeah, that was. But he's buying those. Those bills for $2 per bill. Right? Exactly. That's the difference.

[Andy Inako]

He realized that again, he did sell off his Apple stock, like, a number of years ago. He is not. He is not. He's no longer wealthy. Buy himself out of that level of trouble. So he's not printing his own money.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he's not but somebody fell for it. I saw an article today that said.

[Jason Snell]

There'S something about gentlemen of a certain age and the two dollar bill. There was a guy who was a friend of my grandmother's, who, it's a long story. I think he was in the, like in the mob in Philadelphia. But he had retired, he had survived and he was just in his retirement. This little old man who lived next to my mother, who. My grandmother, who was also retired, and I visited her in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. And we listened to like the Phillies games on the radio and talked about baseball. And he gave me a $2 crisp $2 bill that I still have. But that was his thing was like, kid, here's a two dollar bill. And you never even see a $2 bill. And you're like, Whoa, thanks, mister. So that's gentlemen of a certain age with the two dollar bills and the kid.

[Andy Inako]

What side of this do I tap on the, on the kiosk in order to pay for something?

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, you.

[Andy Inako]

But how do I get it back? You don't.

[Jason Snell]

I tried to put it in the soda machine and it wouldn't accept it. Well.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, this is a 14 year old interview from the Engadget show. Joshua Topolski is apparently fooled.

[Jason Snell]

Steve brought these pads. Kevin, can you, can you.

[Leo Laporte]

One of our interns is going to bring this out.

[Jason Snell]

Can you tell us a little bit about this pad?

[Andy Inako]

Steve, he gave me some sheets off of this pad.

[Leo Laporte]

This is right about when he gave us the sheets, right?

[Andy Inako]

Basically, yeah. Basically I got a printer in my hometown of Los Gatos, California to make these pads for me. And I got him the supplies from.

[Jason Snell]

A higher quality printer.

[Andy Inako]

And they're perforated so you can tear them off like green stamps. I don't know if it's the right president. The serial numbers are very suspicious.

[Leo Laporte]

But see, he's trying to trick him.

[Andy Inako]

Smell the ink. So don't touch it because it's a little wet. They meet the SPECs of the US government. So by law. Law. These are legal tenders.

[Leo Laporte]

Because they are. Yeah, I have, I have in my hands two of these that was assigned to my son, which I forgot to give him. But you see. Yeah, they're perforated. And he was. And they would come on a pad. It's hysterical. But this is real two dollar bills, you know.

[Andy Inako]

Anyway, salt tank is doing well, though. He doesn't need, he doesn't need the money.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm keeping them. You're right. The hell with that kid. He doesn't need my money anymore. He should be Giving me money. So anyway, thank you to Governor Newsom who recommended Steve Jobs for the coin. And I think that's really cool.

[Andy Inako]

Also, also compared to the others like, so the first four are Iowa, Wisconsin, California and Minnesota. Iowa is Dr. Norman Borlag who did something amazing with grain. Wisconsin chose the Cray 1 supercomputer. Good choice. And it's actually cool looking thing. Minnesota decided to honor Mobile Republic Refrigeration.

[Leo Laporte]

Which, hey, don't knock it. That's a huge deal.

[Andy Inako]

Yes, again, I, I, I enjoy having vegetables that we're not grown within 50 miles me. That's fine. It's just that it's not very inspiring.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like it's not much of a coin.

[Andy Inako]

Was there, was there a human being involved in basically put on.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's what the coin looks like. It's got a cute little truck on it with the words Minnesota.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, I mean I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to coin sh State. I'm sure it's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

No coin shaming.

[Andy Inako]

Also, also I acknowledge that anytime you want to, anytime a state is invited to create a commemorative coin or put a statue someplace, there are so many people from so many communities that deserve that honor. It might be part of the thinking process that no one deserves to be felt as though they're not heard and not represented. Let's create, let's choose something so that nobody feels left out. And I think that's a legitimate thing if you're trying to pick a subject for that. But nonetheless, again, it's just a side view of a truck. I drew that when I was in fifth grade.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, these are. So we don't know what's gonna get picked. These are all the candidates. And I like the one that's the steering wheel and it's by the way, leather wrapped. But I don't think that's gonna get selected. These are all candidates. This is according to somebody, the recommended designs. One of the two will be like chosen. The Secretary of the treasury gets to.

[Andy Inako]

Discuss American Innovation series Mobile Refrigeration.

[Jason Snell]

I'm surprised that they didn't coin something like 3M. Right? Like 3M is in Minneapolis. Is there not like some really great adhesive related innovation? Post it notes. Post it notes.

[Andy Inako]

You know, there is a good Minnesota connection because Mystery Science Theater 3000 did a riff on a 1950s shooting short about refrigerated trucks called the Truck Farm.

[Jason Snell]

Well, that's right. Why don't, why don't they put MST3K on the Minnesota coin.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a very good idea, by the way. This is the final design. The one that got picked was the one with the truck on the side and the Statue of Liberty is on the other side. But.

[Andy Inako]

Okay, but on the. On the mystery science theater 3000 innovative coin. Is it. Do you choose Mike or do you choose Joel?

[Jason Snell]

It's just a silhouette that we. You have to guess.

[Leo Laporte]

Servo, Obviously. Obviously.

[Andy Inako]

Silhouettes. Making fun of like the American eagle that's like the 1950. Making fun of the 1953 silver doll.

[Jason Snell]

It should be of the refrigerated truck. It should be. Somebody needs to get that coin and then do like a little sticker you can put on it that gets MSD3k to riff on the coin.

[Andy Inako]

This is a third party marketing opportunity.

[Jason Snell]

We got it, Andy, you and I, we figured it out. We ripped it out.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's Iowa's With Dr. Norman Borlaug, the inveterate of wheat. I guess one of the other commemorative coins. I think I have a whole bunch of them here. Let me see. This is. Oh, the Cray supercomputer from Wisconsin.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah, that one's really good. With the stylized overhead view of the supercomputer in the letter C of the Cray. Yeah, that was.

[Leo Laporte]

And then of course, from California, Steve Jobs. Doesn't look like Steve, but yeah, it's really tough.

[Jason Snell]

Tiny.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, I guess it is really tiny. It's a nice piece of art.

[Jason Snell]

Is interesting. Norman Borlak. I don't know, but that's like, you know. Yeah. Hey, we got a Luther Burbank coin or something, right? It's like. Well, he was really good with plants.

[Leo Laporte]

He did pioneering work developing resilient crops capable of feeding a growing global population.

[Jason Snell]

Good job, man. Good job. Innovation.

[Andy Inako]

Legitimately great stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

And you know, he probably never thought he'd have a coin so pretty, you.

[Andy Inako]

Know, you know the valve stem on a tire.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Andy Inako]

Guess. Guess what state innovated that. South Dakota. It's like. Yeah, but you know what? It's probably something. It's hard to translate into a really, really compelling, like intaglio base relief design for the obverse of a coin. That's all I'm saying.

[Leo Laporte]

There's probably no Apple connection. The Amazon web service out outage, which was a big deal. A lot of sites went down. Was it yesterday? I guess it was, yeah.

[Andy Inako]

Like Apple music went down. A couple of things. It just.

[Leo Laporte]

Did it go down. Okay, so there is an Apple connection.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah. And just. It's just a reminder to like, the.

[Leo Laporte]

Entire world that yeah, everything runs on Amazon.

[Andy Inako]

There are very few servers that run most of what you need on a day to day basis and that when one of them has a DNS failure and as the saying goes, it's always a DNS failure. Failure. Yeah. Guess what? You're going home at 2pm because there's no reason to stay in the office.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple tv, Apple Music and the App Store all suffered outages. I didn't notice it so I must have been when I wasn't awake or something. But still Jammer B says he noticed things were down. So. Yeah, okay, so it's good we talked about that. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we should now get prepared since it is already quarter after one. We've got security now coming up in just a few minutes for our picks of the week. Andy Inocco, Jason Snell. I'm Leo Laporte. Alex of course has the week off. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. One of the things I always like to do on these shows is to thank our club members for making everything we do here possible. Club Twit, which was a genius idea Lisa came up with during COVID now three or four years in represents a quarter of our revenue. It's keeping us on the air. We would have to come cut way back if it weren't for your helpful support. We try to reward you of course. We do a lot of interesting things in the club. This past week we had Stacy's Book Club which was a lot of fun. We're voting now on the next book if you are in the club. We also had the photo show with Chris Marco, which you do every month. Coming up Friday. It's something once in a lifetime. Micah Sargent, our dungeon master will guide Paul. Paul Thurat, Jonathan Bennett from the Untitled Linux Show. Paris Martineau from Intelligent Machines and Jacob Ward, all of whom I think have played D and D many times. And me who have. I have never played D and D. I have created a character, Sagbottom the Cheerful and I look forward to playing. We're going to the Harvest Festival, an autumn fair filled with games like laughter and after sundown, a few surprises. So that's going to be a lot of fun. I hope you'll join us. 2:00 o' clock Friday afternoon, 2:00pm Pacific, 5:00pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. Micah says it's going to last about three hours, so bring lunch. That's just one of many things we do because we can, frankly, because the club really makes it possible. We're very, very grateful for your Support. If you're not a member of the club though, I'd love to get you in it. It's easy enough. Go to Twit tv Club Twit. There's a two week free trial so you can see what it's like. You get ad free versions, by the way, of all the shows. So if the ads are grading on you, I understand. It's how if you don't join the club, it's how we have to support what we're doing here because it's expensive to do this. But if you do join the club, well, we don't need to show you any ads, so that's good. You get the special content. You also get access to the club Twit Discord, which is a wild and crazy place to hang out. It's so much fun and there's smart people. In fact, Darren OKE is saying it was Amazon east that went down. So because it was the middle of the night for me on the west Coast, I did not experience it. I guess Jammer B, you were up late. Anyway, join the club. We'd love to have you great people in there. Great to hang out. Oh, Paul said that. Sorry. That's right, Paul said that. Another great person in there. In fact, Paul and Darren are superb coders. And we will probably be doing the advent of code in December again. We did it in the club last year, it was so much fun. So maybe that's another thing we can do. Actually, Paul's trying to convince me to do Everybody Codes, which starts at the end of this month at Halloween. So maybe, maybe we'll have a little coding. We have our AI user group too. Every first Friday of the month. It's so much fun. Please, please join us in the club Twit TV Club Twit. We would love to have you. This episode brought to you by CleanMyMag. You know how not everything in life deserves eternal storage? Well, that goes for our files too. We all hang on to way too many things. Old downloads, duplicate photos, giant files, surprising projects we don't even remember anymore. And before you know it, your Mac and your cloud storage are stuffed. That's where CleanMyMac comes in. Specifically, the brand new cloud cleanup feature. This tool connects to your icloud, your Google Drive or your OneDrive and spots the space wasters you probably forgot you were carrying around. And here's the cool part. All the scanning happens right on your Mac, so your data stays private and secure. You can choose whether to remove files completely or just clear them out. Of your clip cloud storage to instantly free up space and if you change your mind, no problem, you can restore them. It's like hitting the reset button on your storage without losing control. And Cloud clamp is just one part of CleanMyMac. You also get tools like Smart Care, which keeps your Mac optimized in the background space Lens which actually maps your storage so you can see what's hogging space, and even an anti malware engine to make sure your Mac stays safe. Honestly, paying attention to your cloud storage isn't just good for your Mac, it's good for your your mental health and your wallet. No more paying extra for space you don't even need. So if your Mac or your brain feels cluttered, give it some love with Clean My Mac Get Tidy today. Try it free for 7 days and use my code MACBREAK20 for 20% off Morning Zoe.

[Jason Snell]

Got donuts? Jeff Bridges why are you still living above our garage?

[Andy Inako]

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T Mobile commercial like you.

[Jason Snell]

Teach me so Dana oh no, I'm not really prepared.

[Leo Laporte]

I couldn't possibly at t mobile get.

[Jason Snell]

The new iPhone 17 Pro on them.

[Andy Inako]

It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate Pro camera system. Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice.

[Jason Snell]

Jeffrey, you heard them.

[Andy Inako]

T Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

[Leo Laporte]

Us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for launch?

[Jason Snell]

Dude, my work here is done. The 24 month bill credits on Experience.

[Andy Inako]

Beyond for well qualified customers plus tax.

[Leo Laporte]

And $35 device connection charge credits ended balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs $1099.99 and.

[Jason Snell]

New line minimum $100 plus a month.

[Leo Laporte]

Plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oaklove Speed Test Intelligence data 1H 2025 visit t mobile.com now time for the picks of the week. I'm going to kick it off because I've got two little programs that I of Interesting. I don't usually do picks of the week, but this one was just fascinating to me. Craig Hockenberry made an Apple script that finds a bug. There's a bug in Electron which causes system wide slowdowns in Mac OS Tahoe and I'm going to load the Tahoe Electron detector which is free. It's a utility you can download From Craig. Uh oh, I think I just broke my computer. It's spinning.

[Jason Snell]

It's gonna spin for a while.

[Leo Laporte]

That's something else. I don't know what that is. Let me see what's going there. It is. It's spinned. Oh, look at that. So I have a lot of Electron apps on my MacBook here, most of which are vulnerable to the slowdown. They're bugged. I guess there's a patch for Electron which can be fixed. You can update your Electron only Bitwarden and Notion are currently up to date. But Discord, Slack, Raindrop Dot, New Netron, Cursor, Chat, D reor signal, anything LLM Jan, multi viewer for F1. That's the one I was talking about. Any type, Bellina, Etcher, Cluley and Joplin and Obsidian are all slowing down my Tahoe maybe.

[Jason Snell]

I think I read a follow up that said that it's possible like Discord is an example where they may have not been able to go to the. Because it's, it's based on what version of Electron? Because the Electron, you know, version that fixes this issue is out there, but not all the apps have used it yet. And I think I read somewhere that it's possible that Discord has patched, like done a partial patch. It's, there's a, there's a complexity level here. But you know, you don't necessarily have to import the whole of Electron to address this one one issue. And, and so yeah, but it's good to know, right, that you may have some Electron apps that you should either ask the developer if they're aware of the issue or do an update yourself if there's a, an update to be downloaded or, or whatever. Because there's a, you know, there's a problem, there's a bug in a framework that's very common that causes a slowdown. It's not great.

[Leo Laporte]

It's at. Craig, it's worth taking a look at and what I really like is it highlights how much of what we use to today is written in Electron, which is a version of Chrome Chromium. It actually puts a full browser into each app. So it's a complete waste of space and it can slow down your machine, but it is cross platform. And so a lot of companies that want to design like Notion, that want to design a tool that runs on Mac and Windows and Linux will use Electron to do so. So it's kind of just a educational tool. Thank you Craig for writing this. And actually he, he's basing it on something that Thomas Kafka wrote originally. So furbo.org is Craig Hockenberger's blog, Hockenberry's blog Furbo F u r b o.org the other thing I wanted to talk about is I haven't tried this, but I'm very interested in it. It's got a terrible name. Notepad Exe. Yes, it runs in the Mac. It is a if you don't want to use Apple's Xcode but you still want to write Swift, this might be an interesting thing to look at. It is a lightweight editor for Swift or Python. You can actually run your Python, your Swift apps, SwiftUI apps in it. They even have built in a iOS emulator and all of it much lighter than ever Xcode. So I think this might be something worth taking a look at. It also supports Python scripts. So I think this is kind of a cool little editor. It can be used for free. There is a $25 a year subscription option and there's also a lifetime license of 100 bucks. A native for the Mac, Swift and Python editor named Notepad Exe just to mess with your brain.

[Andy Inako]

Isn't that hysterical that they made a nod towards tradition?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, but it looks really cool. I haven't played with it yet, but I think it might be worth taking a look at anyway. Andy Inocco Pick of the Week I've.

[Andy Inako]

Been sort of taking a look at grammar checkers after reinstalling Grammarly for the first time in years to see how that works out and being so horrified by the experience. And it's like, I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure there are people who use Grammarly who maybe know how to use it better than I do, but I installed it and then suddenly it's like I couldn't type. Okay, the th and suddenly Grammarly is exploding all over my screen, trying to autocomplete things and saying, oh, you shouldn't start things with a definite article. Actually, do you want to if you want us to change those first two letters into a first, like shut up, I've forgotten the sentence I was about to write. I can't uninstall you fast enough. And so I've been looking at alternatives and I found a grammar checker called Harper.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I use Harper. I love Harper.

[Andy Inako]

It is open source. It's basically supported by the development is supported by. It's one guy and the development supported by Automattic, the folks who make WordPress. It's entirely hosted and run on device like on your monitor, MacBook and it seem it's a much calmer version of Grammarly.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't do nearly as much as Grammarly does, obviously.

[Andy Inako]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

That's for some, that's exactly what you want.

[Andy Inako]

What I'm looking for is a reminder that, oh well, you type the word the twice like.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's right.

[Andy Inako]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

I use this in Obsidian because they have an Obsidian plugin that runs in Obsidian and I love it.

[Andy Inako]

It's not available everywhere. Again, another advantage of Grammarly is that any place where you can face a blinking cursor, it will actually. You can actually use it. This one, it's I guess not as ambitious as that, but there's a Firefox plugin, there's a Chrome plugin, so anything that you're doing editing like Google Docs or anything that's on there, as you said, there's an Obsidian plugin, there are plugins for a couple other things. You can also access it via the command line so that if you want to try it via write automations that do grammar checking, it's a good solution. I mean the two biggest selling points is that it's free from free, free comma free. And also it runs completely on device so you don't have to worry about am I wise to allow this third party code to observe literally everything that I'm writing in every app that I'm using to write with. And it's worth a try. You go writewith harper.com as the sentence goes and it's worth checking out. There's also of course a demo area you can type in. I have the plugin working in Chrome and I've been using it and I've been enjoying it a lot. I'm not sure if it's the perfect solution for what I'm looking for. I really wish that they'd make a Ulysses plugin, even though Ulysses, I think the Ulysses does do grammar checks, but it's not working the way that I would like it to work. But again, definitely worth checking out for the price and also very, very flexible and very, very privacy focused and it.

[Leo Laporte]

Does spell checking as well. So that's.

[Andy Inako]

Yeah. And again, I'm not looking for someone to say oh, here's a way to tighten that up or oh well that's kind of formal. Or attack me for using the word hey folks like, oh, that's kind of like informal, don't you think? Again, I want my brain is a little bit neurospicy. Sometimes I will type a word twice or sometimes I will end a Sentence, three words before it actually is supposed to end. That's all I want you to do. I use Gemini as a grammar checker as well, and my prompts and the Gemini gem they have basically says that you are not to edit based on style. You're not edit based on rewriting. You're just simply here to copy, edit, and check for grammatical errors, spelling errors and flow and basic style like that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And they have a list of some of the basics that they fix, which is, I think, really cool. Never say more unique again. You know, there's just certain things you should really not do and this will. And you can add to them, which is nice. And you can turn them off, too, which is also.

[Andy Inako]

Literally has an actual dictionary definition that we would like you to observe from moving forward.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Oh, I love it. Yes. I'm a big fan of Harper, actually. It's really great. Mr. Jason Snell, yourself, your pick of the week.

[Jason Snell]

Yeah. I have the same outdoor string light, LED string lights that literally everybody has in their home or at. And every restaurant has outside and everything. You know, little, you know, string lights that you put up.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you wrap them around your trees in the backyard?

[Jason Snell]

It is. It passes through the branches of my tree and then goes back to my house again and it lights up my backyard. And I. So I had a home kit thing that sort of worked and it died last week that let me control it and time it and it had a dimmer, you know, support and all that. And so I bought a new one and it's better. So I'm going to recommend it. It is from Tapo. It is the Smart WI Fi Outdoor Plug. It is rated for outdoors. It supports dimmers. It is a matter device, so it was very easy to link it in. And it works with all of my. My stuff, $23. And especially, I would say if you do not have something like this for your string lights, I really recommend it because here's what we used to have the string lights. And when you turn them on when you went out, like for the evening or something like that, and hung out in the backyard. But what I found that I really like is we watch TV in a room with two big French doors right next to our patio. And it was always just like a black voice out there. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's not good. You don't want that darkness outside, especially when you're watching horror movies.

[Jason Snell]

It eats into your soul. So. And my house is very small, so now I have the string lights come on fairly dim at sunset. It's reassuring and stay until like 11:30. And it means my house feels bigger because when we're sitting in the living room, we can see our patio. It's visible. It also is good for when we let the dog out. And you can then buy, if you want, want to, a little HomeKit remote switch. And I've got one stuck to the wall that lets me turn it on and off from a physical switch as well. A little. It's like a little remote control, but it feels like a light switch. I'm using the Philips hue one, but there are lots of those too. But just the automation really wins the day. And that it's dimmable means that I can put it on like not at full blast because I don't want that. But I do want it on at like 25% in the evening when we're, you know, eating dinner and watching TV and stuff like that. So this is not only the Tapo one, which seems to work great and is outdoor rated and uses matter, but also just the concept there. These things are out there in so many places and they're all dimmable and they're all automatable. And all you need to do is spend 23 bucks and add it to your, your home kit, network or whatever, and it will make things nicer. I think it's just kind of nice to have. I have a bunch of things now. My number one use of my smart home, honestly, is some lights come on when it gets dark like that. Like it's in the dead of winter. It's really nice for me to leave my office and walk into my living room and the lights are on. Because at sunset or like 30 minutes before sunset, it puts my living room lights on like 25, 30%, not 100%, but like, it means I'm not stepping into a, a black, black house, right? Like, there's nothing there. It's a void. It's nice to have. It makes everything feel a little warmer. And having that outside is a really nice treat too. So there you go.

[Andy Inako]

Tapo.

[Jason Snell]

Yep. Smart outdoor plug in dimmer. Yeah, I got on Amazon. 23 bucks.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, very nice. Good recommendation.

[Jason Snell]

I guess. 30 is the standard price, but it's currently on sale. Your mileage may vary, but I think it has added far more than $30 of enjoyment to my house.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Jason Snell. Your6colors.com is worth every penny I pay for it, which is nothing.

[Jason Snell]

But if people can become a member and then you get a podcast, which is really fun, that Dan Moran and I do every week, that People really like. But yes, we give away many things for free, including all of those M5 stories where you can read about the many, many M5s, Star Trek and otherwise on six scholars.com this week. And of course next week we'll have colorful charts because next week is Apple's financials.

[Andy Inako]

Yay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that before they come out. And then after.

[Jason Snell]

And then after. It's beautiful. It's content for two weeks.

[Andy Inako]

Two weeks. Maybe it'll be a $4 trillion company by then. They almost did it on a Monday.

[Leo Laporte]

They're so close. So close. And of course, Jason has many [e-mail] upgrade.

[Jason Snell]

Well, slash Jason. But you're thinking of Upgrade.

[Leo Laporte]

I was thinking of your upgrade.

[Jason Snell]

Relay FM upgrade. Yeah, we did my curl. Charlie and I did an episode. Time to the embargo. So it's just a whole conversation about the stuff over there this week.

[Andy Inako]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Very good. And I maybe should subscribe to Six Colors since I do really spend.

[Jason Snell]

I can hook you up.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no, no. I don't want it for free.

[Jason Snell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

I like to support journalists.

[Jason Snell]

Independent media.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, independent media. So important now.

[Andy Inako]

Flashing that. Flashing that big wallet.

[Jason Snell]

A two dollar bill. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Not one, but two $2 bills. I could buy one Steve Jobs coin.

[Andy Inako]

I just. I just. I just wish. Do you have a $2 bill that has a less problematic president on it? He's.

[Leo Laporte]

Who is that Jefferson?

[Andy Inako]

Yeah, Jefferson.

[Leo Laporte]

Was. Was he problematic? He was a slave owner. Yes. And he was. He had a relationship with Sally Hemings. That's right. I forgot. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I guess I. I'll give this back to Steve and see if he has any Ben Franklins. That would be better. Was Ben. Ben was. Okay, right.

[Andy Inako]

Bit of a horn dog.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, who is it these days?

[Andy Inako]

He wasn't an abolitionist.

[Leo Laporte]

However, at least he was an abolitionist. That's right. That's Andy Inocco, ladies and gentlemen. Someday, any day soon.

[Andy Inako]

It's. There's a. There's a. It's close enough that I'm pretty much concerned. Consumed by tension and anxiety. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, yes.

[Andy Inako]

Very, very soon.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Actually, come to think of it, there isn't a US Currency I could really use. Except for Franklin's. The Benjamins. I'm going to stick with. You know what, the one Lincoln's. Okay. You could. Is he on the five? He's on the five, right?

[Andy Inako]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so fives or hundreds, that's it. Is it Andrew Jackson on the 50s, something like that?

[Andy Inako]

No, he's on the. He's on the 2020 grant, he fought on the right side.

[Leo Laporte]

U.S. grant. He's kind of okay. He wasn't a great president. I don't know. It's tough, you know, it's tough picking the right president. Yeah, you've picked the right podcast. That's the thing that matters. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC. I do hope you will join us either live if you want to watch live in the Club Twit Discord if you're a member or on YouTube. Twitch, not TikTok. We took it off TikTok x.com, only because it was too complicated for us. No reflection on TikTok X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik.com so we're still on six public platforms. If you want to watch live after the fact though, you get audio or video of the show at our website, Twit TV MBW. There is a YouTube channel dedicated to MacBreak weekly which is great for sharing little clips with friends and family. Family do that helps us spread the word. We appreciate it. Unlike some companies, we like it when you show us in your podcast and you can of course subscribe in your favorite podcast player and that way you get it automatically. Do leave us a five star review if you can. We love the support. Thanks to our Club Twit members for making this possible. Thank you Andy and Akko. Thank you, Jason Snell. Maybe Alex will be back next week. Depends if he's done. I think he's working on the ballroom is what he's doing. I don't know. We don't know what he's doing. But he does.

[Andy Inako]

He, he, he is. He has licensed for heavy, for heavy equipment.

[Leo Laporte]

He's been removing the the east wall.

[Andy Inako]

He got a lot of experience for working on the golf course with his family operating a bucket loader.

[Leo Laporte]

So maybe, maybe we don't know because.

[Andy Inako]

He'S a little extra scratch on the.

[Leo Laporte]

We should make up a lot of things that Alex could be doing when he's not here, I think.

[Andy Inako]

Because. Because 7 out of 13 of them would probably be be likely true.

[Leo Laporte]

Likely true, Exactly. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll see you next time. But now it is, I'm sad to say, my solemn and important duty to tell you.

[Jason Snell]

Get back to work.

[Leo Laporte]

Break time is over. See you next time.