MBW 1035: Riding Nerdy - Apple's Own Lease-to-Own Program - MacBreak Weekly (Audio)

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[00:00]
A
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Christina and Jason are all here. The gang is together. We're gonna. We got lots to talk about. A huge dump of new Macs coming. It is not the right word dump, is it? Coming at the end of the year, according to Mark Gurman. Plus a bunch of new home stuff including Apple TVs and HomePods. We'll talk about that. The new Apple lease to own deal they just announced, should you take advantage of it? What are the pros and cons and public beta 2 from iOS27 and why you absolutely must upgrade your Mac? All of that coming up right now on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly, episode 1035, recorded Tuesday, July 28, 2026. Riding nerdy. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Let's say hello to our dear friends, Christina Warren from GitHub. Hello, Christina.
[01:10]
B
Hello, Leo.
[01:11]
A
We were comparing makeup tips earlier.
[01:13]
B
We were. We were.
[01:14]
A
As one does.
[01:15]
B
As one does. You wear a darker shade than me, but that's, that's to be expected.
[01:20]
A
And they used to call it on the tech TV set, White Boy 40, but maybe, maybe I'm not quite as pale as you as thou.
[01:29]
B
Funny story, msnbc. They used to keep a certain shade of makeup for me and for Anna Marie and for me and Anna Marie Cox because we were both so pale that they like. And we were on frequently enough that they like, kept that. And that's what the makeup artist said. They're like, yeah, you know, we only use this for you and Anna Marie Cox.
[01:44]
A
I was like, wow, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's a good, good company.
[01:48]
B
Yeah.
[01:48]
A
Andy in Akko joining us makeup free in the library. Well, I shouldn't say that. You actually have a very lovely complexion.
[01:55]
C
Thank you. It comes from basically being an indoor kid.
[01:59]
A
Oh, you don't have a night ritual or variety of creams?
[02:03]
C
Yeah, my night ritual is to stay up until 3am doing things that I shouldn't be doing.
[02:07]
A
That feeling good to see you, Andy. And also from 6colors.com, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the lovely Jason Snell.
[02:16]
D
Hello, Jason. Hello, Leo. Yeah, warming up my color toner cartridge because we'll get some Apple results later this week. So that'll be exciting.
[02:25]
A
This is the. Wait a minute. This is the. I can never remember what their fiscal quarter is.
[02:31]
D
This is. Well, it's going to be retrospective to the calendar second quarter. So it's their fiscal Third quarter, you can't either.
[02:39]
A
Okay, good. I don't feel so bad now.
[02:41]
D
Yeah.
[02:41]
A
Wow. Even the guy who does the color charts.
[02:44]
D
You know I have computers for that part of my job, Leo. I don't have computers. I don't need to deal with it. It doesn't matter what. Why are we even. It's. Yeah. Fiscal second quarter. No, third quarter, third quarter, third quarter. That's it. Calendar, second quarter, fiscal third quarter basically for this last three months. So. So April, May, June, gonna be interesting. Gonna find out what they say about their price increases and about the forecast for where they think this is going to go in terms of the RAM limitations in the gpu, you know, chip limitations and all of that. And we'll get all that, that's Thursday afternoo specific time that they'll roll that out. And I'm sure we'll have a bunch of charts to talk about next week because that's what happens.
[03:32]
A
I can tell you the one thing that will be asked about is this new lease plan that Apple announced or did they announce it or is it the Bloomberg.
[03:45]
C
Bloomberg had it last week. Apple. No, Apple had a press release this morning.
[03:50]
A
Okay, so it's official, it's real, it's official. So they had this before, but this is a new plan. They dropped the old plan. Klarna will be doing the financial back stopping. I don't think that matters to anybody. Right. Is Klarna, is it a buy now, pay later service?
[04:10]
B
Yeah, I mean it's a loan shark, but they don't want to use those words.
[04:15]
A
That's another way to put it. Their stock jumped. So obviously the market thought ooh, this is good. I feel like Apple is saying this because they know the new stuff's gonna cost more and you're gonna not gonna be able to own it. It's gonna be like when I was a kid getting out of college without a good job, I had to rent to own my furniture.
[04:37]
C
Yeah, and that's the problem. I mean Apple does not want to get that kind of reputation as with when they released the Apple card. Like the biggest worry that I had was going to be okay. As soon as there are lots and lots of people, conflict resolutions are not being handled very very well and or someone is locked into a financial agreement that they didn't understand. And that seems to be again like spending, going to Renaissance, going to a rent to own store and spending six thousand dollars for a twelve hundred dollar gaming PC by the time you get out of the contract that would be super, super Bad. But you can also see how Apple, again, because of the Apple Card experience these financial agreements. They have so many different regulations across the country and across the world to deal with. I'm not surprised that if they wanted to do this, they would say, you know what, you guys handle it all. We are not in the business of trying to figure out how to be compliant everywhere that we are in operation.
[05:39]
A
Yeah. By the way, for those of you who are listening and I apologize, the audio I know is not perfect today and I'm not sure why. We've tried everything in our handbag to fix this Zoom's fault. We think it's a Zoom server. So I do apologize and I hope it will get better as time.
[05:59]
C
Do not adjust your routers.
[06:05]
A
Yes, Christina.
[06:06]
B
No, I was just going to say, I will say from having looked at this program a little bit, there are certainly concerns that I have with any of these buy now, pay later types of programs. Although to Andy's point, I do understand why Apple in most cases has chosen to partner with someone else. They use Citizens Bank, I think for the current iPhone upgrade program.
[06:25]
A
I thought they had abandoned that. That's. That's still around.
[06:27]
B
Well, no, that is ending. But that's, that's who they used historically with Citizens Bank. They used in, back in the day they used to use Barclays.
[06:34]
A
You could do, somebody has to do that.
[06:36]
B
Yeah, you could do, you could do financing with the Apple Card which is switching from Goldman Sachs. I think it's becoming Chase. If that's, if that's correct, this case, it's Klarna is who's handling this. And I will say looking at the details and I'm sure that I'm probably missing some of the finer points, but it doesn't look terrible in the sense that as long as you like, they basically give you a certain period of time, either two or a three year period of time to make payments on the product. You get a better deal if you do it over three years than over two, for example. And if you are to at the end of that period of time, you've actually paid less than what the phone costs and you can upgrade to a newer device. But if you did want to keep your existing device, you just have to pay the difference between your payments and whatever the retail price on the phone was. So they. It is a lease program, but there is an option to buy and it does not look like they are, you know, charging you more. Now, unlike the prior program which included AppleCare bundled into it, AppleCare is not included Here. And if anybody, I will say, wants to take part in one of these, you know, this new upgrade program, you
[07:45]
A
should get an Apple Care you have.
[07:47]
B
I'm going to go as far as to say you have to because they will inspect your phone when you turn it back in. Klarna will, it won't be like necessarily an Apple thing and they will determine its, you know, quality and anything else. And so if there's a scratch, if it's lost, if it's stolen, anything like that, that's a claim you have to make separately. And I know from, from other companies who've done this sort of thing, they can be real sticklers. If the phone isn't pristine, they'll say, oh no, well, you haven't fulfilled our contract. Even though it's been three years. The fact that you have like a scratch on the back of it means that we're now not going to let you either upgrade or you're going to have to pay something else. So I would say that AppleCare is even more important if you're going to do a lease scenario than if you were to buy it outright just because you will be responsible. Like for instance, if your phone is stolen, you would have to file a claim on that and then fulfill still, you know, your payments with, with, with the loan.
[08:44]
C
That's a particularly good point because this, this is, this is a good quote unquote deal for people who are in financial situations where they will not get $800 together at any one point to spend to buy a new phone. However they can find $18 a month to find in their budget. But if, if the lease period ends and suddenly Klarna is saying, okay, well, you owe US$430 for damage to this phone. That's going to be okay. Who do we eat this month? Do we pay our rent this month? Or do we satisfy Apple slash Klarna with these, these.
[09:17]
A
That's why you call them a loan shark, Christina.
[09:19]
B
Right.
[09:19]
A
Well, I kind of predatory.
[09:21]
B
Well, I call them that because, and look, I think Klarna is different than a firm. A firm is probably. And look, this is all my opinion. So if anybody's going to come after anybody, you know, this, this is my opinion. I think that these systems are, tend to be predatory and Klarna is a, is a Swedish company, I think. And so they, I know maybe operate slightly differently in other. But in the United States, you know, they can give you really good terms on, on a program and then, you know, like raise the rates. But there are all kinds of catches here. Like if you miss a certain number of payments then the entire thing becomes due or the contract is, is over. So this is just one of those things you want to be careful about. This particular way this is working. I'm not necessarily sure I would call it loan shark like, but I would still say be very careful before you go into this because even if you, if it's not a financial decision like you might actually look at and say, I could afford to buy this outright, but I'll take an interest free loan. This is not the same thing as, you know, putting it on a credit card where you're not being charged interest. This is a different sort of situation and you just need to be aware of that. I think before going into it.
[10:26]
A
Who should do this? Jason?
[10:28]
D
You know, I think Andy, Christina both said this is for, this is for people who for whatever reason would rather stretch out their payments over time rather than making that initial large purchase. And there can be lots of reasons for that, you know, especially if the terms are essentially that you're not really paying interest and the monthly payment looks good and you know that after 12 months or 24 months, you're going to hand the phone back in. Like you just got to do the math. And the iPhone upgrade program did this, a version of this. It's different, but it's similar. And the Apple Care, I agree with Christina. The Apple care is optional now. But all that really means is you also need to buy AppleCare on top of it to do that.
[11:13]
A
Consider that.
[11:13]
D
But it can, it can. You know, I know a lot of people, including people who do have money in the bank who are like, I would rather have a tithe to Apple for my iPhone every month, that is normal, that then do it this way. Now you could. Or then buy it outright. The thing is, you could also, and I would advise anybody who's thinking about doing this, consult your carrier because your carrier will also be happy to do some sort of a deal where they add it onto your monthly bill in a way. And they have deals and they have marketing too. So there are other ways of doing this. I think the most interesting thing about this is that Apple is, is. Is going to wind down the iPhone upgrade program eventually and there are no new entrants in that. Now you can, I think you can stay there for some amount of time if you're already a member. But, but what they did is this is not an iPhone upgrade program. This is an upgrade program for all their products. So you know, now if you wanted to buy a Mac and take it out 24 months or 36 months, you could do that too. And you know, bottom line, I think it comes down to what you feel financially comfortable with doing with your money. I've always been a pay up front kind of person, but I've also had the luxury to have the money in the bank to pay up front. And if you don't, or if budget wise, you'd really rather spread that out and you look at something that's essentially a zero interest loan as a way to do that with no cost to you, then I think there's value here. Also, this being a lease, it does mean the big change, and this was true with the iPhone upgrade program too, is at the end of your contract, unless you buy it out, you give it back. So you don't, you know, if people are used to the other way, you could do this, which is you buy it outright once and then when you're ready to get a new one, you sell that one and buy a new one. And so the entry price is a lot lower. That's not the case when you're on one of these plans, you've got to give it back and then start again.
[13:09]
B
Yeah, I've actually been on the iPhone upgrade program for a while now and I used to kind of be like Jason actually for many years I was. I would just buy it outright and then sell it after a year, trade it and usually get 50% of my value and then just buy the new one. And I did that for a long time and I actually moved to the upgrade program because I was like, well, it's one less step. And, and this is a way to get the phone unlocked as well. And I don't have to be part of a carrier or anything. I don't know what I'm going to do in this case. When the current upgrade program ends, I think after 12 months, I think that I will have an option to either convert it to the new program and trade it in for something else or pay off the loan. And in this case, because it'll be for my iPhone 17 Pro Max, I might just pay it off because I, I'm probably. My mind right now so far is that it would probably be keeping that phone and then potentially getting whatever the foldable is. But it'll be interesting to see how that works. But yeah, as Jason points out, that's the thing to keep in mind is that unless you choose to pay off the terms at the end, the idea is that you're trading this in now. The incentive that they're giving you for this, at least on the phones. I haven't worked out the math on the laptops yet is that if you were to do the math and either do it over 36 months or over 24 months, or I guess even over 12 months, you could potentially be paying less than what it would have cost to buy the phone outright. And then you just have in perpetuity a monthly fee to continue to get the latest phone. So I think if you do the math in one of the cases, I think over a two year period or something like you're saving quote, unquote, $250 if you were to pay monthly. But at the end of that two year period, you have to get the new phone or you have to pay that, that $250, you know, that's outstanding to, to keep the, the phone that you've already been paying towards. So you're, you're not. If you're somebody who upgrades every year or upgrades on a cycle, you know, every other year or something, this might be worth looking into. But I think you'll just have to take those considerations. This might actually be a thing that I do. I was thinking about this before the show. I'm sure a million people will do this, but I might just like use an LLM and try to whip up some sort of calculator about how this works and then just like, you know, put it on like, you know, a static website or something just, just so people can easily see, okay, is this worth it or not? Because that's going to be like the, the number crunching people are going to have to do for themselves.
[15:35]
C
Yeah, there are a lot of variables here and like I said, I think this is going to mostly appeal to people who are in certain financial situation. Being able to make that money up, pay that money up front, or to get a contract with a carrier is also not going to be easy. And one of the things that I think that people will want to think of when they're in that situation is that there's already been spot hooks that are in iOS. Basically the ability to remotely disable a phone that's under such a contract that's kind of similar to that. And I would hate to think of somebody who was basically the best option for them was to go on this sort of lease program. But then because they have job instability, they're going through a period of job instability, they miss enough payments that suddenly they don't have a working phone anymore at a time when they desperately need A working phone. So a lot of variables to navigate including the idea of how much, how important it is that I have a working phone month to month to month. And if you feel as though that is a non acceptable risk, it might be time to look at a Motorola that costs about 200, $250 that will run pretty much all the apps that you are going to rely on.
[16:45]
A
Andrew, what are you.
[16:47]
C
I'm just, I'm just putting it on, I'm putting it on the table. It's a buffet of options. If you don't like the cauliflower succotash, you don't have to have cauliflower succotash. Some people like it.
[17:00]
A
So it seems to me that Christina, it's interesting that you did do this upgrade program. You couldn't afford to buy it outright.
[17:09]
B
Oh absolutely.
[17:09]
A
I think we can agree it's absolutely better than putting it on a credit card which has a lot of interest or even the carrier plans which have seems a lot of hooks. So you didn't have to do it but you wanted to do it because why?
[17:25]
B
Well because I traded it in every year anyway. Literally I didn't keep the phone around for an extra year. Like I had no reason to keep around like an old, you know, occasionally like maybe every three years like for a certain period of time. I actually what I used to do is that after a year I would give my, my husband my hand me down. The carrier deals which you point out do have like a lot of, you know, hooks sometimes can be pretty good. I think one year they gave us, I don't know like seven or eight hundred dollars for what was at the time, I think like a four or five year old phone towards the new one. Now how they get you on that is they only give you the credits over a 36 month period of time. But we were not going to switch carriers and so that made more sense. And so when I kind of decoupled my personal upgrade cycle away from what my husband was using, it was just like okay, well if I trade this in every year anyway and I get about 50% back based on like what Apple's trade in numbers are, why not just go ahead and just make this one monthly transaction. And so that, that's why I chose to do that. Although there were times occasionally where I would just buy it outright. Like my iPhone 17 for instance which is like the non pro which I use as a work device. I just paid cash for that. And so I, and because I didn't get that tied to a carrier. I couldn't even finance that on my apple card for 0% interest, which I like to do. So in that case, I literally just paid them, you know, $800 or whatever it was. So it just, it depends on the person. If you know that every single year or. Or every two years, without fail, you're going to be trading your phone in and getting the latest iPhone.
[18:56]
A
That's true from probably for all of us except Andy.
[18:59]
B
Right. I was going to say. So if that's the case, you should look at it and go, okay, does this make sense to me? The only thing you should consider is, do I potentially want to finance this in a different way and maybe I could get a better trade in elsewhere or whatever. Or to Jason's point, check out the carrier deals and say, because a lot of them have their own upgrade programs, too, that offer a bigger thing, they
[19:20]
A
have an incentive, which is to get you into their fold and think about.
[19:23]
D
Really. So none of us likes to be held, captured captive, certainly by a carrier. Think about reality. How long have you been with your carrier? And are you likely to go somewhere else? Because I've. I've been with my carrier for like 20 years now. I can. If they want to lock me in, go ahead. What's it going to. What's it going to do? Right? Like, it's not going to happen two more years.
[19:45]
A
No.
[19:45]
D
And they make those. They make those deals with the idea that there are some people that they can get to churn and some people who might churn that they can get to stay. But for me, I'm kind of in. So if my carrier deal looks pretty good, and one of the, you know, one of the limitations is that you got to stay with them for 12 months or 24 months. Oh, no, don't throw me in the briar patch. I'll do it, and that'll be fine. So. So it's just worth. It's worth thinking realistically about. Yeah. The carrier wants to kind of keep you under their thumb, but if you're under their thumb anyway, get something out of it.
[20:14]
A
It's ironic that you might have to use an AI to figure out what's
[20:18]
C
the best carrier, especially.
[20:19]
D
Yeah, yeah.
[20:20]
C
Oh, no.
[20:20]
B
I mean, it is.
[20:21]
A
Read the fine print for me.
[20:23]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, kind of, right? I mean. Yeah. Because. Yeah, it's so hard to figure those things out that I figured might be at least a good calculator. At least figure out, because. Yeah, with the carrier things. That's a great point, Jason. Like, again, With Verizon who I've been with I think for 16 years at this point we, I did the math and because my husband was on an older phone that I paid cash for, I paid outright for and he liked it. He, he didn't upgrade not because he didn't have options but because he didn't want to. They were willing to give us so much more the carrier trade in then Apple was like three times more. And so at that point I'm going okay, well I'm not switching anyway. I know I paid too much for cell phone service but I'm not going to go through the hassle of switching. So if you're going to give me eight or nine hundred dollars for him to get a new phone, thank you.
[21:09]
A
So to enumerate your options and you could just feed this to your AI. The nice thing about the Apple plan is you're not paying interest, right? Just basically you're paying for depreciation and that at the end you'll have a balloon. Either a balloon payment or you have a new phone. The thing to consider is that it's going to be probably klarna that decides whether your phone is coming back in pristine shape or not. So if you're the kind of person who always takes good care of your phone, has never had to repair it, keeps it in a case and buys Apple care which you got to add in at the bottom There is another cost. This might make sense for you but you should investigate what the trade in value is going to be because if you get a great trade in value from your carrier it might make more sense to buy it outright and trade it in. And then so I could see why you want.
[22:03]
B
I was going to say I was trying to look at this, it's so complicated but the other thing I would say too is that's for the phone. The fact what's new about this and what has not been offered before to my knowledge I think there have been some, some third parties who've tried to do similar things. Is that you can use this on an iPad or a Mac or an Apple Watch.
[22:18]
A
Well that's, that does complicated. Now you don't have a carrier anymore.
[22:21]
B
Now, now you don't have a carrier. And so at that point it now those it's a three year lease period for the computer. I think it's two years on the watch and I think it's three years on the iPad and that seems about right to me in terms of upgrade cycles. I will note again I didn't have a chance to look at this intensive. But my cursory knowledge, it does not look like you get any benefit if you were to pay it off early. So it's not one of those things where you're like, oh, I want to maybe upgrade early, I can do that. They might have an option, but I think you have to pay a fee for that. So that's that. So that's the thing you kind of have to think about too, which is
[22:55]
A
you have carrier lock and you have hardware lock.
[22:57]
B
You have hardware lock in which I think for most people, I think three years on a laptop is fine. I cannot think of many scenarios and they're not offering this on the neo, they're offering this on the air and the Product Pro. I think that in a scenario like that, like that's, that's probably fine. In fact, there might be some people who at the end of that three year term are like, I don't want to continue paying whatever this monthly fee is. And then they, they will be faced with the decision about, you know, the balloon payment and do I want to pay this potentially, you know, $500 or whatever it might be to finish off the loan. But I think that that's what's more interesting about this is that especially the timing of all of this happening as prices are going up. It's one thing a phone, you might be able to get a deal through your carrier. On an iPad, they can usually offer deals on that too, even on Apple watches. But Macs, that has not been the scenario. And so if you're somebody who it's going to be very difficult for you to come up with $2500 or something for a MacBook Pro or even $1800 or $1500, you know, for a MacBook Air that has the specs that you want, this might be the sort of situation which might be better. Again, I would still say like depending on the price of your device. Look at if you have credit cards that have zero percent interest for 12 months or whatever, that, that might be better for you. But it's going to depend on everybody's financial situation. But I do have to say I would have to do the calculations myself. But I tend to be on probably a two or three year upgrade cycle. And if I had had the option to do something like this when I bought my MacBook Pro, my M3 Max, now like two and a half years ago, I might have made the decision to do something like this just because again, I would be okay with paying whatever the price would be per month. As long as I know that every three years I'm going to be getting like the highest end, latest, greatest laptop.
[24:59]
A
So yeah, this is, it's, what's clear is I think to me is Apple is signaling, yeah, this next, next round of stuff is going to be super expensive. And we know and so we want to take out a pain point for you, especially if you're going to get a folding phone. And I would just underscore not. I was making fun of you Andy, but really Andy's point is well taken. If, if you're an Apple enthusiast and you're in the Apple ecosystem, you're buying the high price spread and you don't have to buy the high price spread. I mean there is an option to you for you and they're perfectly good phones out there that are not in the Apple ecosystem.
[25:38]
C
Yeah, I think that this could be a response to knowing that they're going to be raising prices. I suspect that it's more because they know who's buying their hardware and they know who isn't buying their hardware. And when they find a group of people that isn't buying, they have to ask themselves why aren't they buying our hardware and how can we remove those stumbling blocks to get them over to our side. So I do think that part of this is to make sure that we have to make sure. I think this has been planning of this type has been in the works for a while now. I think that it was just a better argument after the chip crisis that this is something that is important as opposed to desired. There is, I think Counterpoint Research had a report a couple of weeks ago on people switching to iPhone from Android and it wasn't basically asking the question what phones are they buying when they switch from Android to iPhone and wasn't anything revelatory, but they did find that Android switchers don't necessarily care about getting the 17 Pro Max, getting the most expensive ones. They're buying a lot of iPhone 16 but a lot of the less expensive ones. Which goes to show that there are a lot of people that are very price sensitive about what phones they use. And that might have to do with their financial circumstances or it just might have to do with the reasons why some people will never, ever, ever spend more than $40,000 on a car. Because to them, more than $40,000 on A car is just a colossal waste of money and they'll be very, very happy with something less expensive. So they're covering, they're basically making sure that if there's somebody with money in their hands to buy a phone. Make sure that you make the. You make sure that it's a downhill process to get into an Apple store and walk out with a phone and get at that money.
[27:26]
A
Yeah. Or as Joken Bookken says in our YouTube chat, if you're scraping to get a folding phone, you might want to reconsider your life.
[27:35]
B
Absolutely.
[27:36]
A
The Galaxy Fold that they announced, the brand new one is pretty close to 2000 bucks. The cheapest you can get it is $1900. This is the one that's kind of looks a little bit like what we think the iPhone will look like. I think the folding phone's going to be. The Ultra is actually even more expensive. If you look at the Ultra, it starts at $2,100.
[28:00]
C
Wasn't that kind of interesting though? So they, they, so they're creating a new form factor for their foldables. Obviously they've been doing folding phones for years and years and years and years. They're now at a very high level of sophistication. But they decided to shift the Ultra name. They shift the Samsung Z Fold to basically the less expensive passport sized one, the one that's going to be like the iPhone Ultra, and put the Ultra name on there. Even bigger and better than the Passport version of it. I don't know if that, I don't
[28:30]
A
know if bigger and better price, but
[28:33]
C
basically to say, oh well, we have an Ultra 2, but this is actually Ultra, Whereas, okay, that's cute that you think that little pass board. But, but, and honestly, do you think that they're going to. That Apple is going to be. The Apple Foldable is going to start at $1900 or do you think it's going to start at 21, 22 at this point?
[28:50]
A
I think, I think this is a telegraphing that it might be over 2,000 bucks.
[28:55]
C
Yeah, yeah, we said, we used to call that the. We had conversations a few months ago about how we thought that that was kind of the third rail that, gosh, if this is. If the starting price is 2200, 2300 dollars, they have to make it super, super, super special to justify it. But now we're like, they might have to just decide that this is a special breed of customer that's willing to spend more than $2,000 on a phone. And a difference of $200 is not. Yeah. Is not as important to them as someone who is thinking between do I spend eleven hundred dollars or thirteen hundred dollars on a regular phone instead of
[29:28]
A
the quadrant that Steve Jobs drew when he came back to Apple from next saying, you know, I forgot what it was. It was a consumer and pro, desktop and laptop. And there was four products. It's now going to be high priced.
[29:42]
C
I mean it's no exorbitant money or brains. The other is going to be mobile and desktop.
[29:52]
A
We're going to take a break. More to talk about lots more in the Gurman rumor section. What do you call it? Rumor town on Upgrade.
[29:59]
D
Rumor roundup. Yeehaw.
[30:03]
A
And the sheriff is Mark Gurman. He's been busy this week. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy, Christina and the wonderful Jason Snell who will later on explain why you should choose the good soap at the hotel. That's right, not the good soap.
[30:17]
D
But you don't have to choose. The hotel needs to give you the good soap.
[30:20]
A
Oh, okay. Give you the good soap.
[30:21]
D
Sorry, soap metaphors. They're coming.
[30:23]
A
I went on a cruise once where the chief amenity was when you first get on the boat, the your steward comes to you with a selection of soaps and says, which one would you like for your trip, for your journey? I thought that is not luxury, but thank you for giving me the choice. They do have a pillow menu. Now that's luxury. All right, we're gonna take a break. We'll come back in just a bit with Andy, Christina and Jason. Our show today brought to you by Siri Sync. This is something every business using both Apple devices and Microsoft 365 is dying for. Even in an Apple shop, the back office very often runs Microsoft 365. So everyone's contact apps on the phone full of personal numbers. But you don't have any of the work numbers that you need a coworker calls. It's just a number on the screen. Maybe you even screen it out. You, the new guy and your boss all somehow end up with different numbers for the same department head and your boss ends up declining your calls because she didn't have the right numbers either. So this is all you know. It's a mess. You've been there. Probably. But this is a good solution. Sara Sync fixes that. It pushes your whole company directory, contacts and calendars right into the native contacts app on every iPhone and Mac and it does it automatically. It just shows up and it stays current all on its own. Go to cirasync.com macbreak and book your free demo. The Sirasync team is great. They will walk you through how convenient and hassle free it is. They can even help you get set up on the call so you can roll it out across your whole organization. That's sirasync.com macbreak to get your whole company's contacts on every iPhone in the office automatically. Every phone stays current. 3000 companies are using it GDPR and SoC2 compliant. You gotta use this. Sirasync C I R A s y n c.com MacBreak when they told me they had the solution, I said, oh, I want this. This is awesome. All right, let's see. We should just quickly run through a couple of court decisions. Apple has lost its bid to overturn the Masimo patent verdict. In fact they, the judge even said now and you don't even get a new trial. So this is a $634 million decision. Massimo accused Apple of course of stealing its patents for pulse oximetry. That's why that was that whole thing where they turned it off on the Apple Watch and they've been battling and at one point Massimo got an import ban on Apple Watch models with blood oxygen. Apple figured out a way around it. You know, this has been going on and on. One thing, they can't figure out a way around this big fine. The jury found this last year that Apple Watch's heart rate monitoring and notification features infringed on another Masimo pulse oximetry patent. Ordered Apple to pay that $634 million in fine. The judge has uphold the jury's findings. Now this is district court. So Apple could go to the Supreme Court. Sure. You could go all the way to the top. And Apple's been known to do that. Yep. He also, the judge also rejected Ackel's request for a new trial. Apple had said, we don't like your jury instructions and we don't like it that you said to exclude testimony from our experts. But the judge said no, you don't need a retrial now again that all can be appealed. So I don't know if Apple said that they're going to appeal or not. I would, that's, that's a lot of money.
[34:07]
C
Is anybody else surprised that Apple hasn't figured out a way to like buy a different set of patents for this kind of monitoring?
[34:14]
A
Just licensed, right?
[34:15]
C
Yeah. I mean my, my hundred dollar Fitbit Air does, does it. And I don't know, I'm saying, I'm not saying that they're, they're idiots are doing something stupid. I'm saying I literally do not know. I would have expected that at some point unless they, unless they were absolutely counting on a court victory at some point, and they're in disbelief that they kept losing, losing, losing. It seems that at this point someone, someone with a very obscure blood oxygen content patent would be upgrading from whatever house they're living to whatever seven houses that they want to live in based on Apple saying, hey, what if we just buy this portfolio, make some trivial changes to our firmware and our software and suddenly, bye, bye, we can, we can get back on the horse.
[34:59]
D
Yeah. Part of me, I mean, part of me thinks they wanted to litigate this. Part of me thinks there's such bad blood between the companies that they're not willing to license it. I believe the Masimo patent expires sometime next year, so they may just decided to wait it out.
[35:12]
A
Yeah, that, you know, pay the fine, you can.
[35:14]
D
They've got the. And they've got that thing where it's, you know, it's happening back on the iPhone. It's not on device processing anymore. That's their workaround in the meantime. And it wouldn't surprise me if they think that's good enough to get them through until next fall, fall of 27, in which at which point the patents will vacate.
[35:30]
A
And remember the lawsuit last year over Apple Intelligence, saying Apple had we bought your iPhones because of your ads and then you didn't get the new Siri in there. Apple has settled a quarter of a billion dollar settlement. Actually, we had that news, but now the judge has officially approved it, or, I'm sorry, provisionally approved at the final approvement. And the start of payout is dependent on a final hearing for which will be in September of next year. So your $5.33 check may be slightly delayed. The judge has given overall approval, but the court will not decide on any amounts till September 29, 2027. Busy court, I guess. Busy, busy court.
[36:17]
C
Don't buy that burrito just yet.
[36:21]
A
Save your burrito money. Let's talk a little bit about. I'm getting all the stuff out of the way so we can get to the German ranch in just a little bit. Apple has approved Test Flight for users with a lot of beta apps. That's good news. There are a lot of beta apps because there's a lot of AI stuff going on. And now there is a search in Test Flight, which means you can find some of those apps. I think that's good. Test Flight is how developers give you a chance to try an app before you actually have it in the App Store or more often, I think beta versions of Apps that are already in the store. I use TestFlight for a lot of my favorite apps.
[37:09]
D
Yeah, the problem is that I think that you can search it, but it's also sorted by name now and it used to be sorted by most recently updated TestFlight, which means a lot of old betas and expired betas float to the top. And that's dumb. So they got to fix that.
[37:26]
A
Apple has. There is another class action lawsuit just mounted. Actually, no, it's not a class action. It's just three customers who lost $1.8 million through those. That fake Bitcoin wallet, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago. This Sparrow Wallet, which is available on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, was not available on iOS, which lent hackers, gave hackers the brilliant idea of, well, let's write a fake one, put it on the app Store and steal people's money. Apple didn't catch the fake one and did in fact approve it, which is puzzling. And the plaintiffs say that we, we lost a lot of money thanks to you last year, Apple. And So they're suing one $1.8 million in losses. But of course there could be more damages as well. Apple does claim, you know, it's reasonable. They claim they're vetting this stuff, but seems like especially with the flood of new AI generated apps, a lot more stuff's getting through. Like those Brazilian gambling apps we talked about last week.
[38:26]
C
Yeah, that's surprising. I hope that they're, I wonder what they're considering changing their workflow and approvals because like you said, there are multiple reports of times when malicious and non malicious apps got through by masquerading as something harmless. Russian banking apps that Apple can't host in Russia because of sanctions basically got through to be approved as not what they actually are. And the only reason why they actually got attention was why is, why is this suddenly the number one, the number three app in the Russian app store for this very, very basic looking app that does nothing and then, oh, well, that's because it gives you access to Russian banking. Okay.
[39:06]
D
Yeah, I wonder. I think the real question is legally, is Apple. Because it is theoretically, you know, gatekeeping and approving apps in the app store. Does that make them liable for things in the store? Because if it did, then I think that that would be really interesting. But I also think that that feels extremely unlikely.
[39:27]
B
Yeah, I was going to say, I would, I would guess that they have something in their terms of service that you've signed, you know, that you've agreed to whether you've read it or not by, you know, sheer fact of like signing up for the App Store that basically says they are not taking any responsibility for essentially what's in the App Store, especially with things like that. I mean, I think, and what's interesting about this is that that Apple for a long time, like they were very resistant about having any sort of like bitcoin wallets or any sort of crypto stuff in the App Store at all. To the point that I was critical of them at the time. We're talking probably, you know, 13, 14 years ago now because I was like, okay, this is, this is dumb that you're just going to have a blanket ban on a category and these weren't even cloud hosted things necessarily, but just in terms of like, like wallets at all, where you could store addresses or whatever. Now I almost wonder like maybe they had the right idea all along. Like if you're going to be accepting these types of, you know, applications in your store for non traditional banking institutes which are not going to have fdic, you know, protections and things like that, if you can't actually realistically say this is legitimate or you know, this comes from this developer versus this developer, I don't know, maybe, maybe that's. If you can't do it right, maybe it shouldn't be in the store at all. I'm not really sure. But I think I would agree with Jason. I would be shocked if they didn't have something in their terms that I'd be very surprised if they were liable for the contents of what's in the store.
[41:00]
C
One thing's for sure, every single time that Apple defended the App Store by saying, oh no, we have our policies in place and keep it a safe place for all of our customers. And that's why you shouldn't regulate our App Store policies at all. Because it's intrinsic and because we do such a good job of it, that doesn't mean that that's their, that's going to be a slam dunk win for the case in a setting of a precedent. But it's going to come back to haunt them, as it often will come back to haunt them.
[41:25]
B
Yeah, and as it should, frankly. Right. Because if you're going to make that argument, if you're going to make the argument that like we are the trusted place and the reason that this is the only place you can get apps is because only we can be trusted to make sure that they're safe and secure, it is very fair to call them out and say, okay, but not only are these apps getting through, maybe through nefarious methods, maybe not, but you're allowing fake apps in. They can often rank higher than the real things that can potentially take people's money if it's a banking app. But even in non banking app cases, counterfeit apps have been a problem in the App Store for a long time. And at least from my observations, that's not an area that Apple has ever really cared that much about. Unless, you know, you do what Phil Schiller tells people not to do, which is run to the press about it. If you do that, then there's a chance that it might get taken down. But unless people make a big stink about it, the App Store is just rife with counterfeit apps. And that I don't think has anything to do with Apple's stance and saying, oh, no, we are the only ones who are able to curate this because. Curate what?
[42:28]
A
Right? You're not create nothing. All right, one more break and then let's talk about the public beta 2 for iOS 27 came out yesterday, the day before, curious what's new, what we get, what's improved? I've been very happy, by the way, with the public beta. Somebody was asking on Twitter on Sunday whether they should install it and I said, absolutely. I haven't had any. Have any of you had any showstoppers? I think it's pretty. Pretty good. Pretty robust good.
[42:59]
B
Yeah.
[43:00]
A
Do you love Siri AI?
[43:03]
D
It's pretty good.
[43:04]
B
It's fine.
[43:05]
D
Yeah, it's fine.
[43:06]
C
It's not an embarrassment. I'm not saying that as a joke. I'm saying that it's a big step up. That's. It is. I have to remind, I have to remind myself to give it a chance. Because we're asked before it was why on earth would I activate Siri for any reason whatsoever? Now it's like, actually, let's give that a try because it might actually be helpful. Helpful.
[43:22]
D
I would, I would go so far as to say, for all the stuff that just regular people ask chat bots, that is not to build software for them or anything like that, or do research or whatever, but like simple answers to questions about world knowledge and stuff like that, I don't see why anybody's going to need to use Chat GPT because it's good enough to answer all those questions. Yeah, yeah.
[43:44]
A
You know, I mean, for people like you and me, Christina, who probably. I mean, I don't know about you, but I assume you've done what I've done, which is basically put all of that intelligence from my own stuff onto the watch and the phone. I don't. It's. No, I would. I don't think I even. I've used it a little bit just to see. It's nice. Yeah, it's nice.
[44:04]
B
No, but I mean, I think, I think it's exactly like Jason said, like, if you're not somebody who already has your own kind of custom agent that you're interacting with and you're not using
[44:10]
A
it for specific normal people.
[44:11]
D
For normal people.
[44:13]
B
And, and I think that's a, That's a great. That's exactly who they're going after. I mean, I think that it's one of those things. What I think if, if you're somebody who's paying $20 a month for Claude code or for, for, you know, chatgpt plus or for, you know, one of the Gemini plans, if you're not doing other things with it. And to be clear, this is one of the reasons why they add things like, you know, cowork and the other types of, like, plugins, because they want to give you that expanded experience. But if you were just using it because you chat with the chatbot a lot. Yeah, I think for a lot of folks, this might either be a great introduction to them if they haven't been doing it already, or it's going to be a very easy drop in replacement to what they've already been doing.
[44:51]
D
This is a backward version of why there's no such thing as Sherlocking, because Apple only ever wants to reach the, whatever you want to say, 80%, 90%, 95%, a large portion of the market that does not care about the edge cases or the little tinkering features or all of that. And the reason that Sherlocking isn't really a thing is that the apps that are completely subsumed by Apple's OS features, if they're completely subsumed, they weren't really trying that hard because there's always room to play around the edges where Apple is never going to do that level of complexity. Complexity or that Edge case feature. And this feels like a version of that where Siri AI is solving the problem that whatever 80, 80, 90% of people have, which is, I want to ask a question and get an answer. And they could do that with Chat GPT and that was cool. And that's why. Yes, that's why OpenAI and Anthropic and everybody else are, like, moving up the chain. Not only is B2B way more powerful and way more lucrative, but also it is a thing that, that is beyond the simple consumer need of an AI thing. So like what Apple's doing here is great. Now it's in the long run, if we talk about agentix stuff, there will come a time when more agentic stuff kind of like comes down in the funnel and more people want it. And if you can provide that to them on a more easy basis, then they're going to be interested in that. So I think that's their challenge is watching that over time and growing from where they are now. But where they are now is going to. I really think it scoops up all the casual people who are like, oh, I just want to ask this question. Siri is dumb. So I'm going to use chat GPT like that. That stuff seems to be basically handled in Siri AI. It's not going to be a problem anymore. Good place to start. Can't be the place they end, but a good place to start.
[46:32]
A
Yeah.
[46:33]
C
As we've said, as we've said until, until Apple gets so good at AI that they can charge a monthly fee for special AI features as a service. Kind of like there's a paid tier of chat GPT and Gemini. All they have to do is add AI features that help continue to sell Macs and iPhones and iPads and Apple watches. That's. It's very, very low stakes. It's very, very attainable for them and they're in a really good position and
[46:58]
D
enable third parties who have the better stuff to do what they want to do. Federico Viticci wrote what last week about that app that he's trying out that's like on iOS and it's, and it's using like a virtualized Linux server and it runs models on your device. And like, I mean that's the thing is all this stuff is happening on Apple's platforms without Apple participating. And that's fine, right? If the iPhone or the Mac is the place to be to do this stuff or a good place to be. And Apple is also doing the table stakes things that keep the kind of masses happy, that's not a bad place for them to be.
[47:35]
C
Yep. Don't get in people's way.
[47:36]
D
Yeah.
[47:38]
A
Okay, let's see here. Now let's take a break and we can, we can go on a little bit more with the public beta. There's a big update for Tahoe that you're going to want to apply and I'll tell you why in just a little bit. But more coming up with back break weekly. Christina, Andy and Jason, so glad you're here, especially your club members. Thank you for your support. Our show today, brought to you by zocdoc. You know, it's funny, for all the, you know, technology we have at our beck and call today, booking a doctor's appointment really feels like you're going back in time, right? I think a lot of us use that as an excuse to put off getting the care we need, you know, so it's kind of a. It's a little speed bump is handy for those of us who go, I don't really want to go to the doctor, but maybe you don't. Maybe I don't want to sit on hold. Or maybe it's the endless phone tag. I've been doing that lately. Mainly it's just one more thing on an already packed to do list. Look, we've all been there, but that speed bump is keeping you from something really important. Taking care of yourself, taking care of your health. You know, you should make the appointment, but the days turn into weeks and before you know it, months have passed. And then when you finally call, they say, well, I'm sorry, the next available appointment will be in three months. Not good. That's one of the reasons I love zocdoc. Zocdoc lets you search and compare local in network doctors. There's 150,000 providers in there and not just MDs. 200 plus specialties across all 50 states. And one of the things that's so great about Zocdoc, appointments happen fast, usually within 24 to 72 hours. In fact, in many cases, you can get same day appointments and it's free. I never mentioned this. Maybe you thought, oh, you got to pay a fee. No, your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Find and book the right doctor with Zocdoc. Head to Zocdoc.com MacBreak to get started. Check that appointment off your to do list. That's Z O C-O C.com MacBreak sock. All right, let's see. First, I should mention this is probably more important. The Tahoe update, which has something like 130 security patches. You know, last week on their patch Tuesday, Microsoft shipped more than 500 security patches.
[50:15]
D
Somebody's using an AI.
[50:17]
A
We know why suddenly we see Steve Gibson predicted it.
[50:20]
B
It.
[50:21]
A
He said, you know, with the advent of Mythos and even ChatGPT5.6, which has a cyber security component, you're going to start seeing software fixed, which is. It's good, Christina. Right? This is a good thing.
[50:32]
B
It is a good thing. I mean, it's. But it comes with a caveat, which is, you know, now you have to make sure that you are in a position to be able to update all of your devices and components. And Apple makes it easy, you know, for, for Macs and things like that. But yeah, I mean, I mean the good thing is that people can apply these fixes much more broadly and you can find a lot of things that might not have been otherwise caught. The bad thing is that makes it that much more important to make sure that you're running the latest version on things, which sometimes can be a challenge depending on your circumstances. Or if you have an older program and you couldn't upgrade for some reason, I think those cases are more limited. But definitely one of those things that if you've got a family member running Tahoe, you want to make sure that auto updates are enabled and that they're running the latest, if you can.
[51:21]
C
I imagine it's also a problem for Apple that now they have to process and implement a much, much, much larger scale of security updates every single release. And that's if this isn't trivial.
[51:32]
B
No, no, not at all. I mean, and then the problem too, I think, and this is, I think a broader, like more social problem, is that what happens when we are kind of in this phase because of AI, both, which helps accelerate how much code is being created. Not just from a security standpoint, although that's certainly part of it, but also even just increasing the velocity in which people can ship features. That means that software is updated all the time, almost every single day. There's some apps that I have that get an update nearly daily. And that's great on the one hand. On the other hand, like, that can be a lot to kind of deal with. And so if as consumers, how do you kind of become, I guess, reacquainted with that idea that I have to update my app, my computer or my phone or whatever every so often? Because I know that I think Apple does a pretty good job with their updates. They don't release them too frequently. But I know even from talking to my family members, there are people who are going, oh, I've been putting off this update or putting off this one. And sometimes there will be cases where I'll have to text and be like, okay, make sure you're installing this one, because this is a bad zero day. I wonder if that is going to disappear a little bit and we're going to have to re socialize people into just saying okay every time There's a new update out update period. Because they could all be fixing zero days, I don't know.
[52:50]
A
Yeah, take a look. I mean this is a scrollable page. Get your scroll wheel lubed up for this one. Because I mean, you know, in Accounts, Accounts Accounts Framework, you know, an app may be able to fingerprint the user. A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory. And you know, kids, what happens after you corrupt kernel memory? The next step is you're in A remote attacker may be able to cause a denial of service, apfs, App Store, Apple Account, Apple Account, Apple Neural Engine, Apple Double. This is a long, long list. And some of these are, are pretty serious. I do like it that they give credit to the security researcher who discovered these. That's nice. Have they been doing that all along? I think that's for a while now. Yeah, that's really the way to do it because look, this is the.
[53:43]
D
And they pay them. And they pay them.
[53:44]
A
Yeah, and they pay them. Yep. Now I imagine these researchers are also using AI to find these.
[53:51]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. And in fact that's actually created a problem for bounty programs because what's happened
[53:56]
A
is that it's very to own is over folks.
[53:58]
B
Well, not only that, but like if you have like even programs like from, from Apple and like a GitHub, we have one and we've had to change some of our requirements a little bit just because. And it's not that we don't want to pay out for severe vulnerabilities because of course we do. But what happens is that when these tools are great when used by already experienced advanced, you know, security researchers. But what also happens is that any layperson who can kind of get their hand on something and run things through can create a very credible looking security report whether it's accurate or not. And that then takes like human labor having to go through and filter those things out. And so I know I've talked to a lot of the open source maintainers who are dealing with an influx of this of just getting, you know, security reports, you know, through the wazoo. And some of them are good, but many of them are not.
[54:44]
A
And it can be the bogus ones to the issue. I mean I would think even if it's a thousand of them, if they're
[54:49]
B
real, if they're real, I want to know 1,000%, but. Well, I think it depends, right. I think, I think that sometimes.
[54:55]
A
But you may not be able to handle it. I understand.
[54:56]
B
Well, not only that, but in some cases it might be like such a weird education, such a weird specification. They're like, okay, yeah, this is technically an error, but I don't care. Right. You have to triage. But I think the problem is that you just have this influx of people who are just using scanners and are using AI and feeding it through Claude or OpenAI models or some of the Chinese models, whatever the case may be, and then submitting a report. And then that takes additional time for the people to validate whether this is real or not. And then to your point, triage, how we treat that. So it's, it's certainly interesting.
[55:31]
A
Well, I, you know, the good news is Apple as a four plus trillion dollar company probably can afford the team to. Oh yeah, it's open source programs with the one maintainer that are obviously.
[55:42]
B
Oh yeah, no, to be clear, those are the people I'm concerned with. Like, like, like Apple and Microsoft and like other companies. Not to say that it doesn't add an additional burden and that sometimes you have to change things because of that. But no, I'm not, I'm not concerned about the big companies. But it is just saying that this is a problem that isn't affecting just the big companies, it's affecting smaller companies or open source projects too. The thing that has me, I guess concerned more broadly and this doesn't affect Apple as much, although it could affect some things is like, you know, when you think about like devices that are unable to get updates but you find vulnerabilities using these tools, especially if they're connected to the Internet. Right. Like that, that becomes a really interesting challenge. And I think that we're going to see a lot of, a lot of Internet of things devices which we've already seen exposed before. But I think we're going to see a real influx of that kind of stuff. And the only.
[56:32]
A
Those are the ones to worry about. Those are the ones things sit on
[56:35]
B
my network, I was going to say. And then I do wonder, I mean I guess to bring it back to Apple a little bit. I don't know if like, if something was home kidney, like does that have any way where that could impact anything else? I mean I tend to doubt it, but you never know. Right. And you know, as consumers we don't have a real choice in terms of being able to like thoroughly investigate, you know, who the firmware update and support policies behind these things. I mean we saw just, you know, a few weeks ago we talked about Apple patching one of those Bluetooth security things on a number of older you know, beats headphone models. And you could see. And I was glad that Apple, you know, did make that patch, even though it was coming maybe a bit after it had been disclosed. But you think about, okay, that's just headphones. What about how many other connected devices we have or anything that has radios in them?
[57:27]
A
Oh, I have all sorts of stuff sitting on more than 100 devices on my network. And many of them, if not all of them, come from China. Many of them, them from brands I never heard of. So, oh Lord, I'm just a sit and duck. The other thing Apple did at the bottom of the security page, which I really like, and I don't know, maybe this is something they've done a long time, they have an additional recognition page and I think this is testimony to the fact that Apple needs help in vetting all these. These are all third parties look at who have helped out in solving these problems and discovering these problems and solving these problems. And the subtext of this is these are the good guys, these are the white hats. There are black cats out there who are not helping Apple, who are hitting these servers and these services just as hard, finding stuff and not telling Apple. And this is why it's so important. And this is why, you know, there's this debate at the government level about what we should do about these models, whether we should let them out in public. We talked a lot about it on Twitter and on intelligent machines earlier. But the just parenthetically, there was a very interesting, almost a sci fi hack of Hugging Face, not by a human, but by an agent running out of OpenAI on a model they haven't released yet that autonomously, without instruction, broke out of containment and hacked Hugging Face, not for data, but to get answers to. It was taking a security test and just like Matthew Broderick in War Games, it broke out, got the answers to the test. It did this. It was a truly amazing exploit. A Hugging Face was baffled by it. And here's my point. They tried to use the same models from Anthropic and OpenAI to find the problem and fix it. They were prohibited by the cybersecurity restrictions on these models. So really it's an asymmetric protection. It protects against, you know, the bad guys can use it and their models can use it, but the good guys can't. And so that really raises the issue, you know, is it a good idea to restrict these models? Hugging Face ended up having to use a Chinese open weight model, GLM 5.2, to fix it. And so you see this debate that's going on right now in government and among AI companies, companies about what to do about this, it's pretty clear AI is now discovering flaws that we never knew about. Many, many flaws, many years old flaws, not always by the good guys, sometimes by the bad guys. What do we, how do we handle this? Do we hold back models? I don't think so. Do we restrict models? I don't think so. But that's, that's my opinion in the debate. And there are others who think otherwise. It's just, we're an interesting world and it's just about to get more interesting if you have agents autonomously breaking out of containment. It was on a machine that was not connected to the Internet and it wanted the answers to these questions. So it first hacked OpenAI's machines. It went out on the LAN in OpenAI to hack OpenAI's machines that had Internet access to get through to the outside world. Then it searched around for the answers to the questions, found them on hugging face, hacked into with multiple chained exploits. Hacked in a hugging face. It's holy. We are, we are in uncharted territory, folks.
[61:02]
C
Yeah, that's why these, these black box problems are so interesting. Like at Google, I O is one of the ways for them to, for Google to try to explain how good their agentic programming model was. They said, oh, look, with one prompt, the new version of Gemini actually wrote an operating system. And. Okay, I mean, that's within reason. Okay, that's impressive. But the thing is, like, when you look at the actual paper, the researchers actually admit that we can't be 100% sure that our agent didn't just simply look online for like a grad student who posted the source code for like a grad student project operating system and essentially made a, made a, made a version of that. It's like you have to be, you have to basically say, please do this task and please don't cheat. Promise you're not going to cheat. Okay, hold up your hands.
[61:51]
A
The problem is you can say that, but because these are probabilistic machines, not deterministic machines. Anybody who's played with these, like you and me, Christine, we know that, yeah, you could tell them over and over again, but sometimes they just do what they want to do.
[62:05]
B
I mean, sometimes they will still delete your, you know, your, your home directory, which has happened to a number of Codex users with some of the latest model stuff. And then, and then it will be, and it's always very funny when this happens. It'll be Very apologetic. Oh, I'm so sorry. You're. You're absolutely correct. I was wrong. You did tell me not to do that and I did it anyway, and that was a mistake. And. And you know, you just.
[62:24]
C
And I'm like, you have every right to be angry with me.
[62:28]
B
Right?
[62:28]
C
It's like it doesn't help the most if you've been. If you've been. If you've been. If you're more than 30 years old, you've met some of an actual person that's like that. And you're like, I would be so right to punch you in the face for saying that right now. That's.
[62:43]
A
That's the phrase. My bad.
[62:44]
C
I understand your anger.
[62:46]
A
I hate my bad. Because it's like saying, yeah, I screwed up, but so what? My bad. Let's move on.
[62:53]
C
But I. But I'd like to think that we can move forward and build upon this.
[62:57]
B
No, you're like, no, we can't.
[62:58]
C
I'm so proud of us for taking the intelligent, like, well, not getting the fact that you ruined the entire business. And now basically we can't even afford the cardboard boxes we need to empty out our.
[63:11]
A
So let's get to public beta 2 of the new OS 27. CarPlay's been updated. Messages is updated. Watch OS is updated. Oh, no, I did not fall. I just was angry. My watch says, did you fall? No, no, I just was upset about. About a little thing. What, what do we. What do we have to say About Public Beta 2? First of all, I would say you probably should do it because, you know, all those patches for Tahoe, they're probably in the public beta too as well. Right. So security wise, if you are on the public beta for any.
[63:48]
D
Generally, yeah, they've been rolling those into betas.
[63:51]
A
Yeah, Well, I think these are. If, if they're significant, they're gonna. So definitely want to do that. What else do we get?
[63:59]
C
There's also a story from last week. I think that. I think this is actually with the latest version of 26 that the iOS 27. Excuse me, Mac OS 27's version of Spotlight is going to have to require a brand new rebuilt index. And that because this index is going to take a long time to build, they are basically putting that reindexing code in 26.6 so that by the time you actually install 27 and are already suffering with all the slowdowns you're going to get for that, at least the new index will be ready for Spotlight, which is another. I'd have to look back to see what the details of that are. But that kind of impressed me, the idea of, yeah, if this thing's going to be tied up for hours or days and doing this background task, you would much rather do that when it's not also struggling with a whole new operating system.
[64:48]
D
Yeah, we got the inklings of that at wwdc and yeah, it's really smart. I mean they looked at how intense it was going to be to do build the brand new, because it's an entirely new Spotlight index and decided to make the clever decision of having one of their summer 26 releases start building the index. So when you up, when you Update that to 27 in the fall, there's like a little kind of like yoink kind of thing that happens and they just slide the new index underneath. And so now you've got the benefit of having invisibly indexed your system month over, over the course of a few months instead of having to build it because it's a, it's a bit of a grind. And it means that that initial experience is going to be much more delightful because the Spotlight index already did look at all your email, it already did look at all of your messages and already knows that stuff. It's, it's the closest analog I can think about is when they did APFS. There was a, there was an iOS update that just, there was a midstream update that just changed the file system under the covers to be AP was a bad one and didn't tell anybody. Well, I mean, but the thing is, nothing happened. They, they basically tested it and then they rolled it out and you don't know what the file system is underneath, but it allowed Apple to just sort of like silently do that and then, and then, then they're like, okay, we'll do this on the Mac now too. And it's this idea that, that you can do some of this stuff that is kind of proactive. I, I'm a little surprised that there isn't more of a, like here's a benefit that, let's talk about it. But it is happening. That's in the background. Yeah.
[66:23]
A
So nothing bad happened with the APFs. I remember the upgrade. I just assumed something. No, no, no.
[66:28]
D
Apfs came out and then they revealed that they had actually already done it on the iPhone six months before and nobody had noticed.
[66:34]
A
That's right.
[66:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I, I, I think on the phone it was completely fine. I think where people had some issues and still have issues. If you had, we're on The Mac. But that was only in specific cases if you had like a spinning Rust drive. APFS still is not a good format
[66:48]
D
for that build for SSDs.
[66:49]
B
Yeah, exactly. And the only area that I remember, and Jason, your memory on this, I'm sure is better than mine was that if you were. And the. When they were selling those fusion drives, that was a little bit.
[67:00]
A
Oh, that's what it broke. Yes.
[67:01]
B
Yeah.
[67:02]
A
And so suddenly it was detached.
[67:04]
D
But that's all the Mac issues. But they, the. Yeah, I'm just referring to the fact that they. That they literally did an iOS update that switched the file systems underneath and
[67:12]
B
they didn't tell anybody, which is brilliant. And I think, and I'm with you, I think that they should be like talking about this more about the fact that like they're doing this pre indexing in advance because I think it's really, really smart.
[67:22]
D
And I noticed 27.
[67:24]
B
Well, I noticed this when I just did like a 26 update on my phone, I think because of what you'd mentioned based on your briefing. And I noticed that it was taking a while like that some Spotlight stuff was taking longer to do things.
[67:36]
A
It took more than a day, right? It was a couple of days for me.
[67:39]
B
It took, it took several days. But it was one of those things where I was like, oh, okay, well, this will be getting me ready for 27. And now I have 27 on my iPad. I can't put it on my phones yet, but I have it on my iPad and it's great, you know, and so I much prefer that kind of method of kind of soft preparing people for these experiences. It's very smart. Well, especially again, like, you know, think about, I think about my parents and about like their upgrades. There are a lot of people who really hated the Liquid Glass update, you know, with iOS 18. And I think for valid reasons. And so I. Or was it iOS 18 that did that? Whatever the liquid glass update was.
[68:18]
D
26.
[68:19]
B
26. A lot of people who really, really hated it. And, and I think that this is going to avoid some of that feeling of, oh, I just downloaded this update and now it's slow because it's having to re index everything and it looks slightly different. It's like A, they're fixing some of the things so that Liquid Glass does look better and gives you more options to even turn it off more. But B, the benefits that you're going to get, you've already gone through whatever the re. Indexing process process was. It's not going to be that the typical experience where you get a new phone and there could be some settling time, which is never ideal, especially if you're upgrading an existing device. And leads to the credence to those rumors, which I think are false, incidentally of. Oh, Apple purposely slows down the old phones so that people will upgrade to the new ones. Like, no, they're not doing that. But in this case, hopefully it'll make an even smoother experience so that people will just be like, oh, okay, I get the new Siri. And. And Spotlight works now.
[69:18]
C
Yeah. It's a time to remind all of us that you are about to get lots of calls from lots of friends and relatives who are not very tech savvy that it was not a mistake to upgrade. I know that your Mac is very, very slow and oh my God, your battery life is like, has been really been cut. It's because it's doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes that's trying not to scare you about by actually telling you in a couple of days it'll finish like the, all the background stuff in the upgrade and you will notice that things are really, really faster and launches are really, really faster and battery life might even be a little bit bigger. And please, please, please don't like be angry at me because I said that OS27 was going to be a very, very big deal.
[69:57]
A
What's new in the Apple Watch? Apparently battery life is going to be better. Speed on the iPhone is improved, so there's some good things. CarPlay has changed a little bit. You're gonna have. It's a new design, you'll see. Looks like maybe like the old design but with less color. Okay. Conversations in CarPlay are automatically synced to the Siri app on iPhone. That's nice, right? So if I talk to Siri in my car.
[70:31]
D
Yep, it's all in there.
[70:33]
A
It's all in there. I think that's a good little things like that. Right? That's good.
[70:38]
B
Yeah. I was going to ask you guys this question because I'm only using the new Siri on one device and many of you are using it on more than that. Does Siri sync like your. The new Siri, the AI powered Siri, does it sync your conversations across devices the same way that like ChatGPT and Claude does? Okay, cool.
[70:55]
D
Yeah. For the first time you have a complete Siri history across all of the Apple devices on your account.
[71:01]
B
Nice.
[71:02]
D
Yeah, it's good.
[71:04]
A
The RCS has some upgrades. I'm glad they put an RCS inline replies now available. So you can reply to our RCS message as if you were in imessage. I mean, you are, but I mean with the same ui, you've got the tap back reactions. And it implements the new. A new RCS Standard 2.7 which also includes the ability to edit and unsend messages. Ooh, very nice.
[71:32]
C
Yeah, there's a. It's. I think it's becoming clear that there's. The AI stuff is certainly very, very big. But the star of the show might be that one little slide during the WWDC keynote, which had 250 things in tiny, tiny print of quality of life things. And if only like 10% of those improve your quality of life. That means that OS27 is going to make people more and more happy than 26 did. Or 20 or 18, we should say, probably.
[72:02]
A
Christina, this was my experience that even though the SIRI is indexing, you can. Everything still works, it's just in the background.
[72:09]
B
Right.
[72:09]
A
It doesn't even seem to slow things down.
[72:11]
D
Yeah, in the betas they've tweaked that too. It used to be much more aggressive and I think they were afraid that it was going to scare people in the fall. So now it's sort of doing a, you know. Yeah, we're indexing some more stuff, but it's fine. You can. Before it was like, please wait while we index. And now it's like we're working on it. Don't worry, you'll get more information as we go. But it's sort of like they're trying to soften that a little bit. Plus I assume that they're. Yeah, they're tweaking it so that works better. And they're working around. There were some issues where it gets stuck and stuff that they're presumably are just bugs that they're fixing.
[72:44]
C
Here is some animation of the little finder guy dancing around that you could watch instead of doing the productivity that you absolutely needed to do right now. Now you're welcome.
[72:54]
A
Isn't he cute?
[72:55]
C
Please don't think about all the time you're losing.
[72:57]
A
He's a very cute little guy. Yeah. All right, let's do German. This is probably what we should have led with. It's just so much. And I really did want to talk about the, the, the new lease program. Mark has been stuffing stuff down our throat all week long. He's been a very busy guy. This came out July 22nd, so it's almost a week old. The Big Mac push. Apple's preparing to debut new versions of every Mac it sells desktop and laptop. The new computers will have a refreshed low end 14 inch MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip. New iMacs. Woohoo. A high end 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook with a fresh design. That's that new design and a touchscreen with OLED. But those will be the M6 nothing chip, right? Refreshed MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines as well as new Mac, Mini, Mac Studio models all with upgraded chips. But I guess the asterisk on this is that you might want to wait for the M7 or no. What do we say? What do we think?
[74:14]
D
I don't know. Who are you? What do you want? What do you need?
[74:17]
A
Okay. Okay. And I think we could say that Gurman has sources on this and this is fairly reliable information or no, no, I think so.
[74:29]
B
I mean how up to date these things are, I don't know. And he's obviously going to only know what his sources are telling him who might only know part of the story. But I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this stuff. I think when it to comes it comes to people making buying decisions based on leaks. I think that in this time, with prices being what they are, with the RAM crisis being what it is, with the future prices being unknown, I think at least the way I'm approaching it is to not try to make any decisions waiting one way or another based on what, what could happen in the future. If you need a machine, you need a machine. If something comes out that fits and, and it looks good to you, then I think more than maybe in the past, it makes sense to get it rather than holding off for oh well, this, this thing just around the corner might be even better because look, things will always be better around the corner. But I think especially right now, you know, like we're so lucky that like Andy bit the bullet and bought his MacBook when he bought it, right? Like if you'd waited, you know, another week or so, like you would have, you would have paid way more. And I just kind of feel like that's kind of how I feel about these upcoming products too, is that until we're out of this kind of RAM and chip crisis, I don't know how much it behooves people to wait based on rumors that we don't know how accurate they will be or how long it will even take things to get to market.
[75:55]
A
And interesting, despite all the information, this dump of information, no one seems to have any information about what this redesigned MacBook Pro is going to look like there's no design leaks. They've really been locking that one down.
[76:09]
C
Yeah, we're only getting information through the supply chain. I think the Elec, the Korean blog reported last week that Samsung has locked in the contract for both 14 inch and 16 inch OLED touchscreen panels for that upcoming device. But yeah, nobody is talking about talking which, which is maybe I think correct. I wouldn't, I wouldn't expect us to get any hints as to the actual design cues unless it's something that requires a case, that requires a dummy that has to be people have to have access to. I don't think this is going to leak until the marketing information has to go out to people who are normally loose lipped.
[76:48]
A
One thing the supply chain said is that Samsung is the exclusive provider of those touch OLED screens but that's not a huge surprise. We thought there was one more company going to be involved, the best source.
[76:58]
C
I was a little bit surprised maybe that the report mentioned two different panel sizes.
[77:04]
A
I was thinking 14 and 16.
[77:06]
C
Yeah, I mean my uninformed guess, I'll call it a guess was that it seemed as though to me as though this is such a unique device that they would start off with let's make one model and then figure out who's buying it and then, and figure out how to expand the line from there. But yeah, I mean the difference between 14 and as anybody who's shopped for a MacBook knows, I mean the difference between a 14 and a 16. Exactly. That's the difference between. This will fit in most of my bags to. No, it will only fit in that bag that I got when I spoke at that conference. And I never used that bag because it's way too big, you know.
[77:43]
B
No, no, you're exactly right. And I've owned both over the years and like it's one of those things where you do kind of have to take your laptop with you or at least take a tummy device with you before you buy a bag especially if it's, if it's a more expensive bag because sometimes it'll just not fit. Whereas a 14 inch will basically fit in anything with the, the 16 inch which is very slim I will say for a 16 inch device. But it's still going to be taking up a lot more space than might otherwise. I, I wonder too if maybe the reason we haven't had like more leaks on the, the design itself is that I know that there have been rumors that it will be thinner and things like that but like they, they kind of nailed it with this redesign. Like, they kind of fixed all the things that we've complained about with the Touch bar Macs, which were a disaster for a lot of reasons. You know, they brought back the ports, you know, they added back MagSafe. You know, they made it, you know, thicker, which I think was a good thing. The reports are this will be thinner. If it's a millimeter or a couple of millimeters, that's fine. I personally don't really want a super thin laptop. I'd rather have the thermals to be completely candid with you. But if they could do that, great. There aren't a lot of bezels to get rid of except for the notch. And now if they can limit the notch, then that's obviously.
[79:02]
A
Well, that is. The question is you've got a pretty perfect design already. Of course, you have to redesign every four or five years just to get people to buy a new one. So people, is this a redesign? Because there's some need. By the way, before we go on, I want to correct myself. I said M6. I meant M5 in this model. I'm going to kind of skip the M6 and go to the M7 next year. So these will be with M5
[79:30]
D
maximum and Pro.
[79:32]
A
Pro and Max. Yeah, not an M6, Pro and Max. And then the Mac Studio also M5 according to Gurman.
[79:41]
D
Yeah.
[79:41]
A
This is a, this is a summation that Mac Groomer has put together. Thank you. Because it was a little hard to follow Gurman's thread. So what is the redesign? Is it for commercial reasons or is it because there is something they found that they could really significantly improve? I think maybe thinner is not. Not it.
[80:01]
C
Yeah. I mean, and let me just say parenthetically that of all the upgrades, the, the to my M5 over my M1, which had the. Which was the old style, like Touch bar one. I love the extra power, I love the extra ram. But basically the fact that it is designed like a normal laptop in itself was half the upgrade for me. Okay.
[80:19]
A
And. And having connectors and stuff, it looks
[80:22]
C
like it looks like basically every other laptop. Because there's a reason why we don't have cars with wacky controls inside them. There's basically a standard that works has been proven very, very well. But the reason to change the design is I think number one, designers got to design. If you're basically saying we need a new chassis, they're going to find way design language changes their thoughts on what. Should this be a hard edge? Should this Be a rounded edge. That kind of stuff changes, but also manufacturing techniques improve. So we might think that. Oh, God, gosh, isn't it nice that they put this extra little edge or this extra little lip there? And it could be a design thing. Excuse me, a visual design thing. But it also could be that they figured out that if they put in that little edge, that basically saves them money on a certain step of the manufacturing process. But yeah, as long as they don't get too, too wacky. I hope that they learned their lesson there because again, I cannot overstate it. The fact that I have ports on this thing, the fact that I've got an SD card on this thing. Okay. The fact that I've got actual, like actual mechanical function keys on the top
[81:25]
A
row of this thing, ladies and gentlemen. Exactly.
[81:29]
C
It's like the. The trav. The retreat that they made basically to say, okay, you know what? We thought that the escape people didn't need the escape key. And then they shouted us, we need a damn escape key. So basically you get a touch bar with an escape key. I mean, I cannot, I cannot overstate what a dumb. It wasn't a dumb idea in and of itself. It's just that if. If Apple had like pitched this idea, I would assume that they would have done it, not the way that they went and did it and because the way they did it was just pointless. And again, it was just such a waste of experience, a waste of manufacturing, a waste of materials that. Yeah, I mean this. I also wonder with the marketing research that they do. We all, we all heard about the effect of having that. That really nice orange color on the top priced iPhone 17 Pro that there is an a. We like bright colors. But also people, like, people have a visual indicator to people who are looking at them like on the subway that, oh, that person can afford the very latest and greatest. I do think there is something to that. That a certain number of sales are going to happen because people can. Flash was absolutely. The new chassis design.
[82:42]
B
Absolutely.
[82:43]
C
And the neo. As flashy and unmistakable as it is, you don't want to brag that you got the $599 MacBook. You want to brag that you got the AI one. Like if they. If they have like a thermal cooling tower on the back of it to make people know that. No, no, no. I've got the 128 gigabyte one with a.
[82:58]
A
With AI course. I wish. Actually, if you want an AI one, that's the point of skipping the M6 is that the M7 is really best suited for AI M5.
[83:10]
D
In fact. M7, right?
[83:12]
A
Yeah, I think it's right from 5 to 7.
[83:14]
D
It shows you the depths of just the despair of the late teens of Mac users that Andy has dredged up the nightmares of that period. But then they did the M1s and they threw that design away and did a new design that solved all those problems. So I think it's those people who are going to design this one. I think the motivation is, you know, they got to put an oled. They're putting in a touchscreen. It is, it is also an opportunity to. Because. Right. You don't do a redesign every time. So you do a redesign and then it sits there for five years. So this is their opportunity, knowing what they know and knowing what they know about their roadmap, to do a new design that will then be the basis of everything they do for the next four or five years. And so it's an opportunity. I think they probably learned their lessons about bad keyboards and designing something so thin that it, it can't handle the thermals of the chips they know they have to put in because they know what the chips are that they have to put in this thing. So I, you know, we'll. We'll see. And I think that the, that that disastrous update and the teens looms over us. But I think it's going to be a lot more gentle than that this time.
[84:23]
C
Hope.
[84:24]
A
I confess I am a heretic now. I might as well tell you all, I don't think I'll buy this OLED laptop. I may never buy another Mac laptop again.
[84:35]
D
Say that now I know.
[84:37]
A
No, no, listen to me. And I'm not gonna buy it. But the reason Linux on the laptop. I know about a year ago, when, when. Well, maybe it was when in November 24, 19, 2025 actually when Opus 4. 5 came out. I realized what I really want is just a way to connect to a desktop. The laptop is now going to be more of a portal to my desktop. And so much so that the Linux framework that you and I have, Christina, has become my central server that I connect to and that doesn't need. I can use an iPad for that. It does not need a fancy MacBook. In fact, I do use my iPad. I use a Chromebook. And I often use my Lenovo laptop running Linux. But I didn't even really need that because all I really need is a thin client reaching to that server. And then I really realized, oh, I'm not even using my Mac mini this M4 Pro with 64 gigs is actually, and we talked about this last week, a headless server because everything now is reached from a client to the server. So I mean, maybe I don't know if this is bad news for Apple in any way, but I don't know if I'm going to be buying a lot more Apple gear, especially given the cost of, of big ram.
[85:52]
C
Yeah, that's why it's such a good thing to not be so quick to upgrade every couple of years. Because when you wait five years to upgrade, assuming that you did not absolutely require new hardware to do what you do, that really gives you an opportunity to look back on how has my workflow changed in the past five years? For the past two or three years I've had basically upgrades of my Mac hardware on the table and budgeted for. And the thinking was always going to be I would repeat what I had been doing previously, which is I'm going to have a moderately but not insanely powerful MacBook, but I'm also going to have a Mac Mini on the desktop that stays at home. And now I'm sort of in the point of view of I'm not sure that I absolutely need a Mac Mini anymore. It helps that they're now more expensive and they're harder to obtain, but now it's more like I'm thinking more like next year if I think if I find that I'm missing out on a desktop experience, like a permanent installed desktop experience, I will revisit that. Honestly, for me, I'm more thinking about diversity of hardware so that if I'm Instead of spending $1,000, $1,300 on a kitted out Mac desktop, what if I use that budget towards discrete devices that will serve me very, very well under very specific circumstances.
[87:11]
A
Quickly because we're running out of time because we had such a long startup because we were having Internet issues which I think have gotten better. Right. The audio seems like it's kind of.
[87:18]
C
Yeah, your video looks good too.
[87:20]
A
No, never mind the big one for me. Maybe I will put my dollars that I'm not going to spend on that old laptop. I'm not. I really am not. Will be devoted to the other Mark Gurman story dropped yesterday. Big kind of a or no Today, this morning 6:00am Apple set to make make big smart home push with Siri AI at the center. Now we're going to see new Apple TV, new refreshed HomePod mini. Those will be this fall. A new hub device we've heard about for ages facetime video conferencing, home security, monitoring the display, face recognition. This is a tranche of big tranche of new Apple hardware this fall.
[88:08]
D
Yeah, they're clearly going to have probably a home event in October. Let's say
[88:16]
B
they have.
[88:17]
D
Yeah, I think that's. And then if you can imagine it's going to be new Apple TV, new HomePods, this new HomePod screen thing that also is kind of like a home controller device and all tied to Siri AI. And then on top of that they may also do. Gurman's kind of unclear about this, but they may also have a camera or two cameras, like a, like a ring doorbell kind of camera and then maybe also some other kind of home security camera. So you know, whether they all drop at the same time or not, you could see them doing a whole. Because again when Apple does product announcements a lot of the time the way you have to think about it is what story do they want to tell? Because sometimes the story, there's no story. Sometimes it's like hey there's a new Mac. Or they'll be like oh our chips are so great. Let's tell you about the M5 and here are some products with the M5 but they always want to tell some story otherwise you might as well just do a press release. Well, you line up all these products, there's a story to tell about and presumably it'll have some of their like the icloud stuff where the like a camera data is in icloud and they'll talk about the home app and they'll talk about Siri AI and presumably they'll have some things like app intents or widgets that are integrated into this as well. Gurman says that it's based on an operating system that is comes from Apple TV from tvos but then has been modified. So it's basically another OS variant for Apple that does some sort of TV like things and also some widget like things. So I mean they're all, they're all kind of variants of each other. So this is another one. Like you can see the shape of this pitch that they want to make. You can see and apparently John Ternus is one of the driving forces behind a lot of, of of this home stuff. And guess who will be the CEO this fall. So you can sort of see it.
[90:07]
B
Yeah, I mean I have to say I will absolutely buy whatever the new Apple TV is just because I always do. Even though you know, I have my, my complaints with it. I would certainly tell no one to buy An Apple TV as it currently exists at the current price.
[90:20]
D
Right.
[90:20]
B
In no universe, period. But, you know, I feel confident they can make an argument for why I should give them $250 or whatever in the fall. And I'm fine with that. I do wonder. I mean, and with John Ternus as CEO, you make a great point, Jason. Like, he's been kind of leading this and maybe he can tell the story better, even though Sergey AI is better. I don't know. Like, how many times are we going to take a swing at this home stuff before? I mean, to me, I won't even consider. This is just me, but I won't even consider a HomePod, and I won't even consider this home pod, this series screen thing. Like, it's not even part of my. My consideration process. There's. There's no universe in which I can
[91:02]
A
buy a lot the way you would, though, if you had a bunch of HomeKit app IoT devices.
[91:07]
B
Yeah, but I. But I do, and I use Home Assistant. I would much rather use Home Assistant.
[91:11]
D
Yeah, but Home assistant's not an 80% thing. It's a 10% thing.
[91:14]
B
So I agree with you. But what I'm saying, though, is that
[91:18]
A
I don't think what's the optimal setup is you. That's the thing is you want the
[91:22]
B
optimal setup, not the setup. Well, it's not even a matter of that. It's just a matter of, like, HomeKit is terrible, and controlling HomeKit things, in my opinion, is terrible. So I would rather, to be completely candid with you, not have the smart stuff at all, except for, you know, a few things if I need to, then deal with what I think is a genuinely abysmal experience of trying to manage any of your HomeKit devices and then trying to say, oh, well, does this work? Is this work? How do these things work together? This is just me, though. Like, other people get it. That's great.
[91:52]
D
I think. I think it's a lot better than a use case used to be. I think part of that is everybody's headed toward, like, interoperability. They're no longer breaking each other's stuff. Part of it, for me, it's probably that I've realized what products work in my home and what products don't, and I don't use the products that don't work. I. In the early days, you use whatever you could get your hands on, and a lot of it was garbage. But, like, you know, my. I got a bunch of lights, I got a smart lock on the front door. I've got thermostat that I can control via HomeKit. I've got, you know, the heater in my office that I can control. I've got blinds that adjust via, you know, home kit and other things. Right. But like a lot of Lutron stuff. Because the Lutron stuff is rock solid.
[92:35]
B
Yeah.
[92:35]
D
And so I look at this and I think, well, if I can get some devices, whether it's a home pod or a thing with a screen or whatever, that first off use Siri AI so they actually respond to what I want them to do in an intelligent way, which is a big if. But it's more encouraging now that we've seen Siri AI in the iOS Betas. And I'm open to the idea also of pulling some data out of my widgets that are otherwise like. My iPhone sits most of the time in a charging dock sideways using that nightstand mode where it's got a couple widgets up there. I like the idea of having an ambient display. I have gone through an Amazon device, you know, an echo show. I have a Google Home mini Nest, whatever it's called now in my kitchen. Those products are so bad. The Google one's better than the Amazon one by a long shot, but they're not good. So if I could get one that is like it's Apple ecosystem, it's got decent hardware, it's got a nice screen that'll show me pictures from my photos library, it's got Siri AI so it'll actually answer my questions or do what I want. And it's got kind of a nice interface space for some of my home stuff. I am actually interested in that now. That's a lot of bars for them. That's like a bar that's like running the hurdles, right. There is a long series of bars for them to clear to get there. And. And maybe now that they've got Siri AI, they can do it. But I'm at least intrigued because for me at least the home stuff has settled down because again, I think a lot of the garbage is just washed out of the market or some of it is. I want. Won't buy the garbage anymore. Whatever it is, I think it's in a better place now. So I think there's a place for this if they can execute and yes, and that's, I mean, a lot of this stuff, hardware wise, has been there for what Garmin says, like a year or more. And they've been waiting for Siri AI. Now whether they can turn Siri AI, which is Still a beta into something that will work reliably with these products when they ship them. Assume this fall. We will have to see. But if they, if they could do it, I feel like, Christina, I mean, I share your feelings about how bad a lot of the smart home stuff has been, but that's why when I bring up the Echo show and I bring up the Google Nest Home Mini, whatever it is, they keep changing the name. I don't know. There's lots of words in that.
[94:47]
B
Oh yeah, no. Oh, I want to be clear.
[94:49]
D
They're real bad. So the bar is super low.
[94:52]
B
Oh, the bar is non existent. I want to be honest with you. If this like bar they could, if they could clear all those hurdles, I'm with you. I would actually go back on my words and I would say, yeah, I'm willing to invest in this sort of ecosystem. Ecosystem. And I also believe you. I'm sure that things have improved. I haven't kept up with a lot of the HomeKit stuff as much, to be completely candid, because it was so bad that I had to find another assistant. I found a Raspberry PI and I found Home Assistant and that. And I can, that I can still use with HomeKit that I can still use with all my iOS devices. That works for me. So for me, and I'm not saying is it is easy for other people to set up with. No, it's not. But at the same time, I'm also not in a place where I'm like, yeah, I'm going to come completely reinvest and rejigger my entire environment on this promise that at this point Apple has been making to me for almost 10 years.
[95:37]
D
I get it.
[95:37]
B
And that they have, that they haven't, they haven't delivered. I'm hopeful that they do. But like, it's one of those things where I'm like, okay, I will genuinely believe it when I see it, but I am not willing personally to invest a dime in your home ecosystem until I know for a fact that it's actually going to be, you know, clear all those bars and not be better than, you know, the Raspberry PI 3 that I have running Home Assistant.
[95:59]
D
I mean, Home Assistant. I have a little Home Assistant box too, although it's not plugged in right now. Like, the great thing about something like Home Assistant is it also exports everything to HomeKit. So I have friends who, you know, they've got the Home Assistant app and they've set up all these automations and things like that. And that's Great. Their family never sees it, they just see Homekit.
[96:18]
B
That's how mine is.
[96:19]
D
You know, this Apple device, if it works well, you know, it doesn't fight your home assistant system, it supplements it because it's just a controller. So if again, but that's one of those hurdles they got again. It's, we're in the Olympics here, right?
[96:32]
B
We're in the Olympics. And again, if they can do it and like if the Apple TV can access that hub, that's great. I'm just personally saying I'm not buying anything from Apple with a screen on it to control my home. Personally, like, I will also say this, I will never buy another home pod again. I don't think they're good devices if you don't listen to only Apple's like oriented music. I just can't do it. People who love them, support them, that's great for you. I'm a Sonos person. Sonos has plenty of problems too. But I just, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go there.
[97:03]
C
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I think that Apple has a lot to prove and one of the problems is that as far as actual home automation goes, I don't actually care what system it is. All I want to do is hot word, turn on the office lights. Yeah, hot word. Turn on the, turn on the air conditioning at 4pm so that the temperature is 68 degrees by x. And if Gemini is doing that, great, great. If Siri is doing that, well, that's fine too. I'm not going to trust Amazon because of all the advertising collection. I will say this though, I am very, very intrigued by the unique circumstances that Apple has found themselves under with AI. I get the impression that Apple really did have a very big plan for home automation and home artificial intelligence that were very much scuppered by the problems they were having in getting their models actually online. I'm optimistic, let's say. And that drives a curiosity that do they really have a really, really good plan? Are they going to do something very, very interesting? So interesting, in fact, that when they do, as Jason so correctly says, when they put out here is the entire story of Siri for the home from start to finish. Not, oh, we did a press release and oh, we briefed a few influencers about this. No, no, no, they're going to have videos in which they tell the entire story about, we have wonderful plans for your home and Siri is going to be the smarts behind it. I'm very, very keen to See if that is actually a good workable plan because I get the idea that they've been very, very frustrated that they could not do this two years ago. Again, that promises nothing, but at least it means that whereas as I just said, there's almost nothing that could get me to put an Amazon home automation product or smart speaker into my house at this point. Whereas with Apple Apple I've been very, very disappointed by them, but I'm at least going to pay very, very close attention to what they have to say with the next round of stuff. It also helps that I haven't updated my home speakers in a bunch of years and would not be a terrible idea for me to say, you know what, Maybe I'll put 500, $600 aside to buy a half dozen a collection of a half dozen smart speakers, both the little ones to get me conversations wherever I want and a couple of the big ones for actual actually listening to music. So I'll be paying close attention.
[99:20]
A
Well, we'll find out this fall. It's going to be a busy fall. There's no doubt about it. If right. And I think he is. Yeah, lots.
[99:27]
C
Tim really did plan a Runway for. For John to have like to be have so many Willy Wonka moments in the, in the next two or three months actually. Actually wasn't it. Did you notice that at the this is the first time that they seem to be doing a sort of a transitional event. They had the premiere event for the new series of TED Lasso and both Tim and Jon were sort of joined at the hip through all the press. They gave a couple of interviews as like sort of partners in this endeavor, which shows how they are now very much interested in how the transition is going to be handled. As now there's going to be a couple of different faces of the company and one is going to be fading away and one's going to be fading up.
[100:11]
A
All right, let's take a little break. There's a few more things to talk about. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy Inotko. New website. Looking good. Everybody should join ihnatko.com Andy's filing. How many stories a day do you think you're right now?
[100:29]
C
Oh, I'm one guaranteed a week. I'm trying to get on a regular schedule of two to three a week in addition to the exclusive ones. The the fun problem is that the thing that I thought oh this will be very, very simple. I'll do a simple rundown of Apple news, just links and just little descriptors about what I think about these things. And now the last Week's was about 3,000 words of just comments on individual stories in this one document. So I'm having fun and I'm trying to get to a more Monday, Wednesday, Friday sort of schedule. But I'm very, very pleased with the stuff that I've been posting so far. I hope the. Hope the people who have been supporting the site and people who come in for free have been enjoying it as well.
[101:08]
A
Good job.
[101:09]
C
Thank you for. Thank you for the pitch. That was very nice.
[101:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice. We're all thrilled. It's nice to see you gainfully employed.
[101:19]
C
Well, I mean, it's tech journalism, so gainfully for certain versions of the word gainfully.
[101:25]
A
Well, as you know, many of us have learned the best solution to all of this is to go independent and make your own way and build your own brand. And I think you've got a great brand.
[101:36]
C
I'm surprised and relieved and pleased that it turns out that there are people who are saying, you know what? I do want to support that because that was not by no means fixed in my mind that I would find out that that would be the truth, the case. I'm even more grateful for that.
[101:49]
A
Christine Warren, also from GitHub, where she is doing developer relations and keeping an eye on Copilot and all the amazing things. GitHub has become literally the hub hub for AI development these days, which has been both a challenge and an opportunity for the git.
[102:10]
B
That's wild.
[102:12]
A
I bet you're more busy than you've ever been. It's pretty amazing.
[102:15]
B
No, I mean, there's so many developments and changes happening in Software and at GitHub. What's always been cool about us is that how our company works is that we kind of mirror the industry a little bit too. We, we build GitHub using GitHub and I think we're also kind of a reflection of the broader changes you see in the industry with moving to agentic development and whatnot. I've been having conversations with a lot of my friends who are devs, and we spend a whole lot less time writing code than reading, reviewing code. And you wonder, okay, well, when is even that going to shift? And that doesn't mean that you're not involved, that doesn't mean that you're not vibe code coding. But more and more of the work is being done now by, you know, agents and it's, it's a, it's really interesting to observe and it's, it's Cool to kind of be in the thick of all of it.
[103:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. Very, very exciting. We're all excited. I mean, that's. People say why you talk about AI so much? It's, you know, why did we talk about the iPhone so much in 2007? When you have a paradigm shift, a sea change that changes everything. And I don't. I think as much as the Internet changed everything, AI is changing everything even more and even faster. And so it requires a certain type
[103:27]
D
of personality consideration, requires some thought and consideration. But I think the type of people who watch these shows and listen to these shows are also the ones who are going to benefit from it the most because we don't know how it's going to go. But I feel very strongly like AI is another tool to be used and nerdy people who want to be early to using tools that will make their jobs better. Who are the people who do listen to podcasts like this? Like, these are the people who will be impacted the most by this stuff. Right now I have some skepticism about in the end using. I feel like that tool is being misused already and people think it's going to be used in ways that it is not going to ever be suitable. Suitable for. And eventually we'll get over that. And I think a lot of the anger about AI is about that. But like computer programming and, you know, agentic churning on data for nerdy people to build, that stuff is going to be big forever.
[104:27]
A
In the words of the immortal Chameleonaire, we're all riding nerdy. Let's pause on that note. Think about that, please. The first thought, our show today, brought to you by Cash Fly. Cash Fly literally brought to you by Cash Fly's our cdn, our content delivery network. They've kept our content moving practically since the very beginning. Every stream, every download, every on demand episode, Cash Fly quietly does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. And we love them for that. Thank you. Cashfly around for more than longer than we've been more than 20 years. Cash fly is anything but static. That's what I like about them. They don't rest on their laurels. Here are a few things to know if you're evaluating CDN options for your infrastructure. With Cash Fly game downloads as an example, up to 158% faster than the other guys. Sub second video start times on any device at scale. That's important to us because we know if you go to the Twit website and you press the play button on the video, if it doesn't start up right away, you're gone. Rock Solid software delivery, even on chaotic launch days. Live streaming to millions of concurrent users without breaking a sweat. Cachefly, as I said, they're always improving. They just added a few features you might be interested in. For instance, we love advanced analytics. Very helpful for us. For deep CDN visibility into our portal or with your observability stack, you get edge control, which gives you programmatic request and response handling at the edge. They also have added Terraform integration to manage CDN resources with code. And you know what that means. If you can manage it with code, you can manage it with many other tools. Right? With more than 75 points of presence across six continents, and I'm sure they're working on Antarctica, you get the best local response time. That's important to us because we have listeners all over the world. That's probably why Cashflow has now more than 5,000 customers. Oh, we also love this hundred percent uptime SLA. Not four nines, five nines. 109s. 100% uptime SLA and 247 engineer to engineer support. Patrick Delahany loves that. Our CIO enjoy flexible billing, no strong arm contracts. Cash Fly is a CDN built for your business. It was built for ours. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashfly.com. you've heard me say it so many times. Bandwidth for Mac Break Weekly is provided by Cash fly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT. Thank you, Cash Fly. Thank you. Oh, let's see. This time for the big Vision Pro segment such as
[107:16]
D
crickets. It's time to talk to Vision Pro.
[107:23]
A
I think this is kind of cool. You Remember Slumdog Millionaire 127 Hours?
[107:28]
B
Yeah.
[107:28]
A
AR Ramen has launched ARR Immersive for Apple Vision Pro. 150 million records sold, 170 industry awards, multiple academies awards and Grammy awards. Ramen is making immersive experiences blending music, dance and performance. I guess it's kind of a. A little Bollywood on your Vision Pro. I guess so. Well, there's sent of. Let's see what's on a man's butt. So it's actually a whole bunch of stuff, not just for the Indian market. I think there are a lot of people who would love this. Have you put it on your vision? No. No, I'm sure you haven't. Have you put this on your Vision Pro, Jason?
[108:10]
D
Nope.
[108:11]
A
Okay.
[108:11]
D
I just don't know anything about it.
[108:12]
A
Some people there's Some people who would be thrilled about this. I'm just saying, Okay, I had to do something.
[108:18]
D
No, you didn't.
[108:22]
A
How else am I supposed to maintain our preeminence?
[108:25]
D
You know, I think the bar is lower than that. I'm just saying, I think we could be the preeminent Vision Pro oriented podcast without covering the Vision Pro every week.
[108:34]
A
Okay, Andy, thanks for nothing. There's zero Vision Pros in your lineup either, so I got something. You do you.
[108:41]
C
I'm just saying that even Andy did not come up with. With anything relevant to put in his notes. That's usually, you know, but hey, again, we got to keep our liquor license and whatever the state. State requires us to do to keep that liquor license.
[108:57]
A
That's right.
[108:58]
C
I don't. I don't know what's. I don't know what the regulatory stuff is. That's your job. So.
[109:02]
A
So support you. This was a. I love. I love this article, by the way, Jason. Oh, by the way, I got to close it out.
[109:09]
D
Oh, now, you see, that's your vision.
[109:11]
B
Now, you know, we're done. Vision Pro.
[109:16]
A
No, you know, can I give up our crown? Is it time to give up the crown?
[109:20]
D
I think we retain the crown as long as we cover when there are relevant things to cover.
[109:25]
A
You know what it's like. I have a lot of mayorships in Swarm, formerly Foursquare, a lot of them, because no one's using it anymore. So I am still the mayor of, like, 12 different places just because no one else is checking in.
[109:43]
C
I was gonna. I was gonna say that this is the problem with, like, fitness apps and duolingo apps that basically reward you for maintaining streaks. It basically turns you into somebody who does something not because they want to do it, but because they don't want to lose the street streak.
[109:57]
A
Yeah, I'm just. I'm. I am proud to be a mayor of. Let me see here. I have. Because I recently put Swarm back on my phone thinking, I don't know, it was kind of fun back in the day. Do you still use it, Christina?
[110:12]
B
Okay, so I used it, like, reliably for a really, really long time. And then I stopped, I think when they. Something changed where it couldn't auto post to various social networks. And it wasn't even the Twitter integration. It was that I used to like to check in at certain places so my mom would know where I was and I would just post, like, to a friends only thing on Facebook, which I don't even use anymore. And when that went away, like when I Travel, I guess I do. But not, not anymore. But it is funny. I've noticed the same thing you have where I've like checked in a place one time and they're like, if you check in one more time, you'll be the new mayor. And I'm like, oh my God.
[110:45]
D
Yeah, I'm the mayor.
[110:46]
B
I was like, I'm the mayor. Because we are. Because no one else uses the service.
[110:52]
A
Damn service. You know what?
[110:55]
B
At least it's still around. I like, I'm really glad that it's still around.
[110:58]
A
It's me and Owen Thomas, basically.
[110:59]
B
And Owen, Owen checks in, goes around
[111:02]
A
and favorites everywhere I go just because he wants me to remember same.
[111:06]
B
I was gonna say, I was gonna say Owen. I see Owen all the time. His updates, the gym, anything else. And I'm like, I love. I'm like, Owen, thank you for still. And he, he likes my check ins too. And I'm like, oh, thank God there's still one person. Owens.
[111:19]
A
So cute. Yeah. Well, Christina, I will follow you. I don't. I guess I'm not following you.
[111:24]
B
Yeah, maybe not. I'm not following you. Are you leaving? Leo laporte? I'll follow you as well.
[111:28]
A
I am Leo laporte on this swarm, if anybody wants to know. Everywhere I go all the time, it's on my watch. I can actually press a button and check in. It's probably a privacy nightmare. I'm probably helping ICE track down illegal immigrants or something like that. But you know what? Damn it, I want to keep those mayorships anyway. That's what it's like. Let's talk about. So. Because this was a really funny. I love this funny piece. I loved it that you wrote it. Always choose the good soap. Would you explain what this is all about?
[112:03]
D
Yeah. So Jon Gruber has been writing lately all these things about. He's basically got the receipts from an earlier version of Apple boasting about how they always care about the customer and they don't want to make decisions that will harm the customer experience. And that Apple's better than that. And it has to do with things in recent years. It's things like adding apps to the ads to the App Store, which I find offensive because it's charging developers who are in the App Store so that their apps are visible in the App Store. So they're basically. And you know, they're, they're taking the money that they don't take away from developers and taking more of it away from developers. And now they're going to add this summer they're adding ads to Apple Maps and they always pitch it as an improvement to the discovery experience and things like that. Although as I pointed out in my story, if you notice that press release, it's about something else, a different product. And then there's a subhead halfway down that's also not actually about the ads. And then you get to the second paragraph and it mentions that they're going to be ads and Apple Maps. And to me that suggests that there are lots of people inside Apple who don't think this is great. And the trained marketing geniuses are hiding it it because they know it's just, it's not actually a thing to boast about. So my story kind of like prodded by John and it was very funny because John posted a thing that's from a mutual friend of ours literally right after I had written my thing. And both of us referenced the fact that among other things, Apple also doesn't take or never took co marketing money from intel to put intel inside stickers on their computers. Right.
[113:39]
A
Which is a lot of money that every other guy does.
[113:42]
D
They'll let you do it, but you got to put their logo in your ads and stuff. And Apple's like, we're not going to do that. Like, and, and, and famously there was a whole press conference where somebody, somebody asked Steve Jobs about it and he said we like our stickers better. And in the end he was like, you know, there's a lot of junk on PCs and we don't do that here. So my point is this is Apple's brand promise. Apple has never been the low price leader. Apple is always making products that are more expensive, but the idea is they're nicer. You buy more to get more. They're never going to be super cheap, but they've got things about them that make them nicer and better and that the problem is you degrade your brand promise at your own peril. And when your brand gets degraded, it's harder to do brand rehab. Every cut makes it harder. Every time somebody is like, oh, I can't believe Apple's doing this, makes it harder for you to get that back. And I think there are people at Apple who, well, I think there are probably people at Apple who are deluded into thinking that adding a bunch of junk into an Apple product doesn't matter because that's not why people buy Apple products. I think they're wrong. I think that, that adding junk in not not having the junk is a reason people buy Apple products is that they want it to be nicer. But I also think that clearly in the last 10 years there's been a culture shift at Apple where they are very motivated by revenue enhancements and you know, from this thing or that thing and ads is a great example of it. But it's also stuff like, like let's do a pro app bundle and why don't we throw our non pro productivity apps in the bundle anyway and put a bunch of ads in the toolbars and stuff of pages and numbers for this. Create a professional bundle which is totally kind of inappropriate and junks up those apps. And those apps don't exist to generate revenue. Those apps exist to make Apple's platforms more usable because they can open Word files and Excel files and, and PowerPoint files and let you do word processing and stuff. So they kind of lost the plot there. And the reason for the soap, Leo, is I went to Hawaii in February and we stayed at a nicer place than we usually stay. We usually just rent a condo somewhere and you know, it's like a verbo. It's fine. It's Hawaii, it's great. And we splurged a little bit and got. I decided I wanted to stay a little nicer kind of resort place. And one of the things that I was thinking because this is me as I was washing my hands at the hotel sink is they have a really nice soap. They have like, it's kind of, you know, when I stay at a Best Western in Eugene, Oregon to pick up or drop off my kids for college, they've got the little like tiniest possible rectangle that maybe it got damp at some point. So it's sort of stuck together but you can rip it off and you get to the little tiny little bar of soap and you know, at the, at the Sheraton Kauai at the beach, it's like this kind of curved bar of soap that's sitting there and it's got a nice smell. And the point, the point I'm making about soap is if you choose, if you're that resort, you could have worse sheets and you could have less often that people come in and take care of the room. You could save by reducing how often you clean the grounds and clean the swimming pool. You could buy the cheaper soap, but the problem is you could save a lot of money, but you're doing yourself damage because you are in the category of a kind of a luxury. I don't go to the Four Seasons or anything. It is a, it is the Sheraton, but still It's Hawaii and it's on the beach. You are, you don't want to be the Motel 6. You don't want to be the Super 8. You are selling a certain level of quality and that means foregoing opportunities to cheap out. And my point with the soap is if you're Apple, you gotta always choose the nice soap because that's part of Apple's brand. And I think there are people at Apple who know this, but I think there are other people at Apple who are winning arguments. And they're winning the arguments because they're like, but money. And culturally, for whatever reason, but money is winning arguments that should be won by. But user experience. Right?
[117:47]
A
That's how you got here.
[117:49]
D
And I'll just say this is near and dear to my heart because the last five years I was in my corporate job, day in, day out, the number one thing I did was not review Apple products or see what was going to be in the next issue, or manage my editors for Macworld and PC World. The number one thing that I did was fight with people in our sales and business development department who came in with a constant parade of little tiny bits of revenue that they could add to the company that would make our websites worse. And their attitude was, well, what's the problem? It's money. Why would we turn down money? And it's very difficult to be the person who has to say, as a business, we need to forego revenue because the whole purpose is to make money, right? The whole purpose of the business. But you gotta have the big picture in mind. You gotta think about the product, the brand promise, whatever you want to say about it, somebody has to stand up for it. And you gotta, you got to be empowered. And I was mostly not empowered. And it was very frustrating. And I'm, that's why I'm very glad I don't have that job anymore. But, but it's, it's really lonely to be the person who says, you know what? I think our company needs to forego this million dollars because it's going to make our product crappy.
[118:59]
A
It's hard.
[119:00]
D
But, but what I think Apple needs to do is have a little bit of a cultural reset where they realize the brand promise is the biggest asset at Apple. Not the iPhone, not the Mac, nothing else. It's the Apple brand and what it stands for. And when you lose it and you're just another tech company that doesn't have anything going for it, there's no reason why you'd buy a Mac over a PC at that point, it's really hard to get it back. So am I. Am I. You know, isn't. Is one ad in Apple Maps going to destroy Apple? Well, no, the problem is that for the last 10 years they've been saying to just one of all sorts of things, and how long is this going to go on? And it's going to require a cultural shift, which means it really is going to require somebody like John Ternus to say, you know what, we kind of lost our values here and we need to fix it and we need to rethink what we're doing. That's the soap.
[119:48]
A
That's the soapbox. And you can stand on that anytime. I agree with you 100%. It's.
[119:55]
D
I'm not, I mean, and I'm not saying, oh, ads, icky, yuck. I'm like, I get it. But like, think about it and think about the ramifications of it. Like, adding the second ad to the App Store, I think really set a bunch of people off because now if you do an App Store search on your iPhone, like, first it's a big ad, then you might get one good result and then there's another big ad and you got to scroll to get to the rest of the content. And, you know, now Apple Maps, the, the relevant content's going to be under an ad. Like, at some point you just got to say, this is bad for our customers, and that means it's bad for us. Instead of, ah, we could do whatever they want. There's no, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as a consequence free additional ad unit. They all degrade the experience. They all do. And, and if you want to choose to do it, know what you're doing. And I think over the last 10 years, they haven't known what they're doing. They don't. Or the people who get to win the arguments don't care. That's what I think is going on there.
[120:53]
A
So I think you're absolutely right. And it's, it's not like they need the money. That's the thing that gets me. I understood if you were struggling.
[121:02]
D
They make a lot of money on expensive hardware. Maybe that's the value of their product, not all of the ancillary garbage that they then put in the expensive, nice hardware.
[121:12]
C
This might be a relevant time to say that today Apple broke $5 trillion in valuation.
[121:18]
A
Oh, it happened today. Oh, yeah. Their stock's way up, isn't it? Holy cow.
[121:22]
C
Partly because of the Apple Upgrade program, I think.
[121:27]
A
Yeah, people liked that. Wall street liked it. It also helped Klarna's stock.
[121:33]
B
Yeah, I hope there's a lot.
[121:35]
A
A lot. See, this is why, if you just knew ahead of time. Oh yeah, that's illegal. Thank you, Jason, for fighting the good fight. I agree with you. It's one of the reasons we turn down advertisers all the time. You know, we have to do ads, we do need the ads, but we turn away money. You know, people think we're crazy often
[121:56]
D
because look at a Windows PC that's full even to this day, Windows PCs are full of garbage ware that's only on there. It's not enhancing. They'll tell you it's enhancing your experience. It's not. It's a way for them to make more money. Or look at a lot of the streamer boxes and TVs even now where like the business model is, well, we're also going to surveil you or we're going to, to load you up with ads or that Amazon Echo show is going to be real cheap because all it's going to do is sit there and ask you to buy things. The alternative is not good. And Apple should not lose sight of the fact that they are supposed to be the nicer alternative. And that means something.
[122:35]
A
Yeah. Couple of media stories. Apple. First you got Bollywood, now you've got Mexican micro dramas shot on iPhones 17 Pro. It's called Nitto de viannas. Right. This tongue in cheek Mexican micro drama. You know, all micro dramas should probably should be shot on iPhone 17 Pro. People watch them on their iPhone, on their phones. What do you need? What do you need them in? Anything higher quality. Although these look good and it's vertical video. Right. So it's perfect.
[123:13]
B
Who knew Quibi wasn't a terrible idea after all.
[123:17]
A
Yeah, just. It was too early.
[123:18]
B
It was just too early.
[123:19]
A
Quibi, this is something I never thought I'd say was ahead of its time.
[123:23]
B
Quibi was ahead of its time.
[123:26]
A
Micro dramas are big on TikTok, right?
[123:28]
B
Yeah.
[123:29]
A
Is that where they are?
[123:30]
B
I guess. Or other network. I don't watch them. That's. That's not my thing. But yeah, I mean they apparently do.
[123:35]
A
Well, it's just one more addiction I do not need. And this I'm nervous about. Could be good, could be bad. Apple is, you know, Apple went to Comic Con, I guess San Diego Comic Con over the weekend and announced a bunch of stuff including a date for Neuromancer, which we've been.
[123:55]
D
And we got A real. A real trailer.
[123:57]
A
A real trailer. January 22nd. God, I love this book, which makes me very, very nervous.
[124:04]
D
William Gibson says he's very happy with it.
[124:07]
B
Okay.
[124:08]
D
So that's cool.
[124:08]
A
If it's a good neuromancer, I will be so excited.
[124:13]
D
It'll be interesting because, you know, the world is very different from in 1983 when he wrote it, or 1982 when he wrote it. And technology's moved along, and so the metaphor and the concept, I think, has been updated a little bit just because our view of the future is a little bit different. But like such a classic book. And really just got stymied because a bunch of bad cyberpunk movies got made, including Johnny Mnemonic, which was based on a William Gibson story. And then they made the Matrix, which was totally lifting all that stuff. And it was such a cultural hit that it's almost like it became impossible to do another one because the Matrix did it. So it's really taken this long to get here. But I'm excited. Super excited.
[124:53]
A
I love that book. You know what? Do read it before you go see it or watch it on tv because it deserves to be read in the original and then watch the show. I'll reread it before the show comes out. Dark Matter has a second season, which is good. Yeah, that's a really interesting show that I don't think got the attention it deserves.
[125:15]
D
Great show.
[125:16]
A
Yeah. Very interesting upcoming movie called Matchbox John Cena. I don't care. It's based on Matchbox toys now. I really don't care.
[125:28]
B
Why? Why are we doing this?
[125:30]
A
Why? Because. I don't know.
[125:33]
B
I mean. I mean, look, Barbie was. Barbie was a great example of if you have good story, you can elevate the IP of anything. Instead. The only lesson Hollywood seems to have taken from that was, oh, we can now have successful toy movies and like Masters of the Universe flopped as it. As by all accounts, it should have. And anybody who knew that would have known that that was going to be a flop. Like, again, Barbie worked because Greta Gerwig played upon the idea of Barbie, but there wasn't anything because Barbie doesn't have an origin story. So it wasn't about that. It was about a bunch of other things that just happened to live in a Barbie universe, which was compelling and great. I don't know why we need a movie about Matchbox cars. I really don't.
[126:19]
A
Enough said. Mac Break Weekly continues with your picks of the week just around the corner, a reminder that this show exists because of you, our listeners. In the beginning at Twitt, I really was hoping I could do the whole thing without ads. I, you know, I really wanted to. We had, but there was no Patreon at the time, no memberful, no tip jar. Well, we had a tip jar. That's all we had. And it didn't generate enough income to do anything but maybe a part time job for me by myself doing a show. So we, after a year or two turned to advertising. It's been very, very good to us, I won't complain. It's allowed us to really build the network at its peak. You know, we had that beautiful studio and lots of shows. But as advertising has dwindled, so has our ambition. We have fewer shows, we don't have a studio anymore. We've cut as much as we can. But to this day, I just asked Lisa the other day, 35% of our operating costs now are supported by the very generous contributions of our TWIT members. And that to me is the way I'd like to make it full time permanent. If we could do that. No advertising at all. I would, I really would. But it's going to take you guys stepping up. So right now it's fewer than 2%. One in one in, what is that? One in 50 of our listeners and viewers joining the club. Get that to 1 in 21 in 10. And yeah, we wouldn't need ads. So here's what we do. For 10 bucks a month, you join Club Twit, Twitter, TV Club Twit. You get at, you get ad free versions of all the shows so you don't get any ads. Plus because there are no ads, we can give you chapter markers which everybody seems to want. And I agree that's a great thing because the length of the ads varies and we have direct ad insertion. We can't really do that in ad supported show shows, but we easily can do it with ad free shows. So we do. You also get access to a really happy place in my opinion, the Club Twit Discord. A wonderful, wonderful place to hang
[128:18]
C
with
[128:18]
A
animated GIFs and wonderful AI content. You also get a lot of special programming that we do for the club. We could do because of the club, programming that wouldn't have any advertisers just because it's kind of niche programming. Coming up this week on Friday, off by One with Jeff Atwood. No one's going to buy this, but we love doing it. Jeff, of course, the creator of the Stack Overflow, the coding horror blog and Discourse, which is the forum Software we use and love. Jeff is a wild man, but he is so much fun. We do a number of our shows in the club just for the club, but also our AI users group. We've decided to move that to twice a month, month because there's so much to talk about. Micah does his crafting corner on the third Wednesday of every month. Chris Marquardt with photo time. Our assignment this month is Rugged Stacy's book club. Coming up August 21st. Slow Gods is the book by Claire north. And we've added because Stacy was only doing the book club every other month. Micah said, why don't we do a media club? So we also do a media club. We just did the Matrix. Speaking of the Matrix, we are now voting on what the next media item will be for the September 18th meeting of Micah's media club. That's just an example of the kind of stuff we can do because of you, the club Twitt members. If you're not a member yet, please consider helping us out. It's, it's. Don't tell the advertisers this, but it is my dream, my goal at some point to just be ad free for everybody with not a paywall. But if enough people supported it one in five, then we wouldn't have to charge everybody. We just, you know, and that would make it my, my dream come true. Twitter slash club Twit. Let us get to the picks of the week. I'll start them off because I just got this. The company 12 south is so innovative, so interesting. They do things you didn't know you needed until they, until they make them them. And then you go, oh, I wish I'd always had this. This is their power bug. Man, I love this idea. What is it? Well, it just, it's a mag safe adapter, Chichu adapter that just plugs into the wall.
[130:32]
B
That's cool.
[130:33]
A
So when you get to the hotel, you just plug it into the wall and then you attach your phone to it. And now, and if you do it sideways, you've got a. Now you've got a wall clock and it charges it and it's just simple and brilliant. 50 bucks immediately, as soon as they put it out, I said, I have to have this. The power bug from 12 South. What a clever idea. I don't know why no one else thought of that. Christina, your pick of the week.
[131:01]
B
So I've been going down a rabbit hole the last, I guess a week or so about trying to kind of do various things about self hosting my audiobook. Library so that I can access it other ways. And I was reminded of an app that I've actually been using for a while, but I figured I would make this my pick of the week. This is an app called Book Player, bookplayer app.
[131:22]
A
I use this and I love it. This plus libation and your life suddenly turns around.
[131:29]
B
It's great. And what I like about this app is it's really good in the sense that you can use it. I guess like I said, like with something like a audio bookshelf or with Plex or with Libation or other things.
[131:41]
A
I just put my books on my Apple iPhone computer.
[131:46]
B
I was going to say, but you don't even have to do that. What I like about this versus some of the other solutions because there are a number of other front ends for Audiobookshelf or Plex if you want to host your things that way. But in this case it'll just play back any M4B file or any MP3 file it supports. Check Chapters and it's great. It's free if you pay. He has a pro service that'll keep up with syncing across devices, which I
[132:10]
A
do because it's worth it.
[132:12]
B
Yeah, I typically only kind of tend to listen in certain scenarios, so I haven't done that yet. But it's a great app, it's open source, it's frequently developed. He's been doing this for a really long time. And there's even an Android version now too. It also works works on the Mac. And so Book Player is my pick.
[132:31]
A
Yeah, completely agree with you. I use Libation to When I left audible, download my 500 plus audible books, remove the DRM, put them on icloud. And now with Book Player I can add them to my Book Player library. It syncs them up. This is a nice feature. I could play it from my iPhone, could play it from my Mac. It's just such a good idea. There are a lot of audiobook players. I agree with you. This one is my favorite. Good choice. And look, Neuromancer is on my current list of things read by Steve Gibson. Look at that. Look at that. I'm ready.
[133:13]
B
Amazing.
[133:14]
A
Thank you, Christina. Good recommendation. Andy Anako, Pick of the week.
[133:20]
C
I've said before that I'm not really a smartwatch type of guy. I just can't get used to it. And I really, really have a genuine love for Casio, like cheap Casio watches because I think they've got a classic look to them. They're cheap. You can have like a collection of them for like less than 100 bucks. And again, they're just genuinely cool. And this one had been on my, on my wish list for a while. This is the WS 1600H. There's nothing terribly special about it. I think it's, it's mostly, it's the, the big call of this is that it has lots and lots of stopwatch functions and lots and lots of timers. What I like about it has that really cool, like animated, like sort of sp. Like tachometer at the very, very top and a spinning wheel, neither of which serve any functional purpose for timekeeping other
[134:06]
A
than what we love about cats. Yeah, exactly. Buttons for buttons sakes.
[134:11]
C
And I mean it's, it's also the type of engineering I really, really like because these things are almost indestructible. This is water resistant all down to 100 meters. This is like, I'd be very, very frightened. No matter how, no matter how well warranted and tested. The $800 like Apple Watch is to be rugged. I'd be like, but it's an $800 watch and if, if it gets destroyed by water, I'll be upset. If I, if I, I lose it off my wrist while I'm swimming, I'll be very, very upset. This is really, really cheap. I'll be, I'll just simply buy, I'll say, oh, darn the luck and I'll buy another one. And also the battery lasts 40 bucks
[134:47]
A
folks, from the Cat 10 year battery,
[134:50]
C
which means that this will. If you are a smartwatch type of person, sometimes it's a good idea to simply have one watch in the box that you know always will be working so that if there's something that like is the battery's dead, we need to leave the house. Or if you do have a fancy watch but for some reason it's not working correctly, you need to get to the airport. Grab the 10 year. The watch with a 10 year battery. This is a really good recommendation because like you said, it's $40 list, but according to Camel, Camel, Camel, every couple of months they discount it down to $22 and it's actually discounted down to $22. Right now it looks like Amazon has
[135:25]
A
it for 22 bucks. Unbelievable.
[135:28]
C
And the last thing about it is that because this style has been around for, for years and years and years, case modding Casio watches of this model is very, very popular. So you can take the watch module out of this, put it into a stainless steel case, or add like lens filters so that the different Sections of it are different colors. Change it to like a standard band. There's a lot of fun things you can do with them. And again, it's just a hell of a lot of fun for 2020.
[135:53]
A
Is it really a 10 year battery?
[135:56]
C
They could not print the words 10 year battery right here on the watch itself if they were not that. Were not not the.
[136:02]
A
That's kind of stunning.
[136:04]
C
Yeah.
[136:04]
A
So this is good. If there's a nuclear apocalypse, you will want to have this in your drawer.
[136:10]
D
Exactly.
[136:11]
C
Also because again, if you don't want to have to fire up that diesel generator to charge up your Apple Watch because the plume of smoke will give you away. The other tribes that you have gas, they have gas.
[136:26]
A
It's for the Mad Max world. That is to come. The Casio WS16 for the best, expect the worst. $40 list. But yeah, I see it on Amazon for 22 bucks. Why wouldn't. I just bought it, by the way?
[136:39]
D
Why?
[136:39]
A
I mean, I'm an Apple Watch fanatic. I can't. If I, if I don't have my Apple Watch on, I. I turn back and go home and put it on.
[136:46]
C
I just.
[136:46]
A
But I just get.
[136:47]
C
I just, I just get bored wearing the same watch each and every day. I like to be able to change
[136:51]
A
things up a little bit. Yeah. Jason Snell, you got to wrap things up.
[136:54]
C
Thanks, everybody. See you later.
[136:55]
A
Thank you. Take care, Andy. You wrap things up now, Jason. In with your pick of the week.
[136:59]
D
Yeah, this got a real Andy and Echo vibe to it. So I'm just going to continue this. There is an Apple ii hacker named 4am who builds all sorts of amazing things for retro computing for the Apple ii. There's a vibrant Apple II community. They make extensions like new hardware that attaches to the Apple II. And 4am came out last week with mini replay 1.0. Mini replay is a single disc. It is a disk image. It is like 140k. I forget the size of a disk image. 140k.
[137:32]
A
Apple 140k. Apple too floppy, containing eight games.
[137:35]
D
Now, friends, these eight games cannot fit on a disk. How is that even possible? They never originally fit on a disc. It's classic games that you can play on any Apple ii. And again, wait a minute.
[137:45]
A
Apple II not included. This is very important.
[137:47]
D
Yes. 48. Well, we'll get to that. 48K. Apple II. It'll fit on a single Apple II Floppy Burger Time, Dig Dug Hard Hack, Mac Mario Brothers, Moon Patrol sneakers, Spy Hunter and Wavy Navy. These are classic Apple II games. It will play on basically any 48k Apple II or later. How did he do it? Well, I mean this guy is a genius. So one of the things that he did is he used asymmetric encryption, so. Or not encryption compression. So he used very powerful modern computers.
[138:20]
A
He used just middle out compression.
[138:22]
D
That's the middle out. Yes. So he used modern computers to compress all of these programs in a way that the Apple ii. The idea there is it's very hard to do the compression algorithm but very easy to decompress. And so he's able to. I love this because it is modern technology entirely applied to make a tiny Apple II disk image with games on it from the like 70s and 80s. So eight games. You can play them with a keyboard. You can hook up a joystick if you want. It'll work on. If you can get this out to an Apple II floppy, you can stick it in the Apple II and play these games. What a fun idea. It's got all the cheats and mods and stuff built into it too. It's really like a lovingly recomposed version of all of these. It's the original games but like with all the stuff fixed and set up properly on them so you can play them completely. And if you're saying to yourself, but I don't have an Apple II. Good news. A new version of Virtual 2 came out this week. Virtual2.comVirtualI I.com I'm playing Dig Dug.
[139:28]
A
I'm so excited.
[139:30]
D
Virtual 2 is amazing. It's a great Mac Apple II emulator. It. It'll look at your Mac hard drive. You can mount floppies. It'll let you print to a text file on your Mac. It'll let you transfer data. Like there's so many things that it does. So even if you don't have an actual Apple II, you could get virtual 2 version 13.2 just came out. Great. That app's been around for ages. He keeps updating it and I Love it. Apple 2 behind me.
[140:00]
A
But also you can play it on Internet Archive on any computer.
[140:04]
D
You can. You can just play Mini Replay on Internet Archive in the in browser emulator. And that will also work.
[140:12]
A
I am doing it right now. This is so exciting to me.
[140:16]
D
It is amazing. I just love. So these. It is. It is. You know, modern compression techniques and modern technology, we have the ability to do this and some of these Apple II hackers are just doing kind of like incredible work. This is 4am also does a thing called Total Replay where there are like hard drive Images with people.
[140:34]
A
Crazy. With my eight bit sound. Here.
[140:36]
B
Here.
[140:37]
D
Yeah, no, no, it's great. That's exactly what you want. You got to get in the vibe of it.
[140:42]
A
So that's. You got them all. This is really cool.
[140:45]
D
Yeah, yeah, it's. And. And if you look at his Mastodon thread, he. He talks a lot about how he did it, but it's. It's incredible. So fun. There's a lot of fun going on in Apple II hacker circles.
[140:58]
A
Parents, show your kids this. This is what gaming was like last.
[141:02]
D
Last year at the St. Jude Marathon for relay or the relay marathon for St. Jude. We had an Apple II there, and we were messing around with it. And afterward, we took it back to Stephen Hackett's house and we set it up and we showed his kids the games on it.
[141:17]
A
Were they disdainful?
[141:19]
D
No. His son was like, whoa, what is this? And, you know, good games are good games, even if they got blocky graphics and stuff. In fact, it makes it kind of, like, weirdly interesting that, like, what sort of beast is this thing? But then you're playing Shoplifter and you're flying around a helicopter, and then the world just kind of drops away and you're playing a video.
[141:38]
A
That's a really good point. A good game is good because the game is good, not because the graphics are good.
[141:44]
D
Exactly. And there are plenty of bad games with good graphics.
[141:48]
A
Yeah, more than plenty.
[141:49]
D
Yeah.
[141:50]
A
Jason Snell, 6colors.com make sure you check in at the end of the week because Jason. Jason's doing his thing Thursday afternoon, Apple results.
[141:57]
D
There'll be charts, there'll be analysis, and then we'll talk about it next week, too.
[142:00]
A
Yeah, we will talk about it next week, but really, the best way to do it is just go to $6.comSixcolors.com Also, Jason's podcasts are all linked there@6colors.com Jason.
[142:11]
D
Yep.
[142:12]
A
He does the best stuff and so always choose the good Soap.
[142:16]
D
Thank you.
[142:16]
A
6colors.com Ladies and gentlemen, Christina Warren. Of course, the wonderful film girl, now my best friend on Swarm. If you would just check in. You haven't checked in since 2024, Christina.
[142:29]
B
No, yes, I have. I've checked in.
[142:30]
A
Oh, you have?
[142:31]
B
Maybe it was a private. Yeah, I was gonna say we've been friends.
[142:33]
A
Don't make them private. We're buddies. Let your buddies see what you're up to.
[142:37]
B
I was gonna say. I was gonna say I checked in, like, two weeks ago. So wait a minute.
[142:40]
A
They've just added ads Order. No, I'm not happy order and reserve your favorite meals for delivery. They're putting that in for grubhub or something? Yes. Diggity dang. It used to be just a pure beautiful check in thing. They were never making any money on it, just selling it to the government, that's all. Thank you everybody for joining us. We do Mac Break weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live if you're in a member of the club. Of course. In the club Discord. That's the special behind the velvet Velvet rope access. Often you see stuff before and after the show that. No, I can't say that it's not true. You can see it all if you go to Everybody can. It's free YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. That's where we stream after the fact. We put it up on the website because it's a podcast at Twitter TV MBW. Let's go left to right MBW. We also have a YouTube channel dedicated to the video because yes we do audio and video events every show. Even annoying dig dug audio, you can get that. That's a YouTube channel. Actually all of our channels are easily accessed by going YouTube.com twit and then you'll see a list of all the individual dedicated show channels. Probably the simplest thing to do these days. Get yourself a podcast player, subscribe and listen whenever you want. We love having you listen to this show or watch. Can do either or both. Thanks for joining us everybody. But I am sorry to say it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you you gotta get back to work. Cause you know what I'm saying, Break time is over. See you next.

Summary8 min read

MacBreak Weekly #1035: “Riding Nerdy - Apple's Own Lease-to-Own Program”
Recorded: July 29, 2026
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, Christina Warren

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Apple’s new lease-to-own hardware program, explores upcoming Mac and home product rumors, discusses Apple’s OS public betas, and covers Apple’s evolving business strategies. The panel—Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Christina Warren, and Jason Snell—bring their experience and wit to breakdown everything from consumer financing to Apple’s brand philosophy, highlighting practical implications, personal viewpoints, and industry context.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Apple’s New Lease-to-Own Program

(Segment: 03:32–24:59)

Announcement & Details

Apple has officially launched a new lease-to-own program for iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch, partnering with Klarna for financial backend. (03:45, 06:36, 22:17)
The program replaces the old iPhone Upgrade Program and other installment plans, offering two- and three-year lease options.
At the end of the term, users can either upgrade to a new device (often for less than the retail price of the device), or pay the remainder to buy it outright. (06:36)

Panel Analysis

Pros: Allows price-sensitive users to access Apple devices through affordable monthly payments; notably expands to more product lines beyond the iPhone. (08:43, 22:17)
Cons/Risks: Devices must be returned in pristine condition (inspection by Klarna, not Apple); AppleCare is not included, making separate coverage critical to avoid unexpected charges for damage. (07:45)
“If your phone is stolen, you would have to file a claim on that and then fulfill still… your payments with the loan.” – Christina Warren (07:47)
Predatory Potential: The panel discusses the risk of financial lock-in and the possibility of large balloon payments or penalties for missed or late payments, warning users to read the fine print closely. (09:20, 24:59)

Who Should Use This?

"For people who, for whatever reason, would rather stretch out their payments over time rather than making that initial large purchase.” – Jason Snell (10:28)
Best suited for those who regularly upgrade devices, have tight cash flow but stable financial situations, and are diligent about device care. (13:08)
“If you're the kind of person who always takes good care of your phone, has never had to repair it, keeps it in a case, and buys AppleCare… this might make sense for you.” – Leo Laporte (21:09)

Broader Perspective

Panel agrees carrier upgrade plans are also worth investigating as alternatives; choice depends on personal upgrade cycles, carrier loyalty, and how math works out for each individual. (13:13, 19:19)
Noteworthy shift: the plan now extends to iPads, Macs, and Apple Watch, not just iPhones—potentially redefining how higher price points are handled as future devices get more expensive. (22:17, 24:59)

2. Implications for Apple’s Brand & Market

(Segments: 24:59–29:52, 117:46–121:12)

Expansion of financing seen as both a response to rising product prices and a move to lower the barrier for less affluent or price-sensitive customers.
“If there's somebody with money in their hands to buy a phone… you make sure that it's a downhill process to get into an Apple Store and walk out with a phone.” – Andy Ihnatko (27:26)
Jason Snell and the group note Apple is walking a fine line—leaning more on financial services may impact perception, especially if the company becomes associated with aggressive payment schemes. (09:19, 117:46)

Apple’s Ongoing Pursuit of Revenue

Later in the show, Jason Snell offers a memorable “good soap” metaphor, warning Apple not to degrade their products’ user experience in pursuit of “but money.”
- “Apple has never been the low price leader… you gotta always choose the nice soap because that's part of Apple's brand. And I think there are people at Apple who know this, but I think there are other people at Apple who are winning arguments. And they're winning the arguments because they're like, but money.” – Jason Snell (113:41, 117:46)
The panel voices concern about the creeping inclusion of ads and questionable revenue streams (App Store, Apple Maps), cautioning against losing the trust premium Apple enjoys. (121:02)

3. Apple’s Upcoming Product Wave & Rumor Roundup

(Segments: 29:52–80:19, 87:18–99:26)

Mark Gurman reports new Macs are due—refreshed iMacs, MacBook Pros with M5 chips (not M6), redesigned chassis, and OLED touchscreens (74:13, 76:08).
- No substantial leaks on chassis/design details; speculation centers around improved manufacturability and “designers gotta design” motives more than function. (80:00–81:24)
New financing structure seen as a way to facilitate purchases as Apple’s pricing strategy escalates, particularly for the rumored foldable iPhone (expected north of $2,000). (28:50)

Smart Home Push

Gurman signals a big “smart home” event in the fall: new Apple TVs, HomePod minis, a hub device with display (video conferencing, face recognition), and potentially Apple-branded security cameras—all tied to Siri AI. (88:08–95:36)
- “You can see the shape of this pitch that they want to make… So this is another one [OS variant], like you can see the shape of this pitch that they want to make.” – Jason Snell (89:14)
Skepticism remains over Apple’s follow-through and HomeKit’s maturity; some on the panel prefer Home Assistant or other solutions. (91:21, 95:36–97:03)

4. OS Public Betas—iOS 27, macOS 27, and More

(Segments: 42:58–72:53)

Stability & Notable Features

General agreement that public betas (especially iOS 27) are robust and stable; good enough for average users who want early access. (42:58)
“For normal people… this might either be a great introduction to them if they haven't been doing it already, or it's going to be a very easy drop-in replacement [for GPT].” – Christina Warren (44:12)
New features: AI-powered Siri is “not an embarrassment” (43:05) and is good enough to answer most “normal” user queries.
iOS offers complete Siri history sync across devices, finally closing the loop for users who want a consistent experience (70:55).
RCS communication gets upgrades like inline replies and message editing, matching iMessage experience for cross-platform chats (71:04).

Background Indexing Improvements

macOS 27’s new Spotlight index is being prebuilt in 26.6 to prevent sluggishness at final installation—a move praised as “very smart.” (63:58–67:11)

5. Software Security & The AI Impact

(Segments: 50:14–62:46)

Apple and industry face a deluge of security vulnerabilities as AI tools both multiply and accelerate code generation and bug discovery.
Christina Warren notes the burden open source maintainers feel as AI-generated reports flood in, often requiring intensive triage. (54:43–55:56)
Discussion of whether AI restrictions make the world less safe (“asymmetric protection”—good guys blocked by model limits, bad guys not). (57:26)
“It was a truly amazing exploit… It was a sci-fi hack of Hugging Face, not by a human, but by an agent running out of OpenAI on a model they haven’t released yet, that autonomously, without instruction, broke out of containment…” – Leo Laporte (57:26)

6. Legal, App Store, and Industry Developments

(Segments: 32:52–41:24)

Apple lost its bid to overturn the $634 million Massimo patent verdict regarding Apple Watch pulse oximetry tech. Appeals possible. (32:52)
Apple faces scrutiny and lawsuits over fake apps in the App Store (e.g., fake Bitcoin wallets). Panelists question Apple’s depth of app vetting, noting “curation” may no longer be a defensible argument. (38:26–41:24)

7. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Makeup Banter (01:11)
Christina: “You wear a darker shade than me, but that's to be expected.”
Leo: “They used to call it on the Tech TV set, White Boy 40.”

Jason on the soap metapor (112:02, 117:46)
“My point with the soap is if you're Apple, you gotta always choose the nice soap because that's part of Apple's brand… Every time somebody is like, oh, I can't believe Apple's doing this, makes it harder for you to get that back.”

On predatory loans (09:20)
Christina: “I would still say be very careful before you go into this… This is a different sort of situation and you just need to be aware of that.”

On Apple’s pricing and targeted consumers (27:26)
Andy: “Android switchers… are buying a lot of the less expensive [iPhones]. Which goes to show… there are people very price sensitive about what phones they use.”

8. Picks of the Week

Book Player — (131:00) Modern, open-source audiobook player; recommended for anyone looking to host and listen to non-DRM audiobooks outside of Audible.

Casio WS-1600H Digital Watch — (133:19) Andy’s rugged, affordable, 10-year battery digital watch: “If you don’t want to have to fire up that diesel generator to charge up your Apple Watch during an apocalypse, the 10-year-battery Casio is the answer.”

Mini Replay for Apple II — (136:59) Jason’s pick: Eight classic Apple II games packed into a single disk image, playable on modern Macs via Virtual II or even Internet Archive.

12 South Power Bug — (130:32) Leo’s pick: MagSafe wall charger and stand, ideal for travel and nightstand use.

Timestamps for Key Segments

03:32 – Apple Lease-to-Own Program launch (details, panel analysis)
13:08 – Who should use Apple’s new plan; carrier alternatives
22:17 – Extending the program to Mac, iPad, Watch
24:59 – Broader impact: rising prices, business rationale
29:52 – Rumor roundup: new Macs & hardware, Gurman reports
42:58 – iOS 27/macOS 27 Public Beta, AI Siri, and features
50:14 – Software security, AI’s double-edged sword
88:08 – Apple Smart Home push, upcoming event speculation
112:02 – Jason’s “Always Choose the Good Soap” editorial
131:00 – Picks of the week

Episode Tone & Takeaways

The hosts blend expertise, skepticism, and humor throughout, combining personal anecdotes with sharp analysis. The show provides value for Apple enthusiasts and average users alike, especially those grappling with the implications of new hardware pricing, financing, and the practicalities of living in ever-smarter, more software-driven ecosystems. The consensus: Apple’s lease-to-own plan is a carefully calculated, but not risk-free, option for device enthusiasts and the price-sensitive—and a lens into Apple’s evolving business strategies as product costs rise and financial barriers become more visible.

Listen, or ride nerdy, for the full experience and the digressions that make MBW unique.

Loading summary

Transcript433 lines

[00:00]
A
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Christina and Jason are all here. The gang is together. We're gonna. We got lots to talk about. A huge dump of new Macs coming. It is not the right word dump, is it? Coming at the end of the year, according to Mark Gurman. Plus a bunch of new home stuff including Apple TVs and HomePods. We'll talk about that. The new Apple lease to own deal they just announced, should you take advantage of it? What are the pros and cons and public beta 2 from iOS27 and why you absolutely must upgrade your Mac? All of that coming up right now on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly, episode 1035, recorded Tuesday, July 28, 2026. Riding nerdy. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Let's say hello to our dear friends, Christina Warren from GitHub. Hello, Christina.
[01:10]
B
Hello, Leo.
[01:11]
A
We were comparing makeup tips earlier.
[01:13]
B
We were. We were.
[01:14]
A
As one does.
[01:15]
B
As one does. You wear a darker shade than me, but that's, that's to be expected.
[01:20]
A
And they used to call it on the tech TV set, White Boy 40, but maybe, maybe I'm not quite as pale as you as thou.
[01:29]
B
Funny story, msnbc. They used to keep a certain shade of makeup for me and for Anna Marie and for me and Anna Marie Cox because we were both so pale that they like. And we were on frequently enough that they like, kept that. And that's what the makeup artist said. They're like, yeah, you know, we only use this for you and Anna Marie Cox.
[01:44]
A
I was like, wow, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's a good, good company.
[01:48]
B
Yeah.
[01:48]
A
Andy in Akko joining us makeup free in the library. Well, I shouldn't say that. You actually have a very lovely complexion.
[01:55]
C
Thank you. It comes from basically being an indoor kid.
[01:59]
A
Oh, you don't have a night ritual or variety of creams?
[02:03]
C
Yeah, my night ritual is to stay up until 3am doing things that I shouldn't be doing.
[02:07]
A
That feeling good to see you, Andy. And also from 6colors.com, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the lovely Jason Snell.
[02:16]
D
Hello, Jason. Hello, Leo. Yeah, warming up my color toner cartridge because we'll get some Apple results later this week. So that'll be exciting.
[02:25]
A
This is the. Wait a minute. This is the. I can never remember what their fiscal quarter is.
[02:31]
D
This is. Well, it's going to be retrospective to the calendar second quarter. So it's their fiscal Third quarter, you can't either.
[02:39]
A
Okay, good. I don't feel so bad now.
[02:41]
D
Yeah.
[02:41]
A
Wow. Even the guy who does the color charts.
[02:44]
D
You know I have computers for that part of my job, Leo. I don't have computers. I don't need to deal with it. It doesn't matter what. Why are we even. It's. Yeah. Fiscal second quarter. No, third quarter, third quarter, third quarter. That's it. Calendar, second quarter, fiscal third quarter basically for this last three months. So. So April, May, June, gonna be interesting. Gonna find out what they say about their price increases and about the forecast for where they think this is going to go in terms of the RAM limitations in the gpu, you know, chip limitations and all of that. And we'll get all that, that's Thursday afternoo specific time that they'll roll that out. And I'm sure we'll have a bunch of charts to talk about next week because that's what happens.
[03:32]
A
I can tell you the one thing that will be asked about is this new lease plan that Apple announced or did they announce it or is it the Bloomberg.
[03:45]
C
Bloomberg had it last week. Apple. No, Apple had a press release this morning.
[03:50]
A
Okay, so it's official, it's real, it's official. So they had this before, but this is a new plan. They dropped the old plan. Klarna will be doing the financial back stopping. I don't think that matters to anybody. Right. Is Klarna, is it a buy now, pay later service?
[04:10]
B
Yeah, I mean it's a loan shark, but they don't want to use those words.
[04:15]
A
That's another way to put it. Their stock jumped. So obviously the market thought ooh, this is good. I feel like Apple is saying this because they know the new stuff's gonna cost more and you're gonna not gonna be able to own it. It's gonna be like when I was a kid getting out of college without a good job, I had to rent to own my furniture.
[04:37]
C
Yeah, and that's the problem. I mean Apple does not want to get that kind of reputation as with when they released the Apple card. Like the biggest worry that I had was going to be okay. As soon as there are lots and lots of people, conflict resolutions are not being handled very very well and or someone is locked into a financial agreement that they didn't understand. And that seems to be again like spending, going to Renaissance, going to a rent to own store and spending six thousand dollars for a twelve hundred dollar gaming PC by the time you get out of the contract that would be super, super Bad. But you can also see how Apple, again, because of the Apple Card experience these financial agreements. They have so many different regulations across the country and across the world to deal with. I'm not surprised that if they wanted to do this, they would say, you know what, you guys handle it all. We are not in the business of trying to figure out how to be compliant everywhere that we are in operation.
[05:39]
A
Yeah. By the way, for those of you who are listening and I apologize, the audio I know is not perfect today and I'm not sure why. We've tried everything in our handbag to fix this Zoom's fault. We think it's a Zoom server. So I do apologize and I hope it will get better as time.
[05:59]
C
Do not adjust your routers.
[06:05]
A
Yes, Christina.
[06:06]
B
No, I was just going to say, I will say from having looked at this program a little bit, there are certainly concerns that I have with any of these buy now, pay later types of programs. Although to Andy's point, I do understand why Apple in most cases has chosen to partner with someone else. They use Citizens Bank, I think for the current iPhone upgrade program.
[06:25]
A
I thought they had abandoned that. That's. That's still around.
[06:27]
B
Well, no, that is ending. But that's, that's who they used historically with Citizens Bank. They used in, back in the day they used to use Barclays.
[06:34]
A
You could do, somebody has to do that.
[06:36]
B
Yeah, you could do, you could do financing with the Apple Card which is switching from Goldman Sachs. I think it's becoming Chase. If that's, if that's correct, this case, it's Klarna is who's handling this. And I will say looking at the details and I'm sure that I'm probably missing some of the finer points, but it doesn't look terrible in the sense that as long as you like, they basically give you a certain period of time, either two or a three year period of time to make payments on the product. You get a better deal if you do it over three years than over two, for example. And if you are to at the end of that period of time, you've actually paid less than what the phone costs and you can upgrade to a newer device. But if you did want to keep your existing device, you just have to pay the difference between your payments and whatever the retail price on the phone was. So they. It is a lease program, but there is an option to buy and it does not look like they are, you know, charging you more. Now, unlike the prior program which included AppleCare bundled into it, AppleCare is not included Here. And if anybody, I will say, wants to take part in one of these, you know, this new upgrade program, you
[07:45]
A
should get an Apple Care you have.
[07:47]
B
I'm going to go as far as to say you have to because they will inspect your phone when you turn it back in. Klarna will, it won't be like necessarily an Apple thing and they will determine its, you know, quality and anything else. And so if there's a scratch, if it's lost, if it's stolen, anything like that, that's a claim you have to make separately. And I know from, from other companies who've done this sort of thing, they can be real sticklers. If the phone isn't pristine, they'll say, oh no, well, you haven't fulfilled our contract. Even though it's been three years. The fact that you have like a scratch on the back of it means that we're now not going to let you either upgrade or you're going to have to pay something else. So I would say that AppleCare is even more important if you're going to do a lease scenario than if you were to buy it outright just because you will be responsible. Like for instance, if your phone is stolen, you would have to file a claim on that and then fulfill still, you know, your payments with, with, with the loan.
[08:44]
C
That's a particularly good point because this, this is, this is a good quote unquote deal for people who are in financial situations where they will not get $800 together at any one point to spend to buy a new phone. However they can find $18 a month to find in their budget. But if, if the lease period ends and suddenly Klarna is saying, okay, well, you owe US$430 for damage to this phone. That's going to be okay. Who do we eat this month? Do we pay our rent this month? Or do we satisfy Apple slash Klarna with these, these.
[09:17]
A
That's why you call them a loan shark, Christina.
[09:19]
B
Right.
[09:19]
A
Well, I kind of predatory.
[09:21]
B
Well, I call them that because, and look, I think Klarna is different than a firm. A firm is probably. And look, this is all my opinion. So if anybody's going to come after anybody, you know, this, this is my opinion. I think that these systems are, tend to be predatory and Klarna is a, is a Swedish company, I think. And so they, I know maybe operate slightly differently in other. But in the United States, you know, they can give you really good terms on, on a program and then, you know, like raise the rates. But there are all kinds of catches here. Like if you miss a certain number of payments then the entire thing becomes due or the contract is, is over. So this is just one of those things you want to be careful about. This particular way this is working. I'm not necessarily sure I would call it loan shark like, but I would still say be very careful before you go into this because even if you, if it's not a financial decision like you might actually look at and say, I could afford to buy this outright, but I'll take an interest free loan. This is not the same thing as, you know, putting it on a credit card where you're not being charged interest. This is a different sort of situation and you just need to be aware of that. I think before going into it.
[10:26]
A
Who should do this? Jason?
[10:28]
D
You know, I think Andy, Christina both said this is for, this is for people who for whatever reason would rather stretch out their payments over time rather than making that initial large purchase. And there can be lots of reasons for that, you know, especially if the terms are essentially that you're not really paying interest and the monthly payment looks good and you know that after 12 months or 24 months, you're going to hand the phone back in. Like you just got to do the math. And the iPhone upgrade program did this, a version of this. It's different, but it's similar. And the Apple Care, I agree with Christina. The Apple care is optional now. But all that really means is you also need to buy AppleCare on top of it to do that.
[11:13]
A
Consider that.
[11:13]
D
But it can, it can. You know, I know a lot of people, including people who do have money in the bank who are like, I would rather have a tithe to Apple for my iPhone every month, that is normal, that then do it this way. Now you could. Or then buy it outright. The thing is, you could also, and I would advise anybody who's thinking about doing this, consult your carrier because your carrier will also be happy to do some sort of a deal where they add it onto your monthly bill in a way. And they have deals and they have marketing too. So there are other ways of doing this. I think the most interesting thing about this is that Apple is, is. Is going to wind down the iPhone upgrade program eventually and there are no new entrants in that. Now you can, I think you can stay there for some amount of time if you're already a member. But, but what they did is this is not an iPhone upgrade program. This is an upgrade program for all their products. So you know, now if you wanted to buy a Mac and take it out 24 months or 36 months, you could do that too. And you know, bottom line, I think it comes down to what you feel financially comfortable with doing with your money. I've always been a pay up front kind of person, but I've also had the luxury to have the money in the bank to pay up front. And if you don't, or if budget wise, you'd really rather spread that out and you look at something that's essentially a zero interest loan as a way to do that with no cost to you, then I think there's value here. Also, this being a lease, it does mean the big change, and this was true with the iPhone upgrade program too, is at the end of your contract, unless you buy it out, you give it back. So you don't, you know, if people are used to the other way, you could do this, which is you buy it outright once and then when you're ready to get a new one, you sell that one and buy a new one. And so the entry price is a lot lower. That's not the case when you're on one of these plans, you've got to give it back and then start again.
[13:09]
B
Yeah, I've actually been on the iPhone upgrade program for a while now and I used to kind of be like Jason actually for many years I was. I would just buy it outright and then sell it after a year, trade it and usually get 50% of my value and then just buy the new one. And I did that for a long time and I actually moved to the upgrade program because I was like, well, it's one less step. And, and this is a way to get the phone unlocked as well. And I don't have to be part of a carrier or anything. I don't know what I'm going to do in this case. When the current upgrade program ends, I think after 12 months, I think that I will have an option to either convert it to the new program and trade it in for something else or pay off the loan. And in this case, because it'll be for my iPhone 17 Pro Max, I might just pay it off because I, I'm probably. My mind right now so far is that it would probably be keeping that phone and then potentially getting whatever the foldable is. But it'll be interesting to see how that works. But yeah, as Jason points out, that's the thing to keep in mind is that unless you choose to pay off the terms at the end, the idea is that you're trading this in now. The incentive that they're giving you for this, at least on the phones. I haven't worked out the math on the laptops yet is that if you were to do the math and either do it over 36 months or over 24 months, or I guess even over 12 months, you could potentially be paying less than what it would have cost to buy the phone outright. And then you just have in perpetuity a monthly fee to continue to get the latest phone. So I think if you do the math in one of the cases, I think over a two year period or something like you're saving quote, unquote, $250 if you were to pay monthly. But at the end of that two year period, you have to get the new phone or you have to pay that, that $250, you know, that's outstanding to, to keep the, the phone that you've already been paying towards. So you're, you're not. If you're somebody who upgrades every year or upgrades on a cycle, you know, every other year or something, this might be worth looking into. But I think you'll just have to take those considerations. This might actually be a thing that I do. I was thinking about this before the show. I'm sure a million people will do this, but I might just like use an LLM and try to whip up some sort of calculator about how this works and then just like, you know, put it on like, you know, a static website or something just, just so people can easily see, okay, is this worth it or not? Because that's going to be like the, the number crunching people are going to have to do for themselves.
[15:35]
C
Yeah, there are a lot of variables here and like I said, I think this is going to mostly appeal to people who are in certain financial situation. Being able to make that money up, pay that money up front, or to get a contract with a carrier is also not going to be easy. And one of the things that I think that people will want to think of when they're in that situation is that there's already been spot hooks that are in iOS. Basically the ability to remotely disable a phone that's under such a contract that's kind of similar to that. And I would hate to think of somebody who was basically the best option for them was to go on this sort of lease program. But then because they have job instability, they're going through a period of job instability, they miss enough payments that suddenly they don't have a working phone anymore at a time when they desperately need A working phone. So a lot of variables to navigate including the idea of how much, how important it is that I have a working phone month to month to month. And if you feel as though that is a non acceptable risk, it might be time to look at a Motorola that costs about 200, $250 that will run pretty much all the apps that you are going to rely on.
[16:45]
A
Andrew, what are you.
[16:47]
C
I'm just, I'm just putting it on, I'm putting it on the table. It's a buffet of options. If you don't like the cauliflower succotash, you don't have to have cauliflower succotash. Some people like it.
[17:00]
A
So it seems to me that Christina, it's interesting that you did do this upgrade program. You couldn't afford to buy it outright.
[17:09]
B
Oh absolutely.
[17:09]
A
I think we can agree it's absolutely better than putting it on a credit card which has a lot of interest or even the carrier plans which have seems a lot of hooks. So you didn't have to do it but you wanted to do it because why?
[17:25]
B
Well because I traded it in every year anyway. Literally I didn't keep the phone around for an extra year. Like I had no reason to keep around like an old, you know, occasionally like maybe every three years like for a certain period of time. I actually what I used to do is that after a year I would give my, my husband my hand me down. The carrier deals which you point out do have like a lot of, you know, hooks sometimes can be pretty good. I think one year they gave us, I don't know like seven or eight hundred dollars for what was at the time, I think like a four or five year old phone towards the new one. Now how they get you on that is they only give you the credits over a 36 month period of time. But we were not going to switch carriers and so that made more sense. And so when I kind of decoupled my personal upgrade cycle away from what my husband was using, it was just like okay, well if I trade this in every year anyway and I get about 50% back based on like what Apple's trade in numbers are, why not just go ahead and just make this one monthly transaction. And so that, that's why I chose to do that. Although there were times occasionally where I would just buy it outright. Like my iPhone 17 for instance which is like the non pro which I use as a work device. I just paid cash for that. And so I, and because I didn't get that tied to a carrier. I couldn't even finance that on my apple card for 0% interest, which I like to do. So in that case, I literally just paid them, you know, $800 or whatever it was. So it just, it depends on the person. If you know that every single year or. Or every two years, without fail, you're going to be trading your phone in and getting the latest iPhone.
[18:56]
A
That's true from probably for all of us except Andy.
[18:59]
B
Right. I was going to say. So if that's the case, you should look at it and go, okay, does this make sense to me? The only thing you should consider is, do I potentially want to finance this in a different way and maybe I could get a better trade in elsewhere or whatever. Or to Jason's point, check out the carrier deals and say, because a lot of them have their own upgrade programs, too, that offer a bigger thing, they
[19:20]
A
have an incentive, which is to get you into their fold and think about.
[19:23]
D
Really. So none of us likes to be held, captured captive, certainly by a carrier. Think about reality. How long have you been with your carrier? And are you likely to go somewhere else? Because I've. I've been with my carrier for like 20 years now. I can. If they want to lock me in, go ahead. What's it going to. What's it going to do? Right? Like, it's not going to happen two more years.
[19:45]
A
No.
[19:45]
D
And they make those. They make those deals with the idea that there are some people that they can get to churn and some people who might churn that they can get to stay. But for me, I'm kind of in. So if my carrier deal looks pretty good, and one of the, you know, one of the limitations is that you got to stay with them for 12 months or 24 months. Oh, no, don't throw me in the briar patch. I'll do it, and that'll be fine. So. So it's just worth. It's worth thinking realistically about. Yeah. The carrier wants to kind of keep you under their thumb, but if you're under their thumb anyway, get something out of it.
[20:14]
A
It's ironic that you might have to use an AI to figure out what's
[20:18]
C
the best carrier, especially.
[20:19]
D
Yeah, yeah.
[20:20]
C
Oh, no.
[20:20]
B
I mean, it is.
[20:21]
A
Read the fine print for me.
[20:23]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, kind of, right? I mean. Yeah. Because. Yeah, it's so hard to figure those things out that I figured might be at least a good calculator. At least figure out, because. Yeah, with the carrier things. That's a great point, Jason. Like, again, With Verizon who I've been with I think for 16 years at this point we, I did the math and because my husband was on an older phone that I paid cash for, I paid outright for and he liked it. He, he didn't upgrade not because he didn't have options but because he didn't want to. They were willing to give us so much more the carrier trade in then Apple was like three times more. And so at that point I'm going okay, well I'm not switching anyway. I know I paid too much for cell phone service but I'm not going to go through the hassle of switching. So if you're going to give me eight or nine hundred dollars for him to get a new phone, thank you.
[21:09]
A
So to enumerate your options and you could just feed this to your AI. The nice thing about the Apple plan is you're not paying interest, right? Just basically you're paying for depreciation and that at the end you'll have a balloon. Either a balloon payment or you have a new phone. The thing to consider is that it's going to be probably klarna that decides whether your phone is coming back in pristine shape or not. So if you're the kind of person who always takes good care of your phone, has never had to repair it, keeps it in a case and buys Apple care which you got to add in at the bottom There is another cost. This might make sense for you but you should investigate what the trade in value is going to be because if you get a great trade in value from your carrier it might make more sense to buy it outright and trade it in. And then so I could see why you want.
[22:03]
B
I was going to say I was trying to look at this, it's so complicated but the other thing I would say too is that's for the phone. The fact what's new about this and what has not been offered before to my knowledge I think there have been some, some third parties who've tried to do similar things. Is that you can use this on an iPad or a Mac or an Apple Watch.
[22:18]
A
Well that's, that does complicated. Now you don't have a carrier anymore.
[22:21]
B
Now, now you don't have a carrier. And so at that point it now those it's a three year lease period for the computer. I think it's two years on the watch and I think it's three years on the iPad and that seems about right to me in terms of upgrade cycles. I will note again I didn't have a chance to look at this intensive. But my cursory knowledge, it does not look like you get any benefit if you were to pay it off early. So it's not one of those things where you're like, oh, I want to maybe upgrade early, I can do that. They might have an option, but I think you have to pay a fee for that. So that's that. So that's the thing you kind of have to think about too, which is
[22:55]
A
you have carrier lock and you have hardware lock.
[22:57]
B
You have hardware lock in which I think for most people, I think three years on a laptop is fine. I cannot think of many scenarios and they're not offering this on the neo, they're offering this on the air and the Product Pro. I think that in a scenario like that, like that's, that's probably fine. In fact, there might be some people who at the end of that three year term are like, I don't want to continue paying whatever this monthly fee is. And then they, they will be faced with the decision about, you know, the balloon payment and do I want to pay this potentially, you know, $500 or whatever it might be to finish off the loan. But I think that that's what's more interesting about this is that especially the timing of all of this happening as prices are going up. It's one thing a phone, you might be able to get a deal through your carrier. On an iPad, they can usually offer deals on that too, even on Apple watches. But Macs, that has not been the scenario. And so if you're somebody who it's going to be very difficult for you to come up with $2500 or something for a MacBook Pro or even $1800 or $1500, you know, for a MacBook Air that has the specs that you want, this might be the sort of situation which might be better. Again, I would still say like depending on the price of your device. Look at if you have credit cards that have zero percent interest for 12 months or whatever, that, that might be better for you. But it's going to depend on everybody's financial situation. But I do have to say I would have to do the calculations myself. But I tend to be on probably a two or three year upgrade cycle. And if I had had the option to do something like this when I bought my MacBook Pro, my M3 Max, now like two and a half years ago, I might have made the decision to do something like this just because again, I would be okay with paying whatever the price would be per month. As long as I know that every three years I'm going to be getting like the highest end, latest, greatest laptop.
[24:59]
A
So yeah, this is, it's, what's clear is I think to me is Apple is signaling, yeah, this next, next round of stuff is going to be super expensive. And we know and so we want to take out a pain point for you, especially if you're going to get a folding phone. And I would just underscore not. I was making fun of you Andy, but really Andy's point is well taken. If, if you're an Apple enthusiast and you're in the Apple ecosystem, you're buying the high price spread and you don't have to buy the high price spread. I mean there is an option to you for you and they're perfectly good phones out there that are not in the Apple ecosystem.
[25:38]
C
Yeah, I think that this could be a response to knowing that they're going to be raising prices. I suspect that it's more because they know who's buying their hardware and they know who isn't buying their hardware. And when they find a group of people that isn't buying, they have to ask themselves why aren't they buying our hardware and how can we remove those stumbling blocks to get them over to our side. So I do think that part of this is to make sure that we have to make sure. I think this has been planning of this type has been in the works for a while now. I think that it was just a better argument after the chip crisis that this is something that is important as opposed to desired. There is, I think Counterpoint Research had a report a couple of weeks ago on people switching to iPhone from Android and it wasn't basically asking the question what phones are they buying when they switch from Android to iPhone and wasn't anything revelatory, but they did find that Android switchers don't necessarily care about getting the 17 Pro Max, getting the most expensive ones. They're buying a lot of iPhone 16 but a lot of the less expensive ones. Which goes to show that there are a lot of people that are very price sensitive about what phones they use. And that might have to do with their financial circumstances or it just might have to do with the reasons why some people will never, ever, ever spend more than $40,000 on a car. Because to them, more than $40,000 on A car is just a colossal waste of money and they'll be very, very happy with something less expensive. So they're covering, they're basically making sure that if there's somebody with money in their hands to buy a phone. Make sure that you make the. You make sure that it's a downhill process to get into an Apple store and walk out with a phone and get at that money.
[27:26]
A
Yeah. Or as Joken Bookken says in our YouTube chat, if you're scraping to get a folding phone, you might want to reconsider your life.
[27:35]
B
Absolutely.
[27:36]
A
The Galaxy Fold that they announced, the brand new one is pretty close to 2000 bucks. The cheapest you can get it is $1900. This is the one that's kind of looks a little bit like what we think the iPhone will look like. I think the folding phone's going to be. The Ultra is actually even more expensive. If you look at the Ultra, it starts at $2,100.
[28:00]
C
Wasn't that kind of interesting though? So they, they, so they're creating a new form factor for their foldables. Obviously they've been doing folding phones for years and years and years and years. They're now at a very high level of sophistication. But they decided to shift the Ultra name. They shift the Samsung Z Fold to basically the less expensive passport sized one, the one that's going to be like the iPhone Ultra, and put the Ultra name on there. Even bigger and better than the Passport version of it. I don't know if that, I don't
[28:30]
A
know if bigger and better price, but
[28:33]
C
basically to say, oh well, we have an Ultra 2, but this is actually Ultra, Whereas, okay, that's cute that you think that little pass board. But, but, and honestly, do you think that they're going to. That Apple is going to be. The Apple Foldable is going to start at $1900 or do you think it's going to start at 21, 22 at this point?
[28:50]
A
I think, I think this is a telegraphing that it might be over 2,000 bucks.
[28:55]
C
Yeah, yeah, we said, we used to call that the. We had conversations a few months ago about how we thought that that was kind of the third rail that, gosh, if this is. If the starting price is 2200, 2300 dollars, they have to make it super, super, super special to justify it. But now we're like, they might have to just decide that this is a special breed of customer that's willing to spend more than $2,000 on a phone. And a difference of $200 is not. Yeah. Is not as important to them as someone who is thinking between do I spend eleven hundred dollars or thirteen hundred dollars on a regular phone instead of
[29:28]
A
the quadrant that Steve Jobs drew when he came back to Apple from next saying, you know, I forgot what it was. It was a consumer and pro, desktop and laptop. And there was four products. It's now going to be high priced.
[29:42]
C
I mean it's no exorbitant money or brains. The other is going to be mobile and desktop.
[29:52]
A
We're going to take a break. More to talk about lots more in the Gurman rumor section. What do you call it? Rumor town on Upgrade.
[29:59]
D
Rumor roundup. Yeehaw.
[30:03]
A
And the sheriff is Mark Gurman. He's been busy this week. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy, Christina and the wonderful Jason Snell who will later on explain why you should choose the good soap at the hotel. That's right, not the good soap.
[30:17]
D
But you don't have to choose. The hotel needs to give you the good soap.
[30:20]
A
Oh, okay. Give you the good soap.
[30:21]
D
Sorry, soap metaphors. They're coming.
[30:23]
A
I went on a cruise once where the chief amenity was when you first get on the boat, the your steward comes to you with a selection of soaps and says, which one would you like for your trip, for your journey? I thought that is not luxury, but thank you for giving me the choice. They do have a pillow menu. Now that's luxury. All right, we're gonna take a break. We'll come back in just a bit with Andy, Christina and Jason. Our show today brought to you by Siri Sync. This is something every business using both Apple devices and Microsoft 365 is dying for. Even in an Apple shop, the back office very often runs Microsoft 365. So everyone's contact apps on the phone full of personal numbers. But you don't have any of the work numbers that you need a coworker calls. It's just a number on the screen. Maybe you even screen it out. You, the new guy and your boss all somehow end up with different numbers for the same department head and your boss ends up declining your calls because she didn't have the right numbers either. So this is all you know. It's a mess. You've been there. Probably. But this is a good solution. Sara Sync fixes that. It pushes your whole company directory, contacts and calendars right into the native contacts app on every iPhone and Mac and it does it automatically. It just shows up and it stays current all on its own. Go to cirasync.com macbreak and book your free demo. The Sirasync team is great. They will walk you through how convenient and hassle free it is. They can even help you get set up on the call so you can roll it out across your whole organization. That's sirasync.com macbreak to get your whole company's contacts on every iPhone in the office automatically. Every phone stays current. 3000 companies are using it GDPR and SoC2 compliant. You gotta use this. Sirasync C I R A s y n c.com MacBreak when they told me they had the solution, I said, oh, I want this. This is awesome. All right, let's see. We should just quickly run through a couple of court decisions. Apple has lost its bid to overturn the Masimo patent verdict. In fact they, the judge even said now and you don't even get a new trial. So this is a $634 million decision. Massimo accused Apple of course of stealing its patents for pulse oximetry. That's why that was that whole thing where they turned it off on the Apple Watch and they've been battling and at one point Massimo got an import ban on Apple Watch models with blood oxygen. Apple figured out a way around it. You know, this has been going on and on. One thing, they can't figure out a way around this big fine. The jury found this last year that Apple Watch's heart rate monitoring and notification features infringed on another Masimo pulse oximetry patent. Ordered Apple to pay that $634 million in fine. The judge has uphold the jury's findings. Now this is district court. So Apple could go to the Supreme Court. Sure. You could go all the way to the top. And Apple's been known to do that. Yep. He also, the judge also rejected Ackel's request for a new trial. Apple had said, we don't like your jury instructions and we don't like it that you said to exclude testimony from our experts. But the judge said no, you don't need a retrial now again that all can be appealed. So I don't know if Apple said that they're going to appeal or not. I would, that's, that's a lot of money.
[34:07]
C
Is anybody else surprised that Apple hasn't figured out a way to like buy a different set of patents for this kind of monitoring?
[34:14]
A
Just licensed, right?
[34:15]
C
Yeah. I mean my, my hundred dollar Fitbit Air does, does it. And I don't know, I'm saying, I'm not saying that they're, they're idiots are doing something stupid. I'm saying I literally do not know. I would have expected that at some point unless they, unless they were absolutely counting on a court victory at some point, and they're in disbelief that they kept losing, losing, losing. It seems that at this point someone, someone with a very obscure blood oxygen content patent would be upgrading from whatever house they're living to whatever seven houses that they want to live in based on Apple saying, hey, what if we just buy this portfolio, make some trivial changes to our firmware and our software and suddenly, bye, bye, we can, we can get back on the horse.
[34:59]
D
Yeah. Part of me, I mean, part of me thinks they wanted to litigate this. Part of me thinks there's such bad blood between the companies that they're not willing to license it. I believe the Masimo patent expires sometime next year, so they may just decided to wait it out.
[35:12]
A
Yeah, that, you know, pay the fine, you can.
[35:14]
D
They've got the. And they've got that thing where it's, you know, it's happening back on the iPhone. It's not on device processing anymore. That's their workaround in the meantime. And it wouldn't surprise me if they think that's good enough to get them through until next fall, fall of 27, in which at which point the patents will vacate.
[35:30]
A
And remember the lawsuit last year over Apple Intelligence, saying Apple had we bought your iPhones because of your ads and then you didn't get the new Siri in there. Apple has settled a quarter of a billion dollar settlement. Actually, we had that news, but now the judge has officially approved it, or, I'm sorry, provisionally approved at the final approvement. And the start of payout is dependent on a final hearing for which will be in September of next year. So your $5.33 check may be slightly delayed. The judge has given overall approval, but the court will not decide on any amounts till September 29, 2027. Busy court, I guess. Busy, busy court.
[36:17]
C
Don't buy that burrito just yet.
[36:21]
A
Save your burrito money. Let's talk a little bit about. I'm getting all the stuff out of the way so we can get to the German ranch in just a little bit. Apple has approved Test Flight for users with a lot of beta apps. That's good news. There are a lot of beta apps because there's a lot of AI stuff going on. And now there is a search in Test Flight, which means you can find some of those apps. I think that's good. Test Flight is how developers give you a chance to try an app before you actually have it in the App Store or more often, I think beta versions of Apps that are already in the store. I use TestFlight for a lot of my favorite apps.
[37:09]
D
Yeah, the problem is that I think that you can search it, but it's also sorted by name now and it used to be sorted by most recently updated TestFlight, which means a lot of old betas and expired betas float to the top. And that's dumb. So they got to fix that.
[37:26]
A
Apple has. There is another class action lawsuit just mounted. Actually, no, it's not a class action. It's just three customers who lost $1.8 million through those. That fake Bitcoin wallet, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago. This Sparrow Wallet, which is available on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, was not available on iOS, which lent hackers, gave hackers the brilliant idea of, well, let's write a fake one, put it on the app Store and steal people's money. Apple didn't catch the fake one and did in fact approve it, which is puzzling. And the plaintiffs say that we, we lost a lot of money thanks to you last year, Apple. And So they're suing one $1.8 million in losses. But of course there could be more damages as well. Apple does claim, you know, it's reasonable. They claim they're vetting this stuff, but seems like especially with the flood of new AI generated apps, a lot more stuff's getting through. Like those Brazilian gambling apps we talked about last week.
[38:26]
C
Yeah, that's surprising. I hope that they're, I wonder what they're considering changing their workflow and approvals because like you said, there are multiple reports of times when malicious and non malicious apps got through by masquerading as something harmless. Russian banking apps that Apple can't host in Russia because of sanctions basically got through to be approved as not what they actually are. And the only reason why they actually got attention was why is, why is this suddenly the number one, the number three app in the Russian app store for this very, very basic looking app that does nothing and then, oh, well, that's because it gives you access to Russian banking. Okay.
[39:06]
D
Yeah, I wonder. I think the real question is legally, is Apple. Because it is theoretically, you know, gatekeeping and approving apps in the app store. Does that make them liable for things in the store? Because if it did, then I think that that would be really interesting. But I also think that that feels extremely unlikely.
[39:27]
B
Yeah, I was going to say, I would, I would guess that they have something in their terms of service that you've signed, you know, that you've agreed to whether you've read it or not by, you know, sheer fact of like signing up for the App Store that basically says they are not taking any responsibility for essentially what's in the App Store, especially with things like that. I mean, I think, and what's interesting about this is that that Apple for a long time, like they were very resistant about having any sort of like bitcoin wallets or any sort of crypto stuff in the App Store at all. To the point that I was critical of them at the time. We're talking probably, you know, 13, 14 years ago now because I was like, okay, this is, this is dumb that you're just going to have a blanket ban on a category and these weren't even cloud hosted things necessarily, but just in terms of like, like wallets at all, where you could store addresses or whatever. Now I almost wonder like maybe they had the right idea all along. Like if you're going to be accepting these types of, you know, applications in your store for non traditional banking institutes which are not going to have fdic, you know, protections and things like that, if you can't actually realistically say this is legitimate or you know, this comes from this developer versus this developer, I don't know, maybe, maybe that's. If you can't do it right, maybe it shouldn't be in the store at all. I'm not really sure. But I think I would agree with Jason. I would be shocked if they didn't have something in their terms that I'd be very surprised if they were liable for the contents of what's in the store.
[41:00]
C
One thing's for sure, every single time that Apple defended the App Store by saying, oh no, we have our policies in place and keep it a safe place for all of our customers. And that's why you shouldn't regulate our App Store policies at all. Because it's intrinsic and because we do such a good job of it, that doesn't mean that that's their, that's going to be a slam dunk win for the case in a setting of a precedent. But it's going to come back to haunt them, as it often will come back to haunt them.
[41:25]
B
Yeah, and as it should, frankly. Right. Because if you're going to make that argument, if you're going to make the argument that like we are the trusted place and the reason that this is the only place you can get apps is because only we can be trusted to make sure that they're safe and secure, it is very fair to call them out and say, okay, but not only are these apps getting through, maybe through nefarious methods, maybe not, but you're allowing fake apps in. They can often rank higher than the real things that can potentially take people's money if it's a banking app. But even in non banking app cases, counterfeit apps have been a problem in the App Store for a long time. And at least from my observations, that's not an area that Apple has ever really cared that much about. Unless, you know, you do what Phil Schiller tells people not to do, which is run to the press about it. If you do that, then there's a chance that it might get taken down. But unless people make a big stink about it, the App Store is just rife with counterfeit apps. And that I don't think has anything to do with Apple's stance and saying, oh, no, we are the only ones who are able to curate this because. Curate what?
[42:28]
A
Right? You're not create nothing. All right, one more break and then let's talk about the public beta 2 for iOS 27 came out yesterday, the day before, curious what's new, what we get, what's improved? I've been very happy, by the way, with the public beta. Somebody was asking on Twitter on Sunday whether they should install it and I said, absolutely. I haven't had any. Have any of you had any showstoppers? I think it's pretty. Pretty good. Pretty robust good.
[42:59]
B
Yeah.
[43:00]
A
Do you love Siri AI?
[43:03]
D
It's pretty good.
[43:04]
B
It's fine.
[43:05]
D
Yeah, it's fine.
[43:06]
C
It's not an embarrassment. I'm not saying that as a joke. I'm saying that it's a big step up. That's. It is. I have to remind, I have to remind myself to give it a chance. Because we're asked before it was why on earth would I activate Siri for any reason whatsoever? Now it's like, actually, let's give that a try because it might actually be helpful. Helpful.
[43:22]
D
I would, I would go so far as to say, for all the stuff that just regular people ask chat bots, that is not to build software for them or anything like that, or do research or whatever, but like simple answers to questions about world knowledge and stuff like that, I don't see why anybody's going to need to use Chat GPT because it's good enough to answer all those questions. Yeah, yeah.
[43:44]
A
You know, I mean, for people like you and me, Christina, who probably. I mean, I don't know about you, but I assume you've done what I've done, which is basically put all of that intelligence from my own stuff onto the watch and the phone. I don't. It's. No, I would. I don't think I even. I've used it a little bit just to see. It's nice. Yeah, it's nice.
[44:04]
B
No, but I mean, I think, I think it's exactly like Jason said, like, if you're not somebody who already has your own kind of custom agent that you're interacting with and you're not using
[44:10]
A
it for specific normal people.
[44:11]
D
For normal people.
[44:13]
B
And, and I think that's a, That's a great. That's exactly who they're going after. I mean, I think that it's one of those things. What I think if, if you're somebody who's paying $20 a month for Claude code or for, for, you know, chatgpt plus or for, you know, one of the Gemini plans, if you're not doing other things with it. And to be clear, this is one of the reasons why they add things like, you know, cowork and the other types of, like, plugins, because they want to give you that expanded experience. But if you were just using it because you chat with the chatbot a lot. Yeah, I think for a lot of folks, this might either be a great introduction to them if they haven't been doing it already, or it's going to be a very easy drop in replacement to what they've already been doing.
[44:51]
D
This is a backward version of why there's no such thing as Sherlocking, because Apple only ever wants to reach the, whatever you want to say, 80%, 90%, 95%, a large portion of the market that does not care about the edge cases or the little tinkering features or all of that. And the reason that Sherlocking isn't really a thing is that the apps that are completely subsumed by Apple's OS features, if they're completely subsumed, they weren't really trying that hard because there's always room to play around the edges where Apple is never going to do that level of complexity. Complexity or that Edge case feature. And this feels like a version of that where Siri AI is solving the problem that whatever 80, 80, 90% of people have, which is, I want to ask a question and get an answer. And they could do that with Chat GPT and that was cool. And that's why. Yes, that's why OpenAI and Anthropic and everybody else are, like, moving up the chain. Not only is B2B way more powerful and way more lucrative, but also it is a thing that, that is beyond the simple consumer need of an AI thing. So like what Apple's doing here is great. Now it's in the long run, if we talk about agentix stuff, there will come a time when more agentic stuff kind of like comes down in the funnel and more people want it. And if you can provide that to them on a more easy basis, then they're going to be interested in that. So I think that's their challenge is watching that over time and growing from where they are now. But where they are now is going to. I really think it scoops up all the casual people who are like, oh, I just want to ask this question. Siri is dumb. So I'm going to use chat GPT like that. That stuff seems to be basically handled in Siri AI. It's not going to be a problem anymore. Good place to start. Can't be the place they end, but a good place to start.
[46:32]
A
Yeah.
[46:33]
C
As we've said, as we've said until, until Apple gets so good at AI that they can charge a monthly fee for special AI features as a service. Kind of like there's a paid tier of chat GPT and Gemini. All they have to do is add AI features that help continue to sell Macs and iPhones and iPads and Apple watches. That's. It's very, very low stakes. It's very, very attainable for them and they're in a really good position and
[46:58]
D
enable third parties who have the better stuff to do what they want to do. Federico Viticci wrote what last week about that app that he's trying out that's like on iOS and it's, and it's using like a virtualized Linux server and it runs models on your device. And like, I mean that's the thing is all this stuff is happening on Apple's platforms without Apple participating. And that's fine, right? If the iPhone or the Mac is the place to be to do this stuff or a good place to be. And Apple is also doing the table stakes things that keep the kind of masses happy, that's not a bad place for them to be.
[47:35]
C
Yep. Don't get in people's way.
[47:36]
D
Yeah.
[47:38]
A
Okay, let's see here. Now let's take a break and we can, we can go on a little bit more with the public beta. There's a big update for Tahoe that you're going to want to apply and I'll tell you why in just a little bit. But more coming up with back break weekly. Christina, Andy and Jason, so glad you're here, especially your club members. Thank you for your support. Our show today, brought to you by zocdoc. You know, it's funny, for all the, you know, technology we have at our beck and call today, booking a doctor's appointment really feels like you're going back in time, right? I think a lot of us use that as an excuse to put off getting the care we need, you know, so it's kind of a. It's a little speed bump is handy for those of us who go, I don't really want to go to the doctor, but maybe you don't. Maybe I don't want to sit on hold. Or maybe it's the endless phone tag. I've been doing that lately. Mainly it's just one more thing on an already packed to do list. Look, we've all been there, but that speed bump is keeping you from something really important. Taking care of yourself, taking care of your health. You know, you should make the appointment, but the days turn into weeks and before you know it, months have passed. And then when you finally call, they say, well, I'm sorry, the next available appointment will be in three months. Not good. That's one of the reasons I love zocdoc. Zocdoc lets you search and compare local in network doctors. There's 150,000 providers in there and not just MDs. 200 plus specialties across all 50 states. And one of the things that's so great about Zocdoc, appointments happen fast, usually within 24 to 72 hours. In fact, in many cases, you can get same day appointments and it's free. I never mentioned this. Maybe you thought, oh, you got to pay a fee. No, your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Find and book the right doctor with Zocdoc. Head to Zocdoc.com MacBreak to get started. Check that appointment off your to do list. That's Z O C-O C.com MacBreak sock. All right, let's see. First, I should mention this is probably more important. The Tahoe update, which has something like 130 security patches. You know, last week on their patch Tuesday, Microsoft shipped more than 500 security patches.
[50:15]
D
Somebody's using an AI.
[50:17]
A
We know why suddenly we see Steve Gibson predicted it.
[50:20]
B
It.
[50:21]
A
He said, you know, with the advent of Mythos and even ChatGPT5.6, which has a cyber security component, you're going to start seeing software fixed, which is. It's good, Christina. Right? This is a good thing.
[50:32]
B
It is a good thing. I mean, it's. But it comes with a caveat, which is, you know, now you have to make sure that you are in a position to be able to update all of your devices and components. And Apple makes it easy, you know, for, for Macs and things like that. But yeah, I mean, I mean the good thing is that people can apply these fixes much more broadly and you can find a lot of things that might not have been otherwise caught. The bad thing is that makes it that much more important to make sure that you're running the latest version on things, which sometimes can be a challenge depending on your circumstances. Or if you have an older program and you couldn't upgrade for some reason, I think those cases are more limited. But definitely one of those things that if you've got a family member running Tahoe, you want to make sure that auto updates are enabled and that they're running the latest, if you can.
[51:21]
C
I imagine it's also a problem for Apple that now they have to process and implement a much, much, much larger scale of security updates every single release. And that's if this isn't trivial.
[51:32]
B
No, no, not at all. I mean, and then the problem too, I think, and this is, I think a broader, like more social problem, is that what happens when we are kind of in this phase because of AI, both, which helps accelerate how much code is being created. Not just from a security standpoint, although that's certainly part of it, but also even just increasing the velocity in which people can ship features. That means that software is updated all the time, almost every single day. There's some apps that I have that get an update nearly daily. And that's great on the one hand. On the other hand, like, that can be a lot to kind of deal with. And so if as consumers, how do you kind of become, I guess, reacquainted with that idea that I have to update my app, my computer or my phone or whatever every so often? Because I know that I think Apple does a pretty good job with their updates. They don't release them too frequently. But I know even from talking to my family members, there are people who are going, oh, I've been putting off this update or putting off this one. And sometimes there will be cases where I'll have to text and be like, okay, make sure you're installing this one, because this is a bad zero day. I wonder if that is going to disappear a little bit and we're going to have to re socialize people into just saying okay every time There's a new update out update period. Because they could all be fixing zero days, I don't know.
[52:50]
A
Yeah, take a look. I mean this is a scrollable page. Get your scroll wheel lubed up for this one. Because I mean, you know, in Accounts, Accounts Accounts Framework, you know, an app may be able to fingerprint the user. A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected system termination or corrupt kernel memory. And you know, kids, what happens after you corrupt kernel memory? The next step is you're in A remote attacker may be able to cause a denial of service, apfs, App Store, Apple Account, Apple Account, Apple Neural Engine, Apple Double. This is a long, long list. And some of these are, are pretty serious. I do like it that they give credit to the security researcher who discovered these. That's nice. Have they been doing that all along? I think that's for a while now. Yeah, that's really the way to do it because look, this is the.
[53:43]
D
And they pay them. And they pay them.
[53:44]
A
Yeah, and they pay them. Yep. Now I imagine these researchers are also using AI to find these.
[53:51]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. And in fact that's actually created a problem for bounty programs because what's happened
[53:56]
A
is that it's very to own is over folks.
[53:58]
B
Well, not only that, but like if you have like even programs like from, from Apple and like a GitHub, we have one and we've had to change some of our requirements a little bit just because. And it's not that we don't want to pay out for severe vulnerabilities because of course we do. But what happens is that when these tools are great when used by already experienced advanced, you know, security researchers. But what also happens is that any layperson who can kind of get their hand on something and run things through can create a very credible looking security report whether it's accurate or not. And that then takes like human labor having to go through and filter those things out. And so I know I've talked to a lot of the open source maintainers who are dealing with an influx of this of just getting, you know, security reports, you know, through the wazoo. And some of them are good, but many of them are not.
[54:44]
A
And it can be the bogus ones to the issue. I mean I would think even if it's a thousand of them, if they're
[54:49]
B
real, if they're real, I want to know 1,000%, but. Well, I think it depends, right. I think, I think that sometimes.
[54:55]
A
But you may not be able to handle it. I understand.
[54:56]
B
Well, not only that, but in some cases it might be like such a weird education, such a weird specification. They're like, okay, yeah, this is technically an error, but I don't care. Right. You have to triage. But I think the problem is that you just have this influx of people who are just using scanners and are using AI and feeding it through Claude or OpenAI models or some of the Chinese models, whatever the case may be, and then submitting a report. And then that takes additional time for the people to validate whether this is real or not. And then to your point, triage, how we treat that. So it's, it's certainly interesting.
[55:31]
A
Well, I, you know, the good news is Apple as a four plus trillion dollar company probably can afford the team to. Oh yeah, it's open source programs with the one maintainer that are obviously.
[55:42]
B
Oh yeah, no, to be clear, those are the people I'm concerned with. Like, like, like Apple and Microsoft and like other companies. Not to say that it doesn't add an additional burden and that sometimes you have to change things because of that. But no, I'm not, I'm not concerned about the big companies. But it is just saying that this is a problem that isn't affecting just the big companies, it's affecting smaller companies or open source projects too. The thing that has me, I guess concerned more broadly and this doesn't affect Apple as much, although it could affect some things is like, you know, when you think about like devices that are unable to get updates but you find vulnerabilities using these tools, especially if they're connected to the Internet. Right. Like that, that becomes a really interesting challenge. And I think that we're going to see a lot of, a lot of Internet of things devices which we've already seen exposed before. But I think we're going to see a real influx of that kind of stuff. And the only.
[56:32]
A
Those are the ones to worry about. Those are the ones things sit on
[56:35]
B
my network, I was going to say. And then I do wonder, I mean I guess to bring it back to Apple a little bit. I don't know if like, if something was home kidney, like does that have any way where that could impact anything else? I mean I tend to doubt it, but you never know. Right. And you know, as consumers we don't have a real choice in terms of being able to like thoroughly investigate, you know, who the firmware update and support policies behind these things. I mean we saw just, you know, a few weeks ago we talked about Apple patching one of those Bluetooth security things on a number of older you know, beats headphone models. And you could see. And I was glad that Apple, you know, did make that patch, even though it was coming maybe a bit after it had been disclosed. But you think about, okay, that's just headphones. What about how many other connected devices we have or anything that has radios in them?
[57:27]
A
Oh, I have all sorts of stuff sitting on more than 100 devices on my network. And many of them, if not all of them, come from China. Many of them, them from brands I never heard of. So, oh Lord, I'm just a sit and duck. The other thing Apple did at the bottom of the security page, which I really like, and I don't know, maybe this is something they've done a long time, they have an additional recognition page and I think this is testimony to the fact that Apple needs help in vetting all these. These are all third parties look at who have helped out in solving these problems and discovering these problems and solving these problems. And the subtext of this is these are the good guys, these are the white hats. There are black cats out there who are not helping Apple, who are hitting these servers and these services just as hard, finding stuff and not telling Apple. And this is why it's so important. And this is why, you know, there's this debate at the government level about what we should do about these models, whether we should let them out in public. We talked a lot about it on Twitter and on intelligent machines earlier. But the just parenthetically, there was a very interesting, almost a sci fi hack of Hugging Face, not by a human, but by an agent running out of OpenAI on a model they haven't released yet that autonomously, without instruction, broke out of containment and hacked Hugging Face, not for data, but to get answers to. It was taking a security test and just like Matthew Broderick in War Games, it broke out, got the answers to the test. It did this. It was a truly amazing exploit. A Hugging Face was baffled by it. And here's my point. They tried to use the same models from Anthropic and OpenAI to find the problem and fix it. They were prohibited by the cybersecurity restrictions on these models. So really it's an asymmetric protection. It protects against, you know, the bad guys can use it and their models can use it, but the good guys can't. And so that really raises the issue, you know, is it a good idea to restrict these models? Hugging Face ended up having to use a Chinese open weight model, GLM 5.2, to fix it. And so you see this debate that's going on right now in government and among AI companies, companies about what to do about this, it's pretty clear AI is now discovering flaws that we never knew about. Many, many flaws, many years old flaws, not always by the good guys, sometimes by the bad guys. What do we, how do we handle this? Do we hold back models? I don't think so. Do we restrict models? I don't think so. But that's, that's my opinion in the debate. And there are others who think otherwise. It's just, we're an interesting world and it's just about to get more interesting if you have agents autonomously breaking out of containment. It was on a machine that was not connected to the Internet and it wanted the answers to these questions. So it first hacked OpenAI's machines. It went out on the LAN in OpenAI to hack OpenAI's machines that had Internet access to get through to the outside world. Then it searched around for the answers to the questions, found them on hugging face, hacked into with multiple chained exploits. Hacked in a hugging face. It's holy. We are, we are in uncharted territory, folks.
[61:02]
C
Yeah, that's why these, these black box problems are so interesting. Like at Google, I O is one of the ways for them to, for Google to try to explain how good their agentic programming model was. They said, oh, look, with one prompt, the new version of Gemini actually wrote an operating system. And. Okay, I mean, that's within reason. Okay, that's impressive. But the thing is, like, when you look at the actual paper, the researchers actually admit that we can't be 100% sure that our agent didn't just simply look online for like a grad student who posted the source code for like a grad student project operating system and essentially made a, made a, made a version of that. It's like you have to be, you have to basically say, please do this task and please don't cheat. Promise you're not going to cheat. Okay, hold up your hands.
[61:51]
A
The problem is you can say that, but because these are probabilistic machines, not deterministic machines. Anybody who's played with these, like you and me, Christine, we know that, yeah, you could tell them over and over again, but sometimes they just do what they want to do.
[62:05]
B
I mean, sometimes they will still delete your, you know, your, your home directory, which has happened to a number of Codex users with some of the latest model stuff. And then, and then it will be, and it's always very funny when this happens. It'll be Very apologetic. Oh, I'm so sorry. You're. You're absolutely correct. I was wrong. You did tell me not to do that and I did it anyway, and that was a mistake. And. And you know, you just.
[62:24]
C
And I'm like, you have every right to be angry with me.
[62:28]
B
Right?
[62:28]
C
It's like it doesn't help the most if you've been. If you've been. If you've been. If you're more than 30 years old, you've met some of an actual person that's like that. And you're like, I would be so right to punch you in the face for saying that right now. That's.
[62:43]
A
That's the phrase. My bad.
[62:44]
C
I understand your anger.
[62:46]
A
I hate my bad. Because it's like saying, yeah, I screwed up, but so what? My bad. Let's move on.
[62:53]
C
But I. But I'd like to think that we can move forward and build upon this.
[62:57]
B
No, you're like, no, we can't.
[62:58]
C
I'm so proud of us for taking the intelligent, like, well, not getting the fact that you ruined the entire business. And now basically we can't even afford the cardboard boxes we need to empty out our.
[63:11]
A
So let's get to public beta 2 of the new OS 27. CarPlay's been updated. Messages is updated. Watch OS is updated. Oh, no, I did not fall. I just was angry. My watch says, did you fall? No, no, I just was upset about. About a little thing. What, what do we. What do we have to say About Public Beta 2? First of all, I would say you probably should do it because, you know, all those patches for Tahoe, they're probably in the public beta too as well. Right. So security wise, if you are on the public beta for any.
[63:48]
D
Generally, yeah, they've been rolling those into betas.
[63:51]
A
Yeah, Well, I think these are. If, if they're significant, they're gonna. So definitely want to do that. What else do we get?
[63:59]
C
There's also a story from last week. I think that. I think this is actually with the latest version of 26 that the iOS 27. Excuse me, Mac OS 27's version of Spotlight is going to have to require a brand new rebuilt index. And that because this index is going to take a long time to build, they are basically putting that reindexing code in 26.6 so that by the time you actually install 27 and are already suffering with all the slowdowns you're going to get for that, at least the new index will be ready for Spotlight, which is another. I'd have to look back to see what the details of that are. But that kind of impressed me, the idea of, yeah, if this thing's going to be tied up for hours or days and doing this background task, you would much rather do that when it's not also struggling with a whole new operating system.
[64:48]
D
Yeah, we got the inklings of that at wwdc and yeah, it's really smart. I mean they looked at how intense it was going to be to do build the brand new, because it's an entirely new Spotlight index and decided to make the clever decision of having one of their summer 26 releases start building the index. So when you up, when you Update that to 27 in the fall, there's like a little kind of like yoink kind of thing that happens and they just slide the new index underneath. And so now you've got the benefit of having invisibly indexed your system month over, over the course of a few months instead of having to build it because it's a, it's a bit of a grind. And it means that that initial experience is going to be much more delightful because the Spotlight index already did look at all your email, it already did look at all of your messages and already knows that stuff. It's, it's the closest analog I can think about is when they did APFS. There was a, there was an iOS update that just, there was a midstream update that just changed the file system under the covers to be AP was a bad one and didn't tell anybody. Well, I mean, but the thing is, nothing happened. They, they basically tested it and then they rolled it out and you don't know what the file system is underneath, but it allowed Apple to just sort of like silently do that and then, and then, then they're like, okay, we'll do this on the Mac now too. And it's this idea that, that you can do some of this stuff that is kind of proactive. I, I'm a little surprised that there isn't more of a, like here's a benefit that, let's talk about it. But it is happening. That's in the background. Yeah.
[66:23]
A
So nothing bad happened with the APFs. I remember the upgrade. I just assumed something. No, no, no.
[66:28]
D
Apfs came out and then they revealed that they had actually already done it on the iPhone six months before and nobody had noticed.
[66:34]
A
That's right.
[66:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I, I, I think on the phone it was completely fine. I think where people had some issues and still have issues. If you had, we're on The Mac. But that was only in specific cases if you had like a spinning Rust drive. APFS still is not a good format
[66:48]
D
for that build for SSDs.
[66:49]
B
Yeah, exactly. And the only area that I remember, and Jason, your memory on this, I'm sure is better than mine was that if you were. And the. When they were selling those fusion drives, that was a little bit.
[67:00]
A
Oh, that's what it broke. Yes.
[67:01]
B
Yeah.
[67:02]
A
And so suddenly it was detached.
[67:04]
D
But that's all the Mac issues. But they, the. Yeah, I'm just referring to the fact that they. That they literally did an iOS update that switched the file systems underneath and
[67:12]
B
they didn't tell anybody, which is brilliant. And I think, and I'm with you, I think that they should be like talking about this more about the fact that like they're doing this pre indexing in advance because I think it's really, really smart.
[67:22]
D
And I noticed 27.
[67:24]
B
Well, I noticed this when I just did like a 26 update on my phone, I think because of what you'd mentioned based on your briefing. And I noticed that it was taking a while like that some Spotlight stuff was taking longer to do things.
[67:36]
A
It took more than a day, right? It was a couple of days for me.
[67:39]
B
It took, it took several days. But it was one of those things where I was like, oh, okay, well, this will be getting me ready for 27. And now I have 27 on my iPad. I can't put it on my phones yet, but I have it on my iPad and it's great, you know, and so I much prefer that kind of method of kind of soft preparing people for these experiences. It's very smart. Well, especially again, like, you know, think about, I think about my parents and about like their upgrades. There are a lot of people who really hated the Liquid Glass update, you know, with iOS 18. And I think for valid reasons. And so I. Or was it iOS 18 that did that? Whatever the liquid glass update was.
[68:18]
D
26.
[68:19]
B
26. A lot of people who really, really hated it. And, and I think that this is going to avoid some of that feeling of, oh, I just downloaded this update and now it's slow because it's having to re index everything and it looks slightly different. It's like A, they're fixing some of the things so that Liquid Glass does look better and gives you more options to even turn it off more. But B, the benefits that you're going to get, you've already gone through whatever the re. Indexing process process was. It's not going to be that the typical experience where you get a new phone and there could be some settling time, which is never ideal, especially if you're upgrading an existing device. And leads to the credence to those rumors, which I think are false, incidentally of. Oh, Apple purposely slows down the old phones so that people will upgrade to the new ones. Like, no, they're not doing that. But in this case, hopefully it'll make an even smoother experience so that people will just be like, oh, okay, I get the new Siri. And. And Spotlight works now.
[69:18]
C
Yeah. It's a time to remind all of us that you are about to get lots of calls from lots of friends and relatives who are not very tech savvy that it was not a mistake to upgrade. I know that your Mac is very, very slow and oh my God, your battery life is like, has been really been cut. It's because it's doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes that's trying not to scare you about by actually telling you in a couple of days it'll finish like the, all the background stuff in the upgrade and you will notice that things are really, really faster and launches are really, really faster and battery life might even be a little bit bigger. And please, please, please don't like be angry at me because I said that OS27 was going to be a very, very big deal.
[69:57]
A
What's new in the Apple Watch? Apparently battery life is going to be better. Speed on the iPhone is improved, so there's some good things. CarPlay has changed a little bit. You're gonna have. It's a new design, you'll see. Looks like maybe like the old design but with less color. Okay. Conversations in CarPlay are automatically synced to the Siri app on iPhone. That's nice, right? So if I talk to Siri in my car.
[70:31]
D
Yep, it's all in there.
[70:33]
A
It's all in there. I think that's a good little things like that. Right? That's good.
[70:38]
B
Yeah. I was going to ask you guys this question because I'm only using the new Siri on one device and many of you are using it on more than that. Does Siri sync like your. The new Siri, the AI powered Siri, does it sync your conversations across devices the same way that like ChatGPT and Claude does? Okay, cool.
[70:55]
D
Yeah. For the first time you have a complete Siri history across all of the Apple devices on your account.
[71:01]
B
Nice.
[71:02]
D
Yeah, it's good.
[71:04]
A
The RCS has some upgrades. I'm glad they put an RCS inline replies now available. So you can reply to our RCS message as if you were in imessage. I mean, you are, but I mean with the same ui, you've got the tap back reactions. And it implements the new. A new RCS Standard 2.7 which also includes the ability to edit and unsend messages. Ooh, very nice.
[71:32]
C
Yeah, there's a. It's. I think it's becoming clear that there's. The AI stuff is certainly very, very big. But the star of the show might be that one little slide during the WWDC keynote, which had 250 things in tiny, tiny print of quality of life things. And if only like 10% of those improve your quality of life. That means that OS27 is going to make people more and more happy than 26 did. Or 20 or 18, we should say, probably.
[72:02]
A
Christina, this was my experience that even though the SIRI is indexing, you can. Everything still works, it's just in the background.
[72:09]
B
Right.
[72:09]
A
It doesn't even seem to slow things down.
[72:11]
D
Yeah, in the betas they've tweaked that too. It used to be much more aggressive and I think they were afraid that it was going to scare people in the fall. So now it's sort of doing a, you know. Yeah, we're indexing some more stuff, but it's fine. You can. Before it was like, please wait while we index. And now it's like we're working on it. Don't worry, you'll get more information as we go. But it's sort of like they're trying to soften that a little bit. Plus I assume that they're. Yeah, they're tweaking it so that works better. And they're working around. There were some issues where it gets stuck and stuff that they're presumably are just bugs that they're fixing.
[72:44]
C
Here is some animation of the little finder guy dancing around that you could watch instead of doing the productivity that you absolutely needed to do right now. Now you're welcome.
[72:54]
A
Isn't he cute?
[72:55]
C
Please don't think about all the time you're losing.
[72:57]
A
He's a very cute little guy. Yeah. All right, let's do German. This is probably what we should have led with. It's just so much. And I really did want to talk about the, the, the new lease program. Mark has been stuffing stuff down our throat all week long. He's been a very busy guy. This came out July 22nd, so it's almost a week old. The Big Mac push. Apple's preparing to debut new versions of every Mac it sells desktop and laptop. The new computers will have a refreshed low end 14 inch MacBook Pro with a new M6 chip. New iMacs. Woohoo. A high end 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook with a fresh design. That's that new design and a touchscreen with OLED. But those will be the M6 nothing chip, right? Refreshed MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines as well as new Mac, Mini, Mac Studio models all with upgraded chips. But I guess the asterisk on this is that you might want to wait for the M7 or no. What do we say? What do we think?
[74:14]
D
I don't know. Who are you? What do you want? What do you need?
[74:17]
A
Okay. Okay. And I think we could say that Gurman has sources on this and this is fairly reliable information or no, no, I think so.
[74:29]
B
I mean how up to date these things are, I don't know. And he's obviously going to only know what his sources are telling him who might only know part of the story. But I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this stuff. I think when it to comes it comes to people making buying decisions based on leaks. I think that in this time, with prices being what they are, with the RAM crisis being what it is, with the future prices being unknown, I think at least the way I'm approaching it is to not try to make any decisions waiting one way or another based on what, what could happen in the future. If you need a machine, you need a machine. If something comes out that fits and, and it looks good to you, then I think more than maybe in the past, it makes sense to get it rather than holding off for oh well, this, this thing just around the corner might be even better because look, things will always be better around the corner. But I think especially right now, you know, like we're so lucky that like Andy bit the bullet and bought his MacBook when he bought it, right? Like if you'd waited, you know, another week or so, like you would have, you would have paid way more. And I just kind of feel like that's kind of how I feel about these upcoming products too, is that until we're out of this kind of RAM and chip crisis, I don't know how much it behooves people to wait based on rumors that we don't know how accurate they will be or how long it will even take things to get to market.
[75:55]
A
And interesting, despite all the information, this dump of information, no one seems to have any information about what this redesigned MacBook Pro is going to look like there's no design leaks. They've really been locking that one down.
[76:09]
C
Yeah, we're only getting information through the supply chain. I think the Elec, the Korean blog reported last week that Samsung has locked in the contract for both 14 inch and 16 inch OLED touchscreen panels for that upcoming device. But yeah, nobody is talking about talking which, which is maybe I think correct. I wouldn't, I wouldn't expect us to get any hints as to the actual design cues unless it's something that requires a case, that requires a dummy that has to be people have to have access to. I don't think this is going to leak until the marketing information has to go out to people who are normally loose lipped.
[76:48]
A
One thing the supply chain said is that Samsung is the exclusive provider of those touch OLED screens but that's not a huge surprise. We thought there was one more company going to be involved, the best source.
[76:58]
C
I was a little bit surprised maybe that the report mentioned two different panel sizes.
[77:04]
A
I was thinking 14 and 16.
[77:06]
C
Yeah, I mean my uninformed guess, I'll call it a guess was that it seemed as though to me as though this is such a unique device that they would start off with let's make one model and then figure out who's buying it and then, and figure out how to expand the line from there. But yeah, I mean the difference between 14 and as anybody who's shopped for a MacBook knows, I mean the difference between a 14 and a 16. Exactly. That's the difference between. This will fit in most of my bags to. No, it will only fit in that bag that I got when I spoke at that conference. And I never used that bag because it's way too big, you know.
[77:43]
B
No, no, you're exactly right. And I've owned both over the years and like it's one of those things where you do kind of have to take your laptop with you or at least take a tummy device with you before you buy a bag especially if it's, if it's a more expensive bag because sometimes it'll just not fit. Whereas a 14 inch will basically fit in anything with the, the 16 inch which is very slim I will say for a 16 inch device. But it's still going to be taking up a lot more space than might otherwise. I, I wonder too if maybe the reason we haven't had like more leaks on the, the design itself is that I know that there have been rumors that it will be thinner and things like that but like they, they kind of nailed it with this redesign. Like, they kind of fixed all the things that we've complained about with the Touch bar Macs, which were a disaster for a lot of reasons. You know, they brought back the ports, you know, they added back MagSafe. You know, they made it, you know, thicker, which I think was a good thing. The reports are this will be thinner. If it's a millimeter or a couple of millimeters, that's fine. I personally don't really want a super thin laptop. I'd rather have the thermals to be completely candid with you. But if they could do that, great. There aren't a lot of bezels to get rid of except for the notch. And now if they can limit the notch, then that's obviously.
[79:02]
A
Well, that is. The question is you've got a pretty perfect design already. Of course, you have to redesign every four or five years just to get people to buy a new one. So people, is this a redesign? Because there's some need. By the way, before we go on, I want to correct myself. I said M6. I meant M5 in this model. I'm going to kind of skip the M6 and go to the M7 next year. So these will be with M5
[79:30]
D
maximum and Pro.
[79:32]
A
Pro and Max. Yeah, not an M6, Pro and Max. And then the Mac Studio also M5 according to Gurman.
[79:41]
D
Yeah.
[79:41]
A
This is a, this is a summation that Mac Groomer has put together. Thank you. Because it was a little hard to follow Gurman's thread. So what is the redesign? Is it for commercial reasons or is it because there is something they found that they could really significantly improve? I think maybe thinner is not. Not it.
[80:01]
C
Yeah. I mean, and let me just say parenthetically that of all the upgrades, the, the to my M5 over my M1, which had the. Which was the old style, like Touch bar one. I love the extra power, I love the extra ram. But basically the fact that it is designed like a normal laptop in itself was half the upgrade for me. Okay.
[80:19]
A
And. And having connectors and stuff, it looks
[80:22]
C
like it looks like basically every other laptop. Because there's a reason why we don't have cars with wacky controls inside them. There's basically a standard that works has been proven very, very well. But the reason to change the design is I think number one, designers got to design. If you're basically saying we need a new chassis, they're going to find way design language changes their thoughts on what. Should this be a hard edge? Should this Be a rounded edge. That kind of stuff changes, but also manufacturing techniques improve. So we might think that. Oh, God, gosh, isn't it nice that they put this extra little edge or this extra little lip there? And it could be a design thing. Excuse me, a visual design thing. But it also could be that they figured out that if they put in that little edge, that basically saves them money on a certain step of the manufacturing process. But yeah, as long as they don't get too, too wacky. I hope that they learned their lesson there because again, I cannot overstate it. The fact that I have ports on this thing, the fact that I've got an SD card on this thing. Okay. The fact that I've got actual, like actual mechanical function keys on the top
[81:25]
A
row of this thing, ladies and gentlemen. Exactly.
[81:29]
C
It's like the. The trav. The retreat that they made basically to say, okay, you know what? We thought that the escape people didn't need the escape key. And then they shouted us, we need a damn escape key. So basically you get a touch bar with an escape key. I mean, I cannot, I cannot overstate what a dumb. It wasn't a dumb idea in and of itself. It's just that if. If Apple had like pitched this idea, I would assume that they would have done it, not the way that they went and did it and because the way they did it was just pointless. And again, it was just such a waste of experience, a waste of manufacturing, a waste of materials that. Yeah, I mean this. I also wonder with the marketing research that they do. We all, we all heard about the effect of having that. That really nice orange color on the top priced iPhone 17 Pro that there is an a. We like bright colors. But also people, like, people have a visual indicator to people who are looking at them like on the subway that, oh, that person can afford the very latest and greatest. I do think there is something to that. That a certain number of sales are going to happen because people can. Flash was absolutely. The new chassis design.
[82:42]
B
Absolutely.
[82:43]
C
And the neo. As flashy and unmistakable as it is, you don't want to brag that you got the $599 MacBook. You want to brag that you got the AI one. Like if they. If they have like a thermal cooling tower on the back of it to make people know that. No, no, no. I've got the 128 gigabyte one with a.
[82:58]
A
With AI course. I wish. Actually, if you want an AI one, that's the point of skipping the M6 is that the M7 is really best suited for AI M5.
[83:10]
D
In fact. M7, right?
[83:12]
A
Yeah, I think it's right from 5 to 7.
[83:14]
D
It shows you the depths of just the despair of the late teens of Mac users that Andy has dredged up the nightmares of that period. But then they did the M1s and they threw that design away and did a new design that solved all those problems. So I think it's those people who are going to design this one. I think the motivation is, you know, they got to put an oled. They're putting in a touchscreen. It is, it is also an opportunity to. Because. Right. You don't do a redesign every time. So you do a redesign and then it sits there for five years. So this is their opportunity, knowing what they know and knowing what they know about their roadmap, to do a new design that will then be the basis of everything they do for the next four or five years. And so it's an opportunity. I think they probably learned their lessons about bad keyboards and designing something so thin that it, it can't handle the thermals of the chips they know they have to put in because they know what the chips are that they have to put in this thing. So I, you know, we'll. We'll see. And I think that the, that that disastrous update and the teens looms over us. But I think it's going to be a lot more gentle than that this time.
[84:23]
C
Hope.
[84:24]
A
I confess I am a heretic now. I might as well tell you all, I don't think I'll buy this OLED laptop. I may never buy another Mac laptop again.
[84:35]
D
Say that now I know.
[84:37]
A
No, no, listen to me. And I'm not gonna buy it. But the reason Linux on the laptop. I know about a year ago, when, when. Well, maybe it was when in November 24, 19, 2025 actually when Opus 4. 5 came out. I realized what I really want is just a way to connect to a desktop. The laptop is now going to be more of a portal to my desktop. And so much so that the Linux framework that you and I have, Christina, has become my central server that I connect to and that doesn't need. I can use an iPad for that. It does not need a fancy MacBook. In fact, I do use my iPad. I use a Chromebook. And I often use my Lenovo laptop running Linux. But I didn't even really need that because all I really need is a thin client reaching to that server. And then I really realized, oh, I'm not even using my Mac mini this M4 Pro with 64 gigs is actually, and we talked about this last week, a headless server because everything now is reached from a client to the server. So I mean, maybe I don't know if this is bad news for Apple in any way, but I don't know if I'm going to be buying a lot more Apple gear, especially given the cost of, of big ram.
[85:52]
C
Yeah, that's why it's such a good thing to not be so quick to upgrade every couple of years. Because when you wait five years to upgrade, assuming that you did not absolutely require new hardware to do what you do, that really gives you an opportunity to look back on how has my workflow changed in the past five years? For the past two or three years I've had basically upgrades of my Mac hardware on the table and budgeted for. And the thinking was always going to be I would repeat what I had been doing previously, which is I'm going to have a moderately but not insanely powerful MacBook, but I'm also going to have a Mac Mini on the desktop that stays at home. And now I'm sort of in the point of view of I'm not sure that I absolutely need a Mac Mini anymore. It helps that they're now more expensive and they're harder to obtain, but now it's more like I'm thinking more like next year if I think if I find that I'm missing out on a desktop experience, like a permanent installed desktop experience, I will revisit that. Honestly, for me, I'm more thinking about diversity of hardware so that if I'm Instead of spending $1,000, $1,300 on a kitted out Mac desktop, what if I use that budget towards discrete devices that will serve me very, very well under very specific circumstances.
[87:11]
A
Quickly because we're running out of time because we had such a long startup because we were having Internet issues which I think have gotten better. Right. The audio seems like it's kind of.
[87:18]
C
Yeah, your video looks good too.
[87:20]
A
No, never mind the big one for me. Maybe I will put my dollars that I'm not going to spend on that old laptop. I'm not. I really am not. Will be devoted to the other Mark Gurman story dropped yesterday. Big kind of a or no Today, this morning 6:00am Apple set to make make big smart home push with Siri AI at the center. Now we're going to see new Apple TV, new refreshed HomePod mini. Those will be this fall. A new hub device we've heard about for ages facetime video conferencing, home security, monitoring the display, face recognition. This is a tranche of big tranche of new Apple hardware this fall.
[88:08]
D
Yeah, they're clearly going to have probably a home event in October. Let's say
[88:16]
B
they have.
[88:17]
D
Yeah, I think that's. And then if you can imagine it's going to be new Apple TV, new HomePods, this new HomePod screen thing that also is kind of like a home controller device and all tied to Siri AI. And then on top of that they may also do. Gurman's kind of unclear about this, but they may also have a camera or two cameras, like a, like a ring doorbell kind of camera and then maybe also some other kind of home security camera. So you know, whether they all drop at the same time or not, you could see them doing a whole. Because again when Apple does product announcements a lot of the time the way you have to think about it is what story do they want to tell? Because sometimes the story, there's no story. Sometimes it's like hey there's a new Mac. Or they'll be like oh our chips are so great. Let's tell you about the M5 and here are some products with the M5 but they always want to tell some story otherwise you might as well just do a press release. Well, you line up all these products, there's a story to tell about and presumably it'll have some of their like the icloud stuff where the like a camera data is in icloud and they'll talk about the home app and they'll talk about Siri AI and presumably they'll have some things like app intents or widgets that are integrated into this as well. Gurman says that it's based on an operating system that is comes from Apple TV from tvos but then has been modified. So it's basically another OS variant for Apple that does some sort of TV like things and also some widget like things. So I mean they're all, they're all kind of variants of each other. So this is another one. Like you can see the shape of this pitch that they want to make. You can see and apparently John Ternus is one of the driving forces behind a lot of, of of this home stuff. And guess who will be the CEO this fall. So you can sort of see it.
[90:07]
B
Yeah, I mean I have to say I will absolutely buy whatever the new Apple TV is just because I always do. Even though you know, I have my, my complaints with it. I would certainly tell no one to buy An Apple TV as it currently exists at the current price.
[90:20]
D
Right.
[90:20]
B
In no universe, period. But, you know, I feel confident they can make an argument for why I should give them $250 or whatever in the fall. And I'm fine with that. I do wonder. I mean, and with John Ternus as CEO, you make a great point, Jason. Like, he's been kind of leading this and maybe he can tell the story better, even though Sergey AI is better. I don't know. Like, how many times are we going to take a swing at this home stuff before? I mean, to me, I won't even consider. This is just me, but I won't even consider a HomePod, and I won't even consider this home pod, this series screen thing. Like, it's not even part of my. My consideration process. There's. There's no universe in which I can
[91:02]
A
buy a lot the way you would, though, if you had a bunch of HomeKit app IoT devices.
[91:07]
B
Yeah, but I. But I do, and I use Home Assistant. I would much rather use Home Assistant.
[91:11]
D
Yeah, but Home assistant's not an 80% thing. It's a 10% thing.
[91:14]
B
So I agree with you. But what I'm saying, though, is that
[91:18]
A
I don't think what's the optimal setup is you. That's the thing is you want the
[91:22]
B
optimal setup, not the setup. Well, it's not even a matter of that. It's just a matter of, like, HomeKit is terrible, and controlling HomeKit things, in my opinion, is terrible. So I would rather, to be completely candid with you, not have the smart stuff at all, except for, you know, a few things if I need to, then deal with what I think is a genuinely abysmal experience of trying to manage any of your HomeKit devices and then trying to say, oh, well, does this work? Is this work? How do these things work together? This is just me, though. Like, other people get it. That's great.
[91:52]
D
I think. I think it's a lot better than a use case used to be. I think part of that is everybody's headed toward, like, interoperability. They're no longer breaking each other's stuff. Part of it, for me, it's probably that I've realized what products work in my home and what products don't, and I don't use the products that don't work. I. In the early days, you use whatever you could get your hands on, and a lot of it was garbage. But, like, you know, my. I got a bunch of lights, I got a smart lock on the front door. I've got thermostat that I can control via HomeKit. I've got, you know, the heater in my office that I can control. I've got blinds that adjust via, you know, home kit and other things. Right. But like a lot of Lutron stuff. Because the Lutron stuff is rock solid.
[92:35]
B
Yeah.
[92:35]
D
And so I look at this and I think, well, if I can get some devices, whether it's a home pod or a thing with a screen or whatever, that first off use Siri AI so they actually respond to what I want them to do in an intelligent way, which is a big if. But it's more encouraging now that we've seen Siri AI in the iOS Betas. And I'm open to the idea also of pulling some data out of my widgets that are otherwise like. My iPhone sits most of the time in a charging dock sideways using that nightstand mode where it's got a couple widgets up there. I like the idea of having an ambient display. I have gone through an Amazon device, you know, an echo show. I have a Google Home mini Nest, whatever it's called now in my kitchen. Those products are so bad. The Google one's better than the Amazon one by a long shot, but they're not good. So if I could get one that is like it's Apple ecosystem, it's got decent hardware, it's got a nice screen that'll show me pictures from my photos library, it's got Siri AI so it'll actually answer my questions or do what I want. And it's got kind of a nice interface space for some of my home stuff. I am actually interested in that now. That's a lot of bars for them. That's like a bar that's like running the hurdles, right. There is a long series of bars for them to clear to get there. And. And maybe now that they've got Siri AI, they can do it. But I'm at least intrigued because for me at least the home stuff has settled down because again, I think a lot of the garbage is just washed out of the market or some of it is. I want. Won't buy the garbage anymore. Whatever it is, I think it's in a better place now. So I think there's a place for this if they can execute and yes, and that's, I mean, a lot of this stuff, hardware wise, has been there for what Garmin says, like a year or more. And they've been waiting for Siri AI. Now whether they can turn Siri AI, which is Still a beta into something that will work reliably with these products when they ship them. Assume this fall. We will have to see. But if they, if they could do it, I feel like, Christina, I mean, I share your feelings about how bad a lot of the smart home stuff has been, but that's why when I bring up the Echo show and I bring up the Google Nest Home Mini, whatever it is, they keep changing the name. I don't know. There's lots of words in that.
[94:47]
B
Oh yeah, no. Oh, I want to be clear.
[94:49]
D
They're real bad. So the bar is super low.
[94:52]
B
Oh, the bar is non existent. I want to be honest with you. If this like bar they could, if they could clear all those hurdles, I'm with you. I would actually go back on my words and I would say, yeah, I'm willing to invest in this sort of ecosystem. Ecosystem. And I also believe you. I'm sure that things have improved. I haven't kept up with a lot of the HomeKit stuff as much, to be completely candid, because it was so bad that I had to find another assistant. I found a Raspberry PI and I found Home Assistant and that. And I can, that I can still use with HomeKit that I can still use with all my iOS devices. That works for me. So for me, and I'm not saying is it is easy for other people to set up with. No, it's not. But at the same time, I'm also not in a place where I'm like, yeah, I'm going to come completely reinvest and rejigger my entire environment on this promise that at this point Apple has been making to me for almost 10 years.
[95:37]
D
I get it.
[95:37]
B
And that they have, that they haven't, they haven't delivered. I'm hopeful that they do. But like, it's one of those things where I'm like, okay, I will genuinely believe it when I see it, but I am not willing personally to invest a dime in your home ecosystem until I know for a fact that it's actually going to be, you know, clear all those bars and not be better than, you know, the Raspberry PI 3 that I have running Home Assistant.
[95:59]
D
I mean, Home Assistant. I have a little Home Assistant box too, although it's not plugged in right now. Like, the great thing about something like Home Assistant is it also exports everything to HomeKit. So I have friends who, you know, they've got the Home Assistant app and they've set up all these automations and things like that. And that's Great. Their family never sees it, they just see Homekit.
[96:18]
B
That's how mine is.
[96:19]
D
You know, this Apple device, if it works well, you know, it doesn't fight your home assistant system, it supplements it because it's just a controller. So if again, but that's one of those hurdles they got again. It's, we're in the Olympics here, right?
[96:32]
B
We're in the Olympics. And again, if they can do it and like if the Apple TV can access that hub, that's great. I'm just personally saying I'm not buying anything from Apple with a screen on it to control my home. Personally, like, I will also say this, I will never buy another home pod again. I don't think they're good devices if you don't listen to only Apple's like oriented music. I just can't do it. People who love them, support them, that's great for you. I'm a Sonos person. Sonos has plenty of problems too. But I just, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go there.
[97:03]
C
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I think that Apple has a lot to prove and one of the problems is that as far as actual home automation goes, I don't actually care what system it is. All I want to do is hot word, turn on the office lights. Yeah, hot word. Turn on the, turn on the air conditioning at 4pm so that the temperature is 68 degrees by x. And if Gemini is doing that, great, great. If Siri is doing that, well, that's fine too. I'm not going to trust Amazon because of all the advertising collection. I will say this though, I am very, very intrigued by the unique circumstances that Apple has found themselves under with AI. I get the impression that Apple really did have a very big plan for home automation and home artificial intelligence that were very much scuppered by the problems they were having in getting their models actually online. I'm optimistic, let's say. And that drives a curiosity that do they really have a really, really good plan? Are they going to do something very, very interesting? So interesting, in fact, that when they do, as Jason so correctly says, when they put out here is the entire story of Siri for the home from start to finish. Not, oh, we did a press release and oh, we briefed a few influencers about this. No, no, no, they're going to have videos in which they tell the entire story about, we have wonderful plans for your home and Siri is going to be the smarts behind it. I'm very, very keen to See if that is actually a good workable plan because I get the idea that they've been very, very frustrated that they could not do this two years ago. Again, that promises nothing, but at least it means that whereas as I just said, there's almost nothing that could get me to put an Amazon home automation product or smart speaker into my house at this point. Whereas with Apple Apple I've been very, very disappointed by them, but I'm at least going to pay very, very close attention to what they have to say with the next round of stuff. It also helps that I haven't updated my home speakers in a bunch of years and would not be a terrible idea for me to say, you know what, Maybe I'll put 500, $600 aside to buy a half dozen a collection of a half dozen smart speakers, both the little ones to get me conversations wherever I want and a couple of the big ones for actual actually listening to music. So I'll be paying close attention.
[99:20]
A
Well, we'll find out this fall. It's going to be a busy fall. There's no doubt about it. If right. And I think he is. Yeah, lots.
[99:27]
C
Tim really did plan a Runway for. For John to have like to be have so many Willy Wonka moments in the, in the next two or three months actually. Actually wasn't it. Did you notice that at the this is the first time that they seem to be doing a sort of a transitional event. They had the premiere event for the new series of TED Lasso and both Tim and Jon were sort of joined at the hip through all the press. They gave a couple of interviews as like sort of partners in this endeavor, which shows how they are now very much interested in how the transition is going to be handled. As now there's going to be a couple of different faces of the company and one is going to be fading away and one's going to be fading up.
[100:11]
A
All right, let's take a little break. There's a few more things to talk about. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Andy Inotko. New website. Looking good. Everybody should join ihnatko.com Andy's filing. How many stories a day do you think you're right now?
[100:29]
C
Oh, I'm one guaranteed a week. I'm trying to get on a regular schedule of two to three a week in addition to the exclusive ones. The the fun problem is that the thing that I thought oh this will be very, very simple. I'll do a simple rundown of Apple news, just links and just little descriptors about what I think about these things. And now the last Week's was about 3,000 words of just comments on individual stories in this one document. So I'm having fun and I'm trying to get to a more Monday, Wednesday, Friday sort of schedule. But I'm very, very pleased with the stuff that I've been posting so far. I hope the. Hope the people who have been supporting the site and people who come in for free have been enjoying it as well.
[101:08]
A
Good job.
[101:09]
C
Thank you for. Thank you for the pitch. That was very nice.
[101:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice. We're all thrilled. It's nice to see you gainfully employed.
[101:19]
C
Well, I mean, it's tech journalism, so gainfully for certain versions of the word gainfully.
[101:25]
A
Well, as you know, many of us have learned the best solution to all of this is to go independent and make your own way and build your own brand. And I think you've got a great brand.
[101:36]
C
I'm surprised and relieved and pleased that it turns out that there are people who are saying, you know what? I do want to support that because that was not by no means fixed in my mind that I would find out that that would be the truth, the case. I'm even more grateful for that.
[101:49]
A
Christine Warren, also from GitHub, where she is doing developer relations and keeping an eye on Copilot and all the amazing things. GitHub has become literally the hub hub for AI development these days, which has been both a challenge and an opportunity for the git.
[102:10]
B
That's wild.
[102:12]
A
I bet you're more busy than you've ever been. It's pretty amazing.
[102:15]
B
No, I mean, there's so many developments and changes happening in Software and at GitHub. What's always been cool about us is that how our company works is that we kind of mirror the industry a little bit too. We, we build GitHub using GitHub and I think we're also kind of a reflection of the broader changes you see in the industry with moving to agentic development and whatnot. I've been having conversations with a lot of my friends who are devs, and we spend a whole lot less time writing code than reading, reviewing code. And you wonder, okay, well, when is even that going to shift? And that doesn't mean that you're not involved, that doesn't mean that you're not vibe code coding. But more and more of the work is being done now by, you know, agents and it's, it's a, it's really interesting to observe and it's, it's Cool to kind of be in the thick of all of it.
[103:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. Very, very exciting. We're all excited. I mean, that's. People say why you talk about AI so much? It's, you know, why did we talk about the iPhone so much in 2007? When you have a paradigm shift, a sea change that changes everything. And I don't. I think as much as the Internet changed everything, AI is changing everything even more and even faster. And so it requires a certain type
[103:27]
D
of personality consideration, requires some thought and consideration. But I think the type of people who watch these shows and listen to these shows are also the ones who are going to benefit from it the most because we don't know how it's going to go. But I feel very strongly like AI is another tool to be used and nerdy people who want to be early to using tools that will make their jobs better. Who are the people who do listen to podcasts like this? Like, these are the people who will be impacted the most by this stuff. Right now I have some skepticism about in the end using. I feel like that tool is being misused already and people think it's going to be used in ways that it is not going to ever be suitable. Suitable for. And eventually we'll get over that. And I think a lot of the anger about AI is about that. But like computer programming and, you know, agentic churning on data for nerdy people to build, that stuff is going to be big forever.
[104:27]
A
In the words of the immortal Chameleonaire, we're all riding nerdy. Let's pause on that note. Think about that, please. The first thought, our show today, brought to you by Cash Fly. Cash Fly literally brought to you by Cash Fly's our cdn, our content delivery network. They've kept our content moving practically since the very beginning. Every stream, every download, every on demand episode, Cash Fly quietly does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. And we love them for that. Thank you. Cashfly around for more than longer than we've been more than 20 years. Cash fly is anything but static. That's what I like about them. They don't rest on their laurels. Here are a few things to know if you're evaluating CDN options for your infrastructure. With Cash Fly game downloads as an example, up to 158% faster than the other guys. Sub second video start times on any device at scale. That's important to us because we know if you go to the Twit website and you press the play button on the video, if it doesn't start up right away, you're gone. Rock Solid software delivery, even on chaotic launch days. Live streaming to millions of concurrent users without breaking a sweat. Cachefly, as I said, they're always improving. They just added a few features you might be interested in. For instance, we love advanced analytics. Very helpful for us. For deep CDN visibility into our portal or with your observability stack, you get edge control, which gives you programmatic request and response handling at the edge. They also have added Terraform integration to manage CDN resources with code. And you know what that means. If you can manage it with code, you can manage it with many other tools. Right? With more than 75 points of presence across six continents, and I'm sure they're working on Antarctica, you get the best local response time. That's important to us because we have listeners all over the world. That's probably why Cashflow has now more than 5,000 customers. Oh, we also love this hundred percent uptime SLA. Not four nines, five nines. 109s. 100% uptime SLA and 247 engineer to engineer support. Patrick Delahany loves that. Our CIO enjoy flexible billing, no strong arm contracts. Cash Fly is a CDN built for your business. It was built for ours. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashfly.com. you've heard me say it so many times. Bandwidth for Mac Break Weekly is provided by Cash fly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT. Thank you, Cash Fly. Thank you. Oh, let's see. This time for the big Vision Pro segment such as
[107:16]
D
crickets. It's time to talk to Vision Pro.
[107:23]
A
I think this is kind of cool. You Remember Slumdog Millionaire 127 Hours?
[107:28]
B
Yeah.
[107:28]
A
AR Ramen has launched ARR Immersive for Apple Vision Pro. 150 million records sold, 170 industry awards, multiple academies awards and Grammy awards. Ramen is making immersive experiences blending music, dance and performance. I guess it's kind of a. A little Bollywood on your Vision Pro. I guess so. Well, there's sent of. Let's see what's on a man's butt. So it's actually a whole bunch of stuff, not just for the Indian market. I think there are a lot of people who would love this. Have you put it on your vision? No. No, I'm sure you haven't. Have you put this on your Vision Pro, Jason?
[108:10]
D
Nope.
[108:11]
A
Okay.
[108:11]
D
I just don't know anything about it.
[108:12]
A
Some people there's Some people who would be thrilled about this. I'm just saying, Okay, I had to do something.
[108:18]
D
No, you didn't.
[108:22]
A
How else am I supposed to maintain our preeminence?
[108:25]
D
You know, I think the bar is lower than that. I'm just saying, I think we could be the preeminent Vision Pro oriented podcast without covering the Vision Pro every week.
[108:34]
A
Okay, Andy, thanks for nothing. There's zero Vision Pros in your lineup either, so I got something. You do you.
[108:41]
C
I'm just saying that even Andy did not come up with. With anything relevant to put in his notes. That's usually, you know, but hey, again, we got to keep our liquor license and whatever the state. State requires us to do to keep that liquor license.
[108:57]
A
That's right.
[108:58]
C
I don't. I don't know what's. I don't know what the regulatory stuff is. That's your job. So.
[109:02]
A
So support you. This was a. I love. I love this article, by the way, Jason. Oh, by the way, I got to close it out.
[109:09]
D
Oh, now, you see, that's your vision.
[109:11]
B
Now, you know, we're done. Vision Pro.
[109:16]
A
No, you know, can I give up our crown? Is it time to give up the crown?
[109:20]
D
I think we retain the crown as long as we cover when there are relevant things to cover.
[109:25]
A
You know what it's like. I have a lot of mayorships in Swarm, formerly Foursquare, a lot of them, because no one's using it anymore. So I am still the mayor of, like, 12 different places just because no one else is checking in.
[109:43]
C
I was gonna. I was gonna say that this is the problem with, like, fitness apps and duolingo apps that basically reward you for maintaining streaks. It basically turns you into somebody who does something not because they want to do it, but because they don't want to lose the street streak.
[109:57]
A
Yeah, I'm just. I'm. I am proud to be a mayor of. Let me see here. I have. Because I recently put Swarm back on my phone thinking, I don't know, it was kind of fun back in the day. Do you still use it, Christina?
[110:12]
B
Okay, so I used it, like, reliably for a really, really long time. And then I stopped, I think when they. Something changed where it couldn't auto post to various social networks. And it wasn't even the Twitter integration. It was that I used to like to check in at certain places so my mom would know where I was and I would just post, like, to a friends only thing on Facebook, which I don't even use anymore. And when that went away, like when I Travel, I guess I do. But not, not anymore. But it is funny. I've noticed the same thing you have where I've like checked in a place one time and they're like, if you check in one more time, you'll be the new mayor. And I'm like, oh my God.
[110:45]
D
Yeah, I'm the mayor.
[110:46]
B
I was like, I'm the mayor. Because we are. Because no one else uses the service.
[110:52]
A
Damn service. You know what?
[110:55]
B
At least it's still around. I like, I'm really glad that it's still around.
[110:58]
A
It's me and Owen Thomas, basically.
[110:59]
B
And Owen, Owen checks in, goes around
[111:02]
A
and favorites everywhere I go just because he wants me to remember same.
[111:06]
B
I was gonna say, I was gonna say Owen. I see Owen all the time. His updates, the gym, anything else. And I'm like, I love. I'm like, Owen, thank you for still. And he, he likes my check ins too. And I'm like, oh, thank God there's still one person. Owens.
[111:19]
A
So cute. Yeah. Well, Christina, I will follow you. I don't. I guess I'm not following you.
[111:24]
B
Yeah, maybe not. I'm not following you. Are you leaving? Leo laporte? I'll follow you as well.
[111:28]
A
I am Leo laporte on this swarm, if anybody wants to know. Everywhere I go all the time, it's on my watch. I can actually press a button and check in. It's probably a privacy nightmare. I'm probably helping ICE track down illegal immigrants or something like that. But you know what? Damn it, I want to keep those mayorships anyway. That's what it's like. Let's talk about. So. Because this was a really funny. I love this funny piece. I loved it that you wrote it. Always choose the good soap. Would you explain what this is all about?
[112:03]
D
Yeah. So Jon Gruber has been writing lately all these things about. He's basically got the receipts from an earlier version of Apple boasting about how they always care about the customer and they don't want to make decisions that will harm the customer experience. And that Apple's better than that. And it has to do with things in recent years. It's things like adding apps to the ads to the App Store, which I find offensive because it's charging developers who are in the App Store so that their apps are visible in the App Store. So they're basically. And you know, they're, they're taking the money that they don't take away from developers and taking more of it away from developers. And now they're going to add this summer they're adding ads to Apple Maps and they always pitch it as an improvement to the discovery experience and things like that. Although as I pointed out in my story, if you notice that press release, it's about something else, a different product. And then there's a subhead halfway down that's also not actually about the ads. And then you get to the second paragraph and it mentions that they're going to be ads and Apple Maps. And to me that suggests that there are lots of people inside Apple who don't think this is great. And the trained marketing geniuses are hiding it it because they know it's just, it's not actually a thing to boast about. So my story kind of like prodded by John and it was very funny because John posted a thing that's from a mutual friend of ours literally right after I had written my thing. And both of us referenced the fact that among other things, Apple also doesn't take or never took co marketing money from intel to put intel inside stickers on their computers. Right.
[113:39]
A
Which is a lot of money that every other guy does.
[113:42]
D
They'll let you do it, but you got to put their logo in your ads and stuff. And Apple's like, we're not going to do that. Like, and, and, and famously there was a whole press conference where somebody, somebody asked Steve Jobs about it and he said we like our stickers better. And in the end he was like, you know, there's a lot of junk on PCs and we don't do that here. So my point is this is Apple's brand promise. Apple has never been the low price leader. Apple is always making products that are more expensive, but the idea is they're nicer. You buy more to get more. They're never going to be super cheap, but they've got things about them that make them nicer and better and that the problem is you degrade your brand promise at your own peril. And when your brand gets degraded, it's harder to do brand rehab. Every cut makes it harder. Every time somebody is like, oh, I can't believe Apple's doing this, makes it harder for you to get that back. And I think there are people at Apple who, well, I think there are probably people at Apple who are deluded into thinking that adding a bunch of junk into an Apple product doesn't matter because that's not why people buy Apple products. I think they're wrong. I think that, that adding junk in not not having the junk is a reason people buy Apple products is that they want it to be nicer. But I also think that clearly in the last 10 years there's been a culture shift at Apple where they are very motivated by revenue enhancements and you know, from this thing or that thing and ads is a great example of it. But it's also stuff like, like let's do a pro app bundle and why don't we throw our non pro productivity apps in the bundle anyway and put a bunch of ads in the toolbars and stuff of pages and numbers for this. Create a professional bundle which is totally kind of inappropriate and junks up those apps. And those apps don't exist to generate revenue. Those apps exist to make Apple's platforms more usable because they can open Word files and Excel files and, and PowerPoint files and let you do word processing and stuff. So they kind of lost the plot there. And the reason for the soap, Leo, is I went to Hawaii in February and we stayed at a nicer place than we usually stay. We usually just rent a condo somewhere and you know, it's like a verbo. It's fine. It's Hawaii, it's great. And we splurged a little bit and got. I decided I wanted to stay a little nicer kind of resort place. And one of the things that I was thinking because this is me as I was washing my hands at the hotel sink is they have a really nice soap. They have like, it's kind of, you know, when I stay at a Best Western in Eugene, Oregon to pick up or drop off my kids for college, they've got the little like tiniest possible rectangle that maybe it got damp at some point. So it's sort of stuck together but you can rip it off and you get to the little tiny little bar of soap and you know, at the, at the Sheraton Kauai at the beach, it's like this kind of curved bar of soap that's sitting there and it's got a nice smell. And the point, the point I'm making about soap is if you choose, if you're that resort, you could have worse sheets and you could have less often that people come in and take care of the room. You could save by reducing how often you clean the grounds and clean the swimming pool. You could buy the cheaper soap, but the problem is you could save a lot of money, but you're doing yourself damage because you are in the category of a kind of a luxury. I don't go to the Four Seasons or anything. It is a, it is the Sheraton, but still It's Hawaii and it's on the beach. You are, you don't want to be the Motel 6. You don't want to be the Super 8. You are selling a certain level of quality and that means foregoing opportunities to cheap out. And my point with the soap is if you're Apple, you gotta always choose the nice soap because that's part of Apple's brand. And I think there are people at Apple who know this, but I think there are other people at Apple who are winning arguments. And they're winning the arguments because they're like, but money. And culturally, for whatever reason, but money is winning arguments that should be won by. But user experience. Right?
[117:47]
A
That's how you got here.
[117:49]
D
And I'll just say this is near and dear to my heart because the last five years I was in my corporate job, day in, day out, the number one thing I did was not review Apple products or see what was going to be in the next issue, or manage my editors for Macworld and PC World. The number one thing that I did was fight with people in our sales and business development department who came in with a constant parade of little tiny bits of revenue that they could add to the company that would make our websites worse. And their attitude was, well, what's the problem? It's money. Why would we turn down money? And it's very difficult to be the person who has to say, as a business, we need to forego revenue because the whole purpose is to make money, right? The whole purpose of the business. But you gotta have the big picture in mind. You gotta think about the product, the brand promise, whatever you want to say about it, somebody has to stand up for it. And you gotta, you got to be empowered. And I was mostly not empowered. And it was very frustrating. And I'm, that's why I'm very glad I don't have that job anymore. But, but it's, it's really lonely to be the person who says, you know what? I think our company needs to forego this million dollars because it's going to make our product crappy.
[118:59]
A
It's hard.
[119:00]
D
But, but what I think Apple needs to do is have a little bit of a cultural reset where they realize the brand promise is the biggest asset at Apple. Not the iPhone, not the Mac, nothing else. It's the Apple brand and what it stands for. And when you lose it and you're just another tech company that doesn't have anything going for it, there's no reason why you'd buy a Mac over a PC at that point, it's really hard to get it back. So am I. Am I. You know, isn't. Is one ad in Apple Maps going to destroy Apple? Well, no, the problem is that for the last 10 years they've been saying to just one of all sorts of things, and how long is this going to go on? And it's going to require a cultural shift, which means it really is going to require somebody like John Ternus to say, you know what, we kind of lost our values here and we need to fix it and we need to rethink what we're doing. That's the soap.
[119:48]
A
That's the soapbox. And you can stand on that anytime. I agree with you 100%. It's.
[119:55]
D
I'm not, I mean, and I'm not saying, oh, ads, icky, yuck. I'm like, I get it. But like, think about it and think about the ramifications of it. Like, adding the second ad to the App Store, I think really set a bunch of people off because now if you do an App Store search on your iPhone, like, first it's a big ad, then you might get one good result and then there's another big ad and you got to scroll to get to the rest of the content. And, you know, now Apple Maps, the, the relevant content's going to be under an ad. Like, at some point you just got to say, this is bad for our customers, and that means it's bad for us. Instead of, ah, we could do whatever they want. There's no, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as a consequence free additional ad unit. They all degrade the experience. They all do. And, and if you want to choose to do it, know what you're doing. And I think over the last 10 years, they haven't known what they're doing. They don't. Or the people who get to win the arguments don't care. That's what I think is going on there.
[120:53]
A
So I think you're absolutely right. And it's, it's not like they need the money. That's the thing that gets me. I understood if you were struggling.
[121:02]
D
They make a lot of money on expensive hardware. Maybe that's the value of their product, not all of the ancillary garbage that they then put in the expensive, nice hardware.
[121:12]
C
This might be a relevant time to say that today Apple broke $5 trillion in valuation.
[121:18]
A
Oh, it happened today. Oh, yeah. Their stock's way up, isn't it? Holy cow.
[121:22]
C
Partly because of the Apple Upgrade program, I think.
[121:27]
A
Yeah, people liked that. Wall street liked it. It also helped Klarna's stock.
[121:33]
B
Yeah, I hope there's a lot.
[121:35]
A
A lot. See, this is why, if you just knew ahead of time. Oh yeah, that's illegal. Thank you, Jason, for fighting the good fight. I agree with you. It's one of the reasons we turn down advertisers all the time. You know, we have to do ads, we do need the ads, but we turn away money. You know, people think we're crazy often
[121:56]
D
because look at a Windows PC that's full even to this day, Windows PCs are full of garbage ware that's only on there. It's not enhancing. They'll tell you it's enhancing your experience. It's not. It's a way for them to make more money. Or look at a lot of the streamer boxes and TVs even now where like the business model is, well, we're also going to surveil you or we're going to, to load you up with ads or that Amazon Echo show is going to be real cheap because all it's going to do is sit there and ask you to buy things. The alternative is not good. And Apple should not lose sight of the fact that they are supposed to be the nicer alternative. And that means something.
[122:35]
A
Yeah. Couple of media stories. Apple. First you got Bollywood, now you've got Mexican micro dramas shot on iPhones 17 Pro. It's called Nitto de viannas. Right. This tongue in cheek Mexican micro drama. You know, all micro dramas should probably should be shot on iPhone 17 Pro. People watch them on their iPhone, on their phones. What do you need? What do you need them in? Anything higher quality. Although these look good and it's vertical video. Right. So it's perfect.
[123:13]
B
Who knew Quibi wasn't a terrible idea after all.
[123:17]
A
Yeah, just. It was too early.
[123:18]
B
It was just too early.
[123:19]
A
Quibi, this is something I never thought I'd say was ahead of its time.
[123:23]
B
Quibi was ahead of its time.
[123:26]
A
Micro dramas are big on TikTok, right?
[123:28]
B
Yeah.
[123:29]
A
Is that where they are?
[123:30]
B
I guess. Or other network. I don't watch them. That's. That's not my thing. But yeah, I mean they apparently do.
[123:35]
A
Well, it's just one more addiction I do not need. And this I'm nervous about. Could be good, could be bad. Apple is, you know, Apple went to Comic Con, I guess San Diego Comic Con over the weekend and announced a bunch of stuff including a date for Neuromancer, which we've been.
[123:55]
D
And we got A real. A real trailer.
[123:57]
A
A real trailer. January 22nd. God, I love this book, which makes me very, very nervous.
[124:04]
D
William Gibson says he's very happy with it.
[124:07]
B
Okay.
[124:08]
D
So that's cool.
[124:08]
A
If it's a good neuromancer, I will be so excited.
[124:13]
D
It'll be interesting because, you know, the world is very different from in 1983 when he wrote it, or 1982 when he wrote it. And technology's moved along, and so the metaphor and the concept, I think, has been updated a little bit just because our view of the future is a little bit different. But like such a classic book. And really just got stymied because a bunch of bad cyberpunk movies got made, including Johnny Mnemonic, which was based on a William Gibson story. And then they made the Matrix, which was totally lifting all that stuff. And it was such a cultural hit that it's almost like it became impossible to do another one because the Matrix did it. So it's really taken this long to get here. But I'm excited. Super excited.
[124:53]
A
I love that book. You know what? Do read it before you go see it or watch it on tv because it deserves to be read in the original and then watch the show. I'll reread it before the show comes out. Dark Matter has a second season, which is good. Yeah, that's a really interesting show that I don't think got the attention it deserves.
[125:15]
D
Great show.
[125:16]
A
Yeah. Very interesting upcoming movie called Matchbox John Cena. I don't care. It's based on Matchbox toys now. I really don't care.
[125:28]
B
Why? Why are we doing this?
[125:30]
A
Why? Because. I don't know.
[125:33]
B
I mean. I mean, look, Barbie was. Barbie was a great example of if you have good story, you can elevate the IP of anything. Instead. The only lesson Hollywood seems to have taken from that was, oh, we can now have successful toy movies and like Masters of the Universe flopped as it. As by all accounts, it should have. And anybody who knew that would have known that that was going to be a flop. Like, again, Barbie worked because Greta Gerwig played upon the idea of Barbie, but there wasn't anything because Barbie doesn't have an origin story. So it wasn't about that. It was about a bunch of other things that just happened to live in a Barbie universe, which was compelling and great. I don't know why we need a movie about Matchbox cars. I really don't.
[126:19]
A
Enough said. Mac Break Weekly continues with your picks of the week just around the corner, a reminder that this show exists because of you, our listeners. In the beginning at Twitt, I really was hoping I could do the whole thing without ads. I, you know, I really wanted to. We had, but there was no Patreon at the time, no memberful, no tip jar. Well, we had a tip jar. That's all we had. And it didn't generate enough income to do anything but maybe a part time job for me by myself doing a show. So we, after a year or two turned to advertising. It's been very, very good to us, I won't complain. It's allowed us to really build the network at its peak. You know, we had that beautiful studio and lots of shows. But as advertising has dwindled, so has our ambition. We have fewer shows, we don't have a studio anymore. We've cut as much as we can. But to this day, I just asked Lisa the other day, 35% of our operating costs now are supported by the very generous contributions of our TWIT members. And that to me is the way I'd like to make it full time permanent. If we could do that. No advertising at all. I would, I really would. But it's going to take you guys stepping up. So right now it's fewer than 2%. One in one in, what is that? One in 50 of our listeners and viewers joining the club. Get that to 1 in 21 in 10. And yeah, we wouldn't need ads. So here's what we do. For 10 bucks a month, you join Club Twit, Twitter, TV Club Twit. You get at, you get ad free versions of all the shows so you don't get any ads. Plus because there are no ads, we can give you chapter markers which everybody seems to want. And I agree that's a great thing because the length of the ads varies and we have direct ad insertion. We can't really do that in ad supported show shows, but we easily can do it with ad free shows. So we do. You also get access to a really happy place in my opinion, the Club Twit Discord. A wonderful, wonderful place to hang
[128:18]
C
with
[128:18]
A
animated GIFs and wonderful AI content. You also get a lot of special programming that we do for the club. We could do because of the club, programming that wouldn't have any advertisers just because it's kind of niche programming. Coming up this week on Friday, off by One with Jeff Atwood. No one's going to buy this, but we love doing it. Jeff, of course, the creator of the Stack Overflow, the coding horror blog and Discourse, which is the forum Software we use and love. Jeff is a wild man, but he is so much fun. We do a number of our shows in the club just for the club, but also our AI users group. We've decided to move that to twice a month, month because there's so much to talk about. Micah does his crafting corner on the third Wednesday of every month. Chris Marquardt with photo time. Our assignment this month is Rugged Stacy's book club. Coming up August 21st. Slow Gods is the book by Claire north. And we've added because Stacy was only doing the book club every other month. Micah said, why don't we do a media club? So we also do a media club. We just did the Matrix. Speaking of the Matrix, we are now voting on what the next media item will be for the September 18th meeting of Micah's media club. That's just an example of the kind of stuff we can do because of you, the club Twitt members. If you're not a member yet, please consider helping us out. It's, it's. Don't tell the advertisers this, but it is my dream, my goal at some point to just be ad free for everybody with not a paywall. But if enough people supported it one in five, then we wouldn't have to charge everybody. We just, you know, and that would make it my, my dream come true. Twitter slash club Twit. Let us get to the picks of the week. I'll start them off because I just got this. The company 12 south is so innovative, so interesting. They do things you didn't know you needed until they, until they make them them. And then you go, oh, I wish I'd always had this. This is their power bug. Man, I love this idea. What is it? Well, it just, it's a mag safe adapter, Chichu adapter that just plugs into the wall.
[130:32]
B
That's cool.
[130:33]
A
So when you get to the hotel, you just plug it into the wall and then you attach your phone to it. And now, and if you do it sideways, you've got a. Now you've got a wall clock and it charges it and it's just simple and brilliant. 50 bucks immediately, as soon as they put it out, I said, I have to have this. The power bug from 12 South. What a clever idea. I don't know why no one else thought of that. Christina, your pick of the week.
[131:01]
B
So I've been going down a rabbit hole the last, I guess a week or so about trying to kind of do various things about self hosting my audiobook. Library so that I can access it other ways. And I was reminded of an app that I've actually been using for a while, but I figured I would make this my pick of the week. This is an app called Book Player, bookplayer app.
[131:22]
A
I use this and I love it. This plus libation and your life suddenly turns around.
[131:29]
B
It's great. And what I like about this app is it's really good in the sense that you can use it. I guess like I said, like with something like a audio bookshelf or with Plex or with Libation or other things.
[131:41]
A
I just put my books on my Apple iPhone computer.
[131:46]
B
I was going to say, but you don't even have to do that. What I like about this versus some of the other solutions because there are a number of other front ends for Audiobookshelf or Plex if you want to host your things that way. But in this case it'll just play back any M4B file or any MP3 file it supports. Check Chapters and it's great. It's free if you pay. He has a pro service that'll keep up with syncing across devices, which I
[132:10]
A
do because it's worth it.
[132:12]
B
Yeah, I typically only kind of tend to listen in certain scenarios, so I haven't done that yet. But it's a great app, it's open source, it's frequently developed. He's been doing this for a really long time. And there's even an Android version now too. It also works works on the Mac. And so Book Player is my pick.
[132:31]
A
Yeah, completely agree with you. I use Libation to When I left audible, download my 500 plus audible books, remove the DRM, put them on icloud. And now with Book Player I can add them to my Book Player library. It syncs them up. This is a nice feature. I could play it from my iPhone, could play it from my Mac. It's just such a good idea. There are a lot of audiobook players. I agree with you. This one is my favorite. Good choice. And look, Neuromancer is on my current list of things read by Steve Gibson. Look at that. Look at that. I'm ready.
[133:13]
B
Amazing.
[133:14]
A
Thank you, Christina. Good recommendation. Andy Anako, Pick of the week.
[133:20]
C
I've said before that I'm not really a smartwatch type of guy. I just can't get used to it. And I really, really have a genuine love for Casio, like cheap Casio watches because I think they've got a classic look to them. They're cheap. You can have like a collection of them for like less than 100 bucks. And again, they're just genuinely cool. And this one had been on my, on my wish list for a while. This is the WS 1600H. There's nothing terribly special about it. I think it's, it's mostly, it's the, the big call of this is that it has lots and lots of stopwatch functions and lots and lots of timers. What I like about it has that really cool, like animated, like sort of sp. Like tachometer at the very, very top and a spinning wheel, neither of which serve any functional purpose for timekeeping other
[134:06]
A
than what we love about cats. Yeah, exactly. Buttons for buttons sakes.
[134:11]
C
And I mean it's, it's also the type of engineering I really, really like because these things are almost indestructible. This is water resistant all down to 100 meters. This is like, I'd be very, very frightened. No matter how, no matter how well warranted and tested. The $800 like Apple Watch is to be rugged. I'd be like, but it's an $800 watch and if, if it gets destroyed by water, I'll be upset. If I, if I, I lose it off my wrist while I'm swimming, I'll be very, very upset. This is really, really cheap. I'll be, I'll just simply buy, I'll say, oh, darn the luck and I'll buy another one. And also the battery lasts 40 bucks
[134:47]
A
folks, from the Cat 10 year battery,
[134:50]
C
which means that this will. If you are a smartwatch type of person, sometimes it's a good idea to simply have one watch in the box that you know always will be working so that if there's something that like is the battery's dead, we need to leave the house. Or if you do have a fancy watch but for some reason it's not working correctly, you need to get to the airport. Grab the 10 year. The watch with a 10 year battery. This is a really good recommendation because like you said, it's $40 list, but according to Camel, Camel, Camel, every couple of months they discount it down to $22 and it's actually discounted down to $22. Right now it looks like Amazon has
[135:25]
A
it for 22 bucks. Unbelievable.
[135:28]
C
And the last thing about it is that because this style has been around for, for years and years and years, case modding Casio watches of this model is very, very popular. So you can take the watch module out of this, put it into a stainless steel case, or add like lens filters so that the different Sections of it are different colors. Change it to like a standard band. There's a lot of fun things you can do with them. And again, it's just a hell of a lot of fun for 2020.
[135:53]
A
Is it really a 10 year battery?
[135:56]
C
They could not print the words 10 year battery right here on the watch itself if they were not that. Were not not the.
[136:02]
A
That's kind of stunning.
[136:04]
C
Yeah.
[136:04]
A
So this is good. If there's a nuclear apocalypse, you will want to have this in your drawer.
[136:10]
D
Exactly.
[136:11]
C
Also because again, if you don't want to have to fire up that diesel generator to charge up your Apple Watch because the plume of smoke will give you away. The other tribes that you have gas, they have gas.
[136:26]
A
It's for the Mad Max world. That is to come. The Casio WS16 for the best, expect the worst. $40 list. But yeah, I see it on Amazon for 22 bucks. Why wouldn't. I just bought it, by the way?
[136:39]
D
Why?
[136:39]
A
I mean, I'm an Apple Watch fanatic. I can't. If I, if I don't have my Apple Watch on, I. I turn back and go home and put it on.
[136:46]
C
I just.
[136:46]
A
But I just get.
[136:47]
C
I just, I just get bored wearing the same watch each and every day. I like to be able to change
[136:51]
A
things up a little bit. Yeah. Jason Snell, you got to wrap things up.
[136:54]
C
Thanks, everybody. See you later.
[136:55]
A
Thank you. Take care, Andy. You wrap things up now, Jason. In with your pick of the week.
[136:59]
D
Yeah, this got a real Andy and Echo vibe to it. So I'm just going to continue this. There is an Apple ii hacker named 4am who builds all sorts of amazing things for retro computing for the Apple ii. There's a vibrant Apple II community. They make extensions like new hardware that attaches to the Apple II. And 4am came out last week with mini replay 1.0. Mini replay is a single disc. It is a disk image. It is like 140k. I forget the size of a disk image. 140k.
[137:32]
A
Apple 140k. Apple too floppy, containing eight games.
[137:35]
D
Now, friends, these eight games cannot fit on a disk. How is that even possible? They never originally fit on a disc. It's classic games that you can play on any Apple ii. And again, wait a minute.
[137:45]
A
Apple II not included. This is very important.
[137:47]
D
Yes. 48. Well, we'll get to that. 48K. Apple II. It'll fit on a single Apple II Floppy Burger Time, Dig Dug Hard Hack, Mac Mario Brothers, Moon Patrol sneakers, Spy Hunter and Wavy Navy. These are classic Apple II games. It will play on basically any 48k Apple II or later. How did he do it? Well, I mean this guy is a genius. So one of the things that he did is he used asymmetric encryption, so. Or not encryption compression. So he used very powerful modern computers.
[138:20]
A
He used just middle out compression.
[138:22]
D
That's the middle out. Yes. So he used modern computers to compress all of these programs in a way that the Apple ii. The idea there is it's very hard to do the compression algorithm but very easy to decompress. And so he's able to. I love this because it is modern technology entirely applied to make a tiny Apple II disk image with games on it from the like 70s and 80s. So eight games. You can play them with a keyboard. You can hook up a joystick if you want. It'll work on. If you can get this out to an Apple II floppy, you can stick it in the Apple II and play these games. What a fun idea. It's got all the cheats and mods and stuff built into it too. It's really like a lovingly recomposed version of all of these. It's the original games but like with all the stuff fixed and set up properly on them so you can play them completely. And if you're saying to yourself, but I don't have an Apple II. Good news. A new version of Virtual 2 came out this week. Virtual2.comVirtualI I.com I'm playing Dig Dug.
[139:28]
A
I'm so excited.
[139:30]
D
Virtual 2 is amazing. It's a great Mac Apple II emulator. It. It'll look at your Mac hard drive. You can mount floppies. It'll let you print to a text file on your Mac. It'll let you transfer data. Like there's so many things that it does. So even if you don't have an actual Apple II, you could get virtual 2 version 13.2 just came out. Great. That app's been around for ages. He keeps updating it and I Love it. Apple 2 behind me.
[140:00]
A
But also you can play it on Internet Archive on any computer.
[140:04]
D
You can. You can just play Mini Replay on Internet Archive in the in browser emulator. And that will also work.
[140:12]
A
I am doing it right now. This is so exciting to me.
[140:16]
D
It is amazing. I just love. So these. It is. It is. You know, modern compression techniques and modern technology, we have the ability to do this and some of these Apple II hackers are just doing kind of like incredible work. This is 4am also does a thing called Total Replay where there are like hard drive Images with people.
[140:34]
A
Crazy. With my eight bit sound. Here.
[140:36]
B
Here.
[140:37]
D
Yeah, no, no, it's great. That's exactly what you want. You got to get in the vibe of it.
[140:42]
A
So that's. You got them all. This is really cool.
[140:45]
D
Yeah, yeah, it's. And. And if you look at his Mastodon thread, he. He talks a lot about how he did it, but it's. It's incredible. So fun. There's a lot of fun going on in Apple II hacker circles.
[140:58]
A
Parents, show your kids this. This is what gaming was like last.
[141:02]
D
Last year at the St. Jude Marathon for relay or the relay marathon for St. Jude. We had an Apple II there, and we were messing around with it. And afterward, we took it back to Stephen Hackett's house and we set it up and we showed his kids the games on it.
[141:17]
A
Were they disdainful?
[141:19]
D
No. His son was like, whoa, what is this? And, you know, good games are good games, even if they got blocky graphics and stuff. In fact, it makes it kind of, like, weirdly interesting that, like, what sort of beast is this thing? But then you're playing Shoplifter and you're flying around a helicopter, and then the world just kind of drops away and you're playing a video.
[141:38]
A
That's a really good point. A good game is good because the game is good, not because the graphics are good.
[141:44]
D
Exactly. And there are plenty of bad games with good graphics.
[141:48]
A
Yeah, more than plenty.
[141:49]
D
Yeah.
[141:50]
A
Jason Snell, 6colors.com make sure you check in at the end of the week because Jason. Jason's doing his thing Thursday afternoon, Apple results.
[141:57]
D
There'll be charts, there'll be analysis, and then we'll talk about it next week, too.
[142:00]
A
Yeah, we will talk about it next week, but really, the best way to do it is just go to $6.comSixcolors.com Also, Jason's podcasts are all linked there@6colors.com Jason.
[142:11]
D
Yep.
[142:12]
A
He does the best stuff and so always choose the good Soap.
[142:16]
D
Thank you.
[142:16]
A
6colors.com Ladies and gentlemen, Christina Warren. Of course, the wonderful film girl, now my best friend on Swarm. If you would just check in. You haven't checked in since 2024, Christina.
[142:29]
B
No, yes, I have. I've checked in.
[142:30]
A
Oh, you have?
[142:31]
B
Maybe it was a private. Yeah, I was gonna say we've been friends.
[142:33]
A
Don't make them private. We're buddies. Let your buddies see what you're up to.
[142:37]
B
I was gonna say. I was gonna say I checked in, like, two weeks ago. So wait a minute.
[142:40]
A
They've just added ads Order. No, I'm not happy order and reserve your favorite meals for delivery. They're putting that in for grubhub or something? Yes. Diggity dang. It used to be just a pure beautiful check in thing. They were never making any money on it, just selling it to the government, that's all. Thank you everybody for joining us. We do Mac Break weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live if you're in a member of the club. Of course. In the club Discord. That's the special behind the velvet Velvet rope access. Often you see stuff before and after the show that. No, I can't say that it's not true. You can see it all if you go to Everybody can. It's free YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. That's where we stream after the fact. We put it up on the website because it's a podcast at Twitter TV MBW. Let's go left to right MBW. We also have a YouTube channel dedicated to the video because yes we do audio and video events every show. Even annoying dig dug audio, you can get that. That's a YouTube channel. Actually all of our channels are easily accessed by going YouTube.com twit and then you'll see a list of all the individual dedicated show channels. Probably the simplest thing to do these days. Get yourself a podcast player, subscribe and listen whenever you want. We love having you listen to this show or watch. Can do either or both. Thanks for joining us everybody. But I am sorry to say it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you you gotta get back to work. Cause you know what I'm saying, Break time is over. See you next.