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MBW 999: Rough Depowdering - Apple's CEO Succession Speculation
02:47:50
Apple's CEO Succession Speculation
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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy in Akos here. Jason Snell filling in for Alex Lindsay. The wonderful Shelly Brisbane from the Texas Standard. Maybe Tim Cook actually is stepping down. We're going to have to give some credence to those rumors. Jeff Williams is definitely out of the building. We'll talk about the amazing technology Apple uses to build its Apple watches and what's next for the iPhone. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac break weekly, episode 999, recorded Tuesday, November 18, 2025. Rough de powdering. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We talk about the latest Apple news. Andy Inocco back from his trip in the woods, that we have MacBreak leafy T shirts. Steve. Stephen Rubbles wasn't kidding. He has produced them.
- [01:07]
Andy Ihnatko
I've heard from people who bought them and are extremely happy with them. Very limited edition. This is, this is like if like we were like actual, like Comic Con superstars, sort of people who had our own signing tables and like times in which for $60 you can get a signed, signed thing and for $200 you get a VIP, like photo thing. Like, there would be people who would be wearing these T shirts ten years from now.
- [01:29]
Leo Laporte
I got it, Andy.
- [01:30]
Andy Ihnatko
Basically. Basically. You know, I'm not just like a fan. I didn't.
- [01:34]
Leo Laporte
Not like I just save a fan
- [01:36]
Andy Ihnatko
who's coming to the con. Oh, I bet I could. No, it's like I, I got deep cut stuff.
- [01:41]
Leo Laporte
I'm your number one fan, Andy.
- [01:43]
Andy Ihnatko
The sort of, the sort of thing where like the cast member from Firefly is like, that T shirt is referencing a joke that I don't remember whatsoever. But I don't want this person to feel bad.
- [01:52]
Leo Laporte
So I'm going to laugh if you mention Mac break leafy in 10 years. No one's going to know. No one's going to know. Anyway. Welcome back from the woods, Andy. And Nako J. Snell is also here. Hello, Mr. Snell.
- [02:03]
Jason Snell
I don't understand that joke either because a week ago when we, when you guys were recording, I was on an air. I was like over Greenland or something.
- [02:10]
Leo Laporte
So where did you go?
- [02:11]
Jason Snell
I went to London for a week. I had a good time.
- [02:13]
Leo Laporte
How nice.
- [02:14]
Jason Snell
This is Mike Hurley. Did a live upgrade in his office, did some work, saw a soccer match, held Mike's new baby. That was very nice. Cute little baby and. Yeah, so. But I missed. Welcome back one Mac Break Weekly.
- [02:30]
Leo Laporte
Well, it's not the first one you've missed this month.
- [02:33]
Jason Snell
That's this. This month. Not this month. Last month, maybe in the last couple of. I try not to miss.
- [02:40]
Leo Laporte
No.
- [02:41]
Jason Snell
I'll have you know that my flight was a little close to Mac Break Weekly the previous week, and I. I said. When I said goodbye, I ran out the door and I. I did make the flight, though, so that's.
- [02:53]
Leo Laporte
Thank you. Yeah. We got you out there a little early.
- [02:55]
Andy Ihnatko
I remember.
- [02:55]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I appreciate that.
- [02:56]
Leo Laporte
Here is the Mac Break Leafy T shirt in case anybody wants to go to Steven.
- [03:00]
Jason Snell
I don't understand it.
- [03:01]
Leo Laporte
Beard fm. Oh, man, you missed it. Andy couldn't get Internet, so. Because it was a holiday, it was veterans.
- [03:09]
Andy Ihnatko
No, no, no.
- [03:10]
Jason Snell
I could.
- [03:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Ordinarily, I can get Internet at my house. But 10 minutes before showtime, it decided that, hey, what if Veterans Day. What if all of a sudden, like, Andy's Internet didn't work and he had. He had to choose between, let's see if he can get his phone hotspot working, or can he, like, what is open today that he can sit for two and a half hours and do a show from? And I'm not saying that going to a picnic table where near a free public WI FI access point was necessarily the right choice, but it was a successful choice.
- [03:41]
Leo Laporte
Yes, it got a little windy at the end, but that's okay. Now, we do have a missing member this week. We're gonna have to change the jingle because Alex Lindsay is on assignment. But good news, that means there's room for the wonderful Shelley Brisbane. Hello, Shelley, from the Texas Standard.
- [03:58]
Shelly Brisbin
Hi, Leo. I'd like a shirt that just says Generic Mac Break Guest star. Could you sort that out for me?
- [04:04]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [04:04]
Jason Snell
I'll make, finally, a radio professional.
- [04:10]
Leo Laporte
You do?
- [04:11]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [04:11]
Leo Laporte
You do radio, right, Shelley? You do a lot of it.
- [04:13]
Shelly Brisbin
I do, allegedly, yes.
- [04:15]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. You have that great, rich radio voice.
- [04:18]
Shelly Brisbin
Why, thank you, Leo.
- [04:19]
Leo Laporte
What do you think of you? I was. Before the show, I was playing an old. That was from 35, 36 years ago, Air check. And I was, as Jason noted, a little bit of a. We call them in the business, a puker.
- [04:33]
Jason Snell
Radio boys.
- [04:34]
Leo Laporte
Radio boy.
- [04:35]
Jason Snell
We don't do that here on podcasting. We're more normal.
- [04:39]
Leo Laporte
I remember when I first started radio, they said, you shouldn't do am. You sound like you're in it because you're kind of sound like you're an FM guy, you know? So I think I puked it up because of that.
- [04:49]
Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah. Now we use our podcasting voices, which are different from our YouTube voices, I guess. I don't know.
- [04:55]
Leo Laporte
They probably are. How it works is characteristic of a YouTube voice. Hey, kids, smash the button, ring the bell, subscribe.
- [05:02]
Jason Snell
Yeah, friends like and subscribe.
- [05:04]
Andy Ihnatko
But was that an actual thing where it's like FM has wider dynamic range and they might be actually playing it through something with a two way speaker. So therefore, let's, let's, let's hire a baritone for this time.
- [05:14]
Leo Laporte
It was two things. One, it was. They did use less compression because they thought maybe audio files will be listening. Two, and so you heard all the compression on the KMVR stuff. It was really boom, boom, boom. But the other thing was they played hipper music, so.
- [05:27]
Jason Snell
Yeah, right.
- [05:28]
Leo Laporte
A little bit stoned all the time.
- [05:31]
Jason Snell
Not all of them.
- [05:32]
Shelly Brisbin
That sounds like early FM because there's a lot going on, you know, 90s FM radio now.
- [05:37]
Leo Laporte
There is.
- [05:37]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [05:38]
Leo Laporte
Well, change.
- [05:39]
Andy Ihnatko
Very diverse programming, both Fog Hat and Poco.
- [05:45]
Leo Laporte
Hey, guess what? We've been mocking Mark Gurman for probably about a year for saying Tim Cook was going to retire. Now the Financial Times is jumping in on this and saying, yeah, he's going to retire soon. Apple intensifies succession planning for CEO Tim Cook. The board is preparing for Tim to step down as early as next year.
- [06:09]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. And I wonder if, like, Jason had the same sort of like deep memory that I did. This is a, it's, it's financial time. So that's like, I don't want to say a real newspaper, but it is more credible.
- [06:22]
Jason Snell
It's acceptable, like respectful.
- [06:24]
Andy Ihnatko
Right. Also, it is a short piece that has four bylines on it. So it's not like just someone read something on Weibo and said, okay, well, I got a deadline, let's just put this in. And I suddenly thought, I remember the time when like the New York Post ran an article about how NBC is really, really interested in the succession plan for Johnny Carson and they're this close to signing Jay Leno. And it turned out that it was like a faction that was trying to like, maybe if we put, get this into the paper, it will nudge Johnny Carson to decide to leave sooner rather than later.
- [06:57]
Leo Laporte
It's. You think that's what this is? No, no, it's kind of.
- [07:00]
Andy Ihnatko
I'm saying that that's what it made me think of that. It's very, very strange that. Okay, well, this institution has. This newspaper has like this piece in there. I'm sure that's, I'm sure that Tim Cook does not leave that seat until he is Absolutely ready. But this sounds like there's a reason why somebody or a faction of people have decided to Financial Times and hope that they will maybe print this story. I don't know what this feels like.
- [07:25]
Shelly Brisbin
It's prepping the market for it. I mean, you can't, you can't just have Tim Cook say bye bye, I'm leaving. You have to prepare the market, whether it's a trial balloon to see whether shareholders are going to freak out or whether it's just this is going to happen. So get ready, make your plans.
- [07:39]
Andy Ihnatko
And the story made it very, very clear that, well, if there is any sort of a change in CEO, it's definitely not going to happen until the end of the. Until they report the next quarter results again, telling people that steady on. This is if this happens, it's not going to happen tomorrow. No. If they're making plans, don't try to read into this and think that, oh well, Tim is deathly ill and he's been ill for the past 18 months and the management has been going by a thread. All I'm saying is that it's this. It's the sort of piece where as we were. When Mark Gurman reports on that, it's like, okay, that's kind of interesting. Don't know where you guys information, but that's kind of interesting when a rumor site is talking about. It's like it's a perennial story that you could write at any times about speculating like what happens after Tim leaves, whenever he wants to leave. When Financial Times Times reports that under these circumstances, it means that we have to pay attention and start wondering is there an actual. Now is. There's like a date circled on a calendar that says if everything goes right and people respond well to this piece, then this is when we're going to announce. And this is when we're going to announce not at a date of leaving, but a start of a long transition. So it was a very, very interesting story. That's what I was getting at.
- [08:45]
Jason Snell
I think Shelley's right, that this is almost certainly a plant and I think a plant from the top, like from the board. I think this is. I think what we just saw is the official sort of like startup chime of the Tim Cook transition.
- [09:01]
Leo Laporte
Gentlemen, start your right.
- [09:03]
Jason Snell
Like the machinery now begins to turn and begin to turn and spin and. Because. Because, yeah, investors hate being surprised. Right. And this is the most gentle way. I mean, in some ways, the Gurman pieces. Gurman's been laying the groundwork for a couple of years. He's the one who got John Ternus his name out there init. And so he, you know, he is thought of as being potentially the next CEO.
- [09:25]
Leo Laporte
Financial Times concurs.
- [09:27]
Jason Snell
Yes, exactly. And then, and then the ft, a respectable like publication comes in with their four bylines and says this and it's like, I mean Apple, I don't know all the instances of Apple leaking things to the press, but I can say that when it's the FT and the Wall Street Journal, those are usually signs that somebody is intentionally letting giving a heads up to someone. So I think, yeah, this is step one of a process that means that there will probably be a step two where Tim Cook announces a succession plan publicly. Where there's like here John Turner is going to be the CEO, I'm going to be the executive chairman, there's going to be a six month transition period. I will remain on the board. And I, yeah, I was surprised. I thought Tim Cook would stay longer. But I do wonder if part of the strategy here, because we've a lot of us have been talking about how Tim Cook is like the politician and the diplomat when it comes to Apple these days. And there's a lot of reasons that you're dealing with governments to have somebody in that spot and you're dealing with the Trump administration especially. I wonder if what's going on here is not. Well, Tim is tired of it and he's getting out. I wonder if it's Tim realizing that he's going to need to do that job. But what if the transition is that he does that job as the chairman of the board and let's John Turner's kind of grow into a role if he's the CEO of CEO while Tim is there to kind of like handle some of the, the top level diplomatic stuff. You know, Donald Trump has Tim Cook's phone number. Right. Like I imagine that will continue to be the case. But if you're Tim Cook and you're like, how long am I going to do this before I'm truly retired, you might say, you know what, I'll give you five years, ten years as chairman. But if that's the case, we should start this now, right. Instead of waiting around. And another thing, cautionary tale. There are lots of them in Corpor America where you have an heir apparent and you've got a CEO who's clearly going to leave sometime and they wait so long that the heir apparent leaves or there's too much infighting and everything gets kind of ugly.
- [11:27]
Andy Ihnatko
And I wonder if this comes Back to Jay Leno.
- [11:30]
Jason Snell
It does, it does. I was thinking about Disney as well and the Bob Iger, various Bob Iger successors who were ready to step in and then he would just never leave. And then they would leave or they would fight it out amongst themselves and the ones who who lost would leave. And then the guy who won also left and was replaced by Bob. I are returning.
- [11:47]
Andy Ihnatko
Right.
- [11:47]
Jason Snell
Like, I wonder if there's some of that.
- [11:49]
Leo Laporte
That was kind of an outlier actually.
- [11:52]
Jason Snell
That one got away from them a little bit. But like, I think the idea that if you know this is going to happen, you've got a time, you've got timing, you've got a person who could step in, you can give him the support so he doesn't have to just be thrown in. Like Tim Cook kind of was because of Steve Jobs various leaves and illnesses and then ultimately his resignation a little bit before he died. Maybe you press the button now. And that's my guess. My guess is this is not him saying goodbye. This is Tim saying, look, if I'm, if I'm going to do the executive chairman job for a while, we should do this now because otherwise, like what, I'm going to be CEO for five more years and then I'm going to be. I think he wants to sort of like set the machinery going. And I think that's what this was. This was. They pushed the button. Yeah.
- [12:34]
Leo Laporte
Turnus is 50, which is roughly the same age Tim Cook was when he took over Turnus is.
- [12:39]
Jason Snell
And he's been there for 24 years.
- [12:41]
Leo Laporte
He's been there since 2001. He worked first on the cinema display
- [12:46]
Jason Snell
half his life at Apple.
- [12:48]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, he, he's not an operations guy, he's a hardware guy. So that's a little bit of a change.
- [12:55]
Jason Snell
Well, and Tim Cook wasn't Steve Jobs. I actually think that that's potentially a good thing that the CEO. Look, CEO can't do everything. CEO always has to rely on their lieutenants and other very talented people in their organization. But I think it's interesting that you have potentially a hardware guy. You know, you'll play to his strengths and then he'll have to find people around him who can play to, to the other parts of the business. Just as Tim Cook as an ops guy was not a hardware software services design guy. And so he had to lean on those people. I mean, very. Nobody is. I mean, Steve Jobs is probably an all timer at being a kind of a cross trainer for this stuff. But even Steve Jobs needed to rely on people for the very technical stuff. So this seems.
- [13:39]
Leo Laporte
And he is the youngest person according to German on the Apple executive team. So this is why you don't pick a Craig Federighi for instance.
- [13:48]
Jason Snell
And I think this is why Jeff Williams retirement is tied in here. I don't know if it's why Jeff Williams retired, but I think Jeff Williams, Jeff Williams wasn't going to stick around. And I think Jeff Williams maybe was there as the in case of emergency break glass CEO replacement. And then at some point he got to the point where he's like, well now I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to retire. And so now we've moved to the next phase of succession planning.
- [14:11]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, and it could be because his retirement was announced that allows the Financial Times leak to be timely. So it's not that the leak happened and Jeff said I'm taking my toys and going home. That's a longer Runway. Probably happened in the reverse direction. I mean we're just speculating obviously. But this also gives Cook and turn us a long time to tag team to go to shareholders and to those various diplomatic constituencies introduce him. Tim can whisper under his breath, okay, you have to watch this guy for this reason, you know, in a macro sense. And so it again gives Turnus the incentive to stick around because Tim is still there to sort of hand him the reins and then turn. This is probably going to pick his own team which is going to take a number of months. And so yeah, it seems very Apple and very. It's so conservative. I was thinking actually about how many tech companies have actually really long term CEOs. But Apple is still very, very conservative even among that group in terms of its executive team and the shovels that happen despite what we hear about, you know, folks at the vice president ranks who have, who leave periodically either on their own terms or on somebody else's terms. But Apple is all about stability from a shareholder point of view, from a, from a corporate point of view. And you know, a long time ago Apple was this sort of, you know, the hippie company that Jobs and was established. But they are, they are as buttoned down and as corporate in terms of their transitions and structure, the high levels as any company out there.
- [15:38]
Leo Laporte
Jeff Williams last day was Friday.
- [15:40]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [15:41]
Andy Ihnatko
Yep.
- [15:41]
Leo Laporte
So that's kind of interesting timing. Jeff Williams is only 59. So he probably. You think he left in a huff?
- [15:50]
Jason Snell
No, I mean only who knows whether he wanted that job or not. I, I do feel like they reached a point where he wasn't going to get that job, right? I think that happened. And maybe he said, maybe he. I just. It's this pure speculation now, but if I were in that position, I would. And I was thinking, like, I got a lot of money, I work at Apple. I got all this, and it's very stressful, and I can retire and be with my family. Because remember, he, you know, I. I think we all said at the time, he's kind of doing it right. Like, a lot of these people stick around because they don't have anything else. And he's like, no, I'm going to retire. But maybe it is also like, oh, if I'm no longer sticking around because I'm the emergency option for Tim, then I'll just leave, right? Like, I'll just take my money and go hang out with my family. Which I think is very healthy, very healthy choice for anybody to make.
- [16:39]
Andy Ihnatko
At a certain high level. It's nuts. You would think, why was you think about what a dream job would be? And it is a dream job, but it's still. You never know what the goals and priorities, both professionally and personally a person has. So it's like, why would somebody leave at 53 years old where they could stay there for another 15 years at this company or running this movie studio or doing this or that? And sometimes it really is exactly as Jason said, where you just realize that, okay, I am at a very, very high level. If I'm going to achieve what I want to achieve, that is run a company that is worth half a trillion dollars or more, it's not going to happen here. So I'm going to have to basically go someplace else to achieve that. Or I simply want to be the head of a very large philanthropic organization. And basically, once a certain goal is either been achieved or has been pulled out from you, it's time to switch to different dreams. And that's often what happens.
- [17:35]
Leo Laporte
Well, good on them. And what kind of CEO will John Ternus be? Do we want to speculate on that? Do we know anything?
- [17:41]
Jason Snell
I mean, I've met him. Okay, yeah, I've met him.
- [17:46]
Leo Laporte
He's have a firm, manly handshake.
- [17:48]
Jason Snell
He does. I mean, he said my name unprompted. So I was like, he had to think about it. He's like, oh, hey, Jason. I'm like, great. John Ternus knows who I am. That's pretty cool. He's the head of hardware. I think what I would say is, if everybody's going to paint the narrative they want to paint, I would say, I think it's healthy that different people have, have those different backgrounds to, to form their CEO ship as you know, based on kind of like a different perspective. I do think it's healthy. It's a little like, you know, you want to, you want to promote different angles on your business from different ways of thinking. I think can be very healthy. And so honestly, you saw how Apple benefited from Tim Cook really thinking of everything from a status and operations perspective and optimizing a lot of things and changing how Apple offered products in a way that I think Steve Jobs, I think Steve Jobs would never have stood for offering last year's product after you announced this year's product and Tim Cook made it like a whole system that allowed them to sell products a little bit cheaper and keep those products in the price list. I think that having Tim Cook's perspective and has greatly obviously given the size of the company benefited Apple. So I look at John Turtles, I'm like, well, wouldn't it be nice to have a CEO who is a little more focused on another area that Apple does well? Hardware. The hardware that they build is, is world class. They've got their chip making operation that is world class. This is a place where they're really, really good. And you know, so it's a little bit of a different emphasis but it's still on stuff that's kind of core to Apple and, and what they do really well. So I think it'll just be different. The challeng CEO is the people around you to support you. Because if John Ternus is a hardware guy then he needs to lean on Craig Federighi and whoever else on the software side and he needs to lean on an OPS person, the current COO probably who replaced Jeff Williams to do the stuff that Tim Cook maybe did a little more of or cared a little more about. But ultimately a CEO you've got to have, even in the stuff you care about, you've got to have somebody else working on it because you're the CEO now, your job is different. But I think that having. It's not a bad thing to have somebody who cares about hardware in charge of Apple. Honestly, I think at that high a
- [20:09]
Shelly Brisbin
level it's not a matter of advocating for or being exclusively knowledgeable about one era. Okay? This is the hardware era of Apple as opposed to the OPS era. You just ask better questions. You're going to have people in charge of those elements, whether it's OPS or hardware or software who are responsible for executing and you're going to have a particular focus based on your own background, but you're really asking questions and supervising the implementation of those things rather than saying, okay, it's all about hardware now. I love hardware and I don't care about software. That's just, it's too far too high a level for that to be sort of the perspective.
- [20:46]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I think the most interesting thing, no matter what direction he decides to take Apple and Apple has always been a company that is led by its CEO. He's not just a CEO. There are companies where the CEO is just the person who make sure that people who need staples and paperclips have staples and paperclips, people who have that. We have the right facilities, our investments are working exactly the way we want to. Apple has always had leaders who shape the future of the company with their intentions and with their philosophy of here is why Apple needs to exist. Here are the things that we need to be doing again, not just to get the paper clips in the drawers, but here are the product lines that we need to start working on. There's a reason why Apple spent billions and billions of dollars trying to develop a car. There's a reason why they spent billions and billions of dollars on the Vision Pro. It's because of. There was a philosophy of this is the sort of thing that Apple should be doing. There's a reason why Apple was not putting as much money into research as other companies were doing. So I'm not saying this as a guide to here's what I think Jeff will be doing or what he should be doing, but Apple is going to fundamentally change based on the priorities that he communicates either explicitly or implic about who we are as a company, what we are supposed to be doing and what is going to amount to a waste of our time and a waste of our potential as a corporation.
- [22:10]
Leo Laporte
You can see, I mean, it's interesting because Tim Cook really was in the mold of Steve Jobs, really kind of followed in Steve Jobs footsteps. But you've seen other companies. Jack Welch at GE comes to mind, where a new CEO completely changed the corporate culture, changed the plan of the company, changed how it works. It is possible to do that, to bring in somebody like that. But I have to think that Apple is really more focused on preserving its existing culture. Right.
- [22:39]
Jason Snell
I don't want to say Apple will never do that, but I would say Apple would need to have have fallen completely, lost its way, been viewed as a company that desperately needs a turnaround.
- [22:50]
Leo Laporte
And he wasn't in that position when Welch took over. Yeah, but it was Roland Was just like Apple at the time.
- [22:56]
Jason Snell
Yeah, but, but Apple Co. Apple will not do that because Apple, Apple has built up the antibodies. Apple.
- [23:01]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [23:01]
Jason Snell
I think everybody knows that Apple has the secret sauce and it's their culture and that comes from Steve Jobs. And that if you brought in an outsider just, I mean we've had in smaller roles multiple outsiders come in, hired by Apple. People who by all accounts were talented and whatever they were doing before and none of them worked out like none of them. I don't think it's been, I think it's been since maybe Ron Johnson.
- [23:23]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Retail was just since Ron Johnson that
- [23:26]
Jason Snell
they, that they have not been able to do that. And so I think Apple has just accepted that the only way they're going to build leadership is internally.
- [23:34]
Leo Laporte
And that saying is Apple is the Borg and resistance is futile. Is that what you're saying?
- [23:38]
Jason Snell
I'm saying that they, they are not. I mean and this has been true since the beginning or certainly since I started paying attention to them. They are not like other companies. And anybody who wants to run Apple or, or think about Apple like you can just use the corporate playbook and it'll work, will fail because Apple has never been like that. Back in the, in the PC days people are like they wanted it to Microsoft. They wanted it to be internal.
- [24:03]
Leo Laporte
There is an example of that was
- [24:04]
Jason Snell
never any of those things.
- [24:04]
Leo Laporte
Look what happened when Steve Jobs left and we had Scully and then, and then Spindler and Emilio. All examples of kind of anti Steve
- [24:12]
Jason Snell
Jobs sort of sales guys.
- [24:14]
Leo Laporte
It was terrible.
- [24:15]
Jason Snell
And, and I, I firmly believe that, that Steve Jobs knew when he came back that one of his. I think he was well aware even before he got his cancer diagnosis. I think he was well aware that one of the he wanted step one was save Apple obviously. But one of the things he wanted to do was make Apple's culture reflect what he thought Apple stood for. And that, that is not necessarily just be Steve Jobs. Right. It's think in a way that Steve Jobs thinks Apple should behave and that's why he did Apple University, which is like an ongoing education for people who work at Apple to understand the culture and to further the culture. And, and as a result one of Steve Jobs's products that's still with us is the Apple corporate culture for better and worse. I think a lot of the ways when they fight regulators, it is part of that corporate culture. I think that is, you know, you take it, you know, for better and for worse. But I think that that is true and I think that after what happened in the 80s and, and early 90s, I think everybody who's got any involvement with Apple, including the board and the investors, the last thing you want to do is break the spell.
- [25:21]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. And that, and that's also a very, very interesting thing in terms of things I would like to see Apple change about its culture is there have been times in its past, and certainly within Tim's tenure where it feels like Apple is just fighting battles that they don't need to fight, battles that they have lost time and time again. And they are continuing to fight these things to their own detriment simply out of stubbornness and dogma. I would like to see an Apple that decides that, you know, what we fought this for, we thought were very good reasons. There's still very good reasons. But we are not going to be in a position where we can keep just being, we're just going to be petulant about this. We're going to look at the entire game board, realize that we just keep losing and losing and losing on this issue and we are not going to magically cause the world to change and for us to win. We are going to find a way to get the best solution we can out of the situation that we don't like. Because again, time and time again it just seems like you're just being jerks about this. Okay, you know what, it's like the player that like, you know what got called out a third you maybe was a disputable call. But the thing is like you are not going to reverse it by storming the, storming the dugout and yelling and raising your hands and in the post game always saying about, gosh, everything is so unfair to us and we're just going to continue to stick to our guns because that was definitely my base. I was definitely not out. At some point you start to think very, very, you start to think a little bit less of this person to say, you know what, the world exist in a certain way. Maybe you weren't the long suffering person fighting for the future of your company in the world. Perhaps this is just a way where you just need to move on and adapt and do well in the world that you live in.
- [27:07]
Leo Laporte
Well, he's going to have to deal with some interesting challenges to Apple. We're going to talk about those in just a little bit. You're watching MacBreak weekly, Andy Inocco. Jason Snell's back and it's wonderful to have Shelley Brisbane with us talking Apple. More in just a moment. The show brought to you this week by Spaceship, my new favorite domain registrar. I love these guys. If you've been listening for a while, you know Spaceship has been part of our world for some twit world for some time. Actually, they're pretty new. They're new in general. There's a good reason for all the attention they've been getting. Spaceship just passed a major milestone.5 million domains under management. And there's a good reason for it. People move to Spaceship. They go there to register new domains, but they also move their old domains to Spaceship because it's better. It delivers real quality and features that make sense not just for domains, but it helps you with everything, building and running your online presence. It does hosting. They have a very strong business email offering. They have tools for creating and managing web apps, virtual private servers, all in one really beautifully designed, straightforward platform. Another reason people are switching, of course, is pricing. Essentially it's Black Friday and Cyber Monday all year round at Spaceship. You don't have to wait for a sale to get a great deal. When I moved my domains over, got some great pricing. I registered because they have a really cool end to end encrypted messaging solution I wanted to try and I love it. So I registered Leo's IM there for five bucks a year. I mean, wow. And that wasn't even using the Twit deal. Now Twit listeners get exclusive offers. There's the prices up on your screen that make it even better. I mean, these guys, I don't know how they're doing it. So whether you're planning a new online project or moving an existing one, Spaceship has what you need to get launched, connected and running smoothly and more affordably too. I know that's not the only concern, of course, but it is a great deal, especially if you're transferring over to a Spaceship from another domain registrar. They've really got a great deal for you. Spaceship.com Twitch Check out spaceship.com twit to see the exclusive offers and find out why millions have already made the move. Spaceship.com they really do a good job with some really nice services. Spaceship.com TWIT thank you Spaceship for supporting Mac Break Weekly and you support us when you go to that address. Make sure you do. Spaceship.com TWIT so a couple things going on in the Apple universe. Massimo got a big jury verdict. Remember this was the battle over the blood pulse oximeter that was built into the Apple Watch app. Massimo said, no, no, we had that first. They went to trial and the jury has awarded them $634 million. In some ways I think it would be nice if Apple would just pay the money and move on. They say they're going to appeal. They have a workaround for the current watches but I don't know, it's not as good because you have to go to the iPhone. Apple said the verdict is contrary to the facts, man. And Apple has to appeal.
- [30:47]
Andy Ihnatko
Go ahead.
- [30:48]
Leo Laporte
No, you go ahead.
- [30:49]
Andy Ihnatko
Apple keeps trying to paint Massimo as kind of like a patent troll company saying well, they don't make any products. They're.
- [30:54]
Leo Laporte
That's not true.
- [30:56]
Andy Ihnatko
And their basis of this is that, well, they didn't even announce like a physical watch that reads oxygen levels until like after the Apple Watch came out with that sort of thing. But the thing is like they have a decades long history as medical technology, medical device, sensor, many sensor and reading manufacturing companies. They have a huge portfolio of patents that they've developed in house by themselves. So it's kind of a little bit disingenuous for Apple to, I mean they have to, it's. They're fighting the suits and they have to do that, but that's a little bit disingenuous. This is another one of those suits where they just keep losing and losing and losing and they have to keep fighting it. It's not as. It's not. I agree, I agree that. I acknowledge that they can't just simply write a check for three quarters of a billion dollars and move on with life because this is. They need.
- [31:41]
Leo Laporte
Why not? Why can't they just settle it and say okay, fine, you win. Why didn't they just license it is actually the bigger thing.
- [31:48]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean that's what I was going to say. It's like they need to have a way that they can continue to create an Apple Watch that has the sensors and the technologies that they want to have. And one of the ways they can do that is to find a way to have a victory in this case. If they have a license then they're basically subject to whatever Massimo wants to allow them to do. And also cutting into whatever future that Apple wants to have for the project, not only for the hardware but also for the amount of money that's going to contribute to their mobiles division. So it's a complicated thing. It's just that again, another case where they just keep losing and losing and losing. You would hope that in a perfect world, and I underscore perfect world, Apple and Masimo at this point would get together and say, okay, you know what, there's a reason why we keep losing these cases. Judges and juries keep agreeing that, yes, you impinged on Masmo's patents. We must find a way that we can continue to make Apple watches to the benefit of our users in a way that maybe we won't be as free as possible, maybe we won't be as profitable as possible, but we need to be able to move forward with this.
- [32:54]
Leo Laporte
Are they afraid of other companies coming forward? Is that why they want to fight this bitterly to the end?
- [33:01]
Andy Ihnatko
I don't know that.
- [33:02]
Shelly Brisbin
I don't think they have to be.
- [33:03]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, exactly.
- [33:05]
Shelly Brisbin
I think it's enough for them to feel like we need to make an example of what we think is the right of it. But it fails the common sense test. And that's why a jury, not to mention judges, that's why a jury. It's unsurprising that they ruled in Massimo's favor, because when you explain the facts to the level of a newspaper article, typically. But even if the jury has heard an entire trial, Apple hasn't really presented any evidence that Masimo is completely in the wrong. There are technical reasons that Apple can claim that it's in the right, but a jury is unsurprising. That jury says, hey, wait a minute, that's Massimo stuff. And Apple took it and put it in their watch. And Apple Watch is a very profitable item and made by a very profitable company. And so from a somewhat emotional perspective, it's not surprising that the jury sided with them. And if Apple ever wins this case, it's going to be on a very arcane set of technicalities. And it does seem like this should be an indication to them that they are losing it. And the thing is, if they go to settlement talks now, they're not going to be paying 634 million, they're going to be billion. They're going to be paying some amount less than that because that's what settlement talks are all about.
- [34:15]
Jason Snell
Yeah, it's interesting. I think ultimately, I think Apple really does believe that they don't owe Masimo anything. And Massimo disagrees. And that is what the court system is for war. It's funny, this jury verdict is not based on the patent. That's a dispute in the import case. This is a different patent that already expired, but the damage is, oh, I didn't realize that. This is from an expired patent from 20 expired in 2022, but infringed before that. And so the damages are for the infringement before the expired.
- [34:47]
Leo Laporte
So that's why licensing doesn't matter because they don't need a license.
- [34:51]
Jason Snell
Right. They could have settled, but my guess is the settlement, settlement would have been about the larger issues, which they don't want to do because they believe that they can win on those. Apple believes they can win on those merits. For the record, the patent that holds up, the import issue, that is the reason that Oxygen has a weird thing in the US On Apple Watch that expires in a couple of years, and I think actually three in three years, in 2028. So again, I don't think Apple's running out the clock necessarily, but I think Apple, Apple feels that they're in the right and, and, and doesn't want to pay Massimo. And I mean, in the end, yeah, they could settle, unless they really don't want to, and in which case it grinds through the courts. Apple's gonna, you know, if Apple has to pay, they got the money to pay. I think that, that this is one of those cases where I don't think
- [35:43]
Leo Laporte
it's literally less than Apple makes in one day.
- [35:46]
Jason Snell
I, I don't think this is like the EU and the dma, because that is, that is potentially changing that one.
- [35:51]
Leo Laporte
That's a big one.
- [35:52]
Jason Snell
So, so that potentially change forever, right? This, like, either Apple's gonna, Apple's gonna pay Massimo something, who knows what it is, and then the patents expire and that's the end. And so, you know, I think that they, I think this is really, you know, Masimo thinks they wrote it and Apple thinks they aren't.
- [36:10]
Leo Laporte
And one of the things that probably convinced the jury is that when Apple was planning the Apple watch back in 2013, they hired Massimo's chief medical officer. Yeah, I mean, that kind of implies that they wanted to do something similar to what Mas doing.
- [36:27]
Jason Snell
The question is, was it just let's rip off Massimo or, or was it, I don't think that their patents cover what we're doing.
- [36:33]
Leo Laporte
And again, or this guy has expertise in creating this kind of thing.
- [36:37]
Jason Snell
And this is, this is why we have courts and lawsuits. And if Massimo can prove it, then they deserve the money. Right? That's just how it works. That's.
- [36:45]
Leo Laporte
The previous jury on this was hung. They couldn't make a decision. And so this is, this is a progress, I guess, for Massimo. Now, let's talk about, about the UK because Apple has been trying to appeal a $2 billion App Store ruling from the United Kingdom. And the UK says, no, you can't appeal that. Pay up. This is with the Competition Appeals Tribunal. They refuse the appeal. They say in their judgment Apple's arguments do not have any reasonable chance of success. So, 2 billion, that's a little more than 640 million. And as you say, it might have greater impact on how Apple does business. It's not just the money. This is the App Store fees thing. The EU has also said Apple is subject to the Digital Services act, which means really, Apple's going to have to change how it does the App Store or in the eu, if not globally. Right?
- [37:54]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. And this is another one of those I think I consider to be dogmatic sort of responses. Kind of like how Steve Jobs used to fight Samsung on everything because we invented a slab device that had rounded glass corners and has a button in the middle of it. The only place you could have stolen that from is from Apple because we innovated and we created that and like, hey, I've got actually a digital scale on my kitchen countertop that was made three years before the iPhone that looks exactly like that. Steve, I don't know where the big point is that, yeah, that is different from massmo because they really do have to rework their entire business in how they run NAP stores, not only in this country, but that country, but also pretty much globally to comply with a set of rules that they fundamentally and foundationally don't agree that they should have to comply with. So they're continuing to fight this tooth and nail pretty much everywhere. And there was a story a couple of weeks ago where Google and Epic Games got together after basically the very last appeals and the very, very last ways to avoid a permanent injunction. Excuse me, to get rid of a permanent injunction that the courts had inflicted upon Google to close that case. They decided, okay, well perhaps we can get together and create a system, basically reinvent how apps and app stores work on Android in such a way that Google gets a lot of what they want. We Epic Games and by hopeful extension developers get what they want. And let's do something better than having to deal with this really, really brutal, barbed wire style injunction that was imposed. And they came up with a system that when you, excuse me, at least when I read it looks like, wow, you don't necessarily have to agree that all phones should allow third party outside app stores, outside the Play Store, or in Apple's case, outside the App Store. But if you are going to have to do this, this sounds like exactly you would want to do it. And after reading like this 32 page agreement that was proposed to this judge, it's like, wow, this almost really does seem as though this makes Android better I would look favorably upon a platform like this that simply makes it okay for a third party app store to exist in a way that it's been vetted and certified and not simply the wild wild west. I think that Apple is kind of missing out an opportunity to have that kind of same reinvention of the App Store. Remember that app stores were created 20 years ago under a set of circumstances that were a unproven territory, pretty much in mobile, at least in this fashion. And secondly, made sense during the marketplace and the way that apps were created, distributed and sold at that time. It's not necessarily the case that this is so perfectly done in 2006, 2007, 2008 that needs absolutely no changes and modifications. There's no need to wi fi. Why would anybody want. Why would anybody want to connect to the Internet? I think the way that phones work in 1998 is perfect. We don't have to change a thing. Well, no, revolutions sometimes have to happen. And I think that Apple is not looking at opportunities to make the platform more relevant for developers that could actually enhance iPhone.
- [41:09]
Leo Laporte
Apple also just won in the Supreme Court. This was kind of a silly battle over the camera patents. Dr. Timothy Pryor Pryor sued Apple in 2021 even though his patents had expired in 2020. He claimed Apple infringed upon my patents before they expired. Your Honor. Apple appealed one in the U.S. court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. They declared the patents invalid. Dr. Pryor then appealed to the Supreme Court, which has refused to hear the case. So the Federal Circuit's ruling stands. So Apples dodged that bullet. Gosh, they must just spend a lot of money on lawyers all the time.
- [41:52]
Jason Snell
Yeah, they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:56]
Andy Ihnatko
And not for silly things either. It's like they just. It's like they have to keep batting away all kinds of garbage day in and day out. And they're not going to.
- [42:04]
Leo Laporte
When you're a big company, you know, $3.5 trillion company, people are going to try to come after you.
- [42:09]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, it's going to be a target. And I do feel it's fortunate if we're talking about the backgrounds we would like for an Apple CEO, at least it's a lawyer. I mean.
- [42:19]
Leo Laporte
Yes, that's good point.
- [42:21]
Jason Snell
Yes, it's funny. I mean the. Yes, this is. I believe that a lot of this, we're going to fight it in court goes back to sort of a Steve Jobs kind of culture. But I think it's also true that when you have new leadership, it's an opportunity. Even if everybody still has the opinions they had before. If you have new leadership, it's an opportunity to claim a reset, to say, oh we, you know, so it's possible, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I'm saying it's possible that Tim Cook departing as CEO and John Ternus or someone else coming in as CEO could be an opportunity to reset their policy and relationship about things like the App Store. I wrote a piece a couple years ago about this. Like Apple has built on the Mac a perfect model that completely fits with what every regulator wants, which is this open model where there's an App Store but also you can just do whatever and they've, they've got their whole idea of you can notarize things and so there's security is in place and ultimately if you want to flip a switch and run something that has not been approved or scanned by Apple, you can still do it, but you're going to get a lot of warnings like that model works on the Mac. So it could be that you have a reset where a new CEO says, I mean it's, it's, you know, it's like politics, it's like the new leader comes in, even if it's the same political party and says, well, we're going to make some changes to our policies. Let's start, let's reset the relationship with the EU or you know, whoever. I think that might happen. I'm not saying it will happen, but I think that it might be an opportunity for Apple to step back and say would it be better for us to end this multi front war that we've been fighting and come to a solution that's pretty, still pretty beneficial to us as the platform owner.
- [44:15]
Leo Laporte
Kind of wish they would do this.
- [44:16]
Jason Snell
Honestly, I think there's a strong argument that it's the right thing for them to do at this point is do you want to keep this going? Now that said, there are some stories about how there's a little bit, not at the dma, but there are other parts of the European Commission where they're kind of retrenching and trying to deregulate a little bit and change their policy. And that makes me wonder if Apple is like, yeah, let's just keep holding out and maybe everybody will just give up. It might happen. I, I, I don't know. But it would be an opportunity with a new CEO to, to change if they wanted to.
- [44:48]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. All right, that's enough of that. Enough talking about courts and we've done lawyers and money.
- [44:58]
Andy Ihnatko
How about guns Next.
- [44:59]
Leo Laporte
We have guns somewhere. Joe Rogan, we could. Well, no, that's not. How about we Talk about Apple's 2026 roadmap? I know this is, this is very speculative. Are we going to see anything more in 2025? I don't think so.
- [45:17]
Jason Snell
Right.
- [45:17]
Leo Laporte
We're almost at Thanksgiving. There's no reason to announce anything.
- [45:20]
Jason Snell
It's over.
- [45:21]
Leo Laporte
The most interesting story of course is the Mark Gurman story that Apple has lost interest in the Mac Pro and that the Mac Studio. It's too bad. If Alex were here, I think we'd have more of a. We'll talk about it when he comes back. But none of you care.
- [45:37]
Jason Snell
It's over. It's over.
- [45:39]
Shelly Brisbin
It has been for a while.
- [45:41]
Jason Snell
It has been for a while. Absolutely. This is. Look, Apple Silicon has some fundamental things about it that make it great, that also make it inappropriate for a classical PC model, which is what the Mac Pro is, where you've got expansion slots that can have add on GPUs and stuff like, and RAM and all that. Like Apple Silicon is not meant to do that. Apple has reaped the benefits. And Apple meanwhile has literally built the new Mac Pro. It's the Mac Studio using one of those Ultra or Max chips. But the Ultra chip, especially Thunderbolt's really fast. If you really need outboard stuff you can break out using Thunderbolts. I just, look, I think the Mac Pro only exists now because they apologized for the, you know, they did the trashcan Mac Pro and then they had to like apologize for that. And so they did this. And I think it's that litany of kind of failures that make them reluctant to do what they really ought to do, which is just say the Mac Pro doesn't make sense anymore. The Mac Studio is the new high end Mac the end. And I'm hopeful that they will do that at some point because like it just no offense to people who loved their Mac Pros and all those slots and all of that but like the decisions Apple has made lead them in a different direction and they're not going to, to. Why would you invest a dramatic kind of like decoupling of a lot of the things that make Apple Silicon what it is just to sell what a few thousand maybe of your lowest volume product. It doesn't make sense.
- [47:14]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. Particularly in the world that, that Apple lives in because there were a good amount of reasons to have. I've got a big box on my desktop or underneath my desk. It's got slots and I can configure it exactly the way I want to. If I want want a humongous amount of memory far beyond any sense of reality, I can do that. If I want to have four different GPUs, I can do that. If I want to build a RAID inside this box, I can do that. There was a time where I need a graphics workstation or I need a video editing workstation or I need a number crunching workstation. 10 or 15 years ago there was a need for that sort of thing. And if Apple wanted to compete in that world of there are people who actually need serious computing power, we need to be able to build that sort of stuff. And now they don't live in a world in which they can possibly compete with Windows machines and with Linux machines. Because the definition of I want a real workhorse, I really want a super, super powerhouse that's configured to my needs. Now it's like, okay, great, so are you training AI models? Are you basically fine tuning AI? Are you crunching enormous data sets? All these things are the sort of thing where if you have an open platform where here there's a buy the board you want, buy the main CPU you want, fill it with all the GPUs you want, fill it with all the extra compute that you want, that's not something that would benefit Apple to support. Now that they have Apple Silicon, now that they have a platform where the people that they know are buying Macs, they don't need to create a special configuration just for super, super super duper video editors. Because even like a base level like Mac mini can do 70% of what a lot of people would have required a Mac Pro to do 10 years ago.
- [48:58]
Leo Laporte
Does Thunderbolt 5 give these high end users, and this is why I wish Alex were here, but does it give them enough throughput that they don't have to worry about expandability? I mean you can use it to attach a gpu, I guess.
- [49:10]
Jason Snell
Well, no, not a gpu because the Apple architecture just isn't built for it. But Thunderbolt 5 has enormous throughput and there's multiple lanes of it on the Mac Studio that's got the Ultra chip in it. So like, you know, I feel like this is more like a requiem for what a PC used to be, what a high end PC used to be. But like Apple and for people who are like, yeah, but on the PC side you can still do that and you can build that and all that. Apple is reaping the benefits of Apple Silicon on the map.
- [49:40]
Leo Laporte
There's a lot of Apple Silicon Envy on the PC side, I gotta tell you.
- [49:44]
Jason Snell
Yeah. And the bit. But the side effect of that is Apple is making essentially mobile computers. Everything's integrated and they've managed in five years that they've had Apple Silicon. It's been five years now they have managed to build surprisingly. Remember we were worried like could they make a Pro system with Apple silicon? The answer is absolutely they can. The downside is if you have either misty watercolor memories of the way PCs were or you're somebody who loves that build it and do all the parts and swap out parts thing. Apple is not. Apple has moved their platform elsewhere. And that's the bottom line is I get nostalgia from the Mac Pro. I used to have a maybe not I power Macs for years and years and years. I don't think I ever had a Mac Pro. I think I was off the Mac Pro train.
- [50:33]
Leo Laporte
I had the trash can Mac, if that counts.
- [50:35]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I mean it does count. It does count. But I just, I mean. So your nostalgia is welcome and you're wishing that Apple would do something like that is understandable. But the, the truth is Apple has moved on and the Mac Pro is as it's currently constituted is completely irrelevant, which is why they even update it.
- [50:50]
Leo Laporte
Memory. You could put in a Studio. You can get 192 gigs of RAM into a Mac Pro.
- [50:57]
Jason Snell
No, I mean the Mac, the Mac Studio is the highest of, of literally everything that's available. So it's, it's the, the, that M3 Ultra Mac studio. Right?
- [51:09]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [51:10]
Jason Snell
So that's.
- [51:11]
Leo Laporte
So M2 Ultra is the farthest the Pro went. So it can go up to 512 gigs of unified memory.
- [51:20]
Jason Snell
Right. So that's it. So the Mac Studio, 512 gigs of memory.
- [51:26]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [51:29]
Jason Snell
SSD internal, up to 16 terabytes. And you're talking about a 60 core GPU and a 28 core CPU.
- [51:37]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So the Studio does everything you need.
- [51:40]
Jason Snell
It is, I mean the M3 Ultra.
- [51:42]
Leo Laporte
Except for expansion.
- [51:43]
Jason Snell
Except for expansion. But even there I would say what first off in the Mac Pro, what expansion. Because GPUs are not compatible. So it's like, yeah, you could put hard drives in it, I guess. But really you're going to have that whole case so that somebody can look at a case instead of an external hard drive. Like I see the argument, but you can. My argument is not that there aren't reasons. My argument is if you're Apple and you have to build a computer and you have to sell it and it costs a lot to do that. Those aren't good enough reasons, especially since I would be shocked if they sell at this point. Are they selling any Mac Pros? Dozens of Mac Pros a month, if that like to install. I think the only reason it still exists is they've got some clients out there who like, they committed like, yes, we will provide you with Mac Pros for the next five years or whatever. And they're like, all right, I guess. But like, nobody. The writing has been on the wall really since the M2, because the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro are at parody in the M2 generation. And now, now in the M4 technically generation with the M3 Ultra, it's surpassed it. So it's just. It's over. I mean, it's over. What can you say?
- [52:50]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, on top of that, the people who would have bought a Mac Pro for certain specific and very, very good reasons left the platform a long time ago and they're not coming back. That's a good way of putting it. Nostalgia, that if you would like to think that, well, if we just build a machine to their needs, they will come back right back. No, because they're very, very happy with what they can do and customize like on Linux and on Windows right now. And there's no need for a $4 trillion company. Apple does not need to reach out to those people for which is a small market. There was a certain amount of prestige in the past about saying, hey, we're going to create an art poster that speaks of exactly how powerful this new G5 Mac Pro Cheese grater Mac Pro is because it is the most powerful desktop workstation you can buy. But that was a nice poster. It was a nice slogan. They're very, very proud of it. They work very, very hard on it. But that was a long time ago. It is no longer necessary. So they're very, very wise to simply let go of ego and just let the numbers tell them. Their customers will always tell them what machines they need to design and what they need to build. Their customers in 2025 were telling them that if I'm in the Apple Store, I will take a look at your nice Mac Pro and think, wow, gosh, golly, a $12,000 computer isn't that nice. But I'm walking out with a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio, because those are.
- [54:01]
Leo Laporte
You can get a Mac studio up to 50, $15,000 if you want to get an 8 terabyte hard drive and 512 gigs of RAM.
- [54:11]
Shelly Brisbin
Because back when the, at the beginning of the first Trump administration, he had Trump and Tim Apple had one of their famous conversations in Texas about building assembling more properly Mac pros in Texas. So if Apple wanted to continue to add to it, see, look what we're doing in terms of United States manufacturing, that would be the best argument from Apple's perspective to build more Mac Pros and to build them in Texas. But even that doesn't make it worth their while.
- [54:38]
Leo Laporte
Fortunately, not paying attention to the future
- [54:42]
Jason Snell
of the Mac Pro, they've replaced that story with the, the plant in Houston where you just were, Shelley, that is building Apple bespoke Apple Silicon servers for private cloud.
- [54:53]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, and that's what's so funny because those aren't Mac pros, those aren't Mac Macs. They're using Apple silicon, they're using it to build AI data center for Apple. But they're not a thousand or a million consumers. It's not Mex Stadium down there.
- [55:06]
Jason Snell
Exactly. Although I would argue that there'll probably be more of those in existence than Mac Pros very quickly. Right. It's actually a higher volume product. No, it's not. And that's the, I mean it's interesting. Like in the. We've got a lot, I mean twit. There are a lot of really big big, big. And I say this in the nice as possible with tech nerds in the Twitch community who are saying like, oh, you know, you can get these GPUs that are much more powerful than Apple's GPUs and all that. It's like, so what? Like in the end Apple has made decisions that have benefited them greatly to integrate the GPUs deeply with their systems and that's the path they have walked down and it does motivate them to do have good GPU performance. But like if the argument is Apple should make a Mac Pro so that some incredibly tiny group of people can put a GPU card which would require them to deconstruct Apple Silicon entirely. Like it just the more you talk about it, the less it makes sense. And I find it's funny. One of the arguments that comes up sometimes about what products Apple should make is, but this product exists somewhere else. And I don't want to be mean about it, but like Apple, there are categories where Apple is not interested and the super high end PC where you stick a bunch of GPU cards in it, they don't care, they've moved on, they're doing something different. And like that could be right or wrong. You can agree or disagree, but after five years of Apple Silicon, they don't even have the wherewithal to build a computer with separate GPUs and separate memory because like that's not the game. That's asking a rock musician to play, to pick up a saxophone and play some jazz. Somebody might be able to do it. But like, like it doesn't make sense. Like they, they spent their whole life over here. That's what Apple has done with Apple Silicon. They have built this expertise. It is in this particular way a computer is made and if you don't like it that's fine, but this is the computer they're making now.
- [57:00]
Leo Laporte
I suspect we'll have this conversation again next week when, when Alex is here. But it is an interesting change a little bit in Apple's construction when they're looking at this very low cost iPhone based MacBook, a 5 or $600 MacBook and they're abandoning their very high end Mac Pro. Is it a shift a little bit of Apple towards consumer.
- [57:23]
Andy Ihnatko
Well they've always been consumers, consumer technology. They also see a unique opportunity I think in 2026 that they did not have in 2020, 21, 22 in that they can be super, super competitive with a $600 or $700 laptop not able to be five or 10 years ago. Part of that is Apple Silicon. Part of that is just the slow, boring but important process of building retail channels in places like Walmart where the people who are looking for the mid range machines are actually living right now. There are a lot of factors there and a lot more outside of control.
- [58:06]
Leo Laporte
Let's not forget that AI though is driving a lot of the.
- [58:09]
Jason Snell
Yes, this is the point is that that M3 Ultra Max studio has again, what is it? 819 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth and up to 512 gigabytes of memory. So like there are a lot of AI workflows that you could do on device with that thing. Right. And I would imagine the M5 Ultra which mark Gurman says is coming will do even more. It's not that Apple isn't still trying very hard. It's not like Apple's like, you know, know what, it's not worth it. Let's just do the base model chip and walk away like they're not doing that. They will not be able to push at the same level as a computer that is loaded with the highest end GPU cards. That's not a game they're interested in. It's a low volume game. It's not what their company is built On. I can't say this. I got to stop saying this because it's the same story over and over again. What I'm saying is they can make high end systems that are high end. Apple silicon systems that will have performance characteristics that will be good for certain tasks and that's all they're interested in building at this point.
- [59:12]
Shelly Brisbin
Yeah.
- [59:12]
Andy Ihnatko
And just one little footnote. There are some things that Apple just isn't good at. And this is one of those things that Apple just isn't good at. So sometimes Apple makes a very strategic and very, very savvy decision. Sometimes it's that, you know what, we just are not. We are not a company that is in any way has the sort of cultural or engineering background to, to make a product like that happen. Also, we have a market that is very, very. I don't want to. I'm not saying niche as a way of making it sound silly or insignificant. I'm saying that we have a set of customers that is not like other sets of customers. Our iPhone customers are not like other phone customers. Our laptops and desktops are not for the conventional laptop and desktop customers. Fortunately, all those other people, they have 82% of the market to and a dozen different companies of great magnitude to choose from. We know our customers. We know what our customers are expecting from us. We know what they'll line up to buy. We choose to make those things rather than say, oh, why can't we make a really, really great, legitimately useful and well built $350 laptop? God, if only we could be Motorola and build an awesome $200 phone that can run pretty much every app that anybody would ever want to run on a phone and also has a halfway decent company camera. They're like, no, we can't, we can't do that. We don't know how. We would, we would, we would fail miserably at that attempt. And then we would also be under my Motorola would just figure out a way to make that same phone for $175 and make our work irrelevant. So let's not, let's not play that game. Let's do. Let we know what people are coming to us to buy. Let us build the things that they want they're coming to us for.
- [60:54]
Leo Laporte
Well, save your apple wheels, your $500 apple wheel wheels and you could put them on something else.
- [61:00]
Jason Snell
Gonna be a heck of a. A display piece. I, I look forward to their prices. Crashing.
- [61:04]
Leo Laporte
They are beautiful.
- [61:05]
Jason Snell
I mean those display.
- [61:07]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, maybe.
- [61:07]
Andy Ihnatko
Maybe what they, maybe what someone should do is create like an adapter plate. So the people who like are buying, bought those super expensive feet could put it on the bottom of Johnny. I've $7,000 like boat lamp and just basically like the ultimate like Apple Design Flex.
- [61:22]
Leo Laporte
I think I have at least one or two old Mac Pros, the Intel Mac Pros sitting across from me. They're the old editor boxes back when we still used Macs for editing. And I also have a bunch of Dell power stations which we don't use anymore either. Times have changed. I think you made an excellent point, Jason, that this is. Computing has changed. But you know, if you are doing local AI, maybe you want Cuda, but maybe you don't need Cuda because Apple's got a lot of unified memory and a lot lower cost.
- [61:57]
Jason Snell
And if you do like, I mean this is the thing. It would be different if Apple was the only company that made computers. Yeah, but they're not. And sometimes I think people are offended. Like I said that Apple doesn't want to play in certain spaces because those spaces are nearby.
- [62:10]
Leo Laporte
Apple AI machine is a Strix Halo box from amd. That's the Framework desktop. It's lovely, it's, it's super fast.
- [62:17]
Shelly Brisbin
It's great.
- [62:17]
Jason Snell
What I'm not saying is everything Apple does is right. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is Apple made some decisions that have benefited them greatly and that that has led them down a path of Apple Silicon. The Apple Silicon Mac era is the best era in the Mac ever. And Macs, you can buy Macs with incredible performance characteristics. That said, there are certain things that they are not going to do. And if those things matter to you, I guess it's a bummer that Apple has said we're not going to go down that path. But like it's a bargain that Apple made to get to go down this path. And I would say for 99.99% of people, it's the right one, right decision to make and they've benefited from it.
- [62:55]
Leo Laporte
I'm really happy with the M4 Mini that I got here that replaced my old Studio. Yeah, it's a nice computer and I put it in that fake Mac Pro case. So it's like a little tiny Mac Pro.
- [63:08]
Jason Snell
Yeah, well that's, I mean, yeah. And that's the truth of it is that there is a Mac Pro. It's the Mac Studio. It's just what a Mac Pro is, has changed.
- [63:15]
Shelly Brisbin
See, I've been hesitating as to whether to say this or not, but I do think that Apple, to some extent and to another extent, customers themselves have trained themselves to want the best thing. And if the best thing is called the Mac Pro, that's what they want. Obviously there are people who have more sophisticated reasons for buying a Mac Pro than that, whether they be expansion GPUs, which we've talked about. But there is this sort of desire, this thought, wait, the Mac Studio, that isn't enough for me because it's not the best thing Apple offers. And maybe at some point when the Mac Studio is the best thing that Apple offers, they can be satisfied with the 15, $15,000 Mac Studio, which doesn't need wheels. And maybe that's sad for them. I don't know.
- [63:53]
Leo Laporte
This is, this is actually a really interesting point which is in the PC space, you have thousands of manufacturers trying every possible configuration. There's only one company in the whole wide world that makes Apple computers. And so this, and it's their business and they've looked at how many Mac Pros they've sold old and they've decided it's not a good business. And you know, you don't have a second company that could say, oh, we'll take up the slack there.
- [64:23]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, not, not a good business for them. Like, for them. Again, this is one of those right
- [64:27]
Leo Laporte
to make that decision. And I suppose there'll be some people who will be upset.
- [64:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, also, again, philosophically, Apple and I, I actually, I actually mean this in a neutral way. There are companies that can make everybody, that can make almost everybody happy. There's companies that are like, I can make only a certain specific subset of people happy, but they'll be so happy that they'll come to me exclusively because we're creating something that's completely unique. Apple is not the sort of company that can say, if you need 1000 computers for your corporation, we can give you those thousand company computers that will be configured for every task in every single department. And this is a large enough order that we will custom configure and custom build this to your, to your specifications. Apple is not going to be really, really super great at that. They can't target that effectively.
- [65:16]
Leo Laporte
And here from our $4 trillion doing things good is a very good use for those old Mac Pros. They make an excellent desktop holder. If you cut the wood just right,
- [65:28]
Andy Ihnatko
it fits the bench cut to my living room.
- [65:31]
Leo Laporte
It's too low for a desk, isn't it?
- [65:33]
Andy Ihnatko
They also make a really good side table for your chair. Serious. I, I, I, I've got a couple of G3s and G4s that are just like next to like a lot of different chairs. That's a perfect, perfect place for like your drink on a coaster, of course, because, you know, you got that beautiful mirror finish and also the remote or like if you have like a muffin that you're having for breakfast. So I actually, I literally do have like two or three of these. Like in my living room.
- [65:56]
Shelly Brisbin
I just have tables made out of wood. I got rid of my cheese grater G5 at some point. I did not think about their aftermarket.
- [66:02]
Andy Ihnatko
I don't, I don't believe I have gotten all the value out of the money that I spent for that, for that pro yet.
- [66:09]
Leo Laporte
And we should also say this is not Apple's announcement. This is Mark Gurman's speculation. It's possible there will be a Mac Pro next year.
- [66:17]
Jason Snell
I mean, it's his reporting. It's his reporting. He says that they put it on the back burner, which is not necessarily that they'll discontinue it. Look, there remains a chance, but I feel like the longer we go Apple,
- [66:27]
Leo Laporte
if it looks like it's abandoned, doesn't it?
- [66:29]
Jason Snell
Because they talked about doing like and German reported they were looking at like an extreme chip that was be like multiple ultras in one thing. And then you might need the cooling of the. But even then, it just sort of doesn't make sense. Like to have a case that big. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
- [66:46]
Leo Laporte
Now how about this? Apple in their newsroom has put out a press release about how they're 3D printing the new Apple watch cases out of titanium. They said nobody thought titanium would be a good material. Recycled material would be a good material. But we figured out how we can use it in 3D printing.
- [67:06]
Shelly Brisbin
Yep.
- [67:07]
Leo Laporte
Wow.
- [67:08]
Jason Snell
They use powder. They use titanium, pure titanium powder. And they say that it actually reduces the waste as well. Because by 3D printing it you don't have shavings that are coming off the larger titanium block that you shave down to the size. Instead you3t3d print it with powder. And it's not just. It's Apple watch and it's also the USB port on The I iPhone Air is done by a 3D. A 3D printing process. Titanium 3D printing to get. To get it to fit.
- [67:36]
Leo Laporte
It's a 3D printer like we think of in our house. Right.
- [67:40]
Jason Snell
I mean, kind of prints with metal.
- [67:42]
Andy Ihnatko
I mean, yeah, creality. Get yourself a three.
- [67:45]
Jason Snell
Yeah. Metal and not plastic.
- [67:47]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And they say using the additive process of 3D printing, layer after layer gets printed until an object is as close to the final shape. Shape needed as possible. Which is really, it does make a lot of sense and it allows them to recycle titanium, which has historically not been.
- [68:08]
Shelly Brisbin
And this is the kind of environmental story from Apple that I really enjoy because it's highly specific. It's not just saying we're doing a good thing, trust us. It's saying this is the process, that it's a tech nerds environmental story. And I love it.
- [68:21]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah. And also it really does come down to like Apple's tenure, Apple's definition as a design company. I mean this is, I don't know what planets align. So that this year Apple decided that we're stopped, we're no longer content simply implying that we're a design company and that we. And that that's part of our heritage. We really want to put that front and center by messaging that right in the introduction, the prediction roll introduction video. When we launch a new iPhone, we want a video that says that we are, we are all about design. Design is about intent. Design is about A, B, C and D. And this is. You could almost hear Johnny, I've titanium, the purest titanium.
- [69:03]
Shelly Brisbin
Now you're reckoning, enjoying it. Until Johnny Ives Ghost came back.
- [69:07]
Jason Snell
Titanium.
- [69:10]
Leo Laporte
Even before the printers can start the raw title titanium needs to be atomized into a powder. A process that involves fine tuning its oxygen contents to decrease the qualities of titanium. This is what happens when exposed to heat.
- [69:26]
Jason Snell
This is what happens when you have one of these enormous companies that produces enormous numbers of products in great precision and has built up an incredible, I mean I've said for a long time, I bet you that one of the, if not the greatest repository of knowledge about how aluminum, aluminum is used outside of the aerospace industry, I guess is Apple, like Apple is so good at metallurgy in so many different ways. And it leads to things like this where because they've got the resources because they're going to ship these products at volume, they can do this kind of research. And it doesn't, I mean, I give credit to Apple PR here because honestly, this is one of those things that they could also just not talk about, but they want to boast about it a little bit, which is kind of cool because somebody's got patents on this, right?
- [70:10]
Leo Laporte
Somebody think is super cool. And it takes them 20 hours to build the Apple Watch Ultra 3 titanium, which is, this is. And the Series 11. They, they, they, each machine features a galvanometer that houses Six layer lasers all working simultaneously to build layer after layer over 900 times for a single case. The powder is 50 microns in diameter which is like very fine sand. Sand. When you hit it with a laser it behaves differently if it has oxygen versus not. So we had to figure out how to keep the oxygen content low otherwise it bursts into flame.
- [70:50]
Andy Ihnatko
Where's that in the video? I want to see that.
- [70:52]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, right. This is. This is wild. Now I imagine all these machines are in Shenzhen, right? I mean they're in China probably or maybe they're in Vietnam.
- [71:00]
Jason Snell
I mean who knows? Yeah.
- [71:02]
Leo Laporte
Are these off the shelf machines? The chat room seems to know what kind of machines these are. So maybe, maybe these are. Maybe these are kind of stock. Bene Shaw lasers does that.
- [71:16]
Andy Ihnatko
But does Apple take anything off the shelf when it comes to manufacturing? Don't they like to optimize for exactly the product they're doing?
- [71:22]
Jason Snell
I would imagine it's a known. It's a known process that has then got custom hardware to generate.
- [71:29]
Shelly Brisbin
You buy components and you build your own machine. Yeah, does what you need.
- [71:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Or they, or they just simply. Just like with Gemini, they just basically can you. We would like to contract you to build. Build us a titanium deposit machine that we don't know how to build ourselves.
- [71:42]
Leo Laporte
Apparently one of our regulars in the club eat the oligarchs. I love his name. Says he's used machines like this. He says you load the powder from above. I've used titanium aluminium. Titanium Selective laser melting. Well from Wikipedia. So that's, that's. That's pretty darn cool.
- [72:07]
Jason Snell
I like my lasers to be selective.
- [72:09]
Leo Laporte
I want one. How much would. How much would one of these set me back? Would it be more or less than a Mac Pro?
- [72:15]
Shelly Brisbin
Oh, Leo's building things out of titanium.
- [72:19]
Jason Snell
Nobody give Leo a laser.
- [72:20]
Leo Laporte
These crappy 3D extrusion printed plastic things. They're so crappy. If I could build my stuff out of titanium. Now I'm interested.
- [72:28]
Andy Ihnatko
An essential part of our process is that we ignore examine each fragment of titanium to select only the best ones that are proper and suitable for the sample. I want to see an ad of
- [72:40]
Leo Laporte
the rejected titaniums wandering off for Apple.
- [72:46]
Andy Ihnatko
They show up at Ocean State job lot with like Swiss movements inside them. I would love that to happen. Building 19 would be Billy 19 would have a big, big bin if they were still in business. We can't say which watch. Which watch casings they have are. But you can use them to store pills in. You can use them for stamps once
- [73:03]
Leo Laporte
the printers are done working. The excess powder is vacuumed off the build plate in a process called rough de powdering. I think I had a nanny that did ruff depowing when I was a baby. But I might be wrong, I don't know. This is the video on the Apple website is actually pretty darn cool. Cool.
- [73:25]
Andy Ihnatko
They're very proud of processes.
- [73:26]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they should be.
- [73:28]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, exactly.
- [73:29]
Leo Laporte
They've tagged this with environment though. They're pushing this as an environmental solution
- [73:33]
Shelly Brisbin
because I think that's it seems legit and like I said, I feel like they can make the case as to why it's very cool, but also what the environmental not impact. We don't know what the actual impact is, but we know what they're doing to diminish the amount of, reduce the amount of waste and to do the process in house in such a way that it is efficient, presumably as efficient as possible possible. I think, I think it feels legit to me.
- [73:58]
Leo Laporte
I'm very happy that my, my Apple Watch Ultra 3 is made of 100% recycled aerospace grade titanium powder.
- [74:06]
Jason Snell
Well, yeah, I mean the, their point, their argument here because it's again, it's a volume of these products that they're producing in this. It's not like, oh we could do this.
- [74:15]
Leo Laporte
It's like, no, no, that's what they say.
- [74:17]
Jason Snell
Could you make millions of them? And so they say in terms of raw titanium, we are about talking, talking about more than 400 metric tons saved and they're using half the raw material that they were using in previous processes.
- [74:29]
Leo Laporte
They're not cutting it because they're not
- [74:31]
Jason Snell
cutting it and having those shavings.
- [74:33]
Leo Laporte
I love this.
- [74:33]
Jason Snell
And that's cool. I mean because that is one of the goals. I mean it serves Apple's pr. But also like in the end that means you're, you've got more of a closed loop of supply chain which is good, right? To not have to, you know, go back to the titanium mines for more titanium. Titanium.
- [74:51]
Andy Ihnatko
I like Casio's approach. Like their philosophy is if the plastic is on my wrist, it's not being choked on by baby sea turtles. It's not in the water, it's not in the air. It's called resin.
- [75:01]
Leo Laporte
Is there any rough powdering involved with those Casio watches? I think not.
- [75:05]
Jason Snell
That's okay, Andy. The sea life will be choking on that plastic in 200 years when it's floating in the ocean.
- [75:10]
Leo Laporte
That's right. No Casio watch ever made has disappeared. It's still there somewhere.
- [75:17]
Shelly Brisbin
Meanwhile, my Series 9 feels big and bulky and non titanium compatible.
- [75:22]
Leo Laporte
When I'm sad, I love this man. Makes me want to just go and roughly de powder somebody. All right, let's take a break. More to come. The Apple podcast charts are out and man, I went down thousands and thousands and I still didn't find us. But anyway, we'll, we'll tell you the best podcasts according to Apple of 2025 are in just a moment. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inocco, Jason Snell. Alex has the week off, but it's great to have Shelley Brisbane from the Texas Standard with us. So I'm confused. I think of it as a newspaper. It's a radio show.
- [76:03]
Shelly Brisbin
It is a public radio show, statewide public radio show. We're syndicated on about 30 public radio stations across Texas.
- [76:09]
Leo Laporte
And what are the topics of conversation?
- [76:12]
Shelly Brisbin
So we are a daily news show. So we do, you know, news of the day. So today we had a story about how Texas universities may or may not capitulate to what the Trump administration wants in terms of regulating their content. And we also had a story about a book. And we did. What else did we do? God, I can't remember. It's been like hours and hours. But basically it's news, arts, culture, music, books, sports, little sports. We actually have an executive producer who loves the sports. So we're getting more sports on all the time.
- [76:44]
Leo Laporte
Have you been hurt by the loss of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defunding?
- [76:49]
Shelly Brisbin
Indirectly, because our station KUT in Austin is our home station and we actually had some reserves. And so I think what's scary for us is that the real hard times will probably come in a year or two because we did so well with the fundraising that we did after CPB was dissolved that we're kind of floating along a little bit. And I'm a little bit, I'm looking over my shoulder to see what happens in a couple of years.
- [77:13]
Leo Laporte
But right now, continue to support.
- [77:16]
Shelly Brisbin
Absolutely. Keep supporting your local public radio stations and it will come to us.
- [77:20]
Leo Laporte
I, I donate to KQED in San Francisco because I'm, I'm a believer and actually I watch it more than I watch other things. So they deserve my, they're a lot cheaper than YouTube TV, I could tell you. Oh, man. We actually bought yet. What did you do? How did you survive the, the Disney, espn, abc blackout? Jason, now did you do what I did? Did we, did you actually end up subscribing to espn?
- [77:46]
Jason Snell
I have, I switched to FUBOTV a couple months ago and it includes ESPN I went.
- [77:52]
Leo Laporte
Because it's owned by abc.
- [77:53]
Jason Snell
Because it's owned by ABC now. Yep, that's exactly it. By Disney.
- [77:56]
Leo Laporte
So how do you like Fubo?
- [77:58]
Jason Snell
I think Fubo is better if you're a sports fan because they've. That was where it came from. Their goal is to have really good sports content and their multi view is the best. So on a college football Saturday, if you're putting up like three or four games in a box and moving around between them and all that, it's really good at that. And they have access to. I think they have access to all the 4K streams and that's one of the things I found on YouTube is that some of the 4K streams on YouTube were just like the NBC 4K soccer feed. Just wasn't there. And said it was there but it wasn't there. And I decided I was going to for roughly the same price I could just go to Fubo. So I'm trying that now again.
- [78:30]
Leo Laporte
What are you going to do when F1 goes to Apple TV though? You're going to have to.
- [78:34]
Jason Snell
Oh no, do you mean I will have to get an Apple Apple TV subscription that I've already had since day one?
- [78:40]
Leo Laporte
Oh, okay, never mind. You have both. Okay.
- [78:44]
Jason Snell
You like Pluribus?
- [78:45]
Leo Laporte
We'll save the Pluribus conversation for later.
- [78:47]
Jason Snell
I have. What do you mean? Like you either subscribe to Fubo or you subscribe to Apple TV and there's no in between that I would think
- [78:53]
Leo Laporte
one would choose, but maybe not. There's no overlap there, you foolish man. It's on pebo. Anyway, we. We were able to watch Monday Night Football last night, so that was.
- [79:06]
Andy Ihnatko
Congratulations on YouTube tv all Peo Brian racing all day.
- [79:11]
Leo Laporte
It's on Peabo
- [79:14]
Andy Ihnatko
theme. We got it. If he's done other music, I bet we have that too.
- [79:22]
Leo Laporte
All right, we'll be back in a moment. Our show today brought to you by Zapier. I actually have been a Zapier fan since they started. I don't know when they started, but I signed up long ago and have been using Zapier as part of my aspect everything as my automation system. You know, I have Zapier turn the lights down or up at sunset and you probably, probably use them for my Christmas lights. And of course the most important thing Zapier does for me is my workflow for these shows. When I bookmark a story in Raindrop, it's automatically posted to my Mastodon instance. It's automatically they format it and put a add a line to a special Spreadsheet that the editors can then use to make the run rundowns. Zapier is just a timesaver. I use Zapier every day without even thinking about it because it, it connects to over 3,000 of the of the tools that you already use in business. Well now Zapier just got a heck of a lot better. It was already perfect, but now they've added AI. Zapier is how you break the AI hype cycle and put it to work across your company. It is the most connected AI orchestrator platform out there. So imagine all those workflows that you already have on Zapier. Imagine just adding a little touch of AI to them. For instance, I'm going to take AI and by the way, they support all the big models. You can chatgpt and Anthropic, whatever you want.
- [80:48]
Andy Ihnatko
I'm going to.
- [80:49]
Leo Laporte
I think I'll use Claude and have it just. I'll add it to my existing workflow and you can make a little briefing book. Take all the stories I've bookmarked, make a little briefing book, a synopsis, a summary, put that together, add that to the show notes. I mean I. The sky's the limit with Zapier. With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you bring the power of AI to any workflow. So you could do more of what matters. You can connect top models like Chat, GPT and claw to the tools your team already uses. This means you can add AI exactly whether you where you need or create, you know, a complete AI stack, AI powered workflows and autonomous agent, a AI powered customer chatbot. Anything you can think of, you can orchestrate it with Zapier. This is, this is the way AI really needs to be. This is, this is a tool that can change everything. Zapier. You don't have to be a geek, you don't have to be a coder. It's for everybody. You don't have to be a tech expert. Teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier because it's easy, it's great graphical, it's simple and it works. Look at that. 364,608,630 AI tasks automated on Zapier. Oh, now 637. Now 639. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.com macbreak that Z A B. Macbreak z a p I e r.com macbreak I'm loving the Zapier. I'm loving it.
- [82:41]
Shelly Brisbin
Top.
- [82:42]
Leo Laporte
Now I have to say this before, a little disclaimer before we cover this Top charts of 2025 in Apple Podcasts. This is only. Only podcast subscriptions in Apple.
- [82:53]
Jason Snell
Yep.
- [82:54]
Leo Laporte
Admittedly, Apple Podcast is probably the dominant podcast client.
- [82:58]
Jason Snell
Spotify is probably even bigger.
- [83:00]
Leo Laporte
Oh, Spotify even bigger. Okay, okay. Actually, I should ask Patrick what percentage of MacBreak weekly listeners use Apple Podcasts. I would think it's higher than, you know, some of our other shows. Number one show, which is ironically a Spotify video podcast, the Joe Rogan Express Experience. Da da, da. It says Spotify right on there. That took over number one from last year's number one. The daily from the New York Times, then Mel Robbins, Crime Junkie, Dateline, Smart Less, Call Her Daddy, this American Life, Huberman Lab, and the Ezra Klein Show. It's the usual. It's the usual subjects. Yeah.
- [83:44]
Andy Ihnatko
As old timers like Hooper been like using, using podcasts since the time where we realized why it was called podcast because it was for the ipod. Like, it's, it's, it's, it was fun in the early days to see that people who are just doing this for fun and they're at the top of the charts and. As opposed to who's at the top of the charts now? Well, people who are essentially like celebrity podcasters, even if they, even if they came by it by becoming podcasters 10 years ago and rising up. But it's like, okay, it's hard. Where is the next? Like really, where is the next? Answer me. This coming from. And I'm not sure that this is an environment in which Helen and Ollie can basically get noticed by people outside of. By word and mouth.
- [84:28]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [84:29]
Andy Ihnatko
Answer me. This podcast is back, by the way. It was on Hares for a long time and I was very, very delighted to see Helen and Ollie once again on my podcaming podcast inbox.
- [84:38]
Leo Laporte
By the way, we are in the top 10 of technology shows at least this week in tech. It's. Which kind of surprises me, the audio version of that. Thank you. I guess given that we've been around, most of these shows are within the last five years. We've been around 20 years. I don't really expect to be.
- [84:56]
Jason Snell
So the Apple Metrics are weird, right? Because they actually have another list that's the most. Most followed, I guess they call it, and not subscribed to. And it's a slightly different list because Amy Poehler is high on that list. I think it's, you know, there's an algorithm happening here too, where it's like, they're probably measuring engagement, they're measuring new subscriptions. Right. Where if you've got a bunch of people who've been there for a long time, but you don't have a bunch of new people coming in, you might not be high on the chart. Even if you got a lot of listeners. I'm not sure I believe that this is like, exactly a pure kind of thing. I think it's a manufactured by Apple kind of gauge of hot fatness more than anything else.
- [85:38]
Leo Laporte
It's just like the Billboard charts. It's my understanding that there's a ballistic effect that, yes, new subscribers count a lot more. Mac Break Weekly is 75th on the chart, right between TFTC, a Bitcoin podcast, and me, myself and I from MIT's Sloan Management School. So at least we're on the top 100.
- [85:59]
Jason Snell
Yeah, but number twister twit is number nine in tech. That's pretty good, right?
- [86:03]
Leo Laporte
That's pretty good security now. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm happy enough. We're old. We've been around a long time. We don't have as many new subscribers every week.
- [86:14]
Jason Snell
Oh, look at. Look at that. Upgrade on relay is number 52. I like it. I like it.
- [86:19]
Leo Laporte
You're beating Mac Break Weekly. Good job.
- [86:21]
Jason Snell
It goes the other way. Those flip. I've seen this before, and it's like one over the other, and it's like, where will my little podcast be on this list?
- [86:29]
Andy Ihnatko
You gotta make sure. Go ahead. Sorry.
- [86:31]
Shelly Brisbin
I was gonna say, you're right. There are several lists. There's the Follow list, the subscribe list. They have a best of list, which in the article I read, you actually had to click through to see what the Apple editors thought were the best podcasts, which is somewhat different than this list, but a little closer to the. Than this, to this list than I would like. They also call out specific episodes if I guess that's a good way to get into a podcast. That's top. But, yeah, like, Andy, I miss the sort of days of indie podcasts where you might actually, if you're a podcast geek like all of us, you might actually see somebody, you know, way high up on the list. And now it's celebrities and people who.
- [87:04]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, we were off number one. You know, we announce a new show to be number one for a while because.
- [87:11]
Andy Ihnatko
And not to denigrate those podcasts, I mean, Conan o' Brien has an amazing podcast that's like, okay, it's. It's like you Just like to see. I have no idea who this person is, but that seems like an interesting idea for a podcast and I'm looking forward to finding out who this person is.
- [87:25]
Shelly Brisbin
Yeah, I read an article last week that really depressed me about the degree to which podcasts are male and white person dominated.
- [87:35]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [87:35]
Shelly Brisbin
So the Annenberg School did a study and something like 75% of podcasters are men. And in particular topics, women do true crime podcasts and art and culture podcasts. But overall it's a very male dominated field. I believe it. But I will say that I am glad to see some women, whether their podcasts I personally listen to or not appear in the the top 10, you know. Oh, well, there went a piece of hardware.
- [87:59]
Leo Laporte
But wow, musical tone as it went down.
- [88:04]
Jason Snell
Big podcast has gotten to Shelley already. It's Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan came over and did something.
- [88:12]
Shelly Brisbin
In any case, I'm glad to see that there's a little diversity in the top. Although still, like when I'm looking for a podcast to listen to. There, there are. And no, you know, no offense to you gentlemen who I. I love to podcast.
- [88:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I can't help it that I'm a man, Shelly. I try not to be, but.
- [88:28]
Shelly Brisbin
Yeah, I know, Liam, I. But there. There are too many dudes in podcasting in general. So anytime a woman led podcast gets a little love, that makes me happy.
- [88:36]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I agree with you. But you know, I'll be honest, when I started, there weren't many people at all in podcasting, so it was just. By the way, hey, we got a. We got a club member Cruising classic who has the Mac Break Leaf Leash leafy shirt.
- [88:53]
Andy Ihnatko
And welcome to this week's Mac Break Break Leafy.
- [88:56]
Leo Laporte
And it looks like he's in the same woods you are, Andy.
- [89:00]
Andy Ihnatko
I was thinking the same thing.
- [89:01]
Leo Laporte
I think he must have run over to wherever the hell you are.
- [89:05]
Andy Ihnatko
I think I need to contribute to the ongoing success of that product by occasionally doing it. Even when my Internet at home is fine, the library is fine.
- [89:15]
Leo Laporte
We were worried and it turned out to work quite nicely. Except there's probably a little risk right now.
- [89:23]
Andy Ihnatko
If I do it again, I will dress a little bit more. I dressed out of anger in the moment as opposed to taking five minutes to say, okay, what are the warmest things I have? And how many of them can I have on underneath my best coat?
- [89:36]
Leo Laporte
Apple on Thursday introduced a new set of app review guidelines, which now specifically say apps must disclose and obtain permission before sharing your personal data with what they call third party AI. In other words, not Siri. Right? Not Apple AI.
- [89:57]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.
- [89:58]
Leo Laporte
Because apps special.
- [90:00]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, actually they are.
- [90:01]
Leo Laporte
But it's the same as app tracking transparency, isn't it? I mean it's the same idea. Don't share my data with AIs. I like it.
- [90:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. There was a lot of things that they changed here. They also clamped down on predatory loan apps by saying you can still have a of load loan app but you can't like have APRs that are higher than a certain extent. What else do they do? There's a, I have a note here. Yeah. There's new stuff that your app has to control, has to support users who want to know what kind of content your app delivers that might be age restricted and that's certainly looking forward to like all the laws they're about being a new trend.
- [90:43]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Roblox just announced that you're going to have to, even if you're eight, you're going to years old submit a video of yourself before you can use chat.
- [90:51]
Shelly Brisbin
Yeah.
- [90:51]
Andy Ihnatko
And there's, and there's another one that was like why, I can't imagine why there wasn't a rule against this to begin with. They're basically having. There's a new rule that, that basically clarifies that. Yeah. If you are trying to. If you create a video streaming app where the local looks like Hulu and it says that makes people think that it's Hulu and you're trying to trick people who are looking for the Hulu app, we would rather you not do that. To the extent that We've introduced Rule 4.1, 4.1 C and a couple other things like that. So interesting.
- [91:22]
Leo Laporte
That's a problem for poob which does use in fact Hulu Green.
- [91:27]
Andy Ihnatko
So that is trademarked. I was amazed at the power of a signature color. I know that this is a new thing but when I was designing an interface for hey, I want to link to music stores, I'm like how do I, should I, should I have like the logos in there? Should I mention it's like. No, if you have like Apple's white on black they understand that. If you have YouTube's like white on red, they understand that. Spotify green, they understand that. Amazon orange, they understand that. It's amazing how. And I'm glad to see that there are these like new rules that says that. Yeah, we know that you're trying to say oh no, no, no, it's a, it's a four letter streaming service. And yeah, it's green. Green. But I mean green is just a color. Nobody owns a color. And Apple can say, yeah, we've pulled your app internationally. Have a good day.
- [92:13]
Shelly Brisbin
If only there were rules mandating better color contrast. But that's just.
- [92:18]
Leo Laporte
I'm sorry, can you turn that on in accessibility? Because is there a way?
- [92:23]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, you can. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I mean, to be like we have accessibility nutrition labels now, which are entirely optional. And for a long time, those of us in the accessibility world have been advocating for some sort of at least required disclosure, if not required, requiring that an app be accessible if it can be made. So. But yeah, color contrast is a big one, especially in the liquid glass world. We don't have to go too far down that rabbit hole except to say sometimes it's bad.
- [92:48]
Leo Laporte
Yes, we have managed to put off the Mark Gurman synopsis till way deep in the show. I think we deserve a gold star for that.
- [92:58]
Andy Ihnatko
That's why we're a top hundred podcast baby.
- [93:00]
Jason Snell
Legitimacy.
- [93:02]
Leo Laporte
The Mark Gurman rehash will now come commence. Apple's iPhone overhaul will reduce its reliance on the annual fall spectacle. We kind of heard this before. This is not new. They're going to do two releases a year. Is that what Mark is saying?
- [93:20]
Jason Snell
Yeah, this is the big. It's fall pro phones and spring non pro phones which Google's been doing for a while. Yeah. And Samsung do releases a year. Year. And if the iPhone line is going to be six phones, then maybe they should do it. So the idea is next fall we're not going to get an iPhone 18, we're going to get an iPhone 18 Pro, an iPhone 18 Pro Max and an iPhone fold. But that's it. And then in the spring of the next year of 27, if you can believe that, then you'll get a regular 18 and maybe you'll get an air and an 18. But the idea there is that they're gonna, they're gonna split. And I think it's smart because if you've got that many phones and everybody wants to know what the new iPhone is, doing it twice a year and since it once a year, it lets you tell your story more, it lets you advertise, sort of spread your advertising out. It. Apple is still kind of going by the playbook of when they had one or two phones and they don't now they have a whole product line. So following the Samsung model makes sense to me.
- [94:25]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. It makes sense in manufacturing, makes sense in marketing.
- [94:30]
Jason Snell
Oh yeah. That's one of the things German results. Is that, is that Part of this, if we don't think about this, I mean, as actually those of us who cover Apple do think about this in the sense that it's so much work in September. And I'm like, guys, can you spread it out? I said, back when I was the editor of Mac World, we were really like one product release every month to put on our cover, please. And they would not listen to us, right. So wonder why? So to do this, to spread it out, it also, also is like getting the OS and the new OS that comes out in the fall and testing it on every new model. Like, okay, let's reduce the number of new models. Getting all of those phone models into production at the same time in the factories. It's. It's a lot. So if they can do like half of them for that and then half of them, the other part, you get this really nice kind of like, you know, every six months is a better, a better pattern than every year, I think to spread out the load for the people who work on this stuff and manufacture it and all those aspects, people who design it, like they're hitting all those milestones simultaneously for like four different phones. It's a lot like maybe, maybe stagger it. It makes sense.
- [95:36]
Shelly Brisbin
I actually think it'll be interesting for marketing in Apple stores, carrier stores, anywhere you buy an iPhone. Because up to now, to the extent that this was a conversation, people would say, well, September, October, October is when the new iPhones are going to be available. So wait till then. But now it's every six months and you go, well, if you wait three months, there might be a new Pro phone, but right now there's a brand new non pro phone and it just, it gives a better or more of a story to tell that isn't so much about a linear product line. But hey, here's something new that's coming from Apple. Maybe you want to hold on to it for it or maybe you don't. It'll be interesting to see how it affects the laggard products, which I'm a big fan of. Apple having. We talked about that earlier. Apple, Apple having left Laggard products on the price list to make the product line even broader. It'll be interesting to see how that's managed and to what extent that continues after this shift.
- [96:28]
Jason Snell
Yeah, it's also, I think you talk about who buys these products and I think the truth is in the fall, especially the people who are buying who are like, oh boy, new iPhone, I can't wait. Those are people who are buying like the pro phones, because those are the nerdier people. And I'm going to do a plug here. Shelley did a great story on six colors and we had lots of charts that was about like comparing her co workers at the radio show to the people who subscribe to six colors in their iPhone buying patterns. And they are different and people hold onto them longer. Regular people, like the regular people Shelly works with. So I think, I wonder if it's easy to split this into two, because the people who know and care are going to know that in the fall there are pro phones and they're going to buy them. And the people who don't care so much and just kind of go into the Apple store when they need a phone aren't going to really care if it's a 17 or an 18. And then at some point in the spring, it'll be an 18 instead of a 17. But like, really the point is, is this the current iPhone I would like to buy it, please. And they don't care so much about, is it, oh, I can't believe this phone's been out six months. I should not buy. I think that there's a lot less concern about that.
- [97:42]
Andy Ihnatko
Casual buyers, 100%.
- [97:44]
Shelly Brisbin
Yep.
- [97:45]
Leo Laporte
Gurman also took a opportunity to take a shot at the information, which of late has competed with him a little bit. Getting the scoops. The information, he Sundays, reported a second generation iPhone Air had been postponed from next fall to 2027. Well, from what I've heard, it hadn't actually been earmarked for next year. That's why they named it the iPhone air.
- [98:07]
Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, he actually reported. This is funny. He reported that it was going to go in the spring before the information reported that it had been delayed out of next. Like, Gurman had already reported that it wasn't going to ship next fall because he said it's going to ship in the following spring. And then the information comes up and says, oh, no, it's not. Like, if I were Mark Gurman, I'd be a little offended too, that, like, they didn't, like they were reporting this as if they were breaking news and they seemingly had not even read his report about it. I don't know. So he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what it is.
- [98:41]
Leo Laporte
I knew that. I knew it all along.
- [98:44]
Jason Snell
He said it's been at least for a while, it may have. They may have discussed releasing it in the fall, but he said for a while it's been on the spring 27 agenda for Apple. That was not. That was not really.
- [98:56]
Leo Laporte
It's still not clear how well the Air is selling. Right. I mean, there's kind of dispute over this.
- [99:01]
Jason Snell
Yeah. Gurman says that the Target is like 7 or 8% or that's what the fourth phone did in the past. I've heard through the grapevine from some sources that, you know, when. When you look at the statistics of what phones are using apps and stuff like that, that numbers are small for the air. It's whatever 4 or 5%, something like that. But that's not surprising. I mean, it's not a mainstream phone. The Pro and the Pro max and the 17 are the mainstream phones. This is the outlier. And you know, when you, when you sell six phones, they're not all going to be mainstream phones. So I think the question is Apple a little disappointed? I think they probably are because there was a report that they reduced the number that they're making, which means that it's probably undershot their projections. But we'll see how it does over time too, because I do think that that phone is more likely to pick up buyers over time who are more casual who see it and go, oh, that's really cool. I want that in a way that maybe the hardcore. Give me another Pro Max. People are not going to look twice at some phone like that.
- [100:04]
Andy Ihnatko
I totally agree. Remember when Apple, the iPhone 6 was only marginally thicker than the iPhone Air, and at that time, Apple decided that, nope, this is not the special super thin version of it. This is just the version that we want to make. And we are establishing this as the mainstream phone with our expectations that's going to sell as well or better than any previous mainstream iPhone we've ever made. This is clearly a. This is something that. It was a good time for us to build this, at least partly because we need to have technologies and experience in manufacturing super, super thin panels backed by batteries just in case we actually do want to do a folding iPhone next year. So this seems like a good way to capitalize on a lot of the investments we've been making in flat battery technology and assembly technology. So, yeah, if they had decided that this was going to be a phone that everybody would want to have, they would have declared it to be. This is the new iPhone 7. Yes, it's there. You notice that.
- [100:58]
Shelly Brisbin
Hey, I hope they stick with it though, because I like the design and I am not like, I know Jason is somebody who is an advocate for. For a whole ton of colors just for the sake of having them, but it Seems like the iPhone air would be a good opportunity to do some things like add additional colors because it's the cool factor that's going to sell those phones in the store more so than the features themselves. And I think if it's going to have longevity, the idea that you could get it in a whole bunch of colors or there would be some other sort of wow factor feature that's more about aesthetics than about actual tech, seems like it would be a big help for, for that product.
- [101:32]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I agree with you. That makes so much sense because I think that Apple is again, they're a design company, they're really good at it. They're good at making a highly desirable object that you just want to own. So I'm glad that they're seeing an opportunity or potential and saying what if we made a phone that is not going to have the best specs of the entire product line? It is not going to be our flagship in any way, shape or form. But we've got some ideas on how we can exploit some brand new technologies that have been happening for more manufacturing. We have some ideas for the opportunities that Apple Silicon has in terms of we don't actually need a super thick battery anymore. We don't have to necessarily worry about heat dissipation for certain levels of performance anymore. Can we do something that takes advantage of all of that and creates. I don't want to call it a statement phone, but something for people who, they would be perfectly fine with a $500 commodity smartphone, but they would much rather spend a lot more money on something with an emphatic amount of style and coolness about it. You deal with this device how many times a day? Way too many times a day. And it's the cigarette case. Cigarette case used to be in the 1920s and 1930s actually I want to go to Tiffany's and find a cigarette case that I'm going to enjoy interacting with several times a day. Only the difference here that this is killing your brain instead of your lungs. But still the principle holds true.
- [103:02]
Leo Laporte
One good point of information. According to an analyst Counterpoint research firm, the iPhone is doing very well in China. 1 out of 4 smartphones so did in China last month were iPhones sales jumped 37% year over year. The iPhone's doing very well. IPhone 17 we don't know if it's the. I guess it's not the air, but it's doing very well, well in China. So that's good. Tim will be happy to report that next quarter.
- [103:32]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, especially because that used to be like one of the big things that they wanted to mention in every single analyst call about how they're doing in China. Analysts used to ask questions about, yeah, we noticed that year, year over year, the growth is pretty much flat. The growth of this, the entire market in China was X and your growth was actually much larger, less than X. And so that's clearly a focus again, not only, just not only an opportunity that they needed to pursue, but also also what was acknowledged as a problem, that there must be reasons why we're not selling in that country. I'm not knowledgeable enough about that market to understand. Oh well, obviously it's because they did this and they took advantage of these subsidies and they just all this sort of. No, but it could be as simple as they created a phone that just everybody wants. Sometimes that's how you become successful with a specific product of others. The right phone at the right time in the right market had the right amount of money to spend on it. But I'm glad to see that the is good news.
- [104:23]
Leo Laporte
New data from Ookla, the owners of speed test the wi fi speeds are much faster on the iPhone 17 and they credit or at least nine to five Mac credits, the new N1 chip. That's interesting. This is an Apple custom chip that I presume replaced a Qualcomm chip. They've got the new modem as well. So overall average download and upload speeds on iPhones with the N1 were about 40% higher. Higher than the iPhone 16. That's a big jump. Yeah. 417 Mbps on average on WiFi.
- [105:04]
Andy Ihnatko
Think how badly they. What a great. They couldn't gamble on this. Like, imagine the one thing that everybody would, that would make the next iPhone into a flop is if they decided, hey, we know more than everyone else, we're going to make our own wi fi chip. We're going to make our own cellular modem. And if people notice that, wow, my wi fi performance suddenly stinks, or wow, my connectivity goes to Verizon in my area now is suddenly absolutely terrible. I regret having bought this. I'm returning it. I'm going to consider other options. The fact that they stuck the landing on the N1 is maybe just as significant as any other piece of Apple Silicon news that's come out in the past five years.
- [105:40]
Shelly Brisbin
I wonder if they'll be able to market that at some point. Feels like it's too early. You've got one study, but is it the kind of thing where they can Say you're going to get better WI FI speeds if you buy new iPhone.
- [105:51]
Andy Ihnatko
I wonder if it's. At this point, it's still a thing of this is their ability to say, wow, we've made this twice as powerful as last year's one. But you still get the same battery life.
- [106:03]
Shelly Brisbin
Wow.
- [106:04]
Andy Ihnatko
It's actually a little bit lighter than last year's phone, but you still get the same battery life and the same performance. Sometimes they don't have to actually call out that we have. We've got this new technology. It's like, hey, we have never downgraded or degraded your performance in any way, shape or form. At minimum, we have given you the same performance and the same expectations each and every year, and that will continue to exceed them in certain ways. Where, where and how we can.
- [106:27]
Leo Laporte
What is interesting is that they did not put the new C1X in the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro. I think it's still using the Qualcomm modems.
- [106:35]
Jason Snell
Yep.
- [106:36]
Leo Laporte
But they did put it in the air. So what I'd love to see is some comparisons to cellular speeds on the air versus the 17. I haven't seen anything like that.
- [106:46]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it sounds like it's going pretty well, but they were hedging their bets there.
- [106:50]
Leo Laporte
Nobody complained about the speeds on the seven?
- [106:53]
Jason Snell
Oh, certainly not. No. So I did a real quick test on the iPad, the M5 iPad. Between this.
- [107:00]
Leo Laporte
You went in your backyard, Right?
- [107:01]
Jason Snell
In my backyard. And the answer was that it was. I think it was. I think I got faster, slightly slower down, but way faster up. And it made a connection on Verizon that it. That nobody makes a connection on Verizon in my backyard. And it made a connection even though it was one bar. So, like, it was different is the answer. But, like, that's. That's the challenge with any of these tests. The nice thing about OOKLA is that they're probably testing under lots and lots and lots of conditions just because of the volume of people using speed test. But, you know, a modem's characteristics. Like, you may get a. An incredibly fast modem that's brittle. Right. Like, incredibly fast modem, it maxes out in a great environment, and in a bad environment, it falls off the ledge and is a disaster. And you might get another one that's slower but more resilient. And I don't. I don't know whether it sounds like the C1 and C1X are pretty good, but which was the fear? I think Apple's goal for Generation One was Don't mess it up. Have it work, have it be functional. Don't have people returning products because the cellular doesn't work. Now step two is put it in the iPhone pro and see what happens. So I think this was, I think. I don't. I haven't seen anybody who would suggest that Apple isn't on the path to doing a C2 essentially and replacing Qualcomm and all their phones and that it'll be fine. But what it may still be is different. Right? Like just because these phones are doing different things in different environments and that's. They're not. It's not, it's not a straight up speed test like a CPU test, because it depends on where you are and what frequencies you're in and all of that stuff. If you're. And if you're in my backyard and it's a disaster back there.
- [108:44]
Leo Laporte
You may remember during the Apple product launch a couple of months ago when Apple introduced the iPhone Air, the engineer, the designer that introduced it, Abadur Chowdhury, featured prominently on the launch video. Not at Apple anymore. He's taken a job at an unnamed AI company. I don't know if that makes any difference or not, but he is an industrial designer who left iPhone, according to Mark. Mark Gurman. Mark loves doing these stories about AI people leaving the company. This is kind of a funny one because he's a designer, not an AI guy, but he did go to an AI company. I wonder if it's OpenAI because remember Jony Ives working there working on some sort of product. Does it matter? We don't know.
- [109:36]
Andy Ihnatko
It's interesting. Also, he did point out. Markram did point, point out that it's not as though this person was left because of fallout because of underperforming iPhone, 17, iPhone Air or whatever like that.
- [109:49]
Leo Laporte
The Air is gorgeous. I don't think anybody would disagree that the industrial design on the Air is impressive.
- [109:54]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, and for all we know, he might have left because a project was successfully completed and he felt like he could move on to something else.
- [110:01]
Leo Laporte
Thank you, Shelley. See, a cooler head prevails only occasionally. You are the saucer that cool cools the cup. Let's take.
- [110:14]
Jason Snell
That's right. Shelley, thank you for your pleasant take. You know, sea of hot takes. It is good to get a pleasant, reasonable take for once.
- [110:22]
Shelly Brisbin
I mean, I'm saving up for when I have a really hot take that I.
- [110:26]
Leo Laporte
Hot take coming.
- [110:27]
Jason Snell
Yeah, no, no, save. Yeah, save. Save it for. For the real hot take.
- [110:30]
Shelly Brisbin
My Mac Pro was the hot take for today. I think
- [110:36]
Leo Laporte
let us take a break and come back with more hot takes and cold takes and cool takes. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Shelley Brisbin from the Texas Standard. Great. Always great to have you on, Shelly. I'm thrilled we could get you here. She's filling in for Alex Lindsey, who may or may not be back last week. He's been working hard. He's been getting a lot of jobs. Andy Inocco is also here. I'm sorry, Andy, but your website was brought down by Cloudflare. This is morning.
- [111:03]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I noticed that because I was trying to post a whole bunch of stuff in anticipation of something.
- [111:08]
Leo Laporte
I got up and, like, this has become a new tradition, you know, first it was aws, then it was Microsoft Azure, now it's Cloudflare. Bunch of sites not working in the morning because Cloudflare was down for a couple hours. Actually, it's pretty serious.
- [111:25]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Because sometimes now it's like when fates befall us in a negative way. Maybe it's not God that hates us, maybe it's Cloudflare that hates us.
- [111:35]
Leo Laporte
It's the cloud. Yes.
- [111:36]
Shelly Brisbin
When AWS went down, it really wreaked havoc with us at the radio show because you don't realize how many things that use AWS you're actually relying on. But none of us noticed Cloudflare. The first thing we read about being down was X. And all of us were like, oh, we don't do that. So we, you know.
- [111:52]
Leo Laporte
Well, besides an Akaraka during Fireball, maybe you've heard of them. That's. That also went down.
- [111:57]
Shelly Brisbin
I've heard of them. Yes.
- [111:58]
Leo Laporte
A few other. A few other Mac stories was down. I know because I do my beat check and I was up early and I got a warning from Tapestry and we couldn't connect with all these sites. I thought, what? That's something.
- [112:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Ironically, I set up Cloudflare because, hey, I don't want this thing coming down.
- [112:15]
Leo Laporte
You don't want Bdust.
- [112:17]
Andy Ihnatko
I want.
- [112:18]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, what's the. What's the. I can't remember the name of the site that checks whether things are up or down. That way.
- [112:26]
Leo Laporte
You know what? Down Detector was also down.
- [112:30]
Shelly Brisbin
Detector was down.
- [112:31]
Leo Laporte
It was behind Cloudflare too.
- [112:35]
Andy Ihnatko
Maybe. Maybe that should be a feature of Safari and Chrome. Like when it realizes what's happening, you just put. Instead of the usual, oh, Internet connected connectivity or whatever could not resolve, just says, guess what, everybody? You get a snow day. You get an Internet free snow. Snow day. Put on your snowsuit. Go outside.
- [112:52]
Shelly Brisbin
I mean, when AWS was down, we, we use a tool called Rundown Creator to run the show. We can't do the. We can, we can do the show without Rundown Creator, but it's really like having your hands tied behind your back. And there was about 45 minutes that day where we were just like, I, I don't know what we're doing. Nobody does. Just keep cutting tape. Wow. But we, but we don't know how long anything is.
- [113:13]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [113:15]
Leo Laporte
Also here, Jason Snell from 6colors.com and the upgrade podcast this week from London. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
- [113:25]
Jason Snell
Love it.
- [113:25]
Leo Laporte
The 52nd most popular podcast in the
- [113:28]
Jason Snell
technology sector, I guess. Today.
- [113:33]
Leo Laporte
Our show today, brought to you by Framer. Now let's talk about websites. If you're still jumping between tools to update your website, you need to know about Framer for Framer unifies design, CMS and publishing on a single canvas. So no more handoff from one tool to another. It's all there. No hassle. Everything you need to design and publish all in one place. Framer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful production ready websites. And it's now redefining how we design for the web. With the recent launch of Design Page Pages, a free canvas based design tool, Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all in one design platform. From social assets to campaign visuals, to vectors and icons, all the way to a live site. Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish. And here's the best part. Framer is free. It's a free, yes, free, full feature design design tool, think Unlimited projects free. Unlimited pages free. Unlimited collaborators free. Everything you need. Vectors, 3D transforms, gradients, wireframes. Everything you need to design. Totally free. And now you got to check this out. Framers, your entire workflow in one place. No more figma imports, no messy HTML. It's faster, it's cleaner, it's more efficient, and you can design more than websites. It lets you create social assets, campaign visuals, icons, site resources, all inside the Framer tool. No switching back and forth. Framer stands above the others because it's not just a site builder. Framer is a true design tool that also publishes professional production ready sites. If you're ready to design, iterate and publish all in one tool, start creating for free@framer.com design and use the code MacBreak for a free month of Framer Premiere Pro. That's framer.com design and use the Code MacBreak framer.com design promo code Mac Break rules and restrictions may apply. Thank you. Framer Supporting Mac Break Weekly Three episodes in Pluribus. What do we think?
- [116:00]
Jason Snell
I love it.
- [116:01]
Leo Laporte
Love it. It's really good, isn't it?
- [116:03]
Jason Snell
I love it.
- [116:04]
Leo Laporte
It's another Severance.
- [116:06]
Jason Snell
Maybe. We'll see if it takes public consciousness. It is. It is, I think, a harder watch than Severance because it's more stylized and a little weirder. Yeah, a little weird.
- [116:16]
Leo Laporte
Skilligan, if you love Breaking Bad. Yeah.
- [116:23]
Andy Ihnatko
Again, they real. It's. It gets really, really intense. Not. Not pay. Oh, my God. There are zombies and they got axes and flamethrowers and they don't have a defense against the. Against the zombies. It's more like these subtle things where even. Like, if you were. You could. You could imagine a situation that is absolutely mundane in which. Oh, my God, if I were in that situation, I would be. I would be despairing and I would. The panic of not knowing what to do and have to figure out something.
- [116:51]
Leo Laporte
I think it's telling.
- [116:52]
Andy Ihnatko
Really hits you hard.
- [116:53]
Leo Laporte
Would react. Ray Horn is clearly upset. I think there are others in that world who are taking advantage of. Advantage of it. I think I would be more like the other guys saying, hey.
- [117:07]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, I'll say is that. I'm sorry just very quickly. The only thing they're very, very cagey about what the subject material of this was about the log line. Was everybody a virus or something?
- [117:18]
Leo Laporte
We're not going to spoil it. Right?
- [117:20]
Jason Snell
The log line was a world's unhappiest person tries to make the rest of the world happy, unhappy and that.
- [117:28]
Leo Laporte
And that was something like that.
- [117:30]
Andy Ihnatko
Basically like this. And that would make me. I have lots of faith in the creators, but, like, what could have been like, okay, so it's kind of like Curve youe Enthusiasm, only like sort of as a drama where it's like, oh, well, gosh, why is this one person always so, like, morose? And when everybody's so upbeat and it's like, no, that was by the end of the first half hour of the first episode, it's like, no, it's not that at all.
- [117:59]
Jason Snell
No. And I think the reason that it may not be as broadly popular as something like Severance is that. Is that I'm not. First off, Severance had kind of this mystery. And I'm sure there are facts to be revealed by Pluribus. We're being very good at dancing around what it's actually about. But I will say this. I think, yeah, you're right, Leo. I think a lot of us would say, well, in this situation. Why would I not just live like the guy who on, you know, on Air Force One. I'll just put it that way. And the answer is, you know, it's kind of a show about grief. And I think that the grief is a thing that motivates the main character. And I think Vince Gilligan is exploring some really interesting, kind of heavy concepts about, not only about grief, but about identity, about what's important, the individual or the collective. And I don't know, maybe it'll be a smash hit like Severance. Maybe it will be one of those shows that most people don't get into. But then the TV critics at the end of the year say, yeah, but that's the best show. And I'm leaning toward the latter. I'm not sure this is as much of a crowd pleaser, but I'll tell you, I've been thinking about it every day since I watched it.
- [119:13]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, me too. It really is. It's philosophically very interesting. And by the way, I am very taking great pains to pronounce it. Ray. I see horn because I pronounced it Ria last time. And I got an email from Dennis Bootsacaris who worked with her. He was one of the lawyers.
- [119:34]
Jason Snell
Dennis Bootsucaris.
- [119:35]
Leo Laporte
Oh my God, you know who he is.
- [119:37]
Jason Snell
He sent my website 20 years ago mean emails because we made fun of him. What a jerk.
- [119:44]
Leo Laporte
Make fun of him.
- [119:45]
Jason Snell
But. But Raya. Okay, good lesson learned.
- [119:48]
Leo Laporte
He said, don't ask me how I know. And he knows because he works with her in Better Call Saul. He's a character, well known character actor who I think I might have seen on Broadway back when he was in Amadeus many, many years ago. Anyway, thank you, Dennis, for correcting us. We're going to say Rhea because she deserves a lot of respect. She is great in this show.
- [120:11]
Andy Ihnatko
Imagine working on a production as bold and as big as Better Call Saul. And even amongst that ensemble cast making such an impression upon the career that he decides, you know what? Next one. I do, you're going to be at the very center of it.
- [120:25]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [120:25]
Andy Ihnatko
Because you, you can absolutely everything.
- [120:28]
Leo Laporte
She's. And by the way, is perfect for Carol Sturka as a perfect person to play that role. And we're not going to say why, but she just really is very, very good. And anyway, I'm Shelley. You haven't said a word. You haven't seen it.
- [120:42]
Shelly Brisbin
I have not, No. I have scrolled by a number of very positive reviews though, so I know that the zeitgeist, or at least the zeitgeist in my RSS feed seems to love it.
- [120:52]
Leo Laporte
So, yeah, we're not ruining it for you, but the reason we mentioned, of course it's an Apple TV plus show. And Apple TV seems to be firing on all cylinders lately. They have been making better and better stuff. I was not a fan of the morning show. The early attempts. Schmigadoon was interesting.
- [121:11]
Shelly Brisbin
I like Schmigadoon. I'll say good things about.
- [121:13]
Leo Laporte
I love musical theater, so I love. Liked it, but it was a little cloying. But I think they're with slow horses. Last Frontier Down Cemetery Road and now Pluribus. They are firing on all cylinders. I think they're really doing a good job. Apparently, Apple's also looking at a sequel for F1, the movie. Joseph Kaczynski, the director, says Apple's interested. Brad Pitt would come back. It would be F1. I don't know what you call it.
- [121:45]
Shelly Brisbin
Is that the sort of movie that when they made it, if it was successful at all, there was clearly going to be a sequel?
- [121:51]
Leo Laporte
I didn't see it, so I don't. I'm waiting until December 12th. I can watch it for free.
- [121:55]
Shelly Brisbin
It's. It's a big budget movie that did really well. And it's 2025. Of course there's a sequel.
- [122:02]
Leo Laporte
Yes, they have to. I mean, they're running out of stuff to make movies. Apparently. There's no ideas, no new ideas. Tim Cook said it's. When he was asked at the Emmys, he told Variety, it's definitely something that's being talked about. We're so proud of it. And the director said, I'd love to see what other adventures Sonny Hayes has in his future.
- [122:26]
Andy Ihnatko
So we had a long conversation about it in Cupertino. We decided that we like making lots of money.
- [122:31]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [122:31]
Andy Ihnatko
We like attracting prestige operations.
- [122:34]
Leo Laporte
Plus we've bought the rights to F1 Real F1 broadcast.
- [122:38]
Shelly Brisbin
Coincidentally.
- [122:39]
Leo Laporte
Coincidentally. And it might help us boost ratings a little bit as well.
- [122:42]
Andy Ihnatko
I mean, we kicked the ball back and forth is what we did, you know?
- [122:45]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [122:45]
Andy Ihnatko
We're an open campus. We were open, open.
- [122:47]
Shelly Brisbin
We ran it down the track to see what would happen.
- [122:50]
Andy Ihnatko
We decided, hey, what if we picked up. What if this big bag of money that's on the table that we're free to take. What if we actually take that big bag of money?
- [122:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [122:57]
Andy Ihnatko
Just spitballing here.
- [122:58]
Leo Laporte
Just, you know, it's a thought, it's an idea. And I'm sad to report, I don't know if you played any of the Mac ports of Baldur's Gate or Fallout. But the game designer, the programmer, brilliant programmer who worked on those for Interplay. She did the famous three do port of Doom in just a few weeks. She did the Macintosh versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Icewind Dale. Rebecca Heinemann passed away at a very young age of 6, 62 of cancer. So a legendary game designer programmer. She got her start as one of the first arcade champions, Space invaders, in the 80s. That pedigree. Yeah, yeah. Her wife had just passed last year, so it's kind of a double tragedy. But you can thank her because she really made it possible. Possible for us to play some of these big titles on a Mac back when that was unheard of. And it was because she was so brilliant. One of the founders of interplay, Bard's Tale 1 and 3 Wasteland. Dead at the age of, I think, 62, sorry to say. All right, I'd like to take a little bit of a break and if you would, my friends, prepare your picks of the the week. We can do those when we come back. Shelly, I don't know. You want to do a pick of the week this week?
- [124:37]
Shelly Brisbin
Sure, I got a pick.
- [124:38]
Leo Laporte
All right. And I don't like to make our guests work, but.
- [124:43]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, it's, it's funny because I had one pick and then my iPad fell off of it, and so I have another pick.
- [124:48]
Leo Laporte
Is that what we. Is that what. Is that what happened?
- [124:51]
Shelly Brisbin
Yes.
- [124:51]
Leo Laporte
Was that the sound?
- [124:52]
Jason Snell
The gong?
- [124:54]
Leo Laporte
Oh, my God.
- [124:56]
Shelly Brisbin
I'll. I'll share it with you when we do our.
- [124:58]
Andy Ihnatko
Oh, my God.
- [124:58]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's not good.
- [125:00]
Andy Ihnatko
Oh, my God.
- [125:01]
Leo Laporte
Maybe not such a pick.
- [125:02]
Jason Snell
Maybe not.
- [125:05]
Leo Laporte
That's got to be the first live pick failure on this show.
- [125:09]
Jason Snell
I know.
- [125:09]
Shelly Brisbin
And I hope you don't get letters from. We make this thing.
- [125:13]
Jason Snell
That's hysterical.
- [125:14]
Leo Laporte
All right, more with Shelley Brisbane, Andy Inacco and Jason Snell in just a moment. Our show today, brought to you quite literally brought to you by Cash Fly. You know, when I hear about Amazon going down or, you know, troubles over a cloudflare, I just think, I don't ever have to worry about this. I have Cash fly. For over 20 years, Cashfly has held a track record for high performing, ultra reliable content Delivery, serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. And, you know, because you've heard me say it time and time again. Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by cachefly@ cachef fly.com TWiT We've been using Cashflice practically since the beginning. I was very naive when I started twit. I thought, oh, we'll just put the podcast up on a website, people can download them. No, it doesn't work quite that way. You need a content delivery network. We went everywhere. We were doing bittorrent for a while, begging people to seed copies of the show. Then it was do you remember it brought to you by AOL Rating Radio. There was such a thing that we're getting bandwidth from them, but thank goodness Matt Levine of Cash Fly came to us. This probably was about 2008, 2009 and said Leo, let us help. And we have. There has never been a day where I haven't thanked Matt and Cash Fly because it just works. For over a decade we've been using Cash Fly. We love their lag free video loading, the hyper fast downloads, the friction free site inter interactions. When you go to our website and you're watching there listening to the video that's all coming to you from Cash Fly. When you subscribe to the podcast that's coming to you from Cash Fly, joint companies like Adobe, Microsoft, lg, the NFL and many more that rely on Cash Fly, most CDN providers will hold you back. You know you'll have to work around their rules. With Cash Fly you get a tailored solution and performance obsessed partners. I can't remember a time Cash Fly has not performed perfectly for us. I think they've never been down as far as I remember your cdn. Our CDN becomes our competitive advantage. Cash Fly's proof is in the petabytes as they say. We deliver more than 2 petabytes a month over Cash Fly events stream smoothly to millions of concurrent users with less than 1 second latency online. Online games start 70% faster, scale instantly and play without lag. Software downloads flawlessly during releases, patches and updates and HD video plays on demand with ultra fast sub second start on every device and podcasts reach global audiences at record speed at any scale. Cashfly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content in their cloud, ensuring a 100 100% cash hit ratio. Also very important to us, Cash Flight let us design our own terms when we came to them. You'll never pay for service overlap again. They've got flexible month to month billing for as long as you need it, then discounts for fixed terms. Once you're happy, you'll do the same. Design your own contract when you switch to Cash Flights. Like gaining an extension of your team. And believe me, trust me when I say when Your entire business is model depends, as ours does, on delivering massive content. You cannot afford to go alone. You can count on personalized help anytime from a tenured expert who gets IT engineer to engineer 24. 7. Cashfly is part of our team. Learn how you can get your first month free at cashfly.com TWIT that's C-A-C-H-E F L Y.com TWIT TWIT. Thank you, Cash Lang. Thank you. Pick of the week time. Andy and Akko, why don't you kick things off?
- [129:17]
Andy Ihnatko
One of my favorite picks of the year. Apple tv, of course, has all the rights to all the classic peanut specials. Yes, exactly. So this is the weekend you can watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for free. Free. Free. Free. Free. Without having access to Apple tv. Go through the app. I think it will.
- [129:35]
Leo Laporte
I think it's there. Yeah. In fact, it's on the front page. There it is.
- [129:38]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah. Y. And so, yeah, it's. I'm. I would have been very, very upset with Apple if they decided that this is the only you got to pay up in order to see again part of our cultural heritage. So I'm. I'm still upset that it's not available just simply on free tv. I'm still a little bit upset that you can't just simply go to like, the Google Play store and buy it if you want to own it. It's like, no, it's own lock, stock and barrel. But yeah, it's still something that has to happen, like each and every year.
- [130:10]
Leo Laporte
And no spoilers. I won't tell you whether Lucy pulls the football from Charlie Brown again this year. I watched it last night. I just love it. It's just. It's nostalgia.
- [130:23]
Andy Ihnatko
At some point, you have to start blaming Charlie Brown, I think. I mean, it's never a good thing, but it's.
- [130:28]
Leo Laporte
He talks himself, herself into it each time. It's like, well, she wouldn't do this. It's a holiday tradition.
- [130:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, exactly.
- [130:35]
Leo Laporte
Charlie. Charlie.
- [130:37]
Andy Ihnatko
She said a lot of things, a lot of things about a lot of subjects that you shouldn't have fallen for before. And this is one of the ones she does not just once a year.
- [130:44]
Leo Laporte
So they do this. Do they do a Great Pumpkin every Halloween? Make it available?
- [130:48]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, every. The holy trinity of. Of peanut specials. Thanksgiving, uh, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas. They do do a free weekend and they announce it well in advance. I think this week it's happening. This year is happening like a week earlier. I think they normally do it, like, close. As close to Thanksgiving as possible. But I think you kind of want to see it before Thanksgiving and not after Thanksgiving.
- [131:09]
Leo Laporte
I remember that right around Thanksgiving you could also see the wizard of Oz with Danny Kaye introducing it.
- [131:16]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that's. I mean, I can't be like a Gen X old timer and say, oh, life is different. Different back then. But there was, you know, there were times where it's like, it's New Year's Eve. Guess what's happening. We are turning on channel 38 and we're watching the Stooge. A thought. Yeah. And.
- [131:33]
Leo Laporte
And so now when you had to in order, you know, this is how TV worked.
- [131:37]
Andy Ihnatko
But also you wanted to because, come on, it's the Stoochathon. It's New Year's Eve. What else are you gonna do? Even if you're. Even if you're at a party like, guess what? It's a part. It's a watch party of the Stooge. A thon. There's going to be.
- [131:48]
Leo Laporte
I love it.
- [131:49]
Andy Ihnatko
There's gonna be champagne somehow.
- [131:51]
Leo Laporte
And I don't know how this happened. You gave me the Czechoslovakian or the Czech Republic link to Apple tv.
- [131:57]
Andy Ihnatko
Sorry about that.
- [131:58]
Leo Laporte
But thanks to that, I know that it's 199,000 Czech kroners or whatever it is they use in Czechoslovak for Apple TV Plus 199. No, wait a minute. The comma's in a weird place. It's 100. Maybe it's 19,900 czks.
- [132:17]
Andy Ihnatko
I apologize. I was with the. With the. With the.
- [132:20]
Leo Laporte
What are you doing in Czechoslovakia?
- [132:22]
Jason Snell
It's just the. It's just Czechia now. The Slovaks somewhere else.
- [132:27]
Leo Laporte
Is it Czech Republic or Czechia? What?
- [132:29]
Jason Snell
It's.
- [132:30]
Andy Ihnatko
I was dealing with a cloud flare cloud. I was. I had my hands full of lots of stuff this morning. I apologize. I. I copied and pasted without really checking out to see what does.
- [132:40]
Leo Laporte
It's the Czech Karuna.
- [132:42]
Jason Snell
Karuna.
- [132:43]
Leo Laporte
The Karun. Oh, you know this?
- [132:44]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I looked it up before you. That's.
- [132:46]
Leo Laporte
Oh, okay. The Czech Karuna. I, when I was a kid, went to see. Went to Czechoslovakia in 1967 when it was still Czechoslovakia and I have a very fond memory of it. The Czech Republic now. Well, now we know. You can see Charlie Brown in the Czech Republic for only 199. Whatever.
- [133:09]
Andy Ihnatko
Before I close, we move on to somebody else. I will notice that Hostess did buy the intellectual property of Dolly Madison. So if you want to have the snack cake, the zingers, which when was back on ABC TV during Gen X, Gen X time period. You can actually do that. It's no longer a.
- [133:27]
Leo Laporte
They were the traditional sponsor of exactly.
- [133:30]
Andy Ihnatko
In New England ways to say, wow, I wonder what a Dolly Madison Zinger would taste like. Some people couldn't buy them in New England. No, we did not have. This was New England is and was a Hostess stronghold.
- [133:44]
Leo Laporte
You're right. I never had Dolly Madison when I was a kid. Come to think of it, you're absolutely right. I had Hostess.
- [133:50]
Andy Ihnatko
Yep.
- [133:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, there was a Hostess plant in Providence.
- [133:54]
Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, exactly.
- [133:55]
Leo Laporte
I remember the Wonder Bread factory as well. Always smelled wonderful.
- [133:58]
Andy Ihnatko
They also used to have a snack cake called the Google.
- [134:01]
Leo Laporte
Well, there you go.
- [134:03]
Andy Ihnatko
They honestly. Absolutely true.
- [134:06]
Leo Laporte
There you go, the Google. Ms. Shelley Brisbane. How about your pick of the week?
- [134:12]
Shelly Brisbin
All right, so this is probably, probably accident and I should have put it in the document. I'm just realizing now, but this is accidentally probably the least expensive pick you've ever had on Mac Break Weekly Visual Aids. It is a lanyard for AirPods Pro. What's special about a lanyard for AirPods pro, you may ask? It is from Cobcob. C O B C O B B and it is a lanyard that you stick each AirPod in and then it's magnetized so that you can put it around the back of your neck. It's perfect for being on a plane because the worst thing I can think of is to drop an AirPod on the plane. And so you put this thing around your neck and you magnetize them together. You put your little airpods in the hole.
- [134:55]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I gotta get this.
- [134:56]
Shelly Brisbin
It's so good.
- [134:57]
Leo Laporte
I have a lanyard for the case. I thought you were talking about the case. This goes right on the AirPods themselves.
- [135:03]
Shelly Brisbin
Exactly. You just stick them in little holes and it comes in colors.
- [135:06]
Leo Laporte
And can you still put them in your ear with this thing on?
- [135:09]
Shelly Brisbin
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, you can.
- [135:10]
Leo Laporte
Doesn't interfere with that.
- [135:12]
Andy Ihnatko
No.
- [135:13]
Leo Laporte
Do you have pink?
- [135:15]
Shelly Brisbin
I don't personally.
- [135:16]
Jason Snell
I have blue, but they come in many colors.
- [135:19]
Leo Laporte
I might get pink because you know why I get everything pink. That way nobody's going to steal it.
- [135:23]
Shelly Brisbin
There you go. There you go.
- [135:26]
Andy Ihnatko
I love that. Because going my walks is like sometimes you do need to like remove just one earbud so you can talk to a clerk that you're purchasing and then lose it.
- [135:35]
Jason Snell
Yes.
- [135:35]
Andy Ihnatko
And then you put and the ability simply. This is one of the reasons why I kind of like wired earbuds because when I'm not using them, I can just sort of just wear them. Like an attractive, very, very thin and non very insulating scarf.
- [135:47]
Shelly Brisbin
Yeah, I used to carry a pair of wired earbuds just for that reason. And now I have this thing. Can I tell a Charlie Brown Christmas TV story though, real quick, please? So when I was a kid, I was probably nine or ten, something like that. I was in a school string ensemble. Wasn't quite an orchestra. There were probably about 10 of us and we had a gig on local television and it was for kids show that was taped, pre taped, but it was going to be played on Saturday morning. So one night before Christmas, we went down to the television station to record our bit. It was the night that Charlie Brown Christmas was on. And because we were in a TV studio, the monitors were showing what was live on television, but they wouldn't turn the sound up. And we were playing and I was so mad because I kept looking over this way trying to grok Charlie Brown Christmas while I'm supposed to be playing my violin on television.
- [136:40]
Andy Ihnatko
That's another thing.
- [136:40]
Shelly Brisbin
That.
- [136:40]
Andy Ihnatko
That's another thing. Younger generations don't understand that if you missed your shot at watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving or Charlie Brown thanks you, that was it for the year.
- [136:48]
Shelly Brisbin
You're waiting a year.
- [136:49]
Jason Snell
You missed VCR back in that day.
- [136:54]
Leo Laporte
You don't understand how hard it was back in the 90s or whatever, 80s,
- [136:59]
Shelly Brisbin
a little earlier than that.
- [137:01]
Andy Ihnatko
I believe that when DJ Jazzy Jeff and this Fresh Prince wrote parents just don't understand, I think they were tapping into that memory of I don't care if it is my aunt's birthday tonight, we have to stay. I have to stay home and watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
- [137:14]
Leo Laporte
It really has. This on demand world has changed so much and it's changed rapidly because first you had VCRs and then, and then you had DVRs, and now you could just watch anything you want, streaming whenever you want it. It really is completely, completely shifted our consciousness. I don't know if it's for the better.
- [137:33]
Andy Ihnatko
Well, I will say that there was a. I missed the Star Wars Christmas Special. And I was upset about it for a long, long time.
- [137:43]
Leo Laporte
Until you saw it.
- [137:44]
Andy Ihnatko
Until I learned about the true horrors. I realized that I was not ready at age 7 or whatever to see something that horrible with characters I liked so much.
- [137:52]
Leo Laporte
It would have really. It would have ruined you, my friend. Ruined you. Cob cob. I'm gonna get some cop magnetic cob cobs for my Airpod pods. I think that's brilliant. But then, wait a minute, you can't put them in the charger anymore.
- [138:08]
Shelly Brisbin
You can't have everything. Leo, come on. I have to hang them around your neck, but you can't charge them.
- [138:15]
Leo Laporte
No, that's not good. So you want to tell us what it was? Do you want to tell us what it was? What it was? It fell off your desk.
- [138:24]
Shelly Brisbin
I bought this. I really like to use an iPad as a teleprompter or as a note keeper. And the way it's easiest for me to do is to mount it on some sort of stand. And right now the easiest thing for me to do is I have a tall microphone stand. It's like a five foot tall microphone stand. And I bought this clip that is very durable, sturdy plastic, or so I thought, that hangs off of the microphone stand. And what happened was the iPad just fell out of the clip. And I'm going to assume that it is not a human error of my own because it's been sitting there for an hour and a half, but all of a sudden it just decided to clunk. But it's a great way for me to use a teleprompter or notes or whatever without having to, you know, stare at a screen over here.
- [139:06]
Leo Laporte
I'm glad you didn't make it your pick, because I have purchased every iPad stand that's been mentioned on this show, and I have a whole junkyard of iPad stands littered over there.
- [139:17]
Shelly Brisbin
I bought crummy ones, too. I really like this one because it is. It's. It's sturdily built. I mean, it's. It's not rubberized plastic, so it's not going to get tacky. It's not weird metal. It feels like a very rugged piece of kit. And I'm going to keep it. I'm just going to be more careful about how I put the iPad in it.
- [139:35]
Leo Laporte
Do you want to mention the manufacturer?
- [139:37]
Shelly Brisbin
It's called. It's an I clip.
- [139:39]
Leo Laporte
I clip. Oh, yeah. I have I clips. Yeah. All right. Jason Snell. I don't know why I kept you for less because you've got four picks.
- [139:46]
Jason Snell
Well, it's a conceptual pick. So Bartender. Bartender has for many years been the standard at organizing your menu bar so that you have like 80 icons up there, and that's too many, and you want to hide most of them most of the time because they're distracting. And the problem is Bartender got sold. The early reviews of Bartender 6, the first major version under the new owners, are that it's kind of hinky. I haven't tried it myself, but, like, I didn't love how they handled the Sale transfer. And now people are saying, especially on Tahoe, it doesn't really work for very well. And so this is my public service to you is if you're a bartender user who doesn't want to update, is concerned about the new owner, maybe doesn't use a menu bar manager at all, but has thought about it. There are many options. So I'm going to.
- [140:29]
Leo Laporte
If you have a MacBook Pro or anything with a notch you need, you need it because the icons will disappear behind the notch.
- [140:37]
Jason Snell
They will vanish behind the notch or they'll get kicked out by the menu bar menus on your app that you're using.
- [140:44]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, so I hear. I'm showing it right now. I don't know if you can see it because it's kind of tiny on my show my screen because it's up at the top. It's a little tiny.
- [140:53]
Jason Snell
Oh, I see, up at the top.
- [140:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. See there? I'm using Hidden Bar to do that.
- [140:57]
Jason Snell
Hidden bar. Okay, so these are your options. Hidden Bar is free, it's open source. It hasn't been updated in four years, but it is open source and you can download it from the GitHub project if you want to. And it works. There might be a memory leak in Tahoe. It's unclear. But like, it works and it's also
- [141:13]
Leo Laporte
in the Mac App Store.
- [141:14]
Jason Snell
Well, yes, it's in the Mac encourages me. Yes, exactly. There's one called Ice. It is also free and open source. There is a GitHub link that the developer will give you. They're currently in beta with a new version that works better and doesn't have a memory leak in Tahoe. But ICE is nice and it rhymes. There's Vanilla from Matthew Palmer, ironically, Vanilla Ice.
- [141:37]
Leo Laporte
Okay. Okay.
- [141:38]
Jason Snell
Yeah, this is what's happening here. I don't know why. Vanilla is for Matthew Palmer, who is the guy who wrote Rocket, which is a great emoji utility for the Mac. Vanilla is. You can try it for free, but the pro version that's the Most functional is $10. And in the Mac App Store, a thing I discovered only when researching this pick is an app called Barbie B A R B E E. Barbie is a $12 app that also is a. It's a free within app purchase of a $12 lifetime buy. Or you can do a subscription that's also a menu bar manager. So the beauty of this is all four of these you can try for free and see if there's a menu bar manager that speaks to you and use it to organize your menu bar.
- [142:22]
Leo Laporte
May I ask which one you use?
- [142:24]
Jason Snell
I have been using Hidden Bar, but I think it's getting a little weird in Tahoe and I may go through this shopping process myself because I'm kind of, that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring it to the table is that I'm actually not sure which one of these I like the most. But I really like the idea of this because, and you might be saying, well, I just drag it off the menu bar if I don't want to see it. But it's like they're ones that I want to see occasionally but not in my face all the time. And so what these utilities do is they give you a little space where you can drag them and then they're kind of, they vanish until you mouse over or click on an expansion. The UI is varied between these apps so you can get to it you when you want it, but you don't have to see it all the time. Or if you're on something like a MacBook Pro with a notch, you have a second tier of them. Then you mouse up and the second tier appears and, but normally it's not there because they're not as important. It's nice. It's nice.
- [143:20]
Leo Laporte
So now I, I, I, I feel like I should be unhappy with Hidden Bar. I might have to look at these other ones.
- [143:27]
Jason Snell
If Hidden Bar works for you, it's great. That's one I've been using. I just, I, I noticed some weirdnesses in Tahoe. But you know, they've been up. That was in, that was in, in the beta process. So they may be fine now.
- [143:36]
Leo Laporte
Right?
- [143:36]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [143:38]
Leo Laporte
The one review that's complaining says when you install something new, it gets sent to the hidden section, which is actually
- [143:44]
Jason Snell
exactly the behavior that may be what you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I want to like this until
- [143:49]
Shelly Brisbin
you decide whether you like wanted on your regular bar or not, they gotta,
- [143:52]
Jason Snell
it's gotta earn its place in the visible section of my menu bar. But anyway, do not be subject. Subject to the whims of many items in your menu bar. You can manage them with one of these many utilities, all of which you can try for free and some of
- [144:05]
Leo Laporte
which would get rid of the notch on MacBooks.
- [144:10]
Jason Snell
Yeah, I think Gurman suggested that it may be going away with those. The M6 MacBook Pro, the OLED either going away or reduced. Right. It could be just like a little tiny cutout instead.
- [144:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, you can. They're starting to work on through the screen cameras for the selfie cams and that would be nice. Nice if they gave us the full screen back.
- [144:32]
Jason Snell
Sure would be.
- [144:33]
Leo Laporte
I would like that. Mr. Jason Snell. He lives@six colors.com. that's his publication.
- [144:40]
Jason Snell
Thank you.
- [144:41]
Leo Laporte
You're hiring better pe. Better people, more. No, I'm just getting out wrong. You're hiring wonderful people like Glenn Fleischman. I see a young Shelly Brisbane there from time to time.
- [144:52]
Jason Snell
Yep.
- [144:53]
Leo Laporte
Of course, you and Dan Moran. You do a great job.
- [144:55]
Jason Snell
Thank you. I don't. I don't know if we said it on this show, but just. Just to throw it out there, when I started in this business at Mac User as a summer intern in the summer of 1993, one of the editors there was Shelley Brisbane and one of the columnists was Andy Inotko. So you are viewing the Mac User staff from the 90s right now.
- [145:23]
Andy Ihnatko
When I try to explain to people how long Jason and I have been friends, the usual thing, thing I go to is Jason taught me how to boldface things in HTML. That's how. That's how we are as friends.
- [145:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [145:33]
Jason Snell
Shelley, for a period.
- [145:34]
Shelly Brisbin
Talk about the Internet map.
- [145:36]
Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah. For a period of time, Shelly and I were literally the only people on the magazine staff who did the Internet.
- [145:42]
Shelly Brisbin
Did Internet. Right.
- [145:43]
Jason Snell
And we.
- [145:44]
Shelly Brisbin
There's this thing called Mosaic. Check it out.
- [145:46]
Jason Snell
Yeah. We did create a thing called the Internet Roadmap with. With my collaborator Jeff Duncan as well, who wrote a hypercard stack for that. And. And Shelly and I had the delight of discovering that it was in, like, an art gallery in Boston where they were selling it as an object of the 90s for, like several hundred dollars. And I'm like, oh, I think I've got five or six of those in a bin in my garage. Anyway, so. So Shelly is. Is og and she just works in legitimate radio now, you know.
- [146:14]
Shelly Brisbin
Yeah, I don't know if that's a step up, a step down, a step sideways. I don't know. I make podcasts too, so, you know,
- [146:22]
Andy Ihnatko
it's very, very smart. Again, some of us are, like, chasing TikTok and chasing, like, all these micro apps. We're just about ready to pivot to terrestrial radio.
- [146:33]
Leo Laporte
It's the next big thing. I can assure you. I can assure you that's Andy and not Ko and Otko. Blue Sky Dots.
- [146:41]
Andy Ihnatko
Happy Thanksgiving.
- [146:45]
Leo Laporte
Somewhere in the cloud Flair. Thank you, Andrew. Mr. Mac Leaf. Mac Break, Le Leafy. And of course, Shelly Brisbane. Thank you so much. Texas Standard Dot, bluesky Dot Social or go to Texas standard dot org or shelly dot brisbane dot net or all
- [147:06]
Shelly Brisbin
all so many ways, so many things.
- [147:08]
Leo Laporte
Is it only Texas or do you. Or do you get hurt in other local.
- [147:11]
Shelly Brisbin
Well, I mean, we're available as a podcast, so we're syndicated on 30 Texas Public Radio radio stations, and then you can grab us anytime at your favorite podcast establishment.
- [147:21]
Leo Laporte
There are a lot of Texans going. I know that voice.
- [147:25]
Shelly Brisbin
I hope so. There's some. Some expats who listen to us, too.
- [147:28]
Jason Snell
So, you know, that's nice.
- [147:29]
Andy Ihnatko
Jason, can I point out that I just hit. I just hit on ebay, there's a copy of the Mac user Internet roadmap listed as a rare collectible, $3,000 or better with free delivery.
- [147:42]
Jason Snell
Somebody.
- [147:43]
Shelly Brisbin
You get a free Mac Pro with that.
- [147:45]
Jason Snell
Somebody. Yeah. Email me if you want one for. For 2500.
- [147:52]
Shelly Brisbin
Jason, could you put that on a shirt maybe? Well, so it's an incomparable bit.
- [147:56]
Jason Snell
It was literally just a giveaway in. I think it was a magazine. Yeah, it was either bagged or it was a subscriber premium or something. But yeah, we. But. But they needed somebody to do it.
- [148:06]
Leo Laporte
It's in the Dave Rumsey Historical Map Collection, if you want to. Want to zoom in and take a look. Look at that.
- [148:15]
Andy Ihnatko
Jason, I'm going to email you because
- [148:17]
Leo Laporte
they're sponsored by Farallon.
- [148:18]
Jason Snell
Yeah. And Lisa Orsini, I think maybe, and Diane Dempsey were the art directors on that. And so they designed it.
- [148:24]
Leo Laporte
You can actually have the entire Internet on one page.
- [148:28]
Shelly Brisbin
Not only that, I mean, entire Internet
- [148:30]
Jason Snell
is generous, but all the connections on the map were legitimate links, which is what. What. What we use Yahoo. Which was the big directory at that time. And Jeff Duncan wrote his. Wrote a crawler. It was probably one of the first web crawlers ever in HyperCard. And he was the one who generated the data that. That led to the map. It was a pretty awesome.
- [148:51]
Shelly Brisbin
I always forget he did that in hypercard. I knew he did the crawler, but
- [148:54]
Jason Snell
I didn't know HyperCard at the time. We thought that was a ridiculous thing to do. And now only more so.
- [149:04]
Leo Laporte
Wonderful. Wonderful. You can actually buy a print of this. I'm sure less than $3,000 from the Dave Rumsey map collection. Dave Rumsey Cartography Associates.
- [149:16]
Jason Snell
Yeah. I wonder who has the copyright on that. It's probably. It's probably. It's probably IDG because they bought the assets of Mac user for and integrated into Mac World. So it's probably like, like, I'll get. I'll talk to Roman Loyola over at Mac World and see if we can.
- [149:31]
Leo Laporte
I can get it on a 24 by 362 by 3 foot canvas for only 370 bucks, I don't think.
- [149:40]
Jason Snell
I mean, who's going to.
- [149:41]
Leo Laporte
How about a wall peel?
- [149:42]
Shelly Brisbin
I mean even. I'm not going to do that. My wall operations are a little more modern.
- [149:47]
Jason Snell
The Internet in 1993 or 1995 or whatever it was.
- [149:51]
Leo Laporte
That's historic now, right?
- [149:53]
Jason Snell
It is, it's.
- [149:55]
Leo Laporte
This is amazing.
- [149:56]
Shelly Brisbin
And I think we did manage to get in a few sites that we each sort of liked. I mean it was, was web crawled, but they were like, oh, this is something I like. We need to put it on.
- [150:04]
Jason Snell
And that was that. I mean, yeah, because we were guiding the crawling of it. That, that is, that is the case for sure. And also I think all the Yahoo links are, are Akebono a Stanford Edu before they went out on their own. So yeah, old times.
- [150:19]
Leo Laporte
They were Gopher, Gopher, Gopher and Archie, Archie and Veronica. And all the Archie Gopher, Veronica Hanukkah.
- [150:28]
Jason Snell
Just amazing.
- [150:30]
Leo Laporte
Wow. And there's the top level Gopher at the University of Minnesota.
- [150:33]
Jason Snell
I was trying to, I was trying to point out how, how, how deep we are into the subject matter. And now I just feel like I pointed out how old.
- [150:40]
Leo Laporte
That's old pretty much.
- [150:42]
Jason Snell
Yikes.
- [150:43]
Andy Ihnatko
Again, legitimacy, legitimacy.
- [150:47]
Leo Laporte
Thank you to all our club members who make this show possible. We really appreciate your support. 25 of our operations operating income comes from the club and that's both a great success and a wonderful heartwarming stat and kind of an indication that we need it if you want us to keep doing the stuff we do. Yesterday we finished our DND adventure with Micah Sargent as our dungeon master in Paris. Martineau and Paul Thurot and Jonathan Bennett. It was so much fun, Jacob Ward and I. And anyway, those are the kinds of things we do it on the Club Twit. Discord. You get access to the Discord. You get all that extra programming. You get ad free versions of all of our shows. And right now, if you go to Twitt TV Club Twit, there's a coupon for 10% off the annual membership. Great for gift giving as well. Twit TV Club Twit. Thank you in advance. We really appreciate our club members. We stream this show every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 utter on in the club to a Discord of course, but also YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. You can watch there, chat with us there after the fact. On demand versions of the show, audio and video are available. At our website, Twit TV MBW, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to MacBreak weekly. A great way to share clips with friends and family. And of course, you can always subscribe in your favorite podcast client. Move us up to the top of the Apple charts if you want to use Apple's podcast. But we don't care. Anyone you want to use, if you subscribe, that's great. Also, audio or video? Or both. Thanks everybody for joining us. We will see you next time. And now, as I have said for the last almost 20 years. By the way, next episode is episode 1000.
- [152:32]
Jason Snell
Yeah.
- [152:33]
Shelly Brisbin
Wow.
- [152:33]
Leo Laporte
That will give you some idea of
- [152:35]
Andy Ihnatko
how long if we make it.
- [152:37]
Leo Laporte
If we make it, we may not make it. So again, Club Twit, nothing is given. Nothing is given in this world. So, yeah, come back for episode 1000. We're not going to do anything special, so don't get your hopes up.
- [152:51]
Andy Ihnatko
I'm going to buy a cake.
- [152:52]
Leo Laporte
Okay. We could all.
- [152:54]
Andy Ihnatko
When do I have an excuse to, like, buy an entire cake and just enjoy it myself?
- [152:57]
Leo Laporte
I was. I was planning. But I think it's too late now to send each of you a frozen 12 pack of Runzas. But maybe I won't do that. That after all. Because it's. I think it's too late. There's a. There's a lead time. They only make them twice a month. Do you know what Runzes are?
- [153:14]
Shelly Brisbin
No, I don't.
- [153:15]
Leo Laporte
Well, then you're missing out. That's all I can say. You can look it up. It's a Midwest tradition.
- [153:22]
Andy Ihnatko
I've never admitted publicly that I don't know what a Runza is.
- [153:25]
Jason Snell
You know what?
- [153:25]
Leo Laporte
I thought of the Runza because I figured you probably grew up eating pierogis.
- [153:30]
Jason Snell
Oh, yeah. These are those Midwestern Hot Pockets, aren't they?
- [153:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're basically, yeah, Hot Pockets. Sizzling steak, grilled onions, and gooey cheese. They're actually delicious.
- [153:39]
Shelly Brisbin
I'll stick to kolache, which is our local. But yeah, no, but no. I wouldn't mind a free one.
- [153:44]
Jason Snell
But no, we'll do something. We'll dress up. We'll wear hats.
- [153:48]
Leo Laporte
We'll do something. We'll wear hats. Something 1000th episode. But until then, it's time to get back to work, because break time is over. It's over.
- [154:00]
Jason Snell
See you next time.
- [154:01]
Leo Laporte
Bye.
- [154:01]
Jason Snell
Bye.
- [154:13]
Shelly Brisbin
I'm Kiana, and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about about some other new business, but Shopify is doing
- [154:33]
Jason Snell
it to me because it's so easy to use.
- [154:35]
Shelly Brisbin
It's like I can't stop.
- [154:36]
Jason Snell
I'm addicted. Start your free trial@shopify.com Instacart makes grocery shopping easier. And just because you're not doing the shopping yourself doesn't mean you don't care how it's done.
- [154:49]
Shelly Brisbin
With Instacart Shopper notes, you can get
- [154:51]
Jason Snell
particular about what you want right in the app. Like rotisserie chicken that's extra crispy steak with marbling the Roma humans would have loved, and lettuce you'd actually pick yourself.
- [155:00]
Shelly Brisbin
Just leave a note for your shopper so they can get it right for
- [155:03]
Jason Snell
you without having to ask. That way you can get groceries just how you like. Download the Instacart app and shop Today, Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a customer car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trading value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.