MacBreak Weekly 1012 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko here. Dave Hamilton's filling in, and we've got a packed show for you. There is an event coming up March 4th. What will Apple announce? We'll also talk about some of the new features of iOS 26.3 and macOS 26.4. There's some Vision Pro news, and Apple buys Severance. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

Leo Laporte [00:00:32]:
This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 1012, recorded Tuesday, February 17th, 2026. Joining the YOLO club. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Dave Hamilton is joining us. Hello, David. Hello, Leo, from Gig Gab and MacGeek Gab. Are all your shows named Gab?

Dave Hamilton [00:01:01]:
You know, I tried to call the business show like, I don't know, Business Gab or something, but no, it's just Business Brain. So it's got the alliterate, it's got the double letters. So at least it's got something there.

Leo Laporte [00:01:11]:
Yeah. Great to see you again, David.

Dave Hamilton [00:01:12]:
It's great to be seen. Thanks for having me.

Leo Laporte [00:01:14]:
Thank you for coming back. Andy Ihnatko also here. He comes back every week.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:20]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:01:20]:
At the end, he came back the very next week.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:23]:
It's nice to have the day, nice to have the week separated into things I need to get done before MacBreak and things I need to get done after MacBreak. So it makes Mondays, it makes Mondays, a good amount of— the right amount of pressure on a Monday.

Leo Laporte [00:01:35]:
I like to think this show is your kind of your binder divider in your life.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:38]:
Exactly. You're the great trapper-keeper of Andy and Artko's life. You are the unicorn leaping over the airbrushed van in the middle that says that, you know what, I think we're gonna go from math into Western Civ today.

Leo Laporte [00:01:54]:
Wow. And last but not least, Jason Snell from sixcolors.com.

Jason Snell [00:02:00]:
As those of us who do not have regular jobs, having regular podcasts It really helps you know what day it is.

Leo Laporte [00:02:07]:
It does.

Jason Snell [00:02:07]:
Honestly, it's really nice to have that.

Leo Laporte [00:02:10]:
So you got an invite. We're going to talk about that in a second. Before I do that— I did, and.

Jason Snell [00:02:16]:
I don't have to lie.

Leo Laporte [00:02:18]:
Yes.

Jason Snell [00:02:19]:
Or mislead or say, "I don't know, Leo, what will happen." And I know literally nothing about it, but I know that I will be there. So that's good.

Leo Laporte [00:02:27]:
I have a message to all. Ramadan Mubarak. Gong Hei Fat Choy and Laissez les bons temps rouler, because today is weirdly, it doesn't happen very often, Ramadan, the Lunar New Year, Year of the Fire Horse, and Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday. And I was able to do all of those in, in their native, roughly, in their native tongues. Very roughly. Anyway, that's kind of wild. Welcome everybody. Glad you could be here despite the, uh, the holidays.

Dave Hamilton [00:03:03]:
Before we continue further, I do need your computer screen.

Leo Laporte [00:03:07]:
Oh, I can, I can provide that very well. There was nothing important happening, but I shall do that right now.

Andy Ihnatko [00:03:16]:
March.

Jason Snell [00:03:18]:
March.

Leo Laporte [00:03:19]:
Now, now I have to though say, if you see my computer screen, that's not good. You should be going up to the left of your Zoom window and clicking the meeting tab, just as I have just done, so that you see me and us. Hello everybody. March 4th, you are going to New York City, Jason.

Jason Snell [00:03:40]:
Yes sir, yes sir.

Leo Laporte [00:03:42]:
Are you excited?

Jason Snell [00:03:44]:
Um, I, I mean, sure, new Apple products are always exciting. Um, they're calling it an experience. I don't know what that's about, but I think it's probably just like a bunch of demos.

Leo Laporte [00:03:53]:
Um, and it's in New York, London, and Shanghai. High at the same time.

Jason Snell [00:03:56]:
Yeah, yeah. So they're, they're doing, they've been tweaking their product rollouts for a while. And I've gone to New York a bunch of times, um, to do this. It does seem silly if you're thinking, Jason, you live in the Bay Area and they're in Cupertino. It does seem silly to fly all the way to New York. It does. But that's just, they want to have a limited group of where, what they're going to do is they're going to put like a bunch of people together and do demos. Presumably, like if there's a MacBook Pro, they'll have like pros showing pro things that can be done on them.

Jason Snell [00:04:21]:
They like to do a lot of storytelling, um, for the media. And so you've got to limit where you can tell those stories. So they're doing more than one, they're doing three in Shanghai, London, and New York City. Um, and there'll be new products presumably. I don't know anything about the details. Obviously they haven't told me anything but to present myself in New York City on the day. And, uh, and so I will and we'll get new stuff. And so am I excited? I like, I don't know if I'm excited about schlepping across the country, but I am excited that they gave me more than 2 weeks notice.

Jason Snell [00:04:53]:
And then I'm also excited that I'll have stuff to write about. And talk about. So that part's great.

Andy Ihnatko [00:04:57]:
And grateful that they decided to make this happen in mid-February as opposed to how about mid-January? Like at least it's a little bit less of a curse.

Jason Snell [00:05:05]:
Well, they didn't, they didn't overwrite my vacation, which was really nice. I appreciate that. I had a bunch of stuff going on the first couple of weeks of this, of this month. And they, they thank you, the, the not really Apple, the just providence that I managed to dodge that. And, and yeah, I like, we've been early in the year, right? We do a lot of anticipation and what's going to happen and there's not a lot going on., and this is the official sort of like Apple coming back from its pre-holiday break to roll out a bunch of new products, and that's always a, uh, always a good time.

Leo Laporte [00:05:38]:
The invitation— okay, so a little tea leaf reading. Okay, Kremlinology. Cooper Teenology has a sliced up apple in 3 different colors. People have noted a, a yellow, a green, and a baby blue. Do you think— we've heard rumors that the MacBook, uh, should we call it MacBook Nothing, Andy?

Andy Ihnatko [00:05:59]:
That's what you like to call it. You know, so someone, someone mentioned that it could— they— I never even considered that they might call it the iBook.

Leo Laporte [00:06:07]:
And resuscitate that name.

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:09]:
But I said, you know, I, I instinctively, I feel as though since there is nothing called just the MacBook Nothing, they are going to call it just the MacBook. But now I'm like, I'm kind of.

Jason Snell [00:06:18]:
Pushing for iBook because I don't think there's ever going to be a new i-anything. Yeah, exactly.

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:22]:
Um, well, there's an iPhone, there's always an iPhone, there's always an iPad, so.

Jason Snell [00:06:26]:
Right, but a new, a new i-thing though. I, I, yeah, I think MacBook is probably the most likely name, although they might have another thing for it. And, and yeah, Mark Gurman said, um, because he's reported about this a little while, for a little while now, that they tested a bunch of colors for this thing, and these are 3 of the colors they tested. So it's possible that this, uh, little MacBook will be a colorful little bit.

Leo Laporte [00:06:47]:
Not plastic, he says.

Dave Hamilton [00:06:48]:
He says kind of, kind of like the, kind of like the iBook was colorful, right?

Leo Laporte [00:06:52]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Snell [00:06:52]:
But they haven't made a colorful laptop since the original iBook, in fact, right? Like since then, every laptop they've made has been basically some sort of monochrome something— white, black, silver, silver, you know, almost indistinct.

Leo Laporte [00:07:05]:
Blue— there was a dark blue.

Jason Snell [00:07:07]:
Yeah, I have, I have the Midnight. It's, it's black with a little blue undertone is what it is, just like the Sky Blue is just silver with a little blue overtone, and that, that's all it is. So yeah, it maybe will get this thing in fun colors. And Gurman does say it is aluminum, not plastic, but that they're going to use a new aluminum process and, you know, That's interesting, right? Maybe it's cheaper, or maybe they feel like it's— this product is where they want to test that. I don't know. But, um, it probably doesn't have anything to do with the anodization dye that leads to them being colorful, although maybe they'll talk about that. But he says it is aluminum, just a new process that they haven't done before.

Andy Ihnatko [00:07:47]:
The thing about Apple is that this could be the residue of every trick and technique they've ever figured out about how to make something a dollar and a half cheaper, and then that's how they to the price point as low as it's going to get.

Jason Snell [00:07:57]:
Yeah, and literally the residue, it may just be, you know, because it's probably recycled aluminum, so it's just like, yeah, dust, dust for all the aluminum, and then put that in the hopper.

Andy Ihnatko [00:08:06]:
Remember all those Apple Watches that we said we replaced the battery for you? Yeah, actually we just ground it up and now we're recycling the aluminum from there.

Leo Laporte [00:08:13]:
But hey, yep, so they're calling it an experience, not an event. Will they live stream it? It is, it's 6 AM my time.

Jason Snell [00:08:20]:
So, so here's what I think is going to happen. I think they're going to do product.

Leo Laporte [00:08:24]:
Announcements that day, like ship out the press releases and the video thing.

Jason Snell [00:08:28]:
Yeah, yeah. I think they'll, they'll announce some products that week at 6 a.m. Pacific like they do. And this event is at 6 a.m. Pacific, right? Like it's 9 a.m. Eastern. And so that is their product drop time usually. So my guess is they'll drop some announcements and those announcements will have newsroom posts and maybe some videos, but it's not going to be like a video event necessarily.

Jason Snell [00:08:51]:
And then, um, what we'll get at the experiences will be, like I said, probably a briefing, a little bit of an overview of what they are, and then also their demos, just like get your hands on so that, um, those of us who go to this thing will be able to walk away saying, you know, I, I held that iPad or I picked up that laptop. And yeah, exactly. You can, you can boast for a little while being the only person to touch it, but also have like a take on the colors or whatever, like.

Dave Hamilton [00:09:18]:
It's a— and what it feels like in your hand. I mean, if it's a new aluminum and, you know, is it, you know, what is this unibody of aluminum feel like versus the other unibody? Let's hope maybe they'll play the, uh, the Rolling Stones She's a Rainbow again. Maybe it's time to dig that one.

Jason Snell [00:09:34]:
Out of the vault. Maybe it's 3D printed this time or something. Like, we don't know what the process is going to be, but let's go for Lego. Lego laptop. Sometimes, um, yeah, I mean, some products, like if there's a new MacBook Pro and it's got the M5 in it and it's not that interesting because it's exactly like the M4,, it's less useful, but when there's a brand new product or especially any product you hold in your hands, um, getting the hands-on experience with it is really better.

Dave Hamilton [00:09:59]:
It makes a difference. I remember going to the iPhone events when they started making the bigger iPhones and it was like, you know, I wanted to put it in my pocket. I want, you know, and I asked them, I'm like, you're not going to freak out if I put it in my pocket, right? And they're like, no, do that. You know, it's like that. You have to, right?

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:14]:
That's a, that's, I'm not the one who's going to tackle you and wrestle you to the ground. That's a, that's a guy that you.

Dave Hamilton [00:10:18]:
Haven'T seen yet, but that's, yeah, you haven't seen him and hopefully you won't. That's right.

Leo Laporte [00:10:22]:
Yeah, and of course Krispy Kreme is offering free donuts in celebration today. No, that gets— that's of something else. But anyway, um, something— what is the— what are the odds that it's just the MacBook?

Jason Snell [00:10:36]:
I think it's low.

Leo Laporte [00:10:37]:
You think there are going to be other things?

Jason Snell [00:10:39]:
I think— I think there are going to be other things there. I have a hard time believing that they would create a whole event, essentially experience, just for one product. And we know that the MacBook Pros are out there, and we know that there are some other products that have been sort of like suggested, um, the.

Leo Laporte [00:10:55]:
Displays possibly too, right?

Jason Snell [00:10:57]:
Studio displays. So, and in the past when they've done this, it's been like a Mac and then maybe also like iPad stuff.

Leo Laporte [00:11:04]:
26-Core is coming out in March. So.

Jason Snell [00:11:09]:
That'S March.

Dave Hamilton [00:11:09]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:11:09]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:11:09]:
So the only reason I say otherwise, that I might think otherwise, is Apple's 50th anniversary is April 1st. And Tim Cook has said Apple's going to celebrate. Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:11:20]:
I don't think launching a new MacBook Pro or something is a celebration. Of Apple at 50. I, I think they'll just also— I.

Andy Ihnatko [00:11:28]:
Think that'll all happen now. Also, what, what Jason said earlier, I think, is apps— is the sort of flexibility that Apple can give itself when it runs an event like this, where it's not, hey, Tim's going to be on stage, is going to introduce some videos, and a couple of product managers are going to come out in sequence and show you different things, and then we all go to a demo area. If they basically have— if they decide that we have this, we've rented out this huge space and we're going to create experience spaces so that we can actually create for people who want to specifically get information information and do a video or do an article about the new MacBook. Here is a MacBook space, go to MacBook World. Uh, here is, uh, here is Pro Display World. Here is an area that is an area level of Super Mario Land that is designed specifically for, uh, whatever they're doing to an iPad Mini. God, God hopes— or I can only hope. So, so basically they don't have to do this linear like Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 stage show.

Andy Ihnatko [00:12:24]:
They can make it a little bit more like Disneyland where you're going to— we have these different facilities We have— I'm, I'm sure Jason is right where it's going to be less, here are tables full of stuff, shoot your videos, collect more information. It's like, no, group, group, group 3 is now headed— is now approved for this area. You're going to be met by X person who's going to be the storyteller. It's going to be like a Disney, Disney princess meeting at Disney where it's like you get to be with Cinderella and Cinderella will tell you a story and then hand you off to Whoever, Ariel, whatever.

Dave Hamilton [00:12:57]:
Snow White. To answer your question, Leo, the biggest thing on Poly Market is that the iPhone 17e, 94%.

Leo Laporte [00:13:04]:
Ah, that's right. That's coming out sometime soon.

Jason Snell [00:13:07]:
Well, maybe. Sure.

Dave Hamilton [00:13:08]:
Maybe at the same event.

Jason Snell [00:13:09]:
And you get people's attention. It's also possible they'll do a couple staggered announcements and like it's primarily about—.

Leo Laporte [00:13:16]:
Do you want to jam it all together?

Jason Snell [00:13:18]:
Does that seem like— Well, I mean, they have machinery that they have to crank up to do this and they want to get people's attention. It's possible though that they'll, you know, again, And I think a Mac announcement where you've got a bunch of different Macs, but this focus is the brand new one is, is, you know, not a bad one. Like even if there's also a Pro and there are also displays that are relevant for the Pro customers, having that all together again, they could just release every product one at a time by press release and little drips and drabs. But I think that they find that they seem to find some marketing value in getting people together and telling these stories about their products in a, in, you know, in various places. And they're not going to do a roadshow where there are PR people going out every week to Shanghai and I, and every week to London, they kind of put it all together and say, this is our big shot for our spring product release. And, you know, I think that's fine.

Leo Laporte [00:14:11]:
Okay, it doesn't make sense that they would hold off the MacBook Pros till WWDC in June. That seems like a long wait, especially since you've, you've got the pipelines backed up a little bit.

Jason Snell [00:14:19]:
You got M6s coming. Yeah, Gurman says that the M6s are coming in, in the fall, possibly end of the year. And, and so you want these out now and turn it— turn over the M5s right now and and then you've maybe got room for the M6 in the fall. I think that is a reasonable assumption.

Andy Ihnatko [00:14:35]:
Also, one of the, one of the peak buying periods for laptops, particularly less expensive laptops, things that might be bought by individuals who are getting ready for school or whatever, is actually get them ready, get— make sure that they're out and saturated by April or May, because that is a specific window that you absolutely want to hit.

Jason Snell [00:14:54]:
Yeah, also, I— there was a, the somebody, I think Dave said about like, uh You know, it's not just laying out on tables so you can do your video. My last experience at one of these things, they did actually have a room where the, the, the video creators were invited to do some shooting so they could get their B-roll and stuff without it being in the midst of everything else. So they kind of think of all of those things and put the, put the detail together. But I don't get to go to that because that's not my, my deal. But, you know, they'll, they'll put, they'll ask, you know, I just think that's.

Dave Hamilton [00:15:23]:
Not the content you create.

Jason Snell [00:15:26]:
Exactly right. Exactly right.

Dave Hamilton [00:15:27]:
And actually for you.

Jason Snell [00:15:28]:
And the problem with having it all mixed together there is that the people who are there to do one job are clashing with the people who are there to do a different job. And it's better to have, I mean, they've really thought this through a lot. So I imagine that's what it'll.

Leo Laporte [00:15:46]:
Be like. On the other hand, you really wanna use all your stuff in one thing? I mean, when you— I don't know, apparently there's as many as 20 new products coming out this year, so I guess you aren't— there's no way you could use all your stuff in one.

Jason Snell [00:16:02]:
Thing, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, you know, you don't want all your stuff in one thing.

Dave Hamilton [00:16:06]:
No, but they do need to clear the pipeline ahead of WWDC and, you know, whatever that's going to be. I mean, it, you know, people can only think of so many things at once.

Leo Laporte [00:16:16]:
So I don't know why I'm arguing against it. I shouldn't be. Okay, so we think 17E MacBook, uh, somebody said in the chat, the Discord chat, MacBook Prosaic, uh, maybe some M5 MacBook Pros.

Dave Hamilton [00:16:32]:
I think, I think definitely.

Leo Laporte [00:16:34]:
Yeah. See, now there is one, uh, clock that's ticking, an opportunity that Apple might want, which is they're selling a lot of Mac Minis. They must be noticing this to AI nerds who are buying them. In fact, buying them in droves, apparently.

Dave Hamilton [00:16:49]:
Droves.

Leo Laporte [00:16:49]:
Yeah, they're, they're running OpenClaw, aren't you?

Dave Hamilton [00:16:51]:
I am running and loving Open Claw.

Leo Laporte [00:16:53]:
Are you running on a Mac Mini?

Dave Hamilton [00:16:56]:
No, I'm actually running it on the old iMac 2019 Intel. But the screen, the screen died, right? So the backlight on the screen died a couple years ago, and I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away. And then the other day I was like, oh, this is perfect for Open Claw. It's really not though, because Intel GPUs are not— none of the LLMs are optimized for Intel GPUs, so I can't really do anything local on it.

Leo Laporte [00:17:21]:
I have— but you don't need to because you don't— is basically using, uh, cloud LLMs.

Jason Snell [00:17:28]:
Cloud LLMs.

Leo Laporte [00:17:29]:
So, so my thinking is that, uh, if Apple were to release, for instance, a high-end Mac Studio with a lot of RAM, it would, it would probably sell very, very rapidly.

Jason Snell [00:17:40]:
Yeah, yeah, it's coming. But, but I think Gurman is unclear whether it's going to be part of this or if it might follow, in a month or two.

Leo Laporte [00:17:50]:
And I wonder how much of that—.

Dave Hamilton [00:17:52]:
Especially if you could find them. Kind of. I mean, it depends on how— you're never going to— well, I don't want.

Leo Laporte [00:17:59]:
To say no, we don't have Nvidia cards on it.

Dave Hamilton [00:18:02]:
You don't have 100 Nvidia cards on it, right? Like, you're just— it, it's not efficient. It's not cost efficient to compete with the, um, with the compute, you know, the the paying for compute power of the cloud LLMs. You might have a dumb local LLM to sort of be your orchestrator, maybe, but it's just as cheap to pay $20 a month to KIMI and get K2.5 if you don't mind your data going back and forth to Beijing. And then that's your orchestrator. And when you need the compute of something more, you're not gonna compete with Claude or OpenAI.

Leo Laporte [00:18:45]:
I.

Andy Ihnatko [00:18:47]:
Mean, yeah, but, but there's something to that. A couple of different commentators last week, especially since OpenClaw is like all everybody wants to talk about, have noted that in particular, like, the Mac Studios and the Mac Minis with lots and lots and lots and lots of RAM are sold out unexpectedly for the next few months. Now, that could be because of OpenClaw. It could be because anybody who thinks, gee, if I was planning on buying one sometime this year anyway, I'd better buy one now before RAM prices go even higher. So, but that's so speculation, but that's an interesting data point, shall we say?

Dave Hamilton [00:19:17]:
Oh no, people are buying them. I just, I think it's not for everyone who wants to run OpenClaw. I think there are those use cases for sure, but then there's everybody else.

Jason Snell [00:19:29]:
That's all. Yeah. Yeah. Also in terms of the Mac Studio, what I would say is it wouldn't surprise me if Apple prioritizes the MacBook Pro because the MacBook Pro is a very popular product that generates a lot a lot of profit margin for them. And that prioritizing— remember, they're— if they're all using a limited supply of M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, they might want to prioritize the MacBook Pro a little bit because it's a higher volume product, and then the Studio will come along. But I agree, they do seem to be having a moment with local AI on the M5, and I'm sure they want to take advantage of it. It's just an open question about whether they're going to be ready to if they're going to ship both of those products in early March or if one of them is going to have to lag a little bit.

Dave Hamilton [00:20:09]:
Yeah, a month ago, nobody— Open Claw basically didn't exist, so like nobody was doing this. I don't know that they have time to pull it all together, but I do think, I do think there's a new Studio Display coming.

Leo Laporte [00:20:19]:
That seems to be a pretty— Yeah, excited about that.

Jason Snell [00:20:22]:
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Dave Hamilton [00:20:23]:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, we'll see what the price is.

Jason Snell [00:20:25]:
Well, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be what exactly what you expect, which is disappointingly expensive because.

Leo Laporte [00:20:30]:
That'S what Apple does with their displays.

Jason Snell [00:20:32]:
The same, you said I bought two. I mean, it's going to look the same, it's going to have a higher refresh rate. Maybe it will have better sort of HDR support. Good to get an update for it, but I think it will probably be disappointingly expensive.

Leo Laporte [00:20:45]:
And that's just running with your iMac there, Dave. What's that? Can you run it with that old.

Dave Hamilton [00:20:50]:
Imac now that you— I could, but I could also— I mean, ViewSonic— I— what I'm— what's sitting in front of me on my Mac Studio is ViewSonic's 5K display, right? And like, that's, you know, that's less than $1,000 and it's awesome.

Leo Laporte [00:21:03]:
Yeah, it's great. By the way, we've lost all the AI bros because about 20 2 minutes ago, Anthropic released Sonnet 4.6.

Dave Hamilton [00:21:11]:
So, oh, no kidding. Yeah, so I gotta go, Leo.

Leo Laporte [00:21:14]:
Yeah, I know, all the OpenClaw guys are long gone, so we're not— well.

Andy Ihnatko [00:21:19]:
I mean, anybody— I heard you— I can't— I heard you can't install it on your murder drone, so what's the point?

Jason Snell [00:21:25]:
Talk about those guys, Apple not being able to react to like OpenClaw becoming a thing. But I would say Apple knew probably a couple years ago going into the M5 that one of the features of the M5— and they hammered on it when they announced the M5 last fall was that they had dramatically improved AI on that chip. That chip is much better than previous Apple Silicon chips are for AI. So they knew that some aspect— and they're the ones who showed off like the Mac Minis that were all connected.

Andy Ihnatko [00:21:54]:
Together as a cluster, right?

Jason Snell [00:21:55]:
As a cluster using Thunderbolt. So yes, exactly.

Andy Ihnatko [00:21:58]:
You got like at least 6, at least a half dozen creators had like YouTube videos in the same day. I've made this $50,000 cluster of Mac Minis.

Leo Laporte [00:22:06]:
Well, they're all back to the drawing board, those guys. Yeah, right now they're quick Quickly installing Sonnet 4.6, 12 days after Opus 4.6.

Dave Hamilton [00:22:16]:
I mean— Opus 4.6 is amazing.

Leo Laporte [00:22:17]:
It is. And apparently it's going to be the new default for Cowork and the Claude chatbot. I don't know what if for Claude Code. Anyway, for those who are saying, "What does this have to do.

Andy Ihnatko [00:22:33]:
With Macintosh?" Nothing. Well, except for as usual, anything that has any any, any technology that's based on silicon in it is going to be going really, really, really, really, really expensively up.

Leo Laporte [00:22:44]:
So, yeah, because of RAM. But I also— Western Digital announced that it's, it's sold out of hard drives for the year. Good heavens. Because so many AI whatevers are buying them, I guess data centers, I don't know.

Andy Ihnatko [00:22:57]:
Well, I'm glad I held on to.

Leo Laporte [00:22:59]:
That USB 2.1 floppy drive because— oh.

Andy Ihnatko [00:23:02]:
I know, infinite storage, baby.

Leo Laporte [00:23:04]:
Be infinite storage.

Jason Snell [00:23:05]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:23:05]:
So that's actually another question. I wonder if Apple will address this at any point is, is this, how is this gonna impact Apple? I mean, it's impacting everybody else.

Dave Hamilton [00:23:18]:
I think to answer your rhetorical question before and this one, how does it impact Apple users or Apple? I think what we're seeing with the user interface of AI first, right? Where you tell the chatbot what you want and then it goes and, does it for you on your computer and you either tell it with your keyboard or your mouth or, you know, your voice or whatever. I think that is the interface, like what we use with ChatGPT right now is the interface for everything that we do in the not too distant future. I think a year, a year, 2 years. I mean, we're already doing it with agentic browsing, right? You tell it, find me these settings in my router. We were talking about pre-show and it just goes and does it right. I don't need to know how to navigate that. I don't need to know how to navigate JetBlue. I think that's where it impacts all of us, is that we are seeing the future of the interface and it's.

Leo Laporte [00:24:11]:
Right in front of us.

Dave Hamilton [00:24:13]:
No, I completely agree with you. I don't want to learn everybody's disparate interfaces and I don't even want to learn Apple's. I just want it, I want my computer to efficiently know what I want to do and then do it with me.

Leo Laporte [00:24:25]:
Well, Dave, that raises a big issue because do you,— now, do you need a Mac? Uh, do you— I mean, if, if the computer kind of fades into the background— it's a great question. I mean, you, you're, you're probably talking.

Dave Hamilton [00:24:39]:
To your Open Claw through a chatbot, correct? And it's doing most of my, my work from a phone, correct?

Leo Laporte [00:24:45]:
Yeah.

Dave Hamilton [00:24:46]:
And I can do it with my voice or my thing. It doesn't matter what, what the thing is. So it really— the question is which operating system integrates that well first and then best. And I think those two— the answers to those two questions, and they are separate questions— and Apple has often not been the former but often been the latter.

Leo Laporte [00:25:08]:
You know what I don't like is because, because it's gonna be harder and harder to do this stuff locally because.

Dave Hamilton [00:25:13]:
You can't get hard drives, you need.

Leo Laporte [00:25:17]:
Your old iMac sitting on the floor. We're more dependent now on the these, what they call them, hyperscalers, these massive companies with billions of dollars worth of GPUs than ever. And I don't know if that's a good thing. Geez, we're headed into very interesting territory. Let's just put it that way.

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:38]:
And it's somewhat unpredictable. The classic problem has always been that AI, developing these models is you need the resources of a nation state in order to do it. And so it's always going to be really, really difficult for anybody to be like the Apple to IBM, the Apple versus IBM in 1976, except there's China, Google versus Microsoft versus— and in 2000, like, when, when does— when is the next small startup with a really good idea able to grow and able to create something that's very, very responsive versus a $4 trillion, $3 trillion company or a government like China, like the United States dictating policy on how this foundation model has to behave? Because again, they have the ability to write the check to actually build the foundation model, so they get to decide what it can and what it can't do and what it can do and will tell the citizens of the country.

Leo Laporte [00:26:25]:
What it can do. So Deepseek, though, is in some ways the garage of AI. It is a Chinese company. In fact, we're waiting for the next Deepseek model any minute now. Uh, it, it shocked the world a year ago, uh, and changed, uh, how AI works. And in fact, I think is kind of the engine of how all these new AI models are working. There are a number of really strong open weight models that you can download from China, like DeepSeq, like GLM, like Minimax. Even Meta has an open weight model.

Leo Laporte [00:27:00]:
I don't know for how much longer they're going to keep doing that. But so there are kind of— but if you can't get the hardware to run them locally, it doesn't much matter.

Dave Hamilton [00:27:10]:
I mean, you could put them on a VPS too. Too, right? Which a lot of people are doing. Sure. You know, you spin up a VPS.

Leo Laporte [00:27:15]:
And up it goes. Yep. We live in interesting times. We sure do. Uh, okay, so I'm just saying Apple, you know, might want to jump on that bandwagon. Now, somebody speculated— I don't know if it was Mark Gurman or somebody— but the fact that there are 3 events, one in New York, one in London, and one in China, in Shanghai, implies that there will not be a new Siri announced at this event because because new Siri is, is new Siri available in China?

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:44]:
Uh, China requires that they use Chinese. They're still far away from getting it.

Jason Snell [00:27:48]:
I don't think it's coming. German has reported that they're behind on that and that they're delaying it. But also, I think I'm just going to say, uh, people are overthinking it if they're like, aha, it's in Shanghai and therefore no Siri. Because if they did have a Siri announcement to make, they'd just make it and they'd show it in London and New York and not show it in Shanghai. And they'd have a bunch of Macs. This is not a Siri event. It was never going to be a Siri event. So I think that's a case of.

Andy Ihnatko [00:28:14]:
People overreading the— I think they just wanted to cover the world and multiple world time zones.

Leo Laporte [00:28:17]:
And that was it. It also confirms though the theory that there'll be— the announcements will be done by a video and press release, not rather than at these experiences. These experiences are hands-on experiences, not the announcements.

Andy Ihnatko [00:28:29]:
Yeah, absolutely. And that was a significant piece of news this week, uh, that when Gurman broke that story, broke that story that yeah, Siri is is not in trouble, in trouble, but it's not going— if you're thinking spring, don't think spring. It's going to be a lot later than that because they're still having trouble with it. Stock— CNBC had a report that the stock took a dive 5% that day, or was it 5 points or 5? I think it was 5%. And the Apple actually— they had, they had to reach— Apple was actually so concerned about it apparently that, yeah, they actually responded to CNBC saying we are still definitely on track to get the new Siri out by the end of the year.

Leo Laporte [00:29:03]:
Bloomberg Gloomburg.

Jason Snell [00:29:06]:
I like that.

Leo Laporte [00:29:06]:
Mark, Mark Gurman. Mark Gurman. Bummer. Yes, Mark Gurman had a tweet. Hey, I didn't say we're going to.

Jason Snell [00:29:16]:
Release it this year.

Leo Laporte [00:29:17]:
Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, he responded. Uh, so yeah, Steve Kovach, who now works at CNBC, which is cool, we know Steve well, um, said Apple has confirmed to him that it is on.

Jason Snell [00:29:28]:
Track to release new series this year. I've seen a lot of people who say, how dare they, uh, take Mark Gurman's report and then hold it against Apple in the stock market, because Apple never said it would be out this spring. Uh, and, and that's what the Apple statement is basically. Look, all we said it would come out this year, and it would, and it is. But that's why— so here's the thing. So Gurman, first off, Gurman knows that they were trying to get it out this spring and that they couldn't do it and they had to push it back. It's not a delay. Apple didn't delay it, but Gurman's insider reporting is that they hope to have it sooner and they haven't.

Jason Snell [00:30:04]:
Also, what I would say, because I've heard this from a lot of people, a lot of people, like, it's just not fair that Apple stock went down based on this Mark Gurman report. And what I would say to that is Apple stock was where it was. The way the stock market works, people, is based on the price is based on what information is known and baked into the stock. So Gurman's report that they were working on this was baked into the stock. It's It's not like everybody forgot everything except that Apple said that they'd come out with it next year, which is now this year. That's not how this works. So the Gurman report was baked in before, including a little optimism that they were close to getting this out. And then when Gurman said, actually, it's going to slide a little bit, the stock went down.

Jason Snell [00:30:47]:
That's it. There's so many misunderstandings and overreactions.

Dave Hamilton [00:30:50]:
This is how the stock market has always worked. It's just always now Mark Gurman is part of it, but there's always been—.

Leo Laporte [00:30:58]:
Bloomberg's always been a part of it. Bloomberg's always been— Bloomberg's business is— Fair. That's why they spend all that money.

Jason Snell [00:31:04]:
On a Bloomberg terminal. And people, people tend to think like, oh, I can't believe— well, here's an example. Apple, especially people who are fans of Apple, will get upset because Apple will have a big quarter. This used to happen back when Apple was not doing as well as it is right now. Apple would have a big quarter and their stock would go down and people were like, it's so unfair. They just hate Apple. And the truth is what Apple's reporting was. They had already given guidance that that was what they were going to do.

Jason Snell [00:31:30]:
That wasn't news. The news was their new guidance, which was lower than Wall Street expected, and so the stock went down. That's just how it works, is there's information and then there's new information and.

Leo Laporte [00:31:40]:
The stock changes, especially in this era of AI where a lot of stock prices are, uh, inflated by the promise of AI.

Jason Snell [00:31:47]:
A lot of speculation going on and people placing bets on But that's.

Leo Laporte [00:31:52]:
A part of AI. If Apple wanted to pump their stock, they would announce on March 4th, hey, and by the way, the best hardware for running an AI is a Mac Studio or a Mac Mini.

Jason Snell [00:32:08]:
I mean, they should say that. I'm sure if they're releasing M5 products that it's going to come up.

Leo Laporte [00:32:12]:
Let's just put it that way. Actually, the M5 I've also just seen is going to be the core of their new servers. Their privacy-forward AI servers. So they're going to say that. They're going to say, of course, this is the chip for AI. We've got neural net units built in. We've got lots of unified memory.

Andy Ihnatko [00:32:34]:
This is it. Yeah. Also, Apple also, again, the stock is always informed by whatever happened last and whatever, and the market's going to react however they reacted. Remember that Apple got a bump, uh, because after— one of the reasons why it got such a bump recently was because, uh, analysts were deciding that, you know what, we're kind of getting scared of all of the increases in capital expenditures that Google and every other AI-based company are making. We are kind— we kind of like that Apple is being a lot more reserved in terms of how much spending to build out its compute. And so they're going to benefit from that one month, and now they got hit with it on the other side.

Leo Laporte [00:33:09]:
Of it this month. So I think they're— long term, we've talked about this, there may well be a benefit to Apple not spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI models. Once again, it's just relaxing back, relaxing, saying, yeah, you know, we'll wait till it all settles out, then we'll be here.

Andy Ihnatko [00:33:23]:
Yeah, it tells the tale that when you look at Apple's machine learning, uh, page, news, news page, every single paper that they publish is all about, here's— if you thought that this type of, this technique could only be done on heavy compute, no, we figured out a way to do it nearly as well on local, on phone-based chips, on local-based chips at 8% of the, of the energy load. So they really are consistently telling the story that, no, we are not the company that will be building the transformative AI that will heal the world. We are the company that will be doing something that runs locally on your own device, does not rely on us having to spend a lot of money, does not rely on you, the consumer, having to spend a lot of money for a $20 a month subscription because of all the power that's being consumed to, uh, to do all this notebook LM stuff. We have figured out a way to do it safely, sensibly, and economically.

Leo Laporte [00:34:14]:
Well, I spent a lot of money on Bloomberg, so let me read you what Mark Gurman said that spooked the market. Uh, Apple's upgrade to the Siri virtual assistant has run into snags— I think that was the word that scared the market— snags during testing, potentially pushing back the release of several highly anticipated functions. The company's now working to spread the new capabilities out over future versions, possibly postponing at least some features until 26.5. 26.4 is supposedly next month's. 26.5, I don't know when, maybe June. Or iOS 27, which would be September with the new iPhones. Testing has uncovered problems with the software, including issues with Siri properly processing queries. That means being Siri, Siri being Siri, taking too long to handle requests, and accuracy issues prompting the latest postponements.

Leo Laporte [00:35:07]:
Gurman had reported earlier that they were dogfooding this internally at Apple. And I can imagine the fire alarms that go off when Siri hallucinates or says something wrong. And Apple, unlike these other companies, Google didn't care that their Gemini model said you should put Elmer's glue to keep your pizza together or eat rocks to get your minerals. Google said, "That's okay, we're going to full speed ahead." But you know Apple is not going to tolerate that. That. And rightly so. I think people would go, do you hear what Siri said?

Andy Ihnatko [00:35:44]:
Siri's so stupid. Apple's in such a good position. Google, the storytelling behind Google versus OpenAI is, I mean, Google had all of this stuff basically ready to go. They had all this stuff inside the labs and they were saying, but it's not working the way that a consumer would expect a tool like this to work. So we're going to we're going to keep working on it until it works a lot better and/or figuring out a limited way to create features for this where it's not going to create problems. Then OpenAI said, we are a startup, we want— we need more investment, YOLO, we're just going to release it and whatever happens. And now Google spent almost like three-quarters of its business year trying to explain to all investors and all analysts that, look, we did the original research that all of OpenAI's work is based on. We are not behind.

Andy Ihnatko [00:36:33]:
We have stuff we've built that we haven't released 'But okay, now we've got to join the YOLO club because it's starting to affect our bottom line.' So there's a degree of craziness that we are going to have to sit.

Leo Laporte [00:36:46]:
Back and witness as industry. But Apple will never join the YOLO club, will they?

Andy Ihnatko [00:36:49]:
They're not going to allow that. Because they can't afford it, no, they'll experience it. But also that's not their business. They're not, they're always, whatever they do with AI, it has to underscore either selling more phones and more iPads and more notebooks, which is going to be their main prey. Priority, or making some sort of a services package even more valuable. But mostly it's going to be about, here is how much better this iPhone is going to be this year than it was last year. Because that's— they are still, as good a job as they're doing and increasing their services revenue, they are first and foremost a company that makes hardware and.

Leo Laporte [00:37:21]:
Sells it to people. Well, we, uh, accidentally dipped into the rumors section. We will get to the other, uh, rumors in And just a little bit, I guess, you know, when it's something like this and Gurman says it, it probably has a status a little bit above rumor.

Andy Ihnatko [00:37:37]:
He didn't pull it out of his butt and he wasn't trying to make a deadline. He has a source. As Jason often points out very correctly, sometimes you have to smell that there is some storytelling going on here, that he's taking things that— facts that he knows about and trying to build a larger— trying to create the context around it for the purposes of explaining it to people. But this is not someone who simply says, it seems like a likely thing, so why don't I just report that.

Leo Laporte [00:38:01]:
That'S probably what's happening? So, right, right. All right, let's take a little timeout. You're watching MacBreak Weekly, and there is a lot of Apple news today. There's even a Vision Pro segment.

Andy Ihnatko [00:38:13]:
So John Ashley, prepare with non-baloney stories this time.

Leo Laporte [00:38:16]:
We're very proud of it. Prepare the Vision Pro theme. Dave Hamilton's here. It's great to have him from the Mac Geek Gab podcast, which is even older than us, uh, but, but it has a springy youthful step and, and it's, uh, it's a wonderful show to listen to. Also Jason Snell, who, uh, will not be with us on the day before the Apple event, March 3rd, because he's flying to New York.

Jason Snell [00:38:42]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:38:42]:
I won't be here either. I'm flying to Orlando for a security conference, uh, So I guess Micah Sargent, you're on. Micah will be here. And I should mention that starting next week, Christina Warren will be filling Alex Lindsay's seat. Christina was getting some stuff done before she could, could start on a regular basis, but she will start next Tuesday on MacBreak Weekly, also here at Andy Ihnatko. Great to have all three of you. Our show today brought to you by Bitwarden. Bitwarden, the trusted leader in passwords, passkeys, and secrets management.

Leo Laporte [00:39:23]:
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Leo Laporte [00:40:54]:
They're only— they're always kept local. Bitwarden has vault health alerts in real time. It has password coaching features for all users. That help them identify those bad passwords and take immediate action to strengthen their security. And here's another nice feature. It's very easy to move to Bitwarden. Of course, they've always supported import from all the major password managers, but now they'll do it automatically from the browser. So many people use browsers as their password manager, and that's not necessarily the right way to go.

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So if you're using Chrome or Edge or Brave or Opera or Vivaldi, good news, Bitwarden can import directly from those vaults vaults, move them into a more secure vault without that export step where, you know, you have a file, a plain text file sitting around with all your passwords in it, which always makes me nervous. It simplifies migration, reduces exposure associated with manual export deletion tips. So that's another nice feature and a really good way to get your friends and family who still don't get it about passwords to start using a good password manager. Bitwarden G2 winner 2025 says Bitwarden continues to hold strong as number one in every enterprise category. Number one. And that's not just for the most recent quarter. That's six straight quarters in a row. Bitwarden setup is easy.

Leo Laporte [00:42:12]:
As I said, you can import it easily from your existing password manager. Bitwarden's open source code. This to me is very important. I say any crypto that you use should absolutely be open source. Source so that experts can verify it works as promised, so that you can verify there are no backdoors. Bitwarden's GPL license, and it's on GitHub so you can look at it. It's also regularly audited by third-party experts. And of course, it meets all the standards— SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA.

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We thank them so much for their support. In other news, uh, one of those pesky little patent lawsuits has finally been settled. Apple has defeated Optus. These were over 5G patents. The lawsuit brought 7 years ago. There is still a case hanging over their heads in the UK, but in the United States it's over now. 6 years ago, Optus was ordered half a billion dollars, but Apple appealed and won, saying those aren't FRAND— fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory license terms. Case went back to a new trial.

Leo Laporte [00:43:45]:
Optus won again. Remember, these places. These trials are held in East Texas, always a great place if you're a patent troll.

Jason Snell [00:43:53]:
Always.

Leo Laporte [00:43:53]:
Did I say troll?

Andy Ihnatko [00:43:56]:
Uh, non-participating. It's just they got great barbecue over there. That's why lawyers are gonna have to be flying someplace. That's the only thing that— the reason.

Dave Hamilton [00:44:04]:
Why they file there.

Leo Laporte [00:44:06]:
You joke, but there's probably some truth there. It's true. Optus won again with a $300 million award. Apple appealed again, finally overturning the verdict during— due to not the, the merits of their case, but flaws in the jury process and the damages methodology. That sent it back. This is a saga to trial for a third time. A jury in the Eastern District of Texas unanimously found, and this is very rare, that Apple did not infringe any of Optus's 5 patents Optus, uh, has nothing to say. I guess they might want to appeal and keep this thing alive.

Leo Laporte [00:44:48]:
Uh, and of course, as I said, it's still, uh, alive in the UK. I actually can't comment on the merits of the patent, uh, but 4G and LTE, if they keep this going long enough, will disappear. And, uh, and then, you know, who cares? Um, Apple says we're.

Dave Hamilton [00:45:11]:
Gonna be nicer to developers. We've heard this, we've seen this movie before.

Andy Ihnatko [00:45:16]:
Yes, we have. And they said it to the EU in lieu of actually being regulated even.

Leo Laporte [00:45:21]:
More instead of doing anything. Yeah, uh, the UK's antitrust regulator said they will closely measure the effectiveness of these 4 promises. 1, In app review, Apple will make sure— and this is the UK's CMA says they must, as well as Google incidentally— make sure to review apps to be distributed on their app stores in a fair, objective, and transparent way, and not to discriminate against apps which compete with their own or give preferential treatment.

Dave Hamilton [00:45:50]:
To their own apps. Does that, does that mean that developers can say, you rejected my app, but there's 14 apps just like it in the store that you, that you keep? Are we allowed to do that yet? Because until that day comes, it's not It's not fair.

Leo Laporte [00:46:03]:
Yeah. Well, there's also the issue, for instance, there's a new keyboard going around on Android. I cannot type on the Apple keyboard.

Andy Ihnatko [00:46:10]:
All these little keyboards on the phones.

Leo Laporte [00:46:11]:
So many complaints about the Apple keyboard. So there's a new one that's big and round and it's a different layout and people are swearing by it saying this is a much better, 'cause you shouldn't be taking this old school keyboard and putting it on a phone. You should do something that's phone native. Creative, but Apple won't allow it because why? Well, because, you know, we got our own keyboard and sorry. So I think that's good. Apple also must, and Google, rank apps in their app stores in a fair, objective, and transparent way. Same 3 words. Not to discriminate.

Leo Laporte [00:46:47]:
Same terms or preferential treatment. As far as data collection goes, making sure Apple and Google safeguard the app data they gather from developers in the course of app review, not to use that data unfairly. Somebody must have said Apple stole my idea or something like that. And this is the one I really like, enabling developers to more easily request interoperable access to features and functionality within.

Andy Ihnatko [00:47:13]:
Apple's mobile operating system. Yeah, we're talking about NFC, we're talking about connectivity to watches and earbuds and stuff like that. That is one of the most serious bones of contention, one of the most legitimate bones of contention contention that Apple will allow the Apple Watch to do both magical things with connection to an iPhone and also the mundane things that you would expect any smartwatch to do when connected to a phone, but they will not allow even the mundane things to happen to a third-party watch on the basis of, oh, but messages and alerts and notifications are the most personal and private, and we're going to stand by our users and make sure that those nasty, nasty data collectors by the name of Garmin and by the name of— Our competitors, in other words. Yeah, exactly. We won't allow them to display notifications from— because we are— because we're doing God's work here.

Leo Laporte [00:48:05]:
This has always been a contention. I remember in Windows days, back when Windows was dominant, people would complain that Microsoft had all these secret APIs that only they knew about and only they could use. And if others used them, that Microsoft Microsoft would get mad and deprecate them. And people say the same thing about Apple. So, uh, by the way, Apple says, you know what, we're happy, we're happy about this. The commitments— this is the quote— and the commitments announced today allow Apple to continue advancing important privacy and security innovations for users and great opportunities for developers.

Dave Hamilton [00:48:40]:
We're happy, but only in the UK, right?

Leo Laporte [00:48:42]:
They don't have to do this in the US. Oh yeah, only in the UK.

Andy Ihnatko [00:48:46]:
Yeah. And also Let's, let's, let's be clear. When a cop pulls me over for speeding and says, do you promise to take it slow? And say, yes, no ticket, sir. I think this is a great thing too. You believe it in the moment when you're saying it. I just dodged a $150 ticket and points on my insurance. I think that the cops are great. I'm glad we're working together to find common solutions.

Leo Laporte [00:49:10]:
Yeah. Thank you very much. So your, your podcasts, Dave, are mostly audio.

Dave Hamilton [00:49:15]:
Do you do any video podcasts? We, we do video. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you do? We do. Yeah. Mac Geek Cab, we livestream it and.

Leo Laporte [00:49:22]:
You know, it's just, it's cute. You put it out as audio or.

Dave Hamilton [00:49:25]:
Do you put it out as video? It goes onto YouTube as video. We do not, we've never released it as video because up until, well, even.

Leo Laporte [00:49:34]:
Up until and including today, you know.

Dave Hamilton [00:49:35]:
Where I'm going, don't you? You would have to have two feeds like you do. And that always seems stupid to me.

Leo Laporte [00:49:41]:
Right. So, but Apple has changed things, at.

Dave Hamilton [00:49:45]:
Least with the Apple Podcasts.

Jason Snell [00:49:47]:
Ish.

Dave Hamilton [00:49:47]:
Not really. It will not help you if it— like, right?

Leo Laporte [00:49:51]:
Because what— you know, it's not going to help us because we don't host any of our shows on any of the places they've made deals with for this. This is— so, but this is the story. Apple Podcasts is launching a feature that will allow you to start a podcast in audio and then switch to video.

Jason Snell [00:50:11]:
Uh, you get both, two forms in one.

Leo Laporte [00:50:13]:
Spotify has this feature through now. Yeah, Spotify and YouTube both, uh, have that feature. I mean, I think we have that feature. Just download the video like everybody else does and listen to it until you.

Dave Hamilton [00:50:23]:
Want a picture, and then you look. But like, even your shows in the new beta, your video feeds look better, right? They, they, they, they, they can go full screen now and do all the things. Okay, so that's good. Yes, but Even though that works.

Jason Snell [00:50:42]:
Yes.

Dave Hamilton [00:50:42]:
In order to have them in the same feed, you would have to not put your video in the RSS. You would have to put your video on the server of a host that could then stream it to Apple using HLS. And it's one of the four blessed hosts, right?

Leo Laporte [00:51:00]:
You know, Acast is one of them. Amazon's Art19, Triton Digital's OmniStudio, which is iHeartMedia.

Jason Snell [00:51:09]:
It's the big guys and SiriusXM. Yeah, they will. They generally, when they announce podcasting partners, it's because they've preset a bunch of.

Leo Laporte [00:51:18]:
Partners that they've worked with up front. There's some hope that it says additional.

Jason Snell [00:51:22]:
Providers to join in the future.

Dave Hamilton [00:51:24]:
Yeah, I'm sure. My point is there doesn't need to be a provider. Leo is a great— you're like, this is a perfect example. Why wouldn't Apple let you— they're letting you do the video feed as it is and even making that better. Better, like the experience of consuming it better. They're letting you do your audio feed, obviously. Why wouldn't they let you take the enclosure tag that you use for your video feed and put it in your audio feed as an alternate enclosure and.

Jason Snell [00:51:52]:
Use both of those? The change here is that they're supporting streaming for the first time instead of it being HLS, which, which they used. They've always supported video podcasting, right? But now podcasts actually has support, not together, but the, the, I, I think the bigger news here is not the togetherness. I think it's the fact that it's using HLS to stream. So when you switch over to video, it's going to use a modern streaming format invented by Apple to support this stuff. Um, and, and so I think that's great. I, I suspect now that it's been announced and part of Dev Beta 1 that there are probably some specs out there. I don't think this is Apple playing keep away. I think there's probably a spec for what you need to have offered on an HLS server and a spec for what you need to put in your RSS to indicate that the video feed is available at a streaming server and that anybody can support this.

Jason Snell [00:52:41]:
I, I will point out that Spotify is hosting the video just like the audio. Spotify hosts the video themselves, whereas Apple is continuing its tradition of saying, we don't actually want to pay to host your media, you do that and then.

Leo Laporte [00:52:54]:
Talk to us later. Yeah, we are on Spotify Video, by the way. I don't think we get a lot of downloads, but we We do have it on Spotify Video, but normally a video comes from Cashfly, our CDN. And I guess, I mean, it would be nice if, I don't know. Of course, as soon as this press release came out yesterday, I presented it to our engineering team and they said, well, sure.

Dave Hamilton [00:53:18]:
Don't know yet because there's not really any details. There are some details and you're right, Jason, they're very open with the spec and how it all works. Works, there's nothing as they've announced thus far, there's nothing that you add to your RSS. Your hosting company, once they have all this infrastructure in place, they submit a file per episode to Apple to say, we are the official host of that episode that you're seeing in this RSS feed. And then Apple on the backend marries the two together.

Leo Laporte [00:53:51]:
What happens if somebody uses Pocket Casts though? Do you, I mean, you have to use Apple Podcasts.

Dave Hamilton [00:53:55]:
Cast for this, right? In order for this experience. But Pocket Casts— and I don't know if they do or not, but in theory they could— and already supporting the alt— well, they could be supporting the alternate enclosure tag, which does the same thing, but instead of having to have a special host, you could have your video come from Cashfly with the alternate enclosure tag.

Leo Laporte [00:54:13]:
You do a lot of video, Jason. Are you, are you gonna adopt this?

Jason Snell [00:54:18]:
You're gonna do it? I have to look into it. We, for Upgrade, we do a YouTube version of the show, and, and we, we tried to offer that on Spotify and we pulled it out. And the reason is, and I imagine this will be true of Apple as well, that there is an assumption that your audio and video versions are identical. And so you can toggle between them and just turn the video on and off. And that's actually not true with our workflow. We have an audio editor who makes a really, really nice audio version that we, we prefer. And then our video version is, you know, we cut the cutout parts and all of that, but our video editor is not, it's not the same person and they're not making the same edits and they're not doing a detailed audio edit because it would cost a lot more money to do that for a relatively small audience. And this premise at Spotify, and I assume at Apple, is that your audio and video versions are the same, which would require us not just to flip a switch, but to completely change our post-production.

Jason Snell [00:55:18]:
And, and you basically need somebody who's capable of using a video editor to do audio editing, which is I know people like that.

Leo Laporte [00:55:27]:
You can— it can be done. We did it. It was hard. Yeah, our editors went kicking and screaming, right, John Ashley? You edit now, basically edit the video.

Dave Hamilton [00:55:36]:
And then export an audio track. Uh, yeah, we do everything.

Leo Laporte [00:55:39]:
I just— I edit. Yeah, you do it all in Premiere, and, and, and the audio track, like.

Jason Snell [00:55:46]:
Would be the same. Yep. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:55:47]:
So we don't do that.

Jason Snell [00:55:48]:
So that, that's the whole thing for us is the idea that, that they they, they, I think a lot of this is premised on the idea that all the audio version of your podcast is, is the video, is the audio track from the video version, which I think says something about how podcasting has been going lately, that everybody's sort of starting to think that the video version is, is, uh, is primary and that the audio version is just video with the picture turned off. And I actually don't believe that, um, and don't agree with that. And so, I mean, we'll see, I may be, uh, forced to change my opinion, but, um, it's the same reason why why I don't, I don't record podcasts where I make, uh, reference to things that are on screen, because I know that a large percentage of the people cannot see what is on the screen.

Dave Hamilton [00:56:33]:
So it's a bad idea. And even from like an, from an audio standpoint, listeners, consumers of the, of the, of the content, content consumers are far more tolerant with audio glitches or, or or odd pauses or any of those things that audio listeners completely get thrown off by, you're more tolerant of that when you can see what's happening on the video, right? Like the experience changes and therefore, we had to pull our video off of Spotify because the audio mix on our video is not the same, even though it's like, even if we don't have any edits or cuts, the blend of the audio on the video version is different than it is on the well-produced audio version. But what Spotify currently anyway does is as soon as you upload the video version, the audio from that is your audio. The audio in your RSS feed— that's where the audio comes from. Yeah, the audio in your RSS feed is ignored the moment you upload a video to Spotify.

Leo Laporte [00:57:39]:
It's just— so Darren has posted, is looking at the tech specs. So there are some tech specs. Yeah. And Apple says To use the new HLS HTTP live streaming capabilities— by the way, Apple started doing this with their, um, with their video, you know, their event streams, and that's why you had— for initially you had to watch them in Safari because the browser had to support this weirdo format. To use new HLS capabilities, you can't simply drop a video file onto your own web server and link an RSS feed. Instead, you must generate a unique API key within your Apple Podcasts Connect account and provide it to an approved hosting partner. The host then manages the complex HLS file chunking and playlist generation, sending that data directly to Apple via the API. So this is very proprietary.

Leo Laporte [00:58:29]:
That's a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. You know, to me, it's really important that podcasting be RSS. And agree, right? Because that's an open format. You can't be spied on. You can't— I mean, no company owns phones, it just, it works. But things are changing in the podcast universe.

Dave Hamilton [00:58:55]:
For instance, many podcasts, including ours, have direct ad insertion. That you can do with HLS. That's one of the things Apple made.

Leo Laporte [00:59:02]:
A big deal about. Yeah, and I noticed that all of these companies do direct ad insertion, right?

Jason Snell [00:59:09]:
Yeah, and that's what this is all about. Percentage of it.

Andy Ihnatko [00:59:12]:
Apple will actually skim some money off.

Jason Snell [00:59:14]:
The top of your— they will— of.

Dave Hamilton [00:59:17]:
Your, uh, dynamically inserted ads.

Jason Snell [00:59:19]:
Yeah.

Dave Hamilton [00:59:19]:
What about your baked-in ads?

Jason Snell [00:59:20]:
Are they going to try and come after that? Can't get that. Well, I mean, they are, but they are taking a piece of the, of.

Dave Hamilton [00:59:27]:
The pie here from the DAI for the video. So that's part of the deal with.

Leo Laporte [00:59:33]:
The 4 chosen companies is they've given.

Dave Hamilton [00:59:35]:
Up— they've given up ad agencies. Yeah, well, they are, but they've given Instead of just giving, you know, choosing their chunk of the pie and then giving the rest of the podcaster, they take their chunk of the pie, they.

Leo Laporte [00:59:44]:
Give some to Apple and the rest of the pod— I realize this is very inside baseball, and for those of you who listen to this show are probably— I mean, here we have 3.

Andy Ihnatko [00:59:52]:
3 podcasters, you know, kind of go.

Leo Laporte [00:59:53]:
What are we going to do about this? Because there's a lot of consternation going on in the podcast universe. We, in order to do DAI there, we don't, we don't have a provider that could do it in video. So, uh, the direct ad insertion is always for audio only. And in order to do that, we have we have to put the vid— the audio on a hosting company that does that.

Dave Hamilton [01:00:11]:
In our same kind of thing as your video with, with these HLS.

Leo Laporte [01:00:16]:
I mean, it's— yeah, part of it. It'd be nice if the world supported it, I guess. I don't know. I wish we didn't have to do any of this. That's why I always tell people, join the club so we could just stick with RSS. We don't have to do direct ad insertion or any of that stuff. But, uh, unfortunately, the Club, as wonderful as it is, doesn't, doesn't, uh, support.

Dave Hamilton [01:00:37]:
Us sufficiently to do it.

Leo Laporte [01:00:38]:
Not yet. You'll get— it'll happen. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. You— how is it going for you? You're doing that, right?

Dave Hamilton [01:00:44]:
I know Jason, you're doing that. Yeah. I would say our, our revenue— I mean, at different points of the year, obviously, that, you know, things move around, but on the whole, when you zoom.

Leo Laporte [01:00:53]:
Out, it's about, I would say, 40% is our premium. And that's about 60% of our operating costs. So you're close. Yeah, yeah, it was 25%, and the.

Dave Hamilton [01:01:02]:
Only reason it's a third is because ads dropping. Because ads dropped. Well, that's the thing. That's why I say you got to zoom out. Yeah, some months the premium is the only revenue.

Leo Laporte [01:01:12]:
That's right. Yeah, or at least the primary. Yeah. Um, and I guess, Jason, kind of in a way, uh, with Six Colors, you've kind of always been in that boat a little bit, that the premium.

Jason Snell [01:01:22]:
Subscriptions are very important, I would imagine. Yeah, I mean, we, we started our membership for Six Colors and Incomparable in sort a year after I went off on my own. And so that's always been there. And then, and, uh, leaned into that and upgrade as well. And it's always— it's a— I think it's a really healthy way to run a media business these days, is that you've got some stuff that you give away for free, uh, supported by advertising. And then for the people who really care, they can get, uh, they can pay you directly, and you've got that relationship with your— yes, your core audience.

Leo Laporte [01:01:50]:
And yeah, I think it works pretty well. Uh, and so that's why, kids, you should support your favorite shows, your favorite websites, sites. Uh, I know the internet used to.

Dave Hamilton [01:02:00]:
Be free, but never— it was never free.

Leo Laporte [01:02:05]:
No, we, we still trade attention for, for content. Yeah. And we're, you know, all these guys, uh, and gals, we're all busting our humps to give you content you enjoy, uh, content we enjoy doing. You know, we're committed to it, uh, we believe in it. And, uh, if you, if you do, then you should support it.

Dave Hamilton [01:02:21]:
And I'm not just talking about me.

Leo Laporte [01:02:24]:
I'm talking about everybody. Preach on, man. Yeah, I do it for open source software too. You know, I, I think it's really important that we remember that this stuff isn't really free. And if you want good stuff, ultimately you got to pay for it. Uh, Apple has updated its own iOS usage figures. I think this is maybe the first.

Jason Snell [01:02:44]:
Time they've done this.

Leo Laporte [01:02:45]:
Is it? They do it every year.

Jason Snell [01:02:46]:
Oh, they do it every year? Every year about this time. It's a little bit later. The numbers are very similar. Similar how many people have updated to, to iOS 26. Um, but it is a few weeks later, so I think I would, I would probably say that adoption is, um, slightly, very, very slightly less than it's been in the past. But people who are like, oh, nobody's updated to, to iOS 26, that's not true. No, in part that's not true because Apple literally has a big button. Well, okay, it's not literally a button.

Jason Snell [01:03:14]:
Apple controls when the rollouts go out. And so you can see, if you talk to any app developer who's measuring this, you can see like there's wave, and it's like, that's the first wave, and then there's another wave. And Apple controls more and more iPhone users getting the— not mandatory, but the, you know, I'm going to do an update update that's available. They will nudge you from day one. You can go and say, I want this update, but then like a month later, they'll take 20% of their user base and they'll, they'll say, you, you should update, and then another 20%, and then another 20%. So they control— this is a figure that they they can, they can boast about, but also it's indicative of the system they've built that allows them to control updates so that these, you know.

Leo Laporte [01:03:55]:
People— it's very hard to stay behind. 74% of all new devices, new iPhones, use iOS 26. But when you include older phones, phones older than 4 years old, that number.

Jason Snell [01:04:08]:
Goes down to 66%. Right. Some of— a lot of them can't run it. They can't, right? So that goes down. But it's pretty good. App developers care about this, right? Because app developers like to get get off of old OSes onto current OSes as quickly as possible. And Apple has made that a focus of theirs. It has security implications as well.

Jason Snell [01:04:25]:
I know that you bring up all these security updates that Apple does. This is one of those implications is even, even if you're on the latest version of the previous OS, you know, you're not as secure as you are on 26 because 26 has got a whole bunch of things that they did fundamentally to make it better and more secure than the last one.

Leo Laporte [01:04:44]:
So, so that's, you know, that's part of the story. You know who's happy to see these numbers? Tesla. That was the headline of Gurman's Power On newsletter this week. Tesla CarPlay held back by need for wider adoption of Apple's iOS.

Jason Snell [01:05:00]:
So wider than 74%, really? Actually, one of my Six Colors listeners pointed out about this. So basically they want to do CarPlay.

Leo Laporte [01:05:06]:
For Tesla and what they— They have never done that, by the way.

Jason Snell [01:05:09]:
They've never done Android Auto, never had CarPlay. But Tesla's having trouble selling cars right now and this is a mode motivator. Um, CarPlay is a motivator for a lot of people buying brand new cars.

Leo Laporte [01:05:18]:
So they're like, I will not buy.

Jason Snell [01:05:20]:
A car that doesn't have CarPlay. Exactly. So, so they're gonna do it. They, they caved on that. But what they found was— and Gurman mentions this, and then I, uh, one of my readers on Six Colors, um, who has an aftermarket, um, thing that hacks your Tesla screen to show CarPlay, um, reported this as well— that, um, when you're in self-driving You end up in a very weird situation where the Apple Map is saying you're going this way and the self-driving is saying it's going that way. And it's very weird. And so Tesla went to Apple and said, can we have a modification to Apple Maps that allows these two things to stay in sync because they're very disconcerting to the user? And Apple said yes. And they put it in an update.

Jason Snell [01:06:05]:
It's unclear whether it was in 26.3 or in one of of the, the tertiary updates to 26.2, but an update that solved this problem. And that what Gurman says is Tesla was basically waiting for them to solve that problem and waiting for that to push out so that enough users had it that they didn't say, hey, we— you've got CarPlay, but you have to wait for an update. But instead can be, you have CarPlay and you probably already don't need to do anything. So there's really just— first off, it means this is totally happening because you do not ask Apple to make OS.

Dave Hamilton [01:06:36]:
Modifications for a thing that you're thinking about doing. It's no, Apple doesn't do them.

Jason Snell [01:06:41]:
There's a commitment that's been legally— legal commitment. Probably. Yes. There is a legal commitment here. You're right, Dave. They're not going to do this extra work without that. And, and you can see why Tesla's kind of up against it in terms of, um, of sales numbers. So they want to do it.

Jason Snell [01:06:53]:
Um, so now it's just a matter of when Tesla pulls the trigger, it sounds like, because with, um, 26.3 out, door, it sounds like, you know, basically most iPhones that are sort of whatever, 70-odd percent of iPhones are probably able to support this feature without an update. And it's not that big a deal, right? I feel like the existence of the update on lots of phones isn't as important as the fact that there needs to be an update available that gets you this feature. Because you, you never want to launch a feature and say, hey, great, great news, we have a new feature, you can't use it yet, wait for Apple Apple, but according to Gurman, it's out now, the version that was necessary. So I would not be surprised if there wasn't a Tesla software update in the next month, maybe, to support this.

Leo Laporte [01:07:34]:
Because it sounds like it's a done deal. So Tesla discovered— this is from Gurman— the compatibility, and it was specifically really.

Jason Snell [01:07:46]:
Between Apple Maps and the in-house mapping software. Because they're using— I think Tesla uses Google Maps API, right? And they've got some customization and So they, yeah, they would fall out of sync. And like my, my reader at Six Colors said, it was, it is disconcerting to have that moment. Now we should say all the usual disclaimers apply. This is not CarPlay Ultra. This is CarPlay in a window. So you've got the sort of like Tesla's got its app interface. This will presumably be an app, app with air quotes called CarPlay that you can open and it will be the CarPlay window.

Jason Snell [01:08:18]:
And then there's also other information available on that screen. Screen. But, um, this was the killer, was they didn't like the fact that you would sometimes have navigation that didn't stay in sync.

Leo Laporte [01:08:30]:
And so, um, so Apple did the necessary changes. Tesla asked Apple, Mark says, to make engineering changes to Maps. Uh, and now, you know, with iOS 26, uh, you'll have the updated Maps. So as soon as, you know, well, it's 74% of new phone users. I figure you probably have a newer phone if you have a Tesla.

Jason Snell [01:08:50]:
Maybe I don't know.

Dave Hamilton [01:08:51]:
Uh, it seems like that's— you spent.

Jason Snell [01:08:52]:
All your money on the Tesla.

Leo Laporte [01:08:54]:
I don't know.

Jason Snell [01:08:55]:
Yeah, it seems like— maybe you're broke. Yeah, I mean, if you— there's a.

Leo Laporte [01:08:57]:
Lot of phones that can run— if.

Dave Hamilton [01:08:59]:
You have full self-driving, you're not broke.

Jason Snell [01:09:02]:
You're not paying for gas anymore. You're not broke. You know, Apple is not afraid, and Tesla I'm sure is not afraid to say, look, if you're using a 6-year-old phone or whatever and it doesn't run 26, you don't get CarPlay.

Leo Laporte [01:09:14]:
You don't get CarPlay. Yeah. So yeah, all right, you're watching MacBreak Weekly. Jason Snell from SixColors.com, uh, Andy Ihnatko from the library, and Mr. Dave MacGeekGab Podcast Hamilton. It's good to see all three of you. Thank you for being here. Uh, I did not get bit by this, but I guess Apple, uh, last week had an outage— Find My and iCloud outage on Tuesday evening.

Dave Hamilton [01:09:43]:
Did any of you get bit by that? Not me. I didn't.

Leo Laporte [01:09:46]:
If I did, I didn't notice it. Yeah, this is the— you know what, everybody's having outages. For GitHub was up and down all week.

Dave Hamilton [01:09:54]:
I mean, it's— everybody seems to be having— well, I mean, the internet was built for resilience, right? For data, so that it could route around nuclear disasters, right? If you needed to get data from New York to San Francisco and Chicago had a nuclear bomb, you go through Dallas, right? That's how the IP part of TCP/IP works, right? But what has, and it does work. Nothing about that has changed. What has changed is instead of decentralizing everything and all our resources, we have centralized all our resources.

Leo Laporte [01:10:27]:
Everything's on AWS.

Dave Hamilton [01:10:27]:
Everything's on the cloud now. Everything's here, everything's there. So it's like cloud, when Cloudflare went.

Leo Laporte [01:10:32]:
Down, that was like, oh my gosh. Huge.

Dave Hamilton [01:10:34]:
In fact, Cloudflare had problems again this week.

Leo Laporte [01:10:37]:
Yeah, well, of course, like, there's infrastructure issues. And then you suddenly realize, wait a.

Dave Hamilton [01:10:43]:
Minute, Down Detector runs on Cloudflare?

Leo Laporte [01:10:44]:
It's got to run somewhere.

Dave Hamilton [01:10:45]:
How are we going to know Cloudflare's down? I mean, Cloudflare proxies and, and keeps the, like, secure and keeps fast, I don't know what, half of the internet, 60%. I mean, it's a lot. And it's— I, I love them for doing what they do.

Leo Laporte [01:11:02]:
I think it's great. We're just all interdependent now. And yes, I guess that's, that's the.

Dave Hamilton [01:11:06]:
Way it is in the world, you know. I mean, we've chosen this path, we.

Leo Laporte [01:11:11]:
Just didn't explicitly say this outcome was part of it. So Creator Studio is out. All right, show of hands, how many.

Andy Ihnatko [01:11:22]:
People bought.

Leo Laporte [01:11:24]:
A subscription?

Jason Snell [01:11:26]:
Not me. None of you? Well, okay, I already own Logic and Final Cut on the Mac, and so I would need need a particular use case on the iPad really to make.

Leo Laporte [01:11:35]:
It even remotely worth it.

Dave Hamilton [01:11:36]:
You're not a big Pages, Keynote, Numbers guy?

Jason Snell [01:11:38]:
Well, those come with it. Like, those are free. It's free with an upsell, right? Yeah, I don't care. I mean, I, I am a big, uh, Numbers guy, and I don't need their clip art. Like, I, I just don't need their clip art. So no, I— if I, if I was shooting a multi-camera thing and needed Final Cut on the iPad, I would subscribe for a month for that, and then I would probably cancel. But I don't think I'm gonna subscribe because, because they have allowed people who already had those apps on the Mac.

Dave Hamilton [01:12:06]:
To just keep using them for now. Like, I, I, I think the day will come when people like you and me will be, oh, it's time to ante up. Okay, fine, whatever. Of course, you know, and, and the price, the price is fair. I, you know, if I needed Final Cut— I don't have Final Cut, I use DaVinci Resolve— and I thought, oh, well, maybe this is the thing to get Final Cut, and I mentioned it on Mac Geek Out where we do a lot of Q&A, right? Like, that's, that's what we do on that show. And I did not realize I was asking a question. And I got so much email that was like, if you are good with DaVinci Resolve, do not switch to Final Cut. You will hate it.

Dave Hamilton [01:12:39]:
It's terrible. Like, all right, well, save some money.

Leo Laporte [01:12:40]:
For a little while. So there you go. Well, something you should know if you were thinking about it, one of the things Apple offers with this subscription is generative AI features. Apple says, quote, at a minimum— and I'm reading from Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica— users will be able to generate 50 images, 50 presentations of between 8 and 10 slides each, and presenter keynotes and keynote presenter notes for 700 slides. More usage may be possible, but this depends on the complexity of the queries and server availability and network availability. Well, Stephen Trouton-Smith Troughton-Smith says, after creating an entire app with OpenAI's Codex, the entire app used 7% of my weekly Codex usage limit. Compared that to a single awful slideshow in Keynote using 47% of my monthly Apple Creator Studio usage limit.

Dave Hamilton [01:13:37]:
There's some concern that the limits are too low. Well, but you know, Stephen Troughton-Smith is— and I say this with love and.

Leo Laporte [01:13:46]:
And, and camaraderie is a nerd, right?

Dave Hamilton [01:13:48]:
He's a power user, man. Correct. He knows how to use OpenAI Codex to do this stuff. Apple makes it very easy and integrates it into the software, and you— we pay for that privilege every time we buy a Mac, every time we buy an iPhone.

Jason Snell [01:14:03]:
Like, this is part and parcel of the Apple experience. That said, you know, if it turns out that Apple has set these restrictions too low and that everybody who's a subscriber tries to do something in Keynote and realizes that they can do one thing and then, or two things a month, and then they're out. Uh, and that's a frustrating experience. I would imagine they'll change the terms, uh, at some point. They'll just revise it in some way because I, I think they don't know how people are going to use this. In fact, what I would wager is that they're going to be able to raise those limits because they're going to discover that 95% of the people who subscribe don't use them. Yeah. And so they're not going to worry about, because remember, they're paying OpenAI essentially.

Leo Laporte [01:14:44]:
For that, uh, for all those queries. Dave, you use, uh, Claude Codex, right?

Dave Hamilton [01:14:49]:
Or Claude Cowork, rather, right?

Leo Laporte [01:14:50]:
I have used Claude Cowork, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can it make Keynote slideshows?

Dave Hamilton [01:14:55]:
Yes, it can, right? Uh, you know, I've never tried that, but I don't see why it couldn't.

Leo Laporte [01:15:00]:
Although I could come up with reasons why most people just make PowerPoint.

Dave Hamilton [01:15:05]:
I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, exactly. PowerPoint. But I mean, it— but probably Probably, let's say it does, it's probably not as smooth an experience as using Keynote to do it. But to your point, Jason, about Apple raising the limits, I was having a conversation with someone at one of the AI companies whose names we know that just wants to remain on background, saying that they are constantly internally adjusting their limits because they know they want to give people that user experience, right?

Jason Snell [01:15:37]:
Right?

Dave Hamilton [01:15:37]:
And, and so I guarantee you, if one of them is doing that, all of them is doing that, right? And so Apple is also going to be doing that. And Apple, candidly, is pretty darn good at the customer experience. But, you know, complain and kvetch as we might about little nitpicky things, like, they're really, really good at delivering a smooth experience to customers. And so my guess is that these.

Leo Laporte [01:16:02]:
Things will go away very quickly. All right, uh, let's cover some other rumors. Uh, they're talking about the new C2 chip, which presumably will be in the next, uh, iPhone. Um, Apple is rumored to have a next-generation C2 chip. This is from 9to5Mac. 3 advantages the new modem will bring: improved battery efficiency, privacy. I don't know how people would know this, but I can't— uh, it will have this new feature which I really like. Uh, Apple has it in the 26.3, limit precise location, which means that cellular networks cannot really triangulate in on your location.

Dave Hamilton [01:16:50]:
That's— lately people are very sensitive, but that only— that only works on on devices that have the C2 chip already, right?

Leo Laporte [01:16:58]:
Right. The 16E. Currently only the Air, the 16E. Yeah, exactly. And the iPad Pro with M5 support that. I wonder, you know, this will be interesting to see if the 17E does.

Dave Hamilton [01:17:11]:
I would bet it, well, I don't know. I mean, the chip's been around, they just haven't had enough of them to put in there.

Leo Laporte [01:17:16]:
That's why it's not in the 17s. It's about production, I guess that makes sense. It's about production, yeah. And then the thing probably you most care about is better performance when the signal is weak in data particularly. Apple told Reuters if an iPhone encounters congested data networks, the phone's processor could signal to the modem which traffic is the most time sensitive and put it ahead of the other data transfers.

Jason Snell [01:17:41]:
I guess that's QoS. So that's interesting. Yeah, and Apple's built their own system for their own, you know, their own operating system works with their own chips and that's the, That's the standard thing. I feel like, you know, we all expected there to be more horror stories about the C1 and the C1X that haven't happened. Um, and so I, I think, I think that's the number one reason they didn't put it in all the phones is like, what if there's a problem? Let's put it in the low-end phone and we'll put it in an iPad.

Leo Laporte [01:18:06]:
And we'll see what happens.

Jason Snell [01:18:06]:
And the answer is, and it's been great. It's fine. It's absolutely fine. I have a, I have an M5 iPad Pro and it's, you know, so it's got the C1X in it and it's, it's great. It's just not a, it's not an issue. I think, uh, Um, I'm surprised because I thought that there would be more issues just because it's so complex and Apple is trying to roll in here with its first product. I think the— what this suggests to me is that Apple did spend a lot of time doing a lot of.

Andy Ihnatko [01:18:32]:
Testing, uh, before they put this in a product. Yeah. And how do we feel about rumors about this, the C2 chip being, uh, when the other side of the box labeled big, big star features being direct-to-satellite connectivity activity. Like, we already have— like, I'm trying to figure out— like, it's— I see this, I see these kind of, kind of features labeled really, really nicely for what if you're outside of normal connectivity.

Leo Laporte [01:18:57]:
Like, it feels like to me that you probably don't spend a lot of time hiking in the wilderness.

Andy Ihnatko [01:19:02]:
I might be wrong on that. Yeah, but most of— but people, if you are spending time hiking in the wilderness, you should probably have a dedicated device that doesn't just simply— I'm gonna rely on my phone. It's like, I'm going to rely— I'm going to have a transponder that that.

Jason Snell [01:19:14]:
Taps directly into existing networks. Right. Spot Watchers. I think it's— I feel like— so there's already— T-Mobile has done a deal with Starlink and they're using some 5G frequencies. I think what this is referring to is the fact that there are some frequencies that can be used for satellite 5G constellations that if you added support for those frequencies in your modem chip, then those carriers that have those partners would then be able to give you that. Now obviously this is only ever happening when you're not within a range of an actual cell tower for that carrier. But, but I, I think that is one of the trends. And so that's how I read that report, is that it really is probably more just about adding some frequency support for, um, for 5G.

Leo Laporte [01:19:59]:
By satellite from different providers. Okay. Yeah, that— yeah. Uh, how about this? Uh, Mark Gurman brought it up, uh, but the latest, uh, from Apple Insider is that Apple is still looking at a clamshell folding phone. We know we're all— we're talking about.

Jason Snell [01:20:14]:
The folding phone that will open up to an iPad.

Leo Laporte [01:20:18]:
Audi.

Dave Hamilton [01:20:18]:
Audi.

Jason Snell [01:20:18]:
That's an Audi.

Leo Laporte [01:20:18]:
This is, this is an innie. Is this an innie?

Jason Snell [01:20:20]:
Is that what you call this? Okay. I do. I, I'm not qualified to call it.

Leo Laporte [01:20:25]:
Anything, but I call it an innie. Innie and Audi. I've had both. I've had innies and Audis, and I'm not talking belly buttons here. I'm talking about— I have had the Galaxy Fold. This is the Fold. Fold, and then I have also had.

Jason Snell [01:20:37]:
The Flip, which is the— that's the innie. It's an innie. Yeah, small, like a, like a, like.

Leo Laporte [01:20:43]:
A, like those old flip phones of yours, right? And I liked— I thought I was gonna really like the Flip because it's, uh, pocket handkerchief size, right? It's a small— it's purse-sized. So, and then you get a normal phone when you open it up. Um, but then now I'm kind of coming around, especially with the, uh, the, the new Fold, uh, is so thin. That it's really like a regular phone in your pocket. And then when it opens up, it's like a little bit like an iPad or something.

Dave Hamilton [01:21:09]:
And I'm kind of coming around to that being— Andy, maybe that's your iPad mini right there. Maybe that this is the— we'll never.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:16]:
See another iPad mini again. Maybe this is it. What I like about the iPad mini is that it'll run you like $500.

Jason Snell [01:21:22]:
And not like $2,000.

Leo Laporte [01:21:23]:
Herman says there's one coming. There's got to be a mini.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:26]:
No, I think that's.

Leo Laporte [01:21:30]:
Apple, right?

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:31]:
Yeah, Apple. I think that a, a fold— a folding phone of the kind where it folds out to a standard size smartphone, and when it's folded up, it's a) more compact and b) presents you with an almost like an Apple Watch widget interface for like the outside screen. I think that's right up Apple's alley. They can design the hell out of it, make it as attractive as possible. Also, they can probably manufacture it as something closer to the price point of a, of a standard iPhone, or even a— even if they have to go to level of a Pro, The thing is, like, a $2,000 phone is rarefied air. I don't think anybody who doesn't— anybody who can't trade in a phone for at least $800 worth of credit, that is going to be a big, big hill for them to climb. And so I would love the idea for Apple to prove what they can do with a passport-sized folding phone, again, a standard-ish looking outer screen that unfolds into something with a little bit more more oomph when it comes to productivity, creating stuff, watching videos, whatever. But I think that the thing— I think that the, the real, the real sweet spot for Apple is going to be, again, make something that when you just have it sitting on your dresser, it looks like a beautiful, like, Cartier compact or cigarette case from the 1930s or 1940s.

Andy Ihnatko [01:22:45]:
That's the sort of stuff that will get people saying, or I could spend an extra $180 and still have, like.

Leo Laporte [01:22:51]:
A smartphone smartphone, but boy, would that look nice. I think it's aesthetically pleasing. I agree with you. And I think there's another reason you might— well, Apple might want to be looking at this. If you're looking at a— some sort of agentic AI device, whether it's glasses, AirPods, a pendant, and you think that you need the computing power of a phone, if you can make this phone smaller, that kind of makes a better companion. Because, you know, you don't want to take it out of your pocket. You're not going to look at it that often.

Dave Hamilton [01:23:19]:
It's just really a little computer you're carrying. And if the interface becomes more about me telling it what to do than me having to see what— where I.

Leo Laporte [01:23:29]:
Depoint, then the, the innie makes more sense. Yes.

Jason Snell [01:23:33]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:23:33]:
That's what I'm thinking. So maybe smart. Yeah. Maybe that's, uh, maybe we'll see. We'll see. I don't think they're going to announce it in March.

Jason Snell [01:23:40]:
I mean, the beauty is not every iPhone needs to be for everybody. And so they can make different shapes and they've got room to do that if they want to. And I'm sure there are people with small pockets or no pockets who would be very interested in a phone that can fold up a little bit smaller, even if it does mean that it's a bit thicker when you do so. So, and, and you get the fun stuff like having a little screen on the outside that gives you some information.

Leo Laporte [01:24:02]:
And like, there's lots of cool stuff about that.

Dave Hamilton [01:24:06]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:24:06]:
It could be a little iPod, the iPod Flip, the iPod Flip. That's what, that's what they're talking about. Dan's, Dan's talking about that on, on.

Andy Ihnatko [01:24:14]:
YouTube or YouTube chat. They're not allowed to call anything an iPod unless it has a headphone jack.

Leo Laporte [01:24:20]:
I'm sorry. I'm a hardliner on that. Yeah, you're probably right. Uh, all right, let me think. Um, it's dangerous. Yeah, I know, it's risky. We got, we got an update, uh, 26.3. We got 26.4 just around the corner.

Leo Laporte [01:24:37]:
Is it too soon to talk about iOS 27, which will be out in the fall? Mark Gurman's talking about it. He's calling it the RAVE update. That's the code name, he says, inside Apple. R-A-V-E. And he's implying that it's kind of a Snow Leopard. It's a cleanup. And maybe there'll be some benefits like better battery life, but it really would be more about efficiency improvements, bug fixes.

Dave Hamilton [01:25:07]:
A snappier, more responsive OS, says Mark Gurman. That makes me excited about macOS 27.

Leo Laporte [01:25:13]:
Assuming all of this is true. Oh yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:14]:
I guess they do the same thing. Yeah, let's hope. There have been a lot of people complaining about fit and function of apps and UIs. Like, all these things have been really, really stacking up. I don't know whether this is a concerted effort, whether this is just the time, or whether it's winter and people are really, really bored and things that have been annoying them a little bit for a while are now it's time to get up. But I've seen so much traffic. I've seen— I've never seen so many concerted complaints about, uh, the iOS keyboard, so many complaints about, uh, well, okay, yes, yes, I— yes, the, the— yes, the new macOS and how it does.

Jason Snell [01:25:49]:
Windows layouts and how it, uh, it's—.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:50]:
It, it can't lay— it can't lay things out properly without making certain user face elements obscured and other things. Apple Music is getting a lot of flack. Apple did sort of a flex saying, hey, well, gee, Spotify raises prices, we don't raise our prices. And that prompted a lot of people say, yeah, that's because your app stinks. I, I stopped using Apple Music so many times. And I don't know how much this is like a, a scarlet letter on Apple's chest or anything like like that. But there seems to be a lot of, uh, I don't know, a lot of motivation for a lot of people to suddenly complain about basic functions and basic, you know, the panel gap, so to speak, in Apple software. And how we were great, we keep working on AI, we think you're doing— that's an important thing, we're really proud about the folding phone, but could you please just make sure that like the, the, the keyboard actually works properly, it's not slow, it doesn't like seem bogged down? And I don't feel as though when I use an Android phone and use— or when I Gboard.

Andy Ihnatko [01:26:47]:
I don't feel like, why is this not everything that Apple gives me for.

Dave Hamilton [01:26:51]:
Free with my phone? Yeah, we're seeing a lot of that at Mac Geek Out because we get questions every week. Like, that's the content of the show. And it more— there is a greater percentage right now of complaints— complaints may be the wrong word, but just questions about, hey, like, why is this slow? How do I troubleshoot this? How do I diagnose this? That point to operating system stuff versus third-party things that somebody's done or whatever the sort of norm is. And it absolutely, we've been doing this show too long, but it reminds me of the Leopard and Snow Leopard days. Like it really does feel like that in terms of, in our little bubble of seeing all the questions come in. It's like, no, this is heating up. I don't think you're, I agree with your anecdotal assessment.

Leo Laporte [01:27:41]:
Andy. So yeah, well, one of those issues is, uh, and I don't— you're gonna have to tell me how this works. I haven't come across.

Andy Ihnatko [01:27:53]:
This.

Leo Laporte [01:27:54]:
Is the resizing windows on Tahoe, um, that was supposed to be fixed with 26.3, right? Window resizes now follow corner radius instead of using square regions.

Jason Snell [01:28:04]:
What are round corners? But But they didn't, but they didn't. So this is the story. Yeah. And the last beta they thought, oh, well, oh no, no, no, you're not supposed to be able to go outside the corner in order to resize a window. Um, and so they, they fixed it and then, uh, they, they unfixed it and they changed the note from we fixed it to we're aware of this issue because the issue was that they changed the corner radius and it got, it was hard to resize windows on Tahoe. And it really was when I read this story, I was like, that's why it's happening. But, but they pointed out that you could actually— if you put your mouse just outside the corner, you can resize it from this invisible place. And it seems like somebody at Apple was like, oh, that is a mistake, we should take that away so it's impossible to resize these windows.

Jason Snell [01:28:49]:
And then somebody was like, no, no, that's not what I meant. But it was too late, so they just sort of like reverted it and said, we're aware of this issue, and that presumably in a new beta they will figure it out. Because it is— you've got to be able to grab that. The grab handle is so pixels now that, that I can't tell you how many times I've been like, click, click.

Dave Hamilton [01:29:08]:
Click, click, try to do it over remote access.

Andy Ihnatko [01:29:12]:
Like, you know, forget it. Forget it. Labcat Software had a blog post about this basically showing the pro— the original problem where one of the, one of the problems he was documenting was the bottom, the horizontal scroller at the bottom of the window is actually obscuring the handles for resizing columns. I say, oh great, so they fixed it. Yeah, now the bottom— not the bottom scroller obscures like the bottom content in the, in the views of this window. So still not the sort of thing where it's like you would think that you would look at this build and say, oh, we fixed it. No, I don't think that you fixed it. I think that you swapped one program, one pro— one big problem for still an existing problem that again is the sort of panel gap that just once you see it, it's like, why is a $4 trillion company shipping software with.

Leo Laporte [01:29:55]:
This kind of a problem in it. Well, you've got to love Norbert Haeger because he's the guy who did LaunchBar and Little Snitch, really great Mac programmer. And he has actually written a little program to test how the window drag is working. His blog post is hysterical. I mean, obviously he cares a lot about this. Like I said, I guess I've maybe noticed it. Maybe I don't drag windows that much.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:23]:
I don't know. It's weird. And there's— and I think scroll bars are also, for many, many generations of releases, are like, why do you not think that I ever want to grab the hand, grab the thumb on the.

Leo Laporte [01:30:33]:
Scroller and move it to a place? I don't do it anymore. I have a scroll wheel on my mouse.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:39]:
Good for you. Wonderful. That's lovely. I'm so happy for you, Leo.

Leo Laporte [01:30:41]:
But so many times you grab it.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:43]:
You actually grab the scroll bar. Well, the time it's like I, I, I've tried to find something inside that find something visually within a view, and.

Leo Laporte [01:30:51]:
I just want to move, move, move, stop it.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:54]:
And it gives you random access, and I really— no, it's not here. So I want to zip all the way down, and the thing is, so I gotta like move, nudge the, nudge the, the, the pointer like into the window to, to reveal it. And then it's such a tiny, tiny little target, I have to make sure that I mouse down on this super slim target before it decides that, oh, Andy was just fooling, I'm not— I'm.

Dave Hamilton [01:31:13]:
Gonna hide the, the scroll bar again. And you know, you can have that scroll bar be there all the time, right?

Andy Ihnatko [01:31:18]:
There's a, there's a setting in system settings. Okay, but this is supposed to be.

Leo Laporte [01:31:22]:
Something that is actually functional, and it doesn't actually function.

Dave Hamilton [01:31:25]:
No, it's never functioned right.

Leo Laporte [01:31:26]:
You just gotta leave it on all the time. Yeah, you know, you know, in a way, this is why I use Linux, because almost invariably these things can be adjusted by the user. Yeah, but, but Windows, Microsoft, and Apple really have— they're very opinionated, and they don't really make it accessible to the end user. This is how it works, this is how it's gonna be. And it's— this is a perfect example of, yeah, I don't care, but Andy cares. And it's a shame that you don't have a way to do this. At least on Windows, there's a very brisk third-party ecosystem of people like that, you know, have all sorts of tweaks for Windows. I don't see that in the Apple.

Jason Snell [01:32:07]:
World, and I guess because Apple probably prevents it. No, no, there are a lot There.

Leo Laporte [01:32:11]:
Are lots of utilities that do it.

Dave Hamilton [01:32:13]:
Why hasn't somebody done that with a scroll bar? I'm surprised that the guy that bothered to do, like the little snitch guy that he, I mean, he did the whole article. I thought you were going to tell us he came out with a utility.

Jason Snell [01:32:24]:
And I was ready to download it. I think he's anticipating that it's going.

Leo Laporte [01:32:27]:
To get fixed and he's not going.

Jason Snell [01:32:28]:
To have to do it. Why should I write it? I mean, you can turn the scroll bar on. Yeah, we said that. Yeah. So like, what more do you want there, I guess? But like little, but there's like, what is the name of the app?

Leo Laporte [01:32:42]:
There's an app that.

Jason Snell [01:32:45]:
Is it better? It's better touch bar. Better Touch Tool does a billion different things beyond its name. So that's one example of a super nerdy thing. They can't be in the Mac. A lot of these can't be in the Mac App Store. Some of them can be, right? Um, but there are lots of them. So to say that, to say that you can't tweak Mac, you totally can. You can't tweak iOS things because it's.

Andy Ihnatko [01:33:04]:
Totally locked down, but yeah, it's not like that. And by the way, by the way, I am talking about like iOS as opposed to macOS.

Jason Snell [01:33:10]:
OS. Oh, okay.

Dave Hamilton [01:33:11]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:33:11]:
Okay. It's like, oh, that's fair, on your iPad.

Jason Snell [01:33:13]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:33:13]:
So I could— so it doesn't have that. But, but I agree, I think that almost everybody should— if you, if you love technology and you love platforms and you want to learn, you have one, I have experience, at least once you should try installing some friendly form of Linux like Pop!_OS, like on an old laptop. Uh, maybe, maybe not necessarily locked-down Apple laptops, but the experience will— even if you don't wind up using that as a productivity laptop or a productivity desktop, the first time, like, I I, I hope I finally updated, uh, like a, a Chromebook that I had too, like that I upgraded to Pop!_OS like a year ago. Now it's a huge, huge, huge new release, uh, in like December and January. And the ability to look at update— nope, nope, the update's not available. It's like, okay, but if I go to the command line, I can basically say, yeah, don't believe your, your own reporting that the update is not available. I'm telling you, it is absolutely available. Download the update and give it to me.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:07]:
I said, yes sir.. And it's like, that is something that on every other platform, particularly Apple, I would just be okay. For reasons beyond my control and understanding, I was not meant to understand why for some reason the server does not want to give me this update. However, if I can say, no, I promise you that my hardware is up to date. It's up to spec. You can, it is, you have released this update. Just give it to me. It's like, oh, not that everything in Linux is wonderful and terrific.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:35]:
Perfect, but you would love to have the ability to simply say, yeah, I know for a fact something that you don't know, so please, please, please trust.

Leo Laporte [01:34:42]:
Me and do this thing I want you to do. There are— we did get a new, uh, version of macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, all of the OSs. 26.3 came out this week, uh, with a number of new, uh, features.

Dave Hamilton [01:34:59]:
I presume you all have downloaded it and installed, right?

Leo Laporte [01:35:03]:
Other than my podcast machine, which is not on top. Don't mess with that. No. Yeah, nope. Uh, the privacy feature that, uh, we mentioned before in the iPhone, the limit precise location, came out in 26.3, but you have to have a C1X modem to do that. But that's a very nice, uh, feature. Uh, I talked to somebody who worked at the telcos to kind of support this, and And he said almost all telcos will support it. I was a little concerned because it said that it only works right now with, what was it, Boost Mobile, but apparently all the telcos are expected to support it.

Leo Laporte [01:35:48]:
So that's good news if you're a privacy advocate. There is a— I'm just looking at some of the other— there's so many little features, just obviously security updates.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:57]:
Updates, not huge. This isn't a huge update, right? Not really. A lot— there's a lot of cool stuff that, uh, that involves interoperability. There's been some updates to RCS for end-to-end encryption.

Leo Laporte [01:36:08]:
Not yet, yet, not yet.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:10]:
26.4 is going to see that probably, right? But there's a lot of infrastructure that's already in place.

Leo Laporte [01:36:14]:
The Migration Assistant stuff is already in place. The Transfer to Android feature, which makes it easier to go to Android. Yep. Why, why would Apple do that? It has to be because of the EU, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, Apple offers to transfer photos, messages, notes, apps, as well as the phone number, not Bluetooth pairing information or data from the Health app. Um, so that's cool. Good, good for you. There's a— Apple also has a move to iOS, on Android, which Google can't stop.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:50]:
But, uh, now you can go the other way as well. I think I, I have to double-check. I'm going from memory. I think that there was something last year about Apple and Google realizing that for compliance purposes it was in their best interest to at least understand each other's frameworks for migration. I'd have to double-check that though. I would— that would be a very.

Leo Laporte [01:37:10]:
Very positive thing if that were true though. Yeah, Apple, uh, also, uh, Fixed many security vulnerabilities. In fact, there was a zero-day which was under active exploitation according to Apple. An attacker with memory write capability, okay, may be able to execute arbitrary code. That seems like— I'm not a big surprise. If you can write to memory, you probably could do that. Apple's aware of a report that issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack attack against specific targeted individuals.

Jason Snell [01:37:45]:
On versions of iOS before iOS 26. That sounds like nation-state. Yeah, I, I— here's the pro tip, which is if it's— if, if you see an Apple security note that talks about targeted individuals, yeah, this is what it is. Do you— it is not for regular people, right? When we were talking about the WebKit bug that they closed a little while ago, that was a similar example of— that was a, a targeted individual. We are talking nation- state level. Um, we're talking the kind of people who should have lockdown mode on, which is not everybody, right? Because lockdown mode actually kind of ruins your experience, but it means that you're much more secure. Targeted individual security items are not the same as general public security items. You really need to have somebody gunning for you.

Jason Snell [01:38:30]:
It doesn't— it doesn't mean that they've seen it trying to just scam people out of things in their bank account.

Leo Laporte [01:38:35]:
It means that there are nation-states that are trying to infiltrate people's phones. Yeah, it's been in iOS since version 1. Uh, it was discovered by Google's threat analysis, uh, group at CVE-2026-20700. Again, patched in the newest version. Google researchers, um, called it an out-of-bound memory access flaw. Oh no, that was, that was for Chrome. Never mind, I take that back. Um, but it was in the dynamic linker.

Leo Laporte [01:39:05]:
It's fixed. Fixed, but it has been there a long time. And these things, you know, some of these bugs are so obscure and so difficult to find that— yeah, what happens—.

Jason Snell [01:39:15]:
Find them, they're worth millions. And what happens sometimes is they close a bug and then it, you know, so there's this constant churn to find other areas of exploit. So sometimes you'll find these incredibly obscure things that nobody even bothered to look for until they had run out of other things to try, and then they try it and they find this thing, and then it gets patched. And this is what I was saying earlier too about like the advantage of going to 26 is there are a bunch of things that just are more secure in 26, and the same will be true of 27. And so it's something to keep in mind. But again, it's especially true if you are a reporter on a sensitive issue, or you're an activist or a dissident or somebody where a nation's— I guess if you're working on nuclear stuff in Iran, I mean, stuff where somebody might want to know what you're doing, uh, that's when you need lockdown mode, and.

Leo Laporte [01:40:07]:
That'S when you need, you know, all of that kind of stuff kicks in. Uh, 26.4 will be out in March, Apple says. Maybe they'll announce it, uh, at this event. I don't know. Uh, that's when you'll start seeing encrypted, uh, end-to-end encryption in RCS.

Jason Snell [01:40:25]:
Is that, is that what we think? They're testing it, and I think I think that's right. I think they're testing it with just iPhone to iPhone, but the idea is.

Dave Hamilton [01:40:36]:
That ultimately that will allow encrypted RCS. Yeah. It's available on Android. Yeah. Well, it's not part of this official spec, which is why Apple didn't support it out of the gate. Right. But Google has effectively their own standard, if you will, that everybody over there has adopted. Is this Apple adopting Google's standard or is this Apple?

Jason Snell [01:40:58]:
I don't, and I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:41:00]:
Asking.

Jason Snell [01:41:00]:
I think it's interoperable. I think that what, what Apple wanted was some blessing from the standards body, right? But I assume that what Google is doing is already with the blessing of the standards body. I.

Andy Ihnatko [01:41:14]:
Would be shocked if they were implementing something that's not. Yeah, RCS is an independent standard. However, the way that most carriers choose to implement is just, just to simply pay Google's own RCS service to make that happen, particularly given that Google Messages is the default, like, messaging app for.

Leo Laporte [01:41:31]:
All Android platforms everywhere. So it's open, just get everybody to.

Dave Hamilton [01:41:34]:
Use Signal and then I wouldn't have to worry about it. Or like a lot of the world— I get yelled at when I say most of the world, uh, or like a lot of the world, it use, uh, WhatsApp. I mean, it like— that's true, most— almost everybody— the US is freaks, is, is atypical in that regard. But like when My son went off to college. He was like, "Oh, everybody on campus." He went to Reed. Oh, great school. And he's like, "Everybody on campus uses WhatsApp.".

Leo Laporte [01:42:01]:
He's like, "That's just the norm." It's the future. Yeah. Actually, I was gonna interview Guy Kawasaki. We crossed wires and we didn't, but he's got a new book out, "Everybody's Got Something to Hide: Why and How to Use Signal." And he talks a little bit about why Signal would be preferable to WhatsApp. I think WhatsApp's ownership by Meta might be number one. Yeah, but the issue with every messaging.

Dave Hamilton [01:42:24]:
App is you gotta have your friends.

Leo Laporte [01:42:28]:
Have to use it. That's the issue. You know, and so if everybody's using WhatsApp, you're gonna use WhatsApp. It's better, you know, if iMessage will add RCS for everybody, and it will sometime someday, probably this year, that will make it a good choice, I think. What do you think? WhatsApp does not hide metadata. And, and that's, that's the issue that Guy Kawasaki has with it. So a little hat tip to Aaron P613 on X. Oh, that was digging into the beta of 26.4 and found this code string.

Leo Laporte [01:43:06]:
CarPlay. When you're not driving, turn on location services in iPhone.

Jason Snell [01:43:15]:
Settings. Settings.

Leo Laporte [01:43:16]:
Uh, apparently Apple TV is coming to CarPlay. Uh, when you're not driving, open Apple TV on the iPhone and review the privacy information.

Dave Hamilton [01:43:27]:
When you're not driving, sign into Apple TV on iPhone. Uh, huh.

Leo Laporte [01:43:31]:
I don't know that I'd want to be a passenger in that car.

Jason Snell [01:43:35]:
Oh, stop driving Apple TV. It's when you're not— you're So it's probably locked out. So this is, there are a bunch of like, so like the Teslas have a, have a bunch of video apps and they only work in the back seat. Yeah. They only work in the back seat. And, and, and that's, that's the truth of it, right? It's like my wife primarily drives a Chevy Bolt and it's got a really nice, I mean, for a little cheap compact EV, but still a little compact car, it's got a pretty nice CarPlay screen. Oh, I love the Chevy Bolt. And why would you not be able, if you're sitting somewhere charging, and if you've got a Chevy Bolt, it's really slow, to put something on that screen, to play video on that screen? So makes sense to me.

Jason Snell [01:44:17]:
It'll be locked down. It'll only be when the car's in park or it's— the sensors indicate it's.

Leo Laporte [01:44:21]:
Not moving, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a good feature. I think a lot of EVs have.

Dave Hamilton [01:44:27]:
YouTube or some way to watch something or play games. Tesla's always had games. It'll probably be more locked down than we want it be given, given the changes we've seen to CarPlay over the last few years where you can't scroll through more than 20 things while you're driving and therefore you have to pull your phone out of your pocket, which is dumb.

Leo Laporte [01:44:43]:
But yeah, my guess is you're right, it'll be perfectly safe. And, um, Tahoe 26.4 will add a charge limit slider. So just like an electric vehicle, you know how your electric vehicle, you can say don't charge past 80% to protect the battery. It's gonna do the same thing. You could set it to 100% or.

Andy Ihnatko [01:45:03]:
Less, go to all the way down to 80% if you want. Yeah, I wonder if that was— that's really, really effective though, because it seems as though times when people try to validate that this will extend the life of a battery, they've found that we can detect that maybe it's getting some extra cycles, but it doesn't seem as though it's the difference between a battery.

Leo Laporte [01:45:23]:
That lasts 4 years and 5 years. On EVs, because they over-provision the battery battery in the EV. And so it will rotate which cells get charged. And so that improves the battery life.

Dave Hamilton [01:45:34]:
I don't think they do that in a MacBook.

Leo Laporte [01:45:36]:
I don't think my MacBook's overprovisioned at all. I think it's exactly provisioned. Yeah. No more, no less. No less. That's right. Maybe they're just doing it because, you.

Dave Hamilton [01:45:47]:
Know, EVs have it. I don't know. We'll find out.

Leo Laporte [01:45:50]:
You can do this on your phone, right?

Dave Hamilton [01:45:52]:
Yeah, they do that on the phone. That's right. Yeah. Oh, and as you were saying this, I'm like, well, you can do that on the Mac. It's like, oh, well, you can do that with Al Dente on the Mac with third-party software. So like, it, like there is, and the folks at Al Dente will tell you that this actually helps your battery. To Andy's point, I don't know it like how much it helps your battery and, and probably more correctly what type of person and use case you would need to have where this would make a notable difference. But if you are someone that leaves your laptop plugged in all the time.

Leo Laporte [01:46:25]:
You know, 99.2% of the time, time, maybe this makes a difference. I don't know. Uh, you remember the reports, I think within the Wall Street Journal, of people, uh, looking over your shoulder at your passcode, then stealing your phone because they knew your passcode. And, you know, it actually— Apple, as a— I think it was in response to those reports, in 2023 added this stolen device protection. It's not on by.

Andy Ihnatko [01:46:52]:
Default, but.

Jason Snell [01:46:55]:
In.

Leo Laporte [01:46:56]:
26.4 it will be on by default. Default. So, uh, it keeps— it keeps people— it requires Face ID when you're accessing passwords. It, it, it's designed to keep people from, once they know your code, from doing other things, accessing your passwords, your bank accounts, safety features like Find My and Trusted Devices. It makes it a little harder.

Jason Snell [01:47:18]:
It's not just the passcode, you'll need to do Face ID as well, right? And there's a really sweet, uh, tweak here, which is there's the option to have it not on when you're in a familiar place, which is like— that's nice— when you're at home.

Dave Hamilton [01:47:33]:
And it's— you don't have to set them, it's automatic.

Jason Snell [01:47:36]:
You don't get to set them. Yeah, exactly. But like, so when you're— yeah, so I suppose if you're in an insecure place regularly, that you have to turn that feature off. But for a lot of us, if like you're at the office or at home, it's going to work normally. But if you're out and about in the wilds of the dangerous world out there that your parents warned you about, then that feature kicks in and it.

Leo Laporte [01:47:59]:
Makes you have to authenticate more often.

Jason Snell [01:48:01]:
Do you have that turned on on your phone? I did.

Leo Laporte [01:48:03]:
I thought I didn't, and I just looked, and I do. So there. It will be on by default. It's kind of interesting, uh, when they're really sensitive stuff like your Apple password, changing your passcode on your phone, adding a face or a fingerprint, turning off Find My. If the user is outside of the trusted location and attempts to change those, there will be a biometric scan followed by an hour delay and another biometric scan before you can make the change.

Andy Ihnatko [01:48:39]:
So that might irritate some.

Leo Laporte [01:48:40]:
Until the phone gets stolen, in which.

Andy Ihnatko [01:48:42]:
Case, you're like, thank you. Care of. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all forms of security are going to be irritating. If they're not irritating, they're probably not being implemented. Yeah, I mean, we— it's, it's irritating that you can no longer just simply replace a camera module or replace a module on a phone without having to go through some rigmarole to, like, to enroll this, this component with and attach it to this, this phone, which makes it harder to repair, harder for independent repair shops to, to function. But you can't deny that it also is making iPhone 17 that gets and not quite so linear a process for.

Leo Laporte [01:49:17]:
Selling and making profits from. And well, it's certainly— activation locks certainly worked for iPhone theft. So yeah, that's good. And finally, as you probably know, starting in macOS 27 this fall, no Rosetta, no Rosetta 2, no Intel apps will work on your Macs. And so the next version of Tahoe 26.4 will be a little bit more annoying to remind you that whatever app you're using that requires an Intel Rosetta.

Jason Snell [01:49:54]:
Translation layer isn't going to work come this fall when you upgrade. Okay.

Leo Laporte [01:49:58]:
Just, just as a point, it's not this fall. It's next fall.

Jason Snell [01:50:03]:
It's 28. 28. Oh, wow.

Andy Ihnatko [01:50:06]:
Okay. So don't, don't hold. Calm down, everybody calm down. Which is, we can laugh about this, but the thing is, people who are still running like Rosetta apps, that must be one fricking important app that has no replacement, no modern alternative, or the thing is, we have this system that is working. This is how we get PDF files through a certain gateway that has to go to a certain place inside our lab or inside our company, and we cannot get the $50,000 it's gonna take to refactor a brand new alternative to this. So again, it seems like, oh well, gosh, we've kind of forgot this thing exists. The people who are still using it are like, we— this is like a, this is like a Y2K bug sort of thing where the world is going to end if this one machine that's, that's probably running like a G3, G5 Mac, uh, is, is, is still plugged in. That one thing has to keep the entire business going, and if it we need to spend— we need to find the $50,000 now because how long are.

Leo Laporte [01:51:04]:
We going to be able to keep Rosetta going? Oh, I know what I was confused by. I was confused by the fact that the next macOS 27 won't work on Intel Macs, right? This is the last— Tahoe is the last macOS that will work on an Intel Mac, right? I had it kind of flipped. And then 28 is the last one.

Jason Snell [01:51:25]:
That you'll be able to run Intel software on. No, uh, 27. 27. The last one. And then, and then 28, they'll, they'll, they'll pull Rosetta. Even then there's an asterisk because it's like there's some games that are old that are never going to get updated and they're going to— I think it must be that Apple is paying— the reason that Rosetta has to be installed, um, and I've never heard a good answer, but the assumption here is that they have to pay a licensing fee for some aspect of Rosetta. And as a result, they gate how many people have Rosetta. And so it's very funny that they're going to actually allow it for a very limited list of whitelisted things in 28.

Jason Snell [01:51:57]:
Uh, and again, I think the reason is they, they don't want those games to all break and those games are never going to get updated because games, but it's going to dramatically decrease the.

Dave Hamilton [01:52:05]:
Number of people who are running Rosetta. And I think that's the goal. I didn't realize I was running Rosetta on my computer here, but I looked in Activity Monitor and sorted. I added the kind column and sorted by kind. And I noticed that the Waves plugin server, which is something many, many audio nerds run. Is Intel. I had no idea it was still Intel. So hopefully they make that change.

Dave Hamilton [01:52:28]:
A lot of really crazy stuff there. Yeah. Like, and the Twitch Studio Stream Deck plugin also. Yeah. So you don't, you don't necessarily know. I mean, to Andy's point, there are those companies that are like, this is the one thing that keeps the whole operation going. But then there's also the one thing.

Jason Snell [01:52:47]:
That you didn't even know kept the whole operation going. I know Apple has talked about, you know, games as being their little thing. I'm going to tell you a little, little theory, maybe a little secret, which is if there is a key piece of software that's running in the background that is necessary for a bunch of people, maybe in a professional area, for any time when 28 is coming out and Apple has talked to that company and that company is like, we know, we just can't do it yet. Oh, they can give you— Apple will.

Dave Hamilton [01:53:13]:
Totally whitelist that company. I mean, they will.

Jason Snell [01:53:16]:
Well, because they don't want engineers to rewrite it. Yeah. Well, I, I, but, but I will say that that's what's going to happen is they, they will be talking to them, right? Like, why, what can we do? And maybe they will find a way to, to fix it. But like, cause Apple's not interested in like having an apocalypse when 28 comes out, but in that classic Steve Jobs fashion, also they want to knock all the laggards out and say, you know, you need to do this. It's been how many years now? You need, uh, cause that'll That'll be the fall of '27, right? So it will have been more than.

Dave Hamilton [01:53:47]:
7 years of Apple Silicon. It's over, right? Like time to move on. That's why you had '27 in your, in your head, Leo. It's not macOS 27.

Leo Laporte [01:53:56]:
It's macOS 28 in the fall of '27. '27. So confusing. Very helpful. But I do the same thing you do, Dave, with the Activity Monitor. But I started doing that like 2 or 3 versions ago. As soon as I started getting Apple Silicon, kind. I had in my head, I don't want Rosetta running.

Leo Laporte [01:54:12]:
I don't know if it uses up CPU cycles or slows things down, but I just— so I have not— I mean, I, I sort by kind, and I had— I haven't used anything with Intel, uh, in a long time. Yeah. Uh, and I made— and I actually, at that time, I made a list of apps that were running Intel and.

Dave Hamilton [01:54:29]:
Actively looked for Apple Silicon versions of those apps. So yeah, but to Jason's point, point. Like Apple's not going to let the entire live audio industry crater because Waves.

Leo Laporte [01:54:40]:
Doesn'T work on a new version of macOS. And I like your theory, Jason, that they have to pay some fees and that's the reason. Yeah. If that's the case, they could go to Waves and say, it's, you know.

Jason Snell [01:54:49]:
It'S going to cost you, buddy. Yeah. No, I think, I think they, you know, they, they will go, right? This is the stuff you never hear about, but like they will go to that developer if they haven't already been there and be like, what are we doing? What can, how can we help? You need to come over and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we just have this old codebase and this weird FileMaker database that we're using or whatever. Like, it's like, oh, it's, you know, you, you pull over the sheet and then there's like the bugs all scatter and you're like, oh no. Um, but then they'll work with them.

Dave Hamilton [01:55:16]:
And, and that's what will happen for— that's what's helpful about having Apple having all the money is they, they can.

Jason Snell [01:55:22]:
Do this when it serves Apple to, to have it, right? They don't do that to everybody, but they— but if there's a benefit to them not looking bad because a bunch of their Pro customers are like, I can't update, I can't buy a new— I mean, the story is going to be like, I can't buy a new MacBook Pro because it has the new OS on it and it will break.

Dave Hamilton [01:55:37]:
All of my old audio software. They don't want that to be the case.

Leo Laporte [01:55:42]:
That story will never be told, guaranteed. Yeah, yeah, guaranteed. They'll make it happen. The never-telling story. Uh, you're watching MacBreak Weekly. So nice to see you, Dave Hamilton, Mac Geek Gab, and apparently Gig Gab. Thank you. Great name for a podcast.

Leo Laporte [01:55:59]:
Thanks.

Jason Snell [01:56:00]:
Mac Geek Gab.

Dave Hamilton [01:56:00]:
Wasn't there Jib Jab? Is Jib Jab still around?

Leo Laporte [01:56:02]:
Jib Jab, yeah, I think so. It's still around. Yeah. Yes. Anything you want to plug?

Dave Hamilton [01:56:08]:
What's going on in your life these days? Oh, I mean, Mac Geek Gab will be 21 this year. Unbelievable. Yeah. It's a great compliment to what you/we, when I'm here, but what you do here with, you know, you're talking about all the news, we're answering people's questions.

Leo Laporte [01:56:24]:
And sharing like cool stuff. I did the answering people's questions on the radio. Radio for 19 years.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:31]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:56:31]:
And my hair turned gray. Yeah. My heart started to fail. I just— and, and at one point I even said, I will not answer any more printer questions, so don't ask. It is— it is— I love it. It's a thankless task, but it needs to be done.

Dave Hamilton [01:56:46]:
It needs to be done. It— I, I mean, for us, it's, it's— our listeners thank us all the time. Like, it really isn't a thankless task. And what I love about it, and we joke at the beginning of the episode, but it's really not at call.

Leo Laporte [01:56:57]:
A joke is that we each get to learn 5 new things.

Dave Hamilton [01:57:00]:
And it's a great way to learn.

Leo Laporte [01:57:02]:
I am the one that gets to learn the most. I learned because I was so afraid. I'm on live radio and I— well, we didn't screen the calls. I mean, it would just— somebody would call, oh, that's a question on live radio.

Dave Hamilton [01:57:14]:
It was a tightrope act. Yeah, no, we only do that some of the time. Most of the time it's questions that have come in that we have filtered and researched and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, that these days is fun.

Leo Laporte [01:57:29]:
But not every week for 19 years. No, these days, uh, I probably would be able to do it with Claude Code in my pocket.

Dave Hamilton [01:57:35]:
You know, I just have— that's a good point.

Leo Laporte [01:57:39]:
You were probably doing that pre— like pre-good Google. Like, I did— you— I would use Google, but you know what, uh, in the earliest days, I started doing it in 2004. Oh, it wasn't impossible to most of the answers. No, you can't know everything now. Today, I don't think I could do it. I mean, I retired at the right time. It was just— and it was just— it's hard work. I mean, it was really— it is hard work.

Dave Hamilton [01:58:02]:
You're exactly right. You do learn so much. You absolutely do learn. So it keeps me sharp, which I love. And like I said, I love learning things. I always say I want to be right in the future. It's not so important to me to have been right in the past. I mean, I like that when I'm right, but you know, we can't be right all the time.

Leo Laporte [01:58:20]:
And so I like learning. So yeah, no, it's fun. Yeah. You know who answers questions all the time? Glenn Fleischman on SixColors.com. That's true.

Jason Snell [01:58:28]:
Yeah, Glenn's every week. I'm so glad he's there. It's great. Yeah, yeah, we're glad to have him. He decided to come over from, uh, from where he was writing at Macworld for, for many years, and now he writes Help Me Glenn on Mondays for for us. And he's doing well? Yeah, he's doing great. He had, he had heart surgery a little while ago and he's back up to— he's, he's reached the point now where he can actually be in better health than he was before because they fixed his, his heart valve. So it's pretty awesome.

Jason Snell [01:58:55]:
Yeah. He's got a, you know, he started another Kickstarter, I think.

Leo Laporte [01:58:58]:
Like that, that's the sign again that Glenn's doing fine.

Andy Ihnatko [01:59:02]:
Another book.

Jason Snell [01:59:02]:
Doing another Kickstarter with another book.

Dave Hamilton [01:59:04]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:59:04]:
Uh, what's the book on? Uh, old publishing things. I think it's a collection of essays.

Leo Laporte [01:59:10]:
About historical publishing and flong and things like that. His book, How Comics Were Made, is just fantastic. I just really, really enjoy that. Of course, SixColors.com is more than just Glen Fleischman. It's Dan Moran, who was on last.

Jason Snell [01:59:23]:
Week, and this guy here, this Jason Snell.

Leo Laporte [01:59:25]:
Yeah, we've got John Moltz, who writes a funny column on Fridays for members. He does the riddles too, right? The questions?

Jason Snell [01:59:34]:
Doesn't he do questions?

Leo Laporte [01:59:35]:
I don't think so. Is that him? I don't think he does. No.

Jason Snell [01:59:37]:
Oh, you know who that is? That's Howard. Does that on the— oh yeah, Howard Oakley on Collected Light. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, uh, Glenn's project is called Long Time No See: Forgotten Stories of Printing and Labor, because, you know, there's always another Kickstarter. Oh my God, Glenn. Yeah, he's just, uh, he has, he has made a, uh, a thing of it. It's, this is a specialty now.

Leo Laporte [02:00:02]:
Yeah, old publishing things. And, you know, doing well at that. I got to get him on Intelligent Machines with Jeff Jarvis and they could—.

Jason Snell [02:00:09]:
They can, you know, talk about linotypes and things for hours. I think it's actually kind of fun. Flong is an actual old printing term. It's very weird, but nobody's heard of it now except Glenn reminds us.

Dave Hamilton [02:00:19]:
Glenn is going to single-handedly drag the word flong back.

Leo Laporte [02:00:23]:
I mean, it's— here we are, he's keeping the flong alive.

Jason Snell [02:00:28]:
Yup. Wasn't there a Fong song or am I confusing that?

Leo Laporte [02:00:33]:
Yeah, you're thinking of Luno. Live Fong and prosper. Live Fong and prosper. That's it. That's it. And Andy Ihnatko is here. It's always a pleasure. Oh, I have to find the little AI thing they made for you in the library.

Leo Laporte [02:00:45]:
Oh, it's back here. Did you see that, Andy, on their Discord or club? Oh, I've seen a couple. They're so creative. They're creative. Andy Ihnatko from the library.

Leo Laporte [02:00:56]:
You look very distinguished, I might add.

Andy Ihnatko [02:00:59]:
Among all these small humans. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, that was a selfie I took.

Leo Laporte [02:01:04]:
At the Metropolitan Opera. Oh. Very, very operatic. That's not an AI image of you.

Jason Snell [02:01:09]:
That's the actual you.

Andy Ihnatko [02:01:09]:
Well, I think the book section— The suit might be different, but I remember. Yeah. Yes. But that is an accurate reproduction, accurate.

Leo Laporte [02:01:18]:
Representation of how many unread books I have pretty much everywhere. Yeah, I know. I know. And I keep buying more, which is It's just nuts. I should just.

Andy Ihnatko [02:01:31]:
Put everything on the Kindle, but I like the paper. My turning point towards the dark side was when I came across in some published article the idea of, oh, well, I often buy books to bank them against time when I have more time to read. It's like, that's what I'll do. I'll bank these books. When I see a good deal on a book that looks nice, I'll just buy that and I'll be banking because.

Leo Laporte [02:01:50]:
Sometime it'll be right there on the.

Andy Ihnatko [02:01:51]:
Shelf when I've got time to read. Exactly what I think. It's like, yeah, that's some— this is, this is again of the many things that this library does for me. It's also Andy, uh, you bought these 11 books, uh, about a year and a half ago, haven't touched them since. Maybe put them into the book sale. And problem, you know, I don't— you, you'll, you'll, you'll take a picture of.

Leo Laporte [02:02:13]:
The spine so you'll remember that they exist.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:18]:
I feel like they're trophies, like it's a trophy. I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're— well, also I, I have to be honest with myself that there are some books like David McCulloch's biography of John Adams. Awesome book. I wind up rereading that like once every year, once every couple of years. So okay, that gets to stay because.

Leo Laporte [02:02:33]:
You keep dipping into that.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:35]:
I feel that way about Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon. I need the hardcover volumes. But the biography of Bob Fosse that you bought because there was that miniseries on Lifetime or whatever, on FXX. Like, okay, again, you've got enough enjoyment.

Leo Laporte [02:02:53]:
Out of that in 2002, 2020, or whatever. Yeah, I think it's time to— but you know, you reckon you recommended that.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:59]:
Jerry Lewis biography years ago, and I still have that. King of Comedy. King of Comedy. There are very few celebrity books that really, at the end, you feel as though you got— the author got under the skin and explained. Here is such a good— if you've ever been like baffled by why is this person the.

Leo Laporte [02:03:19]:
Way that they are okay. Let's start with page 1. You're watching MacBreak Weekly. We're really glad you're here, especially our club members. Thank you for your support. We do know how important you are to us. And if you're not a member, man, I'd love to have you. twit.tv/clubtwit.

Leo Laporte [02:03:36]:
Ad-free versions of all the shows. You also get a lot of benefits. We have a lot of special programming we do just for club members. Somebody was saying, I want more AI stuff. I have— I'm thinking maybe our AI user group, which right now meets on the first Friday of every month, should be maybe weekly. There's so much going on. We have so much fun with it. We have an AI show, but the user group is like the hardcore people are really doing stuff with AI.

Leo Laporte [02:04:01]:
Anyway, lots of great stuff. Photo time. We have Stacy's book club. Anyway, if you're not a member and you want to support what we do, this is the best way you can do it. twit.tv/club. Twit. One of the things we do as the premier Vision Pro podcast in the world is our regular Vision Pro segment.

Leo Laporte [02:04:26]:
Hit it now. You don't leave me hanging here, man.

John Ashley [02:04:32]:
I'm— it's been so long since I've done this. I'm a little rusty. Totally not on purpose Leo.

Leo Laporte [02:04:33]:
That's like when you do the high five and the guy doesn't reciprocate. This is leaving me hanging there, man.

Andy Ihnatko [02:04:42]:
Or shave and a haircut, 2 bits.

Dave Hamilton [02:04:44]:
Don't do that.

Leo Laporte [02:04:45]:
No, don't do nothing.

Dave Hamilton [02:04:46]:
It's like, don't do nothing.

Leo Laporte [02:04:47]:
It makes people feel like I can't do nothing, something wrong in their tummy. Yeah, see, there is big news on the Vision Pro front. It came out 2 years ago, and at that time people were saying, where's the YouTube app? Indeed. Now there is one.

Jason Snell [02:05:06]:
Now there is It's the last one. Is it any good? I haven't had a chance. I've been really busy the last 2 weeks. I have not had a chance to try it out.

Leo Laporte [02:05:15]:
I hope so. I assume, I mean, Google blocked the.

Jason Snell [02:05:17]:
Other ones that people had written, right? Yeah. I think that was the sign that it was going to happen. It was just a matter of Google's will. And maybe if Google, I don't know, sometimes I feel like some of these, there might've been a deal signed with Meta to put it on their platform for an exclusive amount of time or something like that. That. But, um, but yeah, I wish I could report about, about trying it. I haven't. But the, the, the M5 version supports 8K video and it all supports 360 video, and there is a bunch of that content.

Leo Laporte [02:05:45]:
So it is another— this is every video on YouTube, but you really would want the 360s, right? Can you— yeah, I mean, sure, you.

Jason Snell [02:05:52]:
Get the 360 on the 360 video. Yeah, that's the point, is, is you can watch any YouTube video on it, and that's nice since instead of it being in a browser. But the big point of it is that you can watch those immersive videos that are on YouTube, and as well.

Andy Ihnatko [02:06:05]:
As like 8K videos that are super high resolution. You can watch all of those.

Leo Laporte [02:06:11]:
The Google Cardboard legacy. That was such a great idea. Way back when I had a Ricoh 360 and I took it on.

Dave Hamilton [02:06:23]:
A.

Leo Laporte [02:06:23]:
Cruise, I think this is almost 10 years ago., and I, uh, oh, I took it to the Galápagos. That would be kind of fun. Here's sunrise at Machu Picchu in 360. It'd be kind of fun to put this on a Vision Pro and you could watch it walk around and— or at least turn around.

Andy Ihnatko [02:06:40]:
Yeah, turn around, turn around, not walk around. But the key, but the key was it wasn't— it was that, uh, Google just put this capture mode into pretty much every— would run on any Android phone that you're you got, which meant that people would just simply do captures wherever they were, wherever there was worth capturing. And I really wish that there was something— there was a good— is there a good analog to that with Vision Pro? I always assumed when we were talking about the rumors of Apple doing VR/AR that there would be some sort of repo where, hey, here's an interesting— I'm here at the Boston Public Library, I think I'll just like stand in the big atrium here and just turn around and look around and sort of capture all this data so that other people can virtually visit the library, at least what it's like to stand in this place and.

Leo Laporte [02:07:23]:
Look around.

Andy Ihnatko [02:07:25]:
And I'm surprised that there isn't stuff like that. Well, now that— but now you can see what people with cardboard, uh, cardboard.

Leo Laporte [02:07:32]:
Apps could use 12 years ago. Yeah. And then I hope you can explain it, but, uh, Vision OS 26.4— again, this is.

Jason Snell [02:07:43]:
In beta now but will be out soon— unlocks foveated streaming. Yeah, they were already doing— painful. They already were doing foveated rendering, which is basically they do— they render because the processor can't render every single pixel. They render the pixels you're looking at and then it sort of smears out from there. So the ones that are in your peripheral vision, which you can't really see clearly, aren't rendered clearly. That was in the UI. Um, but what this has done is added it to video so that you can have the part of the video you're looking at at a higher resolution will look higher resolution. Because the fact is, even with the M5, the Vision Pro cannot properly render every single pixel of those giant— well, they're teeny tiny, but high-resolution displays.

Jason Snell [02:08:27]:
So instead, they have to sort of like focus on the parts that your eyes can actually see with clarity. And so they're extending that to video, which is great, like the— because the effect will be that it will feel higher resolution.

Dave Hamilton [02:08:39]:
Resolution when you're watching video. Well, that was one of the things when the Vision Pro was first announced that people were raving about how Apple had figured out how to maximize the use of the hardware by learning where your eyes were and only showing you the highest res where you were looking.

Jason Snell [02:08:57]:
And it's brilliant. So it makes sense that they would continue this. More things in more places, right? So to make it more valuable. And it's good. I mean, like we've talked about it here a bunch, like watching video, these are both good stories because they are about the thing that the, that the Vision Pro is best at right now, which is as an entertainment device. And so, um, doing more entertainment devicey.

Leo Laporte [02:09:18]:
Things with, um, with the Vision Pro is a good idea.

Jason Snell [02:09:23]:
So would it make that video from.

Leo Laporte [02:09:25]:
Machu Picchu look better?

Jason Snell [02:09:26]:
Uh, depends on its resolution, but it's probably pretty low resolution, you know. But if there's, if there's a, you know, a high-res image, I again haven't.

Leo Laporte [02:09:32]:
Had time to try any of this stuff yet, but I'm looking forward to NVIDIA's CloudXR. XR technology. Yeah. Okay. So I don't know if that's related to Google's XR. I don't, I don't know what— foveated streaming enabling apps to display high resolution, just as you said, low latency immersive content.

Jason Snell [02:09:51]:
Okay. So it's just going to look better. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:09:53]:
So it prioritizes the part you're looking at, which is as it should be.

Dave Hamilton [02:09:57]:
Just as your eyes do. Yeah. In the real world. Right.

Jason Snell [02:10:00]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:10:00]:
Right.

Dave Hamilton [02:10:01]:
That's the point though, is it matches.

Jason Snell [02:10:02]:
What your eyes would naturally do in the real world. Correct. Yeah, exactly. And if you've ever taken a screenshot in a Vision Pro, you'll notice that most of the screenshot is blurry. It's because it's only rendering the part you're looking right at. The rest of it, it's leaving blurry because your eyes can't notice that. And when you turn to look, it updates and then it renders that part. And so you never see the fuzzy.

Leo Laporte [02:10:24]:
Part because it's in the peripheral of your vision.

Jason Snell [02:10:28]:
And that saves, uh, CPU cycles. It does. Oh, and, and for streaming, it saves— it, it presumably it saves some bandwidth.

Dave Hamilton [02:10:35]:
Too, but But it saves CPU cycles. It's, it's good.

Leo Laporte [02:10:38]:
I want— I— it couldn't save bandwidth, could it?

Dave Hamilton [02:10:39]:
Like, because you need all the data. You need the data. Like, it can't go get this stuff fast enough.

Jason Snell [02:10:44]:
I don't know.

Dave Hamilton [02:10:44]:
Hey, I don't know.

Leo Laporte [02:10:45]:
What do I know? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you might be right. Yeah.

Dave Hamilton [02:10:49]:
Oh, I just realized you're wearing a Reed t-shirt. Now I get it. I realized that when I said it. It didn't even dawn on me that.

Leo Laporte [02:10:56]:
I put on a Reed t-shirt this morning, but that's where Steve Jobs went as well as your son.

Dave Hamilton [02:11:03]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. He learned about choreography. Yeah, for a while. My son only went there for a while too. He, he, he, like Steve, found a.

Leo Laporte [02:11:11]:
A better path to, uh, to the final outcome. So everybody in the computer industry of my generation dropped out of college, including me.

Dave Hamilton [02:11:20]:
I mean, it's, uh, that's, that's what you did. Same.

Leo Laporte [02:11:22]:
I, I never finished. I'm, I'm still on a break. That's, that's— yeah, me too.

Jason Snell [02:11:26]:
That's what I say.

Dave Hamilton [02:11:28]:
I could go back anytime. Yes, we could. We we could. If you want to go back, text me and I'll let you know what my son figured out, because he found.

Leo Laporte [02:11:37]:
A much more efficient path through this silliness. Ah, yes. Yeah. One of the things I always thought would be cool is my university lets you, as an alumnus, graduated or not, go back and audit classes.

Dave Hamilton [02:11:50]:
So of course you'd have to live.

Leo Laporte [02:11:51]:
In New Haven, Connecticut. I was going to say, where'd you go? Yeah, I went to Yale. So it would be kind of cool though, if I, if I lived near— I don't know if I want to move to New Haven, but if I did, yeah, I could just attend all.

Dave Hamilton [02:12:06]:
The classes that I used to live.

Leo Laporte [02:12:08]:
About 30 minutes away.

Dave Hamilton [02:12:09]:
Yeah, yeah, that's where I grew up.

Leo Laporte [02:12:10]:
Did you really? Oh, I grew up in Norwalk.

Dave Hamilton [02:12:14]:
Yeah, you feel like a Connecticuter.

Leo Laporte [02:12:16]:
Well, connect, connect, because that's because I am.

Dave Hamilton [02:12:20]:
Yeah, not now.

Andy Ihnatko [02:12:21]:
A nutmegger. A nutmegger.

Dave Hamilton [02:12:23]:
Yes, a nutmegger. That's right.

Leo Laporte [02:12:25]:
Yeah, that's right. Fellow New Englander. Solidarity. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I now have two reasons to get a Vision Pro. One is my antiquated videos. I have a tour of Rome, uh, you know, I would just— I would hold— actually have it right here.

Leo Laporte [02:12:41]:
I would hold the, uh, the 3D camera aloft as I walked around, uh, Rome.

Jason Snell [02:12:48]:
And, uh, and I just have all these videos. Yeah, well, I can't really enjoy— I have a 360 GoPro and I've done some stuff with it, but like the idea that I could share it with people, like I posted, I did a podcast that we did and recorded in 360 and it's on YouTube, but like, what, who could even see it now? And so it's just, it's, this is good. More places. Cause in the long run, when I went, when I was down at Cupertino and talking to those people who are building immersive video, what they believe is that in the long run, this is an interesting format that people are going to be able to see using some future device in some way. They're laying the groundwork now. The more people who can use this content, the better. And, and this is actually a good example where there's a bunch of content on YouTube now that now will have.

Leo Laporte [02:13:31]:
A, a new platform that can view it all. And so that's great. Like, that's one reason. And then the other reason will be.

Jason Snell [02:13:38]:
If they put out an F1 Vision Pro app. Any word on that? We haven't mentioned it yet, but all the F1 stuff dropped into the Apple TV the other day.

Leo Laporte [02:13:45]:
That's coming up.

Andy Ihnatko [02:13:46]:
Stay tuned.

Leo Laporte [02:13:46]:
Okay, so stay tuned for that. First, before we go to.

Jason Snell [02:13:51]:
That, I.

Dave Hamilton [02:13:52]:
Have to wrap up the Vision Pro section.

Jason Snell [02:13:56]:
Okay.

Dave Hamilton [02:13:56]:
Now you see, now you know, we're done talking. You know, it's been a while since.

Jason Snell [02:14:01]:
You don't say, and that's the Vision Pro segment.

Leo Laporte [02:14:04]:
And that's the Vision Pro segment.

Jason Snell [02:14:06]:
Thank you, Leo. Hey, F1. Oh no, shave and a haircut.

Andy Ihnatko [02:14:09]:
We can't close it twice. The world ends if we close it twice.

Jason Snell [02:14:13]:
Yeah, that's it. Don't do it. That's a double squiggly bracket. No, don't do that. Don't do that. We'd have to go back in time in order to do another parenthesis on.

Dave Hamilton [02:14:19]:
The other side, and we don't want.

Leo Laporte [02:14:22]:
To just hit Command-Z. Just Command-Z. Yeah, it's all good. Yeah, but if you use Emacs, that would all be automatic. Yeah, so the new F1 channel— yeah, I did. I went, you know, I'm really mad because I went through this rigmarole a couple of weeks ago where you connected your F1 TV account to your Apple TV, and that was a bunch of steps. I guess maybe I don't need to anymore because the new F1 channel is now on the Apple TV app. The next The season begins in March.

Leo Laporte [02:14:52]:
It actually begins right after Apple's event.

Jason Snell [02:14:52]:
Yeah. So the weekend of March 6th. Well, maybe I'll meet some F1 drivers or something. Oh, that would be cool. So the, yeah, this is basically in the main TV app. There's now an F1 section and then they're promoting it the heck out of it on the main screen as Apple does with everything that they do. But it is a sign that the F1 season is coming. And I guess the Vision Pro related thing is, will they have a Vision Pro story? At some point during the season, whether it's day one or not, because everybody sort of has this vision, huh, that, that you— that it would be a very good use of a, like, a 3D racecourse and a dashboard with a.

Leo Laporte [02:15:25]:
Bunch of different screens and not immersive. Not to be on the— on the.

Jason Snell [02:15:29]:
Sidelines because you would— your head would— you would have to move. Right. Right. But not for that. F1, what you want is an immersive dashboard full of different views instead. And, and there was that app that demoed that, right? So you, you would assume that Apple is working on something like that.

Leo Laporte [02:15:45]:
But anyway, it has begun because now this is F1 stuff everywhere. This is my question is, did I—.

Jason Snell [02:15:52]:
Was I wasting my time making my.

Dave Hamilton [02:15:54]:
F1 TV app work? I don't— I don't know. Did you enjoy it when you did it? The best day to do it is.

Jason Snell [02:15:59]:
The day you want to do it. Let's just say on a computer. I can tell you, you didn't— you didn't miss it because what's going to.

Leo Laporte [02:16:06]:
Be in Apple's stuff is what was on ESPN basically.

Jason Snell [02:16:09]:
It's a subset. Okay. So that's the subset. Video you can watch, and maybe they'll have some different options. But if you want the complete F1 TV experience that everybody in the world can get by subscribing, as an American.

Leo Laporte [02:16:20]:
Who has Apple TV, you just get it for free, right? I use that app. I use F1 Multiviewer, which, if you have an F1 TV app, allows you— I mean, this is kind of what this— these are example setups, but this is kind of what my setup looks like, where I just have, you know, these are the driver cameras, the race. You can also have data about what's going on and and the— you can even see the track, and that's so cool. And all this data is available through F1 TV. Yeah. So I'm hoping that they will do something, uh, and, and I'm glad to.

Jason Snell [02:16:50]:
Know that they're not going to kill the F1 TV app. No, because it's still everywhere else in the world. It's just in the US you get access— you get access to it with.

Leo Laporte [02:16:59]:
Your Apple TV subscription. You don't need something else.

Jason Snell [02:17:01]:
Good. And they're going to keep the original F1 TV announcers and all that stuff, I hope. Yeah, I think that product isn't changing at all.

Leo Laporte [02:17:06]:
It's just what the, um, what goes in the TV app in the US.

Jason Snell [02:17:11]:
I mean, because so a lot of people love David Crofty. They haven't said. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an option, whether there's another video or not, but they haven't really said what their.

Leo Laporte [02:17:23]:
Video plans are yet for the Apple TV version. Yeah. I'm excited.

Jason Snell [02:17:26]:
It's going to be a whole new era of F1.

Leo Laporte [02:17:27]:
It'd be interesting to see what their take on it is and how that evolves.

Jason Snell [02:17:35]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:17:36]:
Yeah. Apple purchased Severance.

Jason Snell [02:17:37]:
It did. That's weird. Yeah, it sounds like $70 million. It sounds like it's so expensive to make that show that the, the fifth season, the, the producer of that show was having cash flow problems, that they had, they had a bunch of reshoots and a bunch of delays, and they went to Apple and said, we are having— could you take an IOU, or could you loan us money, or how can we do this? And Apple said, tell you what. And apparently Apple had already done this with Silo, which I wasn't aware of. Um, but I've seen a bunch of stories reference that, so that may be true too. Apple basically said, tell you what, why don't we buy it? Why don't we buy it kit and caboodle? We'll have the copyrights, we'll have all the intellectual property rights. You will still be on as a producer, you can still produce the show along with Apple Studios, but we'll, we'll give you— we'll write you a check for, what, $70 million did you say? And then in exchange, we will be the owner going forward of Severance.

Jason Snell [02:18:24]:
And this is important because a lot of the shows that Apple— you think of as Apple shows are not owned by Apple, they're licensed by by Apple, but they're not owned by Apple. So like Ted Lasso is a Warner Brothers show that Apple has a deal with Warner Brothers, they produce that show for them. For All Mankind is a Sony Entertainment show that is made for Apple by Sony, but Sony ultimately is the owner of that show. So with this, Apple is taking one of its landmark TV series, and, and I mean, normally you would not sign the rights away to a hit, but this company is obviously an enormous amount of financial intellectual trouble. And so Apple saw an opportunity to say, I'll have that, right? And just say that now we own it. So now Apple decides where it goes, when it goes, how many, you know, what the budget is. Apple decides the spin-offs, the prequels, whatever they want to do. It's just Apple who gets to decide that.

Jason Snell [02:19:19]:
They don't have a— they have a producing partner, but they don't have a, a partner who is the owner of the intellectual property that they have to.

Leo Laporte [02:19:26]:
Renegotiate a new a new deal if they want to do more stuff with Severance. Apple Insider says it costs $20 million an episode, so the $70 million doesn't cover production at all.

Jason Snell [02:19:37]:
It's just the license, you know, it's just the IP.

Leo Laporte [02:19:40]:
Yeah, I mean, Apple was paying them to make the show, right?

Jason Snell [02:19:42]:
Oh, so were they paying them $20 million? I guess they were. Yeah, I mean, they were— they were getting a bill from— well, the problem is they may not have been paying them the full amount, right? Because one of the things you do when you're a TV producer is you kind of like you get your partner is going to license it, but you.

Leo Laporte [02:19:57]:
Also get like, you have the ownership.

Jason Snell [02:19:59]:
So you can sell it to Netflix down the road, sell it somewhere else, or put out DVDs or whatever. And there's like a, uh, but, but they, I think because of the escalating costs, especially when they had to delay season 2, I think they reached a point where they were having— that's a small company. They, they don't, they're not Sony where they have like this all, all the way across the board. They, they had these limited properties and they were running out of money and asked Apple for help. And Apple basically said, well, why don't can we just buy you out on the intellectual property? They're remaining as a producer, but we'll buy you out on that and that'll give you a shot in the arm in terms of, uh, in terms of keeping your business going. And I'm sure there's probably a first look deal where like they couldn't go to Sony and sell it to them because probably Apple had first look at it. I haven't seen that reported, but I would imagine that Apple got first chance to buy it out. But, um, so in the end, I don't think viewers will see a lot of a difference, but it does mean Apple kind of controls the destiny of Severance going forward.

Jason Snell [02:20:54]:
It can do what it wants with that property. It's not, you know, it's not like Superman, which is from Warner Brothers, right? And like Warner Brothers has all the intellectual property for Superman. Now, uh, Severance is just owned by Apple. Apple has it all. Anybody wants to do anything with Severance.

Leo Laporte [02:21:10]:
Apple is the one who will decide what happens. Apparently Severance was getting so expensive, uh, according to Apple Insider, that they, they.

Jason Snell [02:21:16]:
Might have to move from New York to Canada to produce the show. So this was one of the precipitating events, is the— is that the producer of this show that's such a hallmark for Apple came to them and said, we're having so much money trouble, we may need to relocate from the Northeast of the US to up in Canada just to save costs. And I think Apple was probably horrified because they're like, wait a second, are you going to make the show look cheap? We want it to be expensive.

Dave Hamilton [02:21:41]:
That's the whole point.

Leo Laporte [02:21:42]:
That's the brand promise of this. That's Apple. That doesn't look that expensive.

Jason Snell [02:21:46]:
It's just a lot of corridors and hallways. How expensive could that be? Well, no, but they do. And they do a bunch of location shooting and they're using their existing crew. And I think there's a— there was a fear that they were kind of cheaping out on them. Now, there are a bunch of great shows that are made in Canada, but I think they were afraid that this was just a bad sign that this season was having a lot of trouble. And that apparently was the precipitating event that led to Apple saying, why don't we just write you a check and.

Dave Hamilton [02:22:09]:
Buy it from you, and that solves all of these problems?

Jason Snell [02:22:12]:
Sounds like Apple made him a deal they couldn't refuse. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think I mean, it— I think in other circumstances, obviously you'd want to keep that intellectual property for yourself. But if you're— if you're in danger of like running out of— literally running out of money, and Apple probably said it's not acceptable for us for you to save money like that, right? Which might have put them between a rock and a hard place.

Andy Ihnatko [02:22:36]:
Where they're like, all right, okay, you can buy it then. That is exactly what Michael Colleoni said to, uh, to Mo Green. Said, you think— you think I've been— I've cheating. Like, we think you've been unlucky.

Jason Snell [02:22:47]:
We think maybe we could— maybe we.

Dave Hamilton [02:22:49]:
Could have more luck than you're having. That's right. Well, but what they didn't realize is that there were two games being played: the one that the Severance people thought was being played and the one Apple was actually playing. And by doing the Jason squeeze on.

Jason Snell [02:23:02]:
This, it all comes out roses on.

Dave Hamilton [02:23:04]:
Apple's end in the end. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, my guess is this is— well, like you said, it happened with Silo.

Jason Snell [02:23:10]:
This— these aren't going to be the only two, folks. No, I, I think— I mean, it's Apple, right? They want to control their own destiny. I think, I I think that if Warner Brothers would sell them Ted Lasso, they would buy it, right? And probably would have bought it after season 1.

Dave Hamilton [02:23:23]:
But Warner Brothers has lots of money right now, sort of. Yeah, you've got 2 gorillas.

Jason Snell [02:23:28]:
One might weigh more than the other. The point is, yeah, if you're an entertainment conglomerate, you have the resources to spread out your money and keep your intellectual property. If you're a small outfit, you might have a very expensive thing and not.

Dave Hamilton [02:23:43]:
Have some other revenue stream to solve the problem.

Jason Snell [02:23:47]:
You don't have an instant capital juicer, right? But Warner's— Warner's is in the business of owning and maintaining intellectual property, so they're not going to let— they're not going to let Ted Lasso go to Apple, right? Because they're like, no, no, why would we ever do that? Because we own it. Like, you pay us a fee for.

Leo Laporte [02:24:02]:
It and we get to own it.

Jason Snell [02:24:03]:
Well, and that is— their library is very important to them, right? I mean, it's a very viable way to do it. Apple is now producing and owning more of its shows than it did before. Yeah, but when they got started, you know, they didn't know what they wanted to do. And, and everybody— it's not like it used to be, but everybody still has properties that are owned and produced by somebody else. TV networks and streamers, they all do it. Sony's entire business is working for other people's platforms and generating content for them. So it's all, it's all fine. But this, this was a case where you had a, I think, a weak producer who was, you know, who Apple.

Dave Hamilton [02:24:38]:
Could just come and say, well, just take it. Let's give— just give it to us.

Jason Snell [02:24:43]:
We'll take it. And weak in resources, not weak in talent. Yeah, entirely just in a position of corporate weakness.

Leo Laporte [02:24:50]:
Yes.

Jason Snell [02:24:51]:
That, that meant they had to basically.

Dave Hamilton [02:24:52]:
Trade some intellectual property for cash for a lifetime, which would— which was the.

Leo Laporte [02:24:56]:
Endgame they had anyway. They just didn't realize how close that endgame was. And you may have realized this by now, But Jason does a show about this stuff. I do. It's called Downstream. It's on Reelrund.

Jason Snell [02:25:10]:
There's some interest in general on this topic. Actually got two new hosts with you now. Yeah. I mean, so Will Carroll, who is a sportswriter, he was one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus. He comes on and we talk about the business of sports in streaming, which is really interesting right now. And then Joe Adalian, who is the West Coast editor at Vulture and New York Magazine, has been a TV writer for a zillion years. And I get to talk to Joe basically every month, and he's super smart too. So, I mean, I started the podcast with Julia Alexander.

Jason Snell [02:25:41]:
She's now podcasting at— she's full-time at Puck and podcasting over there. But, but Joe and Will are great to talk to. And then I have some other guests from time to time about it. So it's been a fun thing to talk about the business of streaming because it continues. You know, we ended the peak streaming wars thing kind of past, but now we're in this very weird aftermath. Where lots of strange things are happening.

Leo Laporte [02:26:00]:
So there's still a lot to talk about. Yeah, every, every other week we do another story. And thank you, Scooter X, for putting.

Jason Snell [02:26:08]:
This into the Discord.

Leo Laporte [02:26:10]:
But Apple has decided to make MLS.

Jason Snell [02:26:13]:
Soccer free, free to Apple TV subscribers. So if you already subscribed to Apple TV— yeah, F1— yeah, this was a little while ago, but like when F1 was announced as being just on Apple TV, no package that you have to buy on top of it, I think that was the moment we all knew the jig was up, that instead of trying to treat the MLS season pass as an upsell, premium upsell product, they're just rolling it into Apple TV. And, and I think maybe that product made more sense without— when Apple TV was like $5 or $6 a month. But now that it's more expensive, having.

Leo Laporte [02:26:43]:
It include all the sports is probably the way to go.

Jason Snell [02:26:46]:
So that's what they did.

Leo Laporte [02:26:47]:
I might start watching some, some soccer.

Jason Snell [02:26:48]:
You have it all. I wasn't going to pay for a subscription. Exactly. Yeah, good. Exactly. And I think MLS, they changed the terms of their deal with MLS as a part of that. They extended it a couple of years. And, and I think it's going to be good for everybody because MLS may or— I don't know if MLS is getting as much money as they were before, but I certainly— they've got access to a bigger audience now that there's no paywall beyond the Apple TV paywall, that if you've got Apple TV, you've got MLS, all, every game.

Leo Laporte [02:27:16]:
So that's, I think that's good for them, right? Yeah, in Miami. Sure. Yeah. Good. All right. Let's, let's pause. You're watching MacBreak Weekly with Dave Hamilton, Jason Snell, and Andy Enako. And now it's time for our picks of the week.

Leo Laporte [02:27:37]:
Let's let our special guest, Dave. You know, Dave, you're like me. I put in, I normally I don't even do a pick.

Jason Snell [02:27:42]:
I put in 10 or 11 picks this week.

Leo Laporte [02:27:45]:
You put in a few too. Time, Leo. Save them for now.

Jason Snell [02:27:48]:
I will.

Dave Hamilton [02:27:48]:
I'll save it. Yeah, pick one or two. I was just gonna pick one. I mean, I can pick two if you want. Uh, the, the— I'll pick two. They're both free. I got yelled at last time for.

Leo Laporte [02:27:58]:
Having a really nice, attractive, expensive thing, so these are free.

Dave Hamilton [02:28:01]:
Uh, the first— you are in the Alex Lindsay chair of expensive picks. Yeah, well, you know, I, I can, I can like adjust the chair a little bit, so, uh, I like to tilt back a little. The— remember Network Utility that we used to have, the graphical interface that let us do pings and traceroutes and all that stuff, and it was taken away? The folks at Devan Technologies, they— I think they're the ones who make ChronoSync, if I'm— if my brain is working right, even after 3 hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They have a bunch of free utilities, and within the last couple of months they released actually an update. They had been doing this for a while, version 2.0 of Neo Network Utility. So that is, it will look very familiar to anyone who remembered Apple's Utility. And it's, it's all of that stuff.

Dave Hamilton [02:28:49]:
So if you're not somebody who likes to go to the terminal to do traceroutes and pings and all those things, just download it, put it on your Mac, and now you've got it. And it's in a safe little box.

Andy Ihnatko [02:29:00]:
That you're not going to type, you.

Leo Laporte [02:29:00]:
Know, rm -rf /. So they do.

Jason Snell [02:29:00]:
Dev and think that, that's where I know.

Leo Laporte [02:29:05]:
That.

Jason Snell [02:29:05]:
Yeah. Econ does Dev and.

Dave Hamilton [02:29:07]:
Think. That was Dev and.

Leo Laporte [02:29:08]:
Think. Thank you. I had big brain database things. That's right, I had that wrong. I used to— I paid for Devon Think, used to use it, but.

Dave Hamilton [02:29:15]:
Yes, my brain isn't as big as.

Leo Laporte [02:29:17]:
It used to be, so. All right, well, that's why we need Devon more. Yeah, yeah, Devon Think was like a massive database. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, very cool. Yeah, it's, it's free, uh, and, uh, available from their website, which is Devon Technology, D-E-V-O-N.

Jason Snell [02:29:38]:
Technologies.

Andy Ihnatko [02:29:38]:
.Com. Mr. Andy Inaco, you've got a free one for us, it looks like, too. Yeah. Now, as a professional writer, I spend a lot of my time trying to not write. And one of the ways I can justify that is by looking at different text editors and different work environments. And I came across, as I mentioned earlier, that I've been, I updated like my old like ThinkPad Chromebook for the new pop-up OS, and I came across this really nice text editor that works in the.

Leo Laporte [02:30:07]:
Terminal. It's called.

Andy Ihnatko [02:30:07]:
WordGrinder. It's been around for a while, uh, and it is— it is like the, the most bare bones, but not, not painfully bare. It is, it, it, it works entirely inside the, inside a terminal window. So you can install it on Homebrew, uh, in the, in the Terminal app in Mac. And the thing is, like, I'm used to— like, you mentioned, like, Emacs and other, like, classic, like, terminal text setters, they mostly have like this neckbeardy sort of.

Jason Snell [02:30:33]:
Legacy. Very.

Andy Ihnatko [02:30:34]:
Neckbeardy. Well, why wouldn't I have key bindings to Ctrl+Shift+Option+8 and 2 to, to, to create a new.

Jason Snell [02:30:40]:
Line? But you don't, you know, like.

Andy Ihnatko [02:30:41]:
It'S easy to remember it. No, it isn't. But I love them. No, it isn't. Wordgrinder really impressed me because the, the magic that they did in making it— it is a completely bare-bones user interface looking sort of thing. You just type, type, type, type, type, type, type. It's just plain text, and the, uh, you basically have an 80 by 24, like, window, just like, you know, classic 1980s, 1970s. But the thing is, you hit the Escape key and it creates— it adds a, a menu box that has.

Leo Laporte [02:31:15]:
Like, in text, a really sophisticated interface.

Andy Ihnatko [02:31:15]:
Where, like, if you try to— if you try to save a file with there, it means to, like, okay, so the cursor is now going to be, like, at this little, like, let like text box at the bottom, like at the indicator that lets me type a path name. No, it actually basically reproduces in text like a familiar macOS file picker, so you can just navigate up, down through the hierarchy and save it wherever you want. And it's not just saving and opening text files, like it can export in pretty much any format you want— Markdown, HTML, a couple other forms, like a doc, I think, format is, is included, uh, if you want want to do it though, if you want to use it kind of the way that Ulysses or Scrivener works where yes, you have a master document, but that document has subdocuments inside it, like you've got chapters of a book going on or notes for a different project, you can do that as well. But if all you want to do is sit and write completely focused without any distractions for a good hour or two, all of that stays out of your way until you hit the Escape key and this beautiful little like text interface comes.

Leo Laporte [02:32:18]:
In. Uh, it is free. Uh, it made its debut, something.

Andy Ihnatko [02:32:20]:
Like 10, 13 years old and it's still in beta. That'll tell you something. Yeah, but it's a Google product. Yeah, but it's, but it's very, very polished. It's a— I'm going to check it out. Powlock.com/wordgrinder, or again, it's a— I think it's just brew wordgrinder, and it will just simply— if you've got, uh, if you've got Homebrew installed, it'll just simply install everything for you. And like I said, I don't know if I will use— make— use this on the regular or or not. But boy, I'm just so impressed.

Andy Ihnatko [02:32:52]:
The only graphical GUI sort of like, uh, superfluousness is kind of cool where, uh, they have like a top row and a bottom row that's just sort of like indicates here's— you're at the top of the page, you're at the top of the document, you're at the bottom of the document. Took me a while to figure out that, oh no, those aren't tab stops, those are just, oh, by the way, you're at the bottom right now. And the fit and finish and function of this, like, I, I also thought that, gee, do I have the terminal set up correctly. It's like I'm typing, typing, typing, but it's only like all the new— the cursor, just the editable line is always like in the middle of the window. Before I realized that, no, if I like use the Page Up, Page Down, like arrow keys, it will scroll up and it will like fill the entire window. But it is sophisticated enough to understand that if I'm typing, I probably want the editable— whatever line is— we probably want the cursor, the edit point to be in the middle of the window where my eyes are rather than at the the bottom. Anyway, just beautifully, beautifully put together. It's worth looking at just to see as, as an oddity to see how beautifully this.

Leo Laporte [02:33:46]:
Works. And once you have it installed, maybe you're going to wind up using it. You never.

Andy Ihnatko [02:33:50]:
Know. I shall check it out. Word Grinder, Unicode aware as well, which is very.

Leo Laporte [02:33:54]:
Nice. Of course, it's not Mac, it's not just Mac, it's pretty much— no, it's Linux.

Jason Snell [02:34:03]:
Everywhere. Yeah, cowlark.com. Thank you, Andrew. Jason Snell, your pick of the week. And this is the software that I have been using. It is not publicly available yet, that you can go and sign up for updates about when it will be available. And presumably they'll do a broader test flight at some point. This is by Aaron Vey and Ben Rice McCarthy.

Jason Snell [02:34:22]:
It's called Indigo. You can go to.

Leo Laporte [02:34:26]:
Indigosocial.App. What is.

Jason Snell [02:34:27]:
It? It's a Bluesky and Mastodon in a single timeline client. I like it. It's really good. I've been using a very early beta and it's already by far the client that I've got for those services, and they're all in one, which is really nice. They previously collaborated on an app that let you do, um, cross-posting called Croissant, but this is a full-on client where you can just scroll. It's smart enough to spot cross-posts and mark and only show you one and mark it as a cross-post. It's got indicators to tell you which service it's coming from. You can view and favorite and reply and look at your lists and all of those things.

Jason Snell [02:35:07]:
So it's, it's going to be really good. In fact, like I said, it's already very good. Um, uh, iPhone, iPad, and it'll run on my Mac too. Um, so, um, I recommend if you're somebody who uses Bluesky and Mastodon and are like tired of— you either haven't found a client that you like or are tired of switching between them, um, this can unify your timeline. And I think it's really nice. So indigosocial. .app. The app will be called Indigo, and you can sign up now for updates.

Jason Snell [02:35:38]:
And, uh, and I really like it. So if you're intrigued, check it out. I wish I could say you.

Leo Laporte [02:35:42]:
Could go download it now, but, um.

Jason Snell [02:35:43]:
I've been using this last week and it's really good. Do they have a time frame for— I mean, I think it's in really good shape now. I think they're still adding some.

Leo Laporte [02:35:50]:
Features to it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a broader test flight relatively soon. I can't wait to try it. Yeah, it's good. Um, you know, it's sad because.

Jason Snell [02:35:58]:
If Twitter still had an API, it would be mastered on Bluesky in Twitter. I know, right? But I guess Elon— I know a lot of people quit. A lot of people quit Twitter because of Elon. I never got there because I quit Twitter earlier, because when he got there, first thing they did was they killed the API and they killed all the third-party clients. And at that point, I just stopped using it because I, I used Twitterific and loved it. And I know a lot of people use Tweetbot. And like, for me, so bad for Icon Factory. I was out at that point.

Jason Snell [02:36:27]:
I, I didn't need to wait around to see Twitter, X, get.

Leo Laporte [02:36:29]:
Worse. You were right. Without a good client, I was not interested in being there. You know, I have to check X all the time now because, I mean, I don't ever post there, but.

Dave Hamilton [02:36:39]:
Because unfortunately all the AI bros live on X still. Well, maybe, I mean, this weekend they announced that they were gonna crack down on any sort of agentic browsing, even just what they call scraping. So not even agentic posting for you. Forget it. Well, like, you don't have an API. You don't— like.

Leo Laporte [02:37:02]:
How are we supposed to like digest this content? Oh my gosh. Yep. Yep. I gotta point out NetNewswire is still around. It's still free. It's 23 years old. We were talking about how great.

Jason Snell [02:37:16]:
We love, how much we love RSS. If you need an RSS reader for your Mac, free, open source, it's recent updates for Mac and for iOS. They give new 26 Liquid Glass version for iOS. Always free, always open source. Brent Simmons running it, a lot of people contributing to it. And Brent retired from his job at Audible, so Brent is a man.

Leo Laporte [02:37:39]:
Of leisure and also of NetNewsWire, which I think is pretty awesome. I didn't realize that. A man of leisure and NetNewsWire. And you have mentioned a number of times a bunch of OpenWhisperer dictation stuff. I just want to mention FreeFlow, which is an open source open, uh, and I think Claude-coded version of Super Whisper. But because you download the Whisper, uh, LLM to your machine, it's fast and it's absolutely free and it's very easy to install. And I have been using it to dictate to Claude Code because I feel like Claude Code— see, it puts a little thing up there when you press the button so you know you're recording. And, uh, it does a really Nice.

Dave Hamilton [02:38:19]:
Job. So it's very fast. Whisper is amazing as far as models go. It is. So I don't think it's— as I'm reading about this, Leo, is it using Whisper? It says.

Leo Laporte [02:38:30]:
That it uses the Groq API key, so it's using Groq, not Whisper, right? Uh, yeah, I had to put.

Dave Hamilton [02:38:37]:
A Groq, but it's a free API.

Leo Laporte [02:38:38]:
Key. I guess it is using.

Dave Hamilton [02:38:40]:
Groq. Yeah, it's not doing it locally. It's, it's using— oh, that's disappointing.

Leo Laporte [02:38:44]:
Disappointing. The Grok thing, that's what I'm reading. I didn't— yeah, you're right, I'm correct. Never mind, forget, because, um, well, it does a good job of transcribing. I use Whisper on my Linux boxes, but I wanted to have something on my Mac that was equivalent where you press a button, you dictate, and it goes into Claude. Uh, yeah, you're right, never.

Jason Snell [02:39:02]:
Mind. I paid for Super Whisper, which Jason recommended a while ago. So you're still using that, Jason? I, I'm not currently using it because I, I— it's just not dictation You guys were talking earlier about, oh, maybe just, uh, maybe just talking or typing into a blank text box is the future of interfaces. It's like talking into a text box doesn't work for me. So, um, so, so no, it's a really great idea for an app. And I think we'll, we'll see more, you know, I'm a moderate on this AI interface thing. I think there will be more interfaces that are doing a good job of understanding context and taking input from you. And SuperWhisper is interesting because it allows lets you, uh, based on the context of your Mac, it lets you.

Leo Laporte [02:39:42]:
Um, have different instructions for the processing of your text, which I think is really interesting. Yeah, yeah. Uh, automate all the things, I.

Jason Snell [02:39:53]:
Guess.

Leo Laporte [02:39:54]:
Yes. Jason Snell, SixColors.com. Look for his podcast at SixColors.com/podcast. Thank you, Jason. Yeah, thank you. Lovely to see you. We'll see you next week. Christina Warren will be here in the Alex Lindsay.

Dave Hamilton [02:40:04]:
Chair. Maybe we'll get her her own chair. Uh, Mr. Andy, this chair is nice, but it's not, you know, it's.

Leo Laporte [02:40:08]:
Not, it's not fit for.

Jason Snell [02:40:10]:
Christina. She needs to know it's not all that. She needs her own. Yes, we've taken Alex's chair out.

Leo Laporte [02:40:18]:
Back, we hosed it down, and we shipped it to Christina. Uh, great. Always my joy. Thank you very much, Mr. Hnatko. And, uh, Dave, thank you so much for being here a couple of.

Dave Hamilton [02:40:29]:
Times now in the, uh, in the.

Leo Laporte [02:40:30]:
Interim. Macgeekgab.com, that's the best place to go. You're getting better at saying that. I, I, it's hard, but I am getting better., and I think after.

Jason Snell [02:40:37]:
About.

Leo Laporte [02:40:37]:
21 years I might be able to master it. Yeah. Well, I'll let you know. Thank you, David. Thanks, Rob. Really great to see you. Thank you all for joining us. We do MacBreak Weekly of a Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern.

Leo Laporte [02:40:51]:
Yes, I've given up the 24-hour clock. I couldn't, I couldn't do it. 2:00 PM Eastern. Uh, but well, it is 1900 UTC. I guess when you say UTC, you got it. Do the 24-hour clock. You can watch us do it live. We stream it on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kick.

Leo Laporte [02:41:12]:
We also stream into the Discord for our club members. If you, if you can't watch live and I maybe you've got a, I don't know, a job or something, you could always download a copy of the show. It is a podcast. We make copies available on our website, audio or video, not both yet. Well, I guess the video has audio. Audio. So maybe that's the both. Uh, that's at twit.tv/mbw.

Leo Laporte [02:41:37]:
There is a YouTube channel with both video and audio in one, one convenient file. Uh, that's a good way to share clips if you want. And of course, the best way to get the show— subscribe in your favorite podcast client. Yes, you can even use Apple Podcasts, and you'll get it automatically as soon as we're done. Thanks to our producer and editor, John Ashley. Appreciate your John, thanks to all of you for joining us. Thanks to our Club Twit members. But now I am sad to say, it is my solemn duty to tell you, get back to work because break time is over!