MacBreak Weekly 1032 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko's here. Jason Snell. And filling in for Christina Warren, the wonderful Glenn Fleischman. We're going to talk about the sticker shock. We're all going through it. What Apple's doing, trying to replace or reduce the cost of your next Apple device. How much will that folding phone cost? Speculation.

Leo Laporte [00:00:19]:
And five new iPhones coming in the next couple of years. What could that be? We'll talk about it next on MacBreak Weekly Weekly. This is MacBreak Weekly. Episode 1032, recorded Tuesday, July 7, 2026: I Like Turtles. It's time for MacBreak Weekly.

Leo Laporte [00:00:51]:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for. I don't know what that is. The show where we talk about all the Apple news with Mr. Andy Ihnatko from the world famous in notco.com. hello, Andrew.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:06]:
Hello, hello, hello. Coming at you with my brand new, not $300 paid extra for MacBook G5.

Leo Laporte [00:01:14]:
Oh, you lucky dog.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:16]:
Yes, I can full screen you now. The M1 was like, you know what, what if we were to minimize that window, Andy? That would be great, wouldn't it? Yeah, M1, that's fine. We can minimize that.

Leo Laporte [00:01:26]:
Andy arrives at the library singing I've Got the Power. Also with us, Mr. Jason Snell, who is no longer wearing the USA jersey. Did you retire it? Is it?

Jason Snell [00:01:36]:
I mean, there's a reason I wore it last week, Leo. I did wear it last night as well. No, I've got my Apple rainbow on.

Leo Laporte [00:01:43]:
Oh, nice. Very nice. Christina, as we mentioned last week, has the week off. She's in Berlin for some sort of Microsoft confab. But that's good news because that MTC means Glenn Fleischmann can sit down instead of just standing the whole time.

Jason Snell [00:01:57]:
Hello, Glenn.

Glenn Fleischman [00:01:58]:
Hello there. How are you?

Leo Laporte [00:01:59]:
Always a pleasure to see you, my friend. How's the. Is the Kickstarter over? Is the book funded? Are you doing the thing?

Glenn Fleischman [00:02:06]:
I've, I've done two. I've done. I've done so many Kickstarters, I can't even keep track.

Leo Laporte [00:02:10]:
I did, you know, Jason said you were his Kickstarter consultant.

Glenn Fleischman [00:02:14]:
I was a concierge, I would say, because he and Mike Hurley ran their design in California campaign like champs, like pros.

Leo Laporte [00:02:22]:
Yeah, he did really, really well.

Jason Snell [00:02:24]:
Glenn was just there to tell us when we did stupid stuff, which is very helpful.

Glenn Fleischman [00:02:28]:
Or like that don't know that that button. Not that, but there's that weird setting in Kickstarter. No flick. No, no, no. Not that one. But yeah. Kickstarter is. Kickstarter is you remedy from the original Star Trek movie where it becomes part of this massive cloud of additional function.

Glenn Fleischman [00:02:45]:
Kickstarter is like a little probe going through space and they're like, maybe we should just keep bolting things onto it until it's the size of a planet. So. But it's wonderful and it's a great. So, yeah. For long time no see. Funded earlier this year. And then I did that one. Matt were doing an entire book about a single panel of a single comic.

Glenn Fleischman [00:03:03]:
And it did very well in Kickstarter.

Leo Laporte [00:03:05]:
What's the name of that? So you can pre order flong time. No see.

Glenn Fleischman [00:03:08]:
Yeah. And the other is.

Leo Laporte [00:03:09]:
That is official.

Glenn Fleischman [00:03:11]:
That one. Matt Bohr's comic, which you can. That one. Matboarscomic.com you can type.

Leo Laporte [00:03:19]:
And how do you spell Matt Bohr?

Glenn Fleischman [00:03:21]:
M A, T, T, B, O, R, S. Matt Bohr's. He did the comic everyone cites, which is, we should improve society somewhat. And there's a smirking guy who says, ah, curious yet you participate in society. I am very intelligent. So this became a meme. And we're doing a whole book about kind of the nature of memes and this particular thing and neoliberalism. And I've got essayists and cartoonists, and we're pulling a lot of mashup art from.

Glenn Fleischman [00:03:50]:
People have done things where they'll put like AOC in one face and like Bernie Sanders on the other, and it's a lot of fun. So that was a.

Andy Ihnatko [00:03:57]:
That was.

Glenn Fleischman [00:03:58]:
That's also coming out this year.

Leo Laporte [00:03:59]:
It is a fascinating subject how just moments in time can become memes. And it's unpredictable. I mean, I see people trying all the time to go viral, and it's just unpredictable and it's fascinating. And I think this is a great subject for a book.

Glenn Fleischman [00:04:14]:
But artists don't typically make money when their thing becomes a meme. And there are exceptions, like on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Peter Steiner, who's still with us, sold his original a couple years ago for, I think $175,000.

Jason Snell [00:04:28]:
Nice.

Glenn Fleischman [00:04:29]:
And his Cartoo cartoon was licensed and continues to be licensed by Cartoon bank, which is part of the New Yorker. And he's made well over 100 grand, maybe a lot more from it. So he's one of the few people you can say his meme took off because it was from 1993 and he actually made some money.

Leo Laporte [00:04:44]:
I was just watching a presentation of Family Guy's 25th anniversary, and they were talking about how lines in the script become memes and how unpredictable it is.

Glenn Fleischman [00:04:53]:
It just.

Leo Laporte [00:04:54]:
Why that one? You know, it's fascinating, but that's.

Andy Ihnatko [00:04:59]:
I should mention something. You did mention Christina. She did remember last week she promised to trust me with her recap of her thoughts on the Taylor Swift wedding. Whenever we're ready. I've got it in front of me. I've got it standing by for when you think it's an appropriate moment.

Leo Laporte [00:05:14]:
I think now would be a good time. I am shamed because I actually posted a picture from the wedding before I learned that it was actually Adam Sandler that officiated it. And intentionally, I decided to make Travis Kelce wear his football helmet, knowing that would pretty much anybody who's paying attention say, this is fake, But I am embarrassed. So tell us what was. I think Christina was saying it was kind of tacky to hold at Madison Square Garden. She was hoping that they wouldn't, but they did.

Andy Ihnatko [00:05:48]:
It's good. And here we go. We must hand it to Page Six and tmz, who had details of this wedding down to a tee. I'll admit that when details first started to leak, I was sure they were wrong. But as I said last week, as tacky as I still feel like getting married at Madison Square Garden is, I can't deny that it's a good event space. With Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks performing

Leo Laporte [00:06:14]:
and with Frost play I want to hold your hand for the first time.

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:18]:
First time in years.

Leo Laporte [00:06:19]:
Yeah, 60 or something.

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:20]:
And with a broadcast camera and audio setup, one might wonder if a TNT wedding concert might be in the works. Isn't that, to quote Taylor Swift, a little gauche? It is, but we've already had a wedding at Madison Square Garden. That sounds just ridiculous. If I can focus on just one area, it's the truly insane guest list for every blockbuster name. You have. A what?

Jason Snell [00:06:47]:
How? Like, what do you mean?

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:50]:
Mgk, Fergie and Tom Cruise and Chris Rock were all at the same wedding. What do you mean? It was officiated by Adam Sandler.

Leo Laporte [00:06:59]:
What do you mean?

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:59]:
Carly Kloss was invited, but Blake Lively wasn't on an apple angle. Ted Lasso himself, Jason Sudeikis was there. So was Bob Iger. Tim Cook was not there. Were. So hang on. There are so many open questions about the guest list, the ceremony, why there was a raffle for attendees, and I look forward to unpacking it all with you and our unwitting Audience who definitely didn't sign up for this. Love, Christina Warren.

Jason Snell [00:07:32]:
Very nice.

Leo Laporte [00:07:33]:
I was told after the fact there were many complaints about our coverage of the Taylor Swift wedding. I don't care. Some things are just so important. We can't let them lie. Anyway, on we go with the show. Thank you, Christina. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Meanwhile, you were, you were proud of your last minute purchase of an M5 MacBook, Andy, and you are even more glad now.

Leo Laporte [00:08:00]:
America, according to Atlantic magazine, is having MacBook sticker shock. And then they say the $10,000 MacBook Pro is here. Good luck getting a $10,000. You could build it, I guess.

Andy Ihnatko [00:08:13]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:08:13]:
But I don't know if you'll ever get it. Apple still kind of, you know, the stock tumbled at first, but it's now recovered fully. In fact, it's gone up considerably. So the real question is, is this going to cost Apple sales or not?

Andy Ihnatko [00:08:30]:
Yeah, I think Apple announced that their quarterly call is going to be at the end of this month. And also, and maybe in light of that, Merrill Lynch, I think they actually up their, up their, their predict up their target for Apple so therefore figuring that these price changes are going to at least help the, help the stock. But yeah, it's like it's going to be a lively conversation because they're just coming off of a, of a call in which they were able to say, oh my God, we sold so many Neos we've sold. We can barely make enough of these. We, we're having so much success and now they have to face the fact of here is our guidance. There's going to, most of the questions are going to be headwinds and can you give us some color, Tim, about how you feel the price increases are going to affect sales in the future? Now the analysts have had some time to think about it and make their guesses. They're also basically feeling, there's another report that says that they feel as though that's going to depress laptop sales in general across like all categories, mostly led by declines in MacBook sales.

Glenn Fleischman [00:09:36]:
I don't know, I got this attitude that like a lot of, you know, there was pent up or not pent up demand. There was a massive flow early in the pandemic and then there was, you know, an ebb because people had bought the machines. The M series is a more robust machine, although Andy is finding the advantage of upgrading already to a newer one. But, but people don't need to upgrade the M series on a, on as Fast a cycle, as I would say people often used to. So people are buying a Mac laptop out of need, not out of like, oh, I need to get a new one. I don't know. I don't think the particularly. This is my big problem with everything these days.

Glenn Fleischman [00:10:12]:
Let me tell you. My big problem with everything is.

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:14]:
What's your big problem with everything, Glenn?

Glenn Fleischman [00:10:16]:
I need to see everything inflation adjusted. If you're not going to show me an inflation adjusted chart, inflation was, I think it was 28% between 2020 and the current day. And if you don't show me a chart of prices where it says, well, Apple in 2019 was charging $2,000 for this and now they're charging 2700, I'm like, well, I need to see the inflation number on that. Because I mean, not that wages have kept up, that's issue. But the stock market has grown enormously. So there is a sense that the actual price of the thing isn't fully tied to like, you know, the way we feel as consumers. And yet inflation is a real thing. So if you're going to say a dollar is now worth a $28, you got to tell me that and adjust that into the price.

Glenn Fleischman [00:10:57]:
When you talk about price increases

Andy Ihnatko [00:11:01]:
just quickly. Apple has been historically holding the line on certain price levels like the, the MacBook Air has traditionally been $999, sometimes 1099. But they'll drop it back and they will make adjustments to features, capabilities to hold that priceline. So it is significant for people who were might be have thinking, gee, I'm going to, I'm going to need a new Mac book like in next year. So I'll save up about $2,000, which is the usual price over the past five or six, seven or eight years for a base level with some extra goodies on it. And so it is, it is relevant. But that is a good point about buying power.

Jason Snell [00:11:34]:
Yeah. And that Apple was Apple holding those prices level for as long as they did really essentially were ongoing price cuts as inflation went up.

Glenn Fleischman [00:11:41]:
Absolutely.

Jason Snell [00:11:42]:
And then they hit a where they felt that they couldn't do anymore because they were losing their margins because of all of these other issues with chip availability. I want to point out that a few years ago we mentioned that they're going to do their quarterly results at the end of the month. So they do every three months like clockwork. Well, a few years ago they said we're not going to tell you unit sales anymore. We're only going to report revenue. And that has a couple Advantages. One is when they forecast their revenue, even if their sales drop, if everything costs more, their revenue might not drop, which is a nice trick because you're not looking at the total number. If everything costs more, but you sell fewer of them, you may still make more money.

Jason Snell [00:12:24]:
And to Glenn's point, this is a point when I do all my charts that I. Yes, the laser printer is warming up, the color ink is being prepared. One thing I don't do is inflation adjust. Mostly because it's not how Wall street reports it.

Leo Laporte [00:12:38]:
Right.

Jason Snell [00:12:38]:
But I do think it is important to always keep in mind that as if Apple's revenue is growing at a fairly nice clip but not enormous, you could argue that what it's really doing is just treading water against inflation. And it's worth keeping that in mind too.

Leo Laporte [00:12:58]:
MacBook price hikes expected to contribute to a 13.6% drop in global laptop shipments according to Trendforce. I'm sure some of that includes Apple's laptop shipments, but of course every laptop costs more. So I don't know if you can blame that on Apple price hikes.

Jason Snell [00:13:19]:
I mean, it's the same thing about that MacBook Neo. The MacBook Neo isn't going. It's a shame that it's going up in price, but it's not going up in price in isolation. Its competition is also going up in price.

Leo Laporte [00:13:28]:
Yeah, yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [00:13:29]:
I mean Apple, I think there's this idea too that Apple was keeping that price steady over time during periods of low inflation and then during high inflation, keeping kind of a stable price because they squeezed their competitors. They had bought all the chips in the world at one point, they had bought all these capacity, they could reduce their margin slightly and still keep that very high margin they have relative to almost everybody selling anything that's comparable in the industry. So when you come to a point where they're like, ah, we have squeezed, like not only have we squeezed everyone else to the wall by buying capacity, we are now squeezed to the wall ourselves. Well, they can raise the price and I don't think it has the same impact on them that it would if they hadn't spent that many years sort of destroying any effective alternative to them. Right. I mean, at the same, not you, you can say like I'll buy a MacBook or I'll buy a Dell, whatever, but it really does, I have an industry wide impact. When they've been pushing the price that low, it really does hurt their competitors when they're doing superior sourcing and, you know, quantity purchasing.

Andy Ihnatko [00:14:27]:
Yeah. And let's not forget the absolutely insane like mobster style markup on storage where it's like you can either, you can either spend one quarter the amount of that upgr on like an external ssd or you could have it put inside the machine and spend four times as much. It was like that was never something that was, had any tether to reality whatsoever. So we'll see how that affects things.

Leo Laporte [00:14:53]:
One way Apple's trying to ameliorate this crisis is buying ram. We mentioned this last week from two blacklisted Chinese RAM suppliers. Apple trying to reassure the US Government that no, no, we're only going to use that ram in Chinese MacBooks. It's not a security, it's not a security issue. We're going to keep it in China.

Andy Ihnatko [00:15:12]:
It's not, it's not actually a security issue the government has right now. They're not on the, they're not on the, the federal blacklist of you can't do business with these companies. They're on the Pentagon's blacklist that basically says that. And their position is that if you do business with this Chinese company, they are so closely tied to the Chinese army that you are essentially giving money to the Chinese military. Right. And so that's why there's, and so there's, there. This is where all the Apple diplomacy has to come in because they are actually free to deal with this company, but there will be serious political consequences if they don't have the taste at approval of the government. Also, Apple was trying to get assurances that, hey, I know that we can legally make this deal right now, but you're not about to actually put them on the actual blacklist where we can, we suddenly can't actually serve these contracts, are you?

Leo Laporte [00:16:05]:
Because so that would be a bad thing because they would have maybe spent the money but not get the chips. Yeah. All right, so they're lobbying Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and the Trump administration just to. This is, according to Bloomberg, nothing's final yet. Now why would it help to only use this in China? Well, that frees up chips for the rest of the world. So to the degree you can do that, it helps you all around. We'll see if they succeed at that. China still has some RAM chips to sell.

Leo Laporte [00:16:42]:
I guess that's because they can't sell it in the U.S. yeah, I mean

Jason Snell [00:16:45]:
this is the challenge, right. Is that those are constrained in a way that the others, the sales are constrained in a way the others aren't. And so there's more available there.

Leo Laporte [00:16:52]:
Right. That's very interesting. All right. The final story in this sticker shock story is at Broadcom and Apple have agreed to keep their deal through 2031. Broadcom makes. Is it legacy nodes? They don't make the main processors or the GPUs they make.

Jason Snell [00:17:15]:
Yeah, it's legacy nodes. They used to do all the Bluetooth and WI Fi stuff for Apple although Apple has sort of moved that to their own chips. But they are still. Yeah, they're making useful bits and I

Leo Laporte [00:17:25]:
think that's what Apple screen controllers A6 for inductive charging. IFixit found four Broadcom chips in the iPhone air including radios and a charging chip. Although Apple is moving all of their modems to Apple made modems right away from. Away from Broadcom.

Jason Snell [00:17:41]:
Right? Well, they were using Qualcomm for modems. They were using Broadcom for WI Fi and Bluetooth.

Leo Laporte [00:17:47]:
Confused.

Andy Ihnatko [00:17:48]:
Also there was a. Also there's a story about how I think it happened. It was put out this week that they are for the next series of phones they are going to use Apple Silicon for foreign for phones intended for foreign markets. For US Markets they're going to stick with Qualcomm because Qualcomm has mmWave and they're first and they don't have it in Apple Silicon yet.

Leo Laporte [00:18:11]:
So in fact that takes us to the iPhone 18 Pro leaks. Either Qualcomm or Apple would make the modem according to these these leaks.

Jason Snell [00:18:23]:
Right. Because Millimeter Wave is. Is basically not implemented anywhere other than the US but it is here. And John Gruber had a bunch of good posts about this. The idea is that the carriers in the US who have invested Millimeter Wave are not thrilled with the idea that Apple might roll out a phone that doesn't support it because even though it's not, it's like, it's like WI Fi almost. But it's super fast.

Leo Laporte [00:18:47]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:18:48]:
And it's not in very. It's in some city centers and various places. But still Verizon did. Did the work and they want to boast about it and it sets a high speed at and T has done less work and I think nobody else has done any work on it. But it's like it's around and if you go to the. The Apple chip that they're planning, it doesn't implement it. And that is why you will probably get a Qualcomm chip in the US if you buy an iPhone 18 Pro. But you won't the rest of the world because the rest of the world doesn't care.

Jason Snell [00:19:17]:
So It's a little like how there are. I mean, there are always been fluctuations in iPhone models between countries based on what frequencies were supported. So they would put different parts in. This is just going to be more dramatic because it's going to be a different supplier. It's going to be Qualcomm instead of the Apple modem.

Leo Laporte [00:19:37]:
Okay.

Jason Snell [00:19:38]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:19:39]:
Actually, we'll talk some more about the future coming up because we're starting to get more and more tips as we get closer and closer to September. Also, iOS, 27,Mac OS, GoldenGate, and more. You're watching MacBreak Weekly. Glenn Fleischman filling in for Christina. It's great to have you, Glenn. And apparently Glenn has no interest in Taylor Swift or Travis Kelsey. And we're happy for that. Thank you.

Jason Snell [00:20:05]:
Our producers approve.

Andy Ihnatko [00:20:09]:
It's not a snub. They only had 1,000 seats. They were capped at a thousand seats. I understand that not all of Travis's cousins could come. They have to cut the line somewhere.

Leo Laporte [00:20:21]:
But why Blake Lively? I mean, that really is a question. We'll get to that next week.

Glenn Fleischman [00:20:25]:
And amazingly, I don't know anybody who knows somebody who knows the mailman of Taylor Swift.

Leo Laporte [00:20:31]:
Well, how could that be?

Glenn Fleischman [00:20:32]:
What's your T shirt?

Leo Laporte [00:20:33]:
What's your T shirt? This week we have to do the T shirt check.

Glenn Fleischman [00:20:36]:
This is the T shirt from Raub Drocherin, which is the thief printer. And she's an artist in Europe, I think, based in Berlin. Who does. She does. I'll have to send you the URL.

Leo Laporte [00:20:49]:
Can you give us a twirl.

Glenn Fleischman [00:20:50]:
Rubbings of service covers, you know, formerly called.

Leo Laporte [00:20:54]:
Oh, it's like a manhole cover.

Glenn Fleischman [00:20:55]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:20:56]:
That's cool.

Glenn Fleischman [00:20:56]:
She calls herself, you know, Raoub Thief, because she. It's not illegal, but she goes into. Finds them, cleans them off, inks them, and then makes T shirts from them. And so it's just a great. It's a great little. It's like having a piece of the city with you in a weird way, because I'm sure there's grime in here. I've watched it. But it's the actual.

Glenn Fleischman [00:21:15]:
That tactile sensation.

Leo Laporte [00:21:16]:
So that shirt itself was rubbed on a man.

Glenn Fleischman [00:21:19]:
This is not a silk screen. This is literally created from it. And what's even better is my spouse, who knows me very well, I got this for a birthday or Christmas a couple years ago, and I was like, I had not even mentioned how much I love these shirts, but she knows me. It's German. It looks like a letterpress, you know?

Leo Laporte [00:21:36]:
Yes. How could you not love.

Glenn Fleischman [00:21:38]:
That's great.

Leo Laporte [00:21:39]:
It's actually, it's. I've noticed that. That we have such a paucity of creativity in manhole covers here in the United States. Japan has the most beautiful, often colorful.

Glenn Fleischman [00:21:51]:
Oh, I've seen those. Yes.

Leo Laporte [00:21:52]:
Manhole covers are gorgeous. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting tribute to brutalist zine.

Glenn Fleischman [00:22:01]:
Great fun. We have fun manhole covers or service covers in Seattle. There's actually quite a few, I've thought.

Leo Laporte [00:22:07]:
Oh, do you.

Glenn Fleischman [00:22:08]:
Once I thought about doing in my copious spare time, which, you know, I have, I thought about doing a project where I would like geolocate the most interesting, like metal street furniture, manhole covers and other kinds of plaques and things. And then I thought, I. I think I'm. That's. I've gone too far. I can't do that.

Leo Laporte [00:22:23]:
You know, what I love about it is there's art all around us and we often don't notice it. And it's kind of cool. This is the. The website.

Andy Ihnatko [00:22:33]:
Oh, my God. She's pulling shirts right off the sidewalk.

Glenn Fleischman [00:22:36]:
This is literally. That's why it's so.

Andy Ihnatko [00:22:38]:
I thought you meant she sourced them from like a scrap yard or something and then put in her studio.

Jason Snell [00:22:42]:
That's why she's a sneak around because

Andy Ihnatko [00:22:48]:
the local constabulary now I love it even more.

Glenn Fleischman [00:22:51]:
It's even great. She's gone to some other places and done it too. It's just fun. There's 99% invisible podcast. Their statement, Roman Mars statement is always, always read the plaque. And it's like you're in some weird place. I don't know. There's a little sign.

Glenn Fleischman [00:23:06]:
It'll be like on this spot, 100 people had a mini uprising and took over Boston City Hall. I don't know. Whatever. But like, I don't even know what this is about. So always read the plaque.

Leo Laporte [00:23:16]:
I love this. Now I'm going to buy. They're cheaper than they should be. She should charge more given that she has to run around a manhole couple.

Glenn Fleischman [00:23:22]:
Wait till you see the. Wait till you see the shipping price on it from.

Leo Laporte [00:23:25]:
Yeah, it's tariffs on the Berlin mittel hoodie.

Glenn Fleischman [00:23:29]:
Isn't. It's a great idea.

Leo Laporte [00:23:30]:
I think this is gorgeous.

Glenn Fleischman [00:23:31]:
I would love to say, look at that.

Leo Laporte [00:23:34]:
And then you can explain to people why the radio tower is on your shirt.

Glenn Fleischman [00:23:38]:
Yeah. Isn't that great? That Berlin tower.

Leo Laporte [00:23:41]:
That is so cool. Also, Andy Inacco. And you're just wearing a plain brown shirt, but maybe your hat has something.

Andy Ihnatko [00:23:49]:
No, no, no. It's it's, it's, it says Dickies on this little tag.

Glenn Fleischman [00:23:54]:
How dare you.

Andy Ihnatko [00:23:55]:
So and so basically it's, it's a tribute to one half of the Smothers brothers. I have a Tommy. And this is the same color as their usual performance shoots suits. They had those maroon suits with a, with little like neighbor collar.

Glenn Fleischman [00:24:10]:
Wow. I have not talked to Andy for a while and I forgot the unending source of fabrication you were capable of without any provocation. That's incredible.

Andy Ihnatko [00:24:21]:
I like to keep on my toes.

Leo Laporte [00:24:22]:
Keeps me out of jail. His mind is a terrible and wonderful thing.

Jason Snell [00:24:26]:
You know, in this July season, remember, no fabrication without provocation. So well done, Glenn.

Leo Laporte [00:24:34]:
And of course, Jason Snell is wearing his six colors. His beautiful apple.

Jason Snell [00:24:39]:
Kept the Apple rainbow going because on brand for me, I just, I leaned in 11 years ago, I leaned into the six colors and then, then Apple started leaning into it. I'm like, great. It's like, give it to me. Yeah, more six colors, apple rainbows. I love it.

Leo Laporte [00:24:52]:
And I'm wearing a shirt with apples on it. But maybe I'm too literal.

Glenn Fleischman [00:24:56]:
I like that.

Leo Laporte [00:24:57]:
In my, in my understanding of what Apple means, this is actually. Are the apples from the orchard that Steve Jobs worked in barefoot. That started the whole thing. So.

Jason Snell [00:25:10]:
Ah, I see. Sure.

Glenn Fleischman [00:25:12]:
Very good.

Leo Laporte [00:25:12]:
The master of fabrication that Mr. Nanako is. I think we had this as a late breaking story last week, but let's fill in the details. The Supreme Court agreed in their last week of term to yes, hear the Apple appeal. I think this was the third time Apple had gone back to the Supreme Court. This time it's the Apple epic case. They're not going to rule on the ruling. They're just going to rule on Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers declaration that Apple was in contempt of court.

Glenn Fleischman [00:25:47]:
Oh.

Leo Laporte [00:25:49]:
Apple petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene in a last ditch attempt. This is from Ars Technic. To keep fees at an acceptable rate. In the petition, Apple argued the 9th Circuit's spirit based approach. Judge Gonzalez Rogers said they violated the spirit. Sharply conflicts. That's that 27% violated the spirit. Right.

Leo Laporte [00:26:08]:
Sharply conflicts with the contempt standard in other circuits which only find contempt when companies defy explicit language in a disjustable order. Your Honor, the judge didn't say we couldn't do 27%.

Glenn Fleischman [00:26:21]:
She didn't say we couldn't sit in the back seat of the car and keep touching my brother. And I wasn't touching him. My finger was only this far away.

Leo Laporte [00:26:27]:
Make me pull this curve. Said that Apple clearly could not be Held in civil contempt at other circuits for charging a commission that's nowhere mentioned in the underlying order. So the supreme said, yeah, all right, we'll take that. Which is surprising since they had rejected two previous Apple requests and other. Other areas of the same decision.

Glenn Fleischman [00:26:46]:
There was times that I'd say, with Apple, would you just grow up? You're like this giant company. Well, they're fighting, got a lot of money. It's just. But it's sunny. It's. They're fighting for what's not enough money to be fighting for. And that's. That frustrates me because it feels like there are plenty of things we could say we wish they were doing at Apple, and this ain't one of them.

Glenn Fleischman [00:27:04]:
And I don't think it even benefits the shareholders that much. I think is infinitesimal versus they're like

Leo Laporte [00:27:09]:
Argentina two goals down in the last minutes, and they just won't give up.

Jason Snell [00:27:16]:
I don't know.

Leo Laporte [00:27:17]:
I had to make it a soccer analogy.

Glenn Fleischman [00:27:19]:
Some people like Argentina. Apple makes themselves seem fairy.

Leo Laporte [00:27:22]:
Epic is preparing to fight. Epic said, we're heading to the Supreme Court.

Jason Snell [00:27:25]:
Court.

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:26]:
Woo.

Leo Laporte [00:27:26]:
Where we'll continue to fight against junk fees, Apple charges on third party payments. Remember, they charged 30%. The court said, you can't do that. So they said, well, okay, 27%.

Jason Snell [00:27:37]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:38]:
Plus. Plus an immense amount of bookkeeping that no one wants to have anything to do.

Jason Snell [00:27:43]:
And this is the core of this case. The case is that Judge Gonzalez Rogers said, look, what you're doing is not good enough. You. There's no competition here. You can't do 30%. You need to come back with a remedy. And Apple said, great, we've done a remedy where it's basically, if you do all the calculations, it's essentially 30% and it won't address the underlying issue of competition. But you didn't tell us how low we had to go.

Jason Snell [00:28:08]:
And so we did the minimum possible to. To do this ridiculous, you know, literal read of what you said, even though you also made clear why you were ordering it. And Apple says that's fine because she can't hold them in contempt. It's like, it's like that kid who got away with everything in your. In your school. Right? Whereas, like, Apple's like, well, you didn't say it that way. You said this. And that's what I did.

Jason Snell [00:28:35]:
And, and the teacher's like, you know what I meant? Right. So that's what the argument's going to be at the Supreme Court. It's literally Apple saying, yeah, but she didn't say it needed to be a lot less. So we didn't make it a lot less. She just said it needed to be less and. And the counter would be. She also made it clear it needed to foster competition. And you built this in such a way that it will not.

Jason Snell [00:28:56]:
But that's why the Supreme Court took the case is they think there's an interesting legal conversation to be had about judges instructions and whether Apple can be held in contempt for in Apple's opinion, a thing that she didn't specifically ask them to do. I roll my eyes at that. But I also see the argument which is like, you know what I meant is not the strongest legal argument. If you meant that, maybe you should have said that. Probably though the result will be if Apple even wins this case, they'll just send it back to Judge Gonzalez Rogers and say okay, give them specific instructions this time and she will. And then they'll have to do it.

Glenn Fleischman [00:29:34]:
Could they make. I just want to like. There's various things Apple does where I'm like, you're just being petty or there are lawyers in there who've convinced the management that this is the right course of action and they've been given too much freedom. It's like robots turning the planet into grey goo. It's like everything is a lawsuit. We don't need everything to be this way. You can just agree, do something reasonable. You'd give up a little money maybe, but you might increase.

Glenn Fleischman [00:30:00]:
There's a value for not making your customers angry at you and feeling like they have to find an alternative.

Andy Ihnatko [00:30:06]:
And meanwhile Google has, in the face of the similar amounts of just losing, losing, losing, losing this issue everywhere where decided for whatever motivation that they haven't been explicit about. Okay, you know what? We will absolutely now totally revamp how we approach app stores and app installs. We will actually bring Epic Games in on the conversation so that we know that if we can make these people happy, then we can make Courts happy and we can make other developers happy. And it is a comprehensive plan that seems to cover. We'll see how well it works out. But how the needs of developers, the needs of markets and the needs of individual users need to get access to apps as like at some point Google, at some point I'm just, I'm totally with you. It's like at some point Apple has this. As should have said, okay, you know what? It's not.

Andy Ihnatko [00:30:54]:
This isn't. This is not an isolated thing in which we're treated unfairly. We are losing, losing, losing Losing this battle everywhere. It's time to figure out how to adapt and hopefully surrender on terms that are at least partially beneficial to us, rather than just be petulant. And they're just being petulant and spending millions.

Glenn Fleischman [00:31:14]:
I mean, it doesn't cost them nothing to do this.

Leo Laporte [00:31:17]:
Meanwhile, Tim Cook on the line with the European Commission head, trying to negotiate. This is kind of gonna be Tim's new job once he steps down. He's gonna be the governmental liaison fella. And you know, remember that EU users were pretty much cut off from Siri, from Child Safety, from the Apple foundation models, because they didn't, you know, the DMA prevented them. They didn't like the interoperability requirements of the Digital Markets act. And they said, we don't want to do that. Can you, can you give us a break here? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago where Apple said, just, all what's going to take is 18 months. Can you give us 18 months? And the EU said no.

Leo Laporte [00:32:05]:
And I'm sure that's what Tim's saying is. Let me explain. We don't want to do all this development if, if, if we, you know, if you don't give us the 18 months to do it. Right. Am I saying that right? This is a report from the Financial Times. Tim Cook met with, and I'm going to botch her name, Hannah Birkunen. Constructive talks on Tuesday last week as the two sides aim to lower the temperature in a bitter dispute over the iPhone makers New Siri AI. Is it a bitter dispute? I don't know.

Leo Laporte [00:32:43]:
I guess you're in the EU and you don't get the New Siri. You maybe, maybe you're a little.

Andy Ihnatko [00:32:47]:
I would swell. During wwdc, both sides were, I think, unusually vocal where they put, like Apple put it right into the keynote. Oh, by the way, hey, don't blame us. Those dinks over the EU are the reasons why you're not going to be getting features too. Exactly. And then the EU at the same time said, look, we, we were trying to work with Apple. They said, well, can you give us like a year and a half to not comply with this? He said, no, we're not giving you a year and a half. We don't think you need a year and a half.

Andy Ihnatko [00:33:16]:
And it wasn't like, it wasn't diplomatic language. It was, why do you have to be this way, Apple? Well, because if you, maybe you were being that way first, like, oh, for God's sake.

Leo Laporte [00:33:25]:
The Financial Times says it's Apple's lack of engagement or Apple says, sorry, it's the EU's lack of engagement that's preventing it from launching Siri AI.

Glenn Fleischman [00:33:35]:
I don't.

Leo Laporte [00:33:36]:
In other words, they're not negotiating with us. And so Tim's placed a personal call hoping that that would perhaps clear the log jam.

Andy Ihnatko [00:33:45]:
And, and, and to be fair, Apple is. This isn't. This is the same as the App Store stuff where the. For fairness across platforms. They. The EU is essentially saying that whatever Siri can do to control apps across the platform, third party AI should also be able to do across the platform. And it is completely, wildly, I think, unknown whether you can actually allow that to happen and preserve some semblance of security and privacy across the device. So Apple's not being a joint jerk here.

Andy Ihnatko [00:34:17]:
They are actually. I think they're defending an actual important principle and it's possible that, look, we can't figure out how, we can't. We're not going to figure out compliance in a month. It really is going to take us a year and a half. But the eu, the way the EU regulates this stuff, it's not basically, here is the hammer, you are underneath the hammer. The hammer is about to fall. You might want to get out from under the hammer. It actually is set up to be an ongoing conversation for compliance with a lot of conversations after a decision has been made.

Glenn Fleischman [00:34:43]:
But it's. Nobody wants to make a. I mean, I don't think the EU is sort of implicitly legislating API access, but I remember right, they don't build a standard for it. So it feels like, I mean, you know, I don't disagree in principle that the EU wants certain things to be open to more platforms, to reduce or, you know, to make things that are exclusive available in a fair way. And I don't disagree with Apple that there's certain things that they do that if they opened it up in the way that the EU is saying, would actually have significant security problems or issues that could come up. But the conflict is like, the EU is really good at making standards. Why can't they make an API after all these years, sit down with the companies involved? I mean, the companies would not all act in good faith or any of them, but it feels like you could come up with an API that you would then move towards for EU citizens that might still only be implemented there, but would allow, I don't know, a happy result instead of whatever is going on. Maybe Apple would never agree with that

Leo Laporte [00:35:41]:
or Google or whoever.

Andy Ihnatko [00:35:42]:
I think the, I think the position is basically that we're not. We're a government regulatory agency. We're not experts in APIs.

Glenn Fleischman [00:35:48]:
All.

Andy Ihnatko [00:35:49]:
We are all. It's our position. It's our. We are correct to ask you to tell you what we want you to do, but then you are free to figure out the technology that will best do it. We will tell you whether it's okay or not. And sometimes it is very, as you say, we don't even know if this is feasible or not. But we're just going to make this rule and it's up to you to figure out if this is even possible.

Jason Snell [00:36:07]:
That's where it veers into insanity, honestly, is when it becomes, well, you're the tech wizards, you figure it out. And then it becomes like that, you know, famous Washington Post editorial where they're like, surely somebody can invent a secure golden key that fixes encryption. And it's like, no, you're illiterate. You have no idea what you're talking about. And that's the danger when you have a regulator is like, if they believe that this could just be solved by the boffins, bring in the boffins, they'll solve it. It. Then if they're diluted, that's really bad. And I think one of the other problems here is the complete lack of trust between the two parties.

Jason Snell [00:36:43]:
And I get why the EU doesn't trust Apple, but the problem is they are viewing Apple, I would say, quite reasonably, saying, we're going to need to build something special for you. They view that as a lie or a stalling tactic. And while it might have the side effect of being a stalling tactic, it might. It's also true that, like Apple saying, why would we build something to maybe match your kind of squishy definition of what you want here, but you won't tell us if it will or not. And it's going to take us a year to build it. Which again, they may be dragging their feet and they could do it faster, but again, and that's a lack of trust is like, they don't trust Apple. That Apple isn't just kind of fibbing about all of this and dragging their feet, because Apple's got a track record of doing that. They want to do as little as possible possible.

Jason Snell [00:37:33]:
See the other case, the epic case in America about this. But Apple is frustrated because I think they realize that the EU doesn't understand what they're asking for and how complicated it is. And because of that, perhaps won't give them approval to find a solution. And what it says to me is this is a broken relationship. And if Tim Cook is indeed talking to the EU people about this, maybe what he's trying to do in his new role as chief diplomat is find, you know, can they reset the relationship so that there's an understanding? Because, like, look, Apple doesn't want to do it, but Apple does want to be in the EU and they do want to bring their features to the eu. I don't think ultimately Apple, Apple has brought a lot of things to like. It would be different if Apple was like, we're just not going to do the App Store in the EU because you want us to do extra app stores, so we're out of there. But they're like, no, no.

Jason Snell [00:38:28]:
They built support for third party app stores, a thing that they despise, but they did do it. So they've got a history of playing ball in Europe, at least to a little bit. But with this, with the AI stuff and access to personal data, you are hitting on some of the real, like, huge triggers for both sides and there's a lack of trust. And that's why I kind of despair for this. Unless Tim Cook and the regulators can kind of reset and there can be some, ideally, some understanding on both sides. Because I think where we are now is that Apple feels like there is a bunch of stuff they need to do and that the EU doesn't understand what they're saying. And I think the EU says Apple goes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about all this stuff they're worried about, but they're just a bunch of liars. They just don't want to do it because they want to have complete control and both sides have points, but that is no way to have a relationship with these two parties.

Jason Snell [00:39:23]:
And that's why it feels broken right now. So good luck, Tim Cook. Another tough job for you, Mr. Chairman.

Leo Laporte [00:39:29]:
That's why you get the big bucks. Yeah, Jaws. Greg Joswiak, chief Marketing Officer at Apple, says, quote, this is from the Financial Times again, this is not some sort of effort for us to be punitive over our feelings with the dma. We've worked very hard to avoid this outcome, but the Commission has not accepted our proposals or meaningfully engaged with us. There's that phrase. The EU says Apple's seeking an unacceptable carve out from its interoperability obligations. They push back at what they call, quote, a regulatory holiday which would, and this, I have to underscore this, this is what they care about, would harm competitors. We've seen this before with EU Regulations.

Leo Laporte [00:40:11]:
It's really about protecting competitors, competition. Now, the Financial Times does say that there is some pushback from the general public. The dispute triggered a fierce public backlash against the Commission. Hundreds of emails from consumers accusing Brussels of depriving Europeans of a new technician. One EU official said a Commission spokesperson had received a stream of abusive messages, including death threats. So I think this is part of Apple's strategy is let them hear from the people. We're going to cut you off and see what the people have to say. I don't know how responsive the people.

Jason Snell [00:40:52]:
The e. It is a strategy. I mean, it is a political body, right? Like if they get elected, if people in the EU are grumpy about what the European Commission is doing, it gives Apple some ammunition. It gives Apple some ammunition to say, your attitude here is making your people angry because they want these useful features that you refuse to allow us to give them. Now, again, a lot of complexity there and it absolutely serves Apple, but it's got to be part of the conversation because theoretically the European Commission is serving the people of Europe. And if the people of Europe are mad, then they're going to have to explain themselves, at the very least to the people about why they're doing it the way they're doing it. And I don't know, I just. My frustration here is that it seems like both sides have reason to not trust the other and they're not even on the same page at this point, which is, you know, again, good luck to Tim Cook.

Jason Snell [00:41:43]:
But it's, it's, it's, it's tough because looking at it like it's funny, because we've, we've had a lot of debates on this show about European regulations and Apple. But like I see their argument is, AI seems to be kind of important, maybe giving another, giving a platform owner another lever on top of all of this to completely control it and box out competition is bad. But I also see Apple saying, yeah, letting random AI companies have complete, unfettered access to personal data on the phone is also bad. Like, I think both of those things have truth in them. But how do you square the circle then? I don't know. It's.

Andy Ihnatko [00:42:22]:
Sometimes the win is not so much that the regulatory agency gets the regulations in force, but simply that the company that doesn't want to play ball all is forced to say, look, we are going to prove to you that this is not possible, that this is not tenable. And I think that even that is a positive thing. You can't have these companies basically thinking we don't want to do this and saying well no, this is just technically impossible and we'll destroy the product. And for that reason we're doing the valiant thing. I mean I'm thinking about, I think during the Biden administration there's some sort of a rule or a law based the regulation saying that car companies have to figure out how to essentially how to, how to make. How to. How to make. Make car.

Andy Ihnatko [00:43:07]:
Car ignitions that will not start if the driver is inebriated. And, and there is a, there was a long timeline for that, but there was also a part of it that says that you have a timeline. If you can't make by this timeline you automatically get an extension. And also if by the end of the extension you can't do it, but you just simply have to explain to, you have to simply have to prove to us that you tried. And here are the technical reasons why that's not possible. So that is a case of saying, okay you boffins go at it. Just let's, let's wave the magic, magic pixie stick of technology and science and hope that it'll work. But basically saying that it's worth trying, it's a goal that's worth exploring.

Andy Ihnatko [00:43:43]:
Don't simply tell us that you can't do it. Try it and then tell us what you tried and why it didn't work. And then we'll say okay, I guess that wouldn't, that wasn't going to work out at all.

Glenn Fleischman [00:43:51]:
Interesting counterexample may also be RCS encryption and RCS encryption because I don't. Apple was always kind of like we don't really care about RCS and people complained about it and you know, it's the green bubble, blue bubble issue with text messaging. But then Apple's like all right, we're going to push RCS out, but there's no standard. But when there is a standard for end to end encryption, we're going to do it. And Google worked it out. And so you can get end to end encryption and RCS based messaging now. And then Apple suddenly releases a beta was a few like two months ago or six weeks ago they pushed that out and this was all done with what I can tell with no arm twisting. Just because there was a sense in the industry that they needed interoperability.

Glenn Fleischman [00:44:31]:
Maybe also because it arose from Apple's desire to do user facing privacy things too.

Jason Snell [00:44:37]:
Think, well the original RCS I think was a regulation in China that drove them to implement it.

Glenn Fleischman [00:44:43]:
Oh, they had to do. But they didn't have to do it worldwide. They could have limited it but that

Jason Snell [00:44:46]:
would have annoyed people too. And I think this is the truth is like when you see Apple get pushed into doing something it doesn't want to do, it does seem to follow its principles in doing so. And so when it said look, okay, we're going to do rcs, fine, fine, fine. But they also said the problem we have with this is we really want it to be encrypted and it's not in a lot of circumstances. And, and they, in their initial announcement they said we are working with the standards bo to see if there is a way to get rcs to meet our standards for privacy. And time passes 15 minutes later and they, and they did it right. Like they, they got it there. And that's a case where Apple didn't just, they got pushed to do a thing they didn't want to do but in the end it kind of made things better for everybody.

Jason Snell [00:45:35]:
And it's like that's a good model, you know, we'd like to see more of that, I think.

Glenn Fleischman [00:45:39]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:45:39]:
Well also that's also the reason why Airdrop now works across Android devices. Not because there was some brave coalition between these two companies, but because there was a regulation that simply says there is an open WI FI standard, you have to simply support the standard. You don't have to do this yourself Apple, but you have to support this open WI standard that actually exists once it existed. Google was saying hell yes, we're going to basically build Airdrop support into our own version of that. So it's like, like Jason said, it's a complicated issue that involves lots of discussions. Sometimes Apple, Apple doesn't help its case with when it really does act like a petulant child on things like the App Store stuff. Because that's when we're saying okay, you know what, we're not going to take your word for this Apple. We're going to fight this out and make sure that you have the documentation.

Andy Ihnatko [00:46:25]:
Especially since during discovery on oh gosh, I can't remember what case it was, it came out that Craig Frederick inside Apple they had conversations about improving the cross platform performance of imessage on Android. And the end, one of the end comments from Apple Document Apple Communications was I think Craig Federighi saying we just, we don't see any way that if we do that it doesn't encourage people to buy Android phones so we're not going to do that. That's like okay, I wish, I wish I had done that as a Phone call instead of as an email that could be revealed.

Leo Laporte [00:46:58]:
I should point out in a kind of. This is somewhat related to the RCS discussion. The EU had a proposal back in the spring called Chat Control, which would experts say have undermined basically encryption completely. Chat Control was voted down, fortunately, but it's back and on Thursday they're going to vote with new rules that make it more likely to pass. And that would be a big shift for encrypted messaging. It would require this.

Glenn Fleischman [00:47:33]:
One of these things on device scanning

Leo Laporte [00:47:35]:
or on device scanning.

Glenn Fleischman [00:47:38]:
Apple backed off from that because people were so angry about. And yeah, I mean, you know, this is the problem. This is the problem. It's like, you know, it's like, how often do you beat your wife? Kind of things. It's like, oh, so you love child pornography? It's like, no, nobody does. But it's such a blunt instrument against everyone's privacy. And you know, from what I can tell, like a lot of things that happen with like law enforcement actions and cases being solved, things like that, a lot of the work that ever happens is because people are sloppy or they do real world work and that's where they take these outfits down, they infiltrate them. It's not, you know, having a backdoor doesn't actually help because that's not how these groups of people work because it's groups.

Glenn Fleischman [00:48:23]:
If it's one person solo who possesses a lot of stuff, well, you're never going to find that person anyway. And this might find one person like that. It's the trading of stuff and the creation of stuff that's the primary issue. And that's where law enforcement focuses and they get into it because all those people have lots of issues. You don't get involved in this because you are a competent, well functioning person who has no, you know, is just like, oh, I'm going to violate the law in this one horrific way. It's like, nope, that's. So anyway, all these things are like, we need this for protect children against, you know, child sexual abuse. And it's like, you know, you're using it for entirely to invade our privacy, but you have a weapon and you're going to use it weapon against us.

Leo Laporte [00:49:03]:
The Greens Party, which is against chat control, said children are protected by smart enforcement, not by scanning the private messages of millions of innocent people. So we thought this was dead in the water last spring when Germany withdrew its support of it. Apparently it is not. In fact, because they've been able to find a parliamentary maneuver to change the rules. It does seem likely that it will be implemented on Thursday. We'll watch it that with interest.

Glenn Fleischman [00:49:31]:
I'm sure Steve Gibson see every time those things come through it's just the, the devils in the details and as they start to try to enforce the things and they realize that companies will withdraw. I mean I don't know if Apple is going to withdraw.

Leo Laporte [00:49:41]:
Imessage very famously Meredith Whitaker of Signal said if, if chat control passes signal is out of the EU and this is that same kind of maneuver that Apple's using. Like you want our, our, our, our features, you're going to have to, you know, do the right thing. I'm not sure this is in the same ballpark. Clearly chat control is not the right thing. And on the other side of the Caucasus, Russia which really wants to insist that Apple install state required apps on the iPhone pretty mad that Apple's not doing that. They're going to find them a whopping $52 million. So I don't know if that's enough to get Apple to. Do they even care about the Russian market?

Jason Snell [00:50:28]:
No.

Andy Ihnatko [00:50:28]:
Well, yeah, but, but and it's causing them more and more trouble because number one they have to navigate sanctions which are very, very complicated. So if they're operating an app store they're already. This is, this, this is the reason why Russian banking apps are disguising themselves as other apps to get into the. It's happened twice in the past month and it's because Apple with other apps it's so difficult to figure out. Well there are trouble and they had to pay a fine several months ago because of an app that was created by a company that was legit at the time it was submitted but then changed hands a couple of times and then was in violation of sanctions and so they had to withdraw it and pay a fine. Meanwhile Russia is the number of takedown requests of apps in the app store is I think well into the thousands. And they're also having all this political trouble where they're being insisted to put all these states, the state sponsored messaging app, the state sponsored social media apps. I mean they're not making enough money to make it worthwhile to all of this, all of these headaches.

Andy Ihnatko [00:51:31]:
It's I wonder what those conversations are like.

Leo Laporte [00:51:34]:
Apple hasn't sold its products directly in Russia since 2022. They did remove Russian applications from the App Store. The these applications made by vk, so they're called the VK apps were with withdrawn from the App Store Russia says without warning or explanation. I don't know how they Talk without warning or explana now. There we go. Thank you, Boris Bednov. Now the country has taken even stricter measures, says Apple Insider, issuing a warning to Apple saying you could face $52 million fine by June 15 or July 15 if you don't apply.

Glenn Fleischman [00:52:13]:
There's a great sociological study waiting to happen about which accents are acceptable.

Leo Laporte [00:52:18]:
I know Lisa often said, can't use that one anymore. I think if I. I don't know, I think you can do Russian stuff. Russian is okay, Russian is fine.

Glenn Fleischman [00:52:27]:
We can all do Russian.

Leo Laporte [00:52:28]:
Yes, we'll all talk Russian.

Glenn Fleischman [00:52:30]:
But.

Leo Laporte [00:52:31]:
So these are. This is Max, which is a messenger program which obviously the Kremlin has access to all the encrypted. Encrypted messages in Max and a Russian and Russian search engines which actually I think that's not unreasonable to say. You have to put our own search engines on there. But Max, I can understand why Apple

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:52]:
and also remember that they also forced Apple to add a page to the setup process for iPhones. So that basically to add in Vice way hero. Here is a selection of authorized government approved apps that are within the Would you like to download and install these apps right now? I think that happened a couple of years ago. I don't know if it's still applicable, but again, it's just such an unusual

Leo Laporte [00:53:13]:
place that they've removed apps apps from the App Store on the request of the Russian government. The Russian government's not happy they removed the VK apps. However, I don't know how Apple will respond. I don't think they really care particularly. And that fine is not going to change anything. Right?

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:30]:
I mean, or 18 pairs of authentic Levi's blue jeans.

Leo Laporte [00:53:33]:
We want Levi's Saint Levi's, Beatles albums.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:37]:
Levi's blue jeans.

Glenn Fleischman [00:53:38]:
It's a. It's a new version of Goodbye Lens Lenin. But I don't know how it ends.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:43]:
Tell me you grew up during the Soviet Union without saying I grew up during a period when the Soviet Union was a thing.

Glenn Fleischman [00:53:50]:
They're having nostalgia now in the Soviet Union because everyone's waiting in line for gas and people are like, listen. People are like, did you not remember

Leo Laporte [00:53:59]:
you are watching a special broadcast of Apple Break Weekly on Tweet Glenn, aren't you? I know, I know. Oh no. Andy has a Slavic origin. His name tells the story.

Glenn Fleischman [00:54:14]:
I had family from Danzig, which is now Gdansk, Polish, from a town that I grew up. My family would say we have relatives from Dakshit Ski is what they would say. And I thought this was some silly family joke. There is a town called Duksky, Russia.

Leo Laporte [00:54:26]:
Okay.

Glenn Fleischman [00:54:28]:
Which it does exist.

Jason Snell [00:54:29]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:54:30]:
It comes from.

Jason Snell [00:54:31]:
Your family is from the same part of Europe that my wife. Wife's mom's family is from, which is very much like, where are they from? And it's like, well, all the places. It was Poland, it was Russia, it was Germany, and they didn't go anywhere

Glenn Fleischman [00:54:44]:
the way it was still there.

Jason Snell [00:54:45]:
Pogroms. But yeah, like that part of Europe really, you know, they've kept moving the borders around and the people inside it.

Leo Laporte [00:54:53]:
So all three of you have some origins.

Jason Snell [00:54:56]:
Not me, but my, My wife does. Not me. I am. I am super British Isles guy here. Yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [00:55:02]:
My spouse is Scots, Irish, German. So my family is. My. My children are a cavalcade of Eastern, Central and Western Europe.

Jason Snell [00:55:10]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:55:12]:
So good to have all three of you here on MacBreak Weekly. So good to have all of you watching. We appreciate it. We do MacBreak Weekly on Tuesdays. I think you've figured that out if you're watching live. We are not unfortunately able to stream to all the normal outlets today. Having a little trouble with one of our providers. We are on YouTube.

Leo Laporte [00:55:27]:
So those of you watching on YouTube, thank you for being here. Normally we do YouTube, Twitch, TikTok Tock, Facebook, not TikTok X Facebook, LinkedIn and Kik, and of course Club Twit, Discord. But we're glad to have all of you watching on YouTube today. Thank you. On we go with the show, let's talk a little AI. An update to Apple's creator studio giving you a little bit of AI

Glenn Fleischman [00:55:56]:
if

Leo Laporte [00:55:56]:
you have this subscription. We've got AI powered features in Final Cut Pro. Apple Insider says whether you want it or not, well, you don't have to use it. Right?

Jason Snell [00:56:08]:
Yeah, they're doing some auto auto transcription stuff which is cool. They've got a smart mask feature that I've heard people have been, people I know who've tried it out have said that it was very impressive. I haven't had a chance to.

Glenn Fleischman [00:56:19]:
Yeah, these are the two greatest things. And kind of across all the Adobe apps I use too is like when they added good auto transcription and then like Photoshop's, you know, find object thing. It's like oh like a 10,000 hours of time. My life silhouetting things has just disappeared. It's just great. Yeah. So good.

Leo Laporte [00:56:36]:
And generate captions is great too. I don't know why anybody would complain about any of this. They accept that people. The word AI just those are more like machine.

Glenn Fleischman [00:56:45]:
I mean machine learning component you know, neural network components, deep learning components are not, not driven by LLMs, I think. I don't know, there's some level where there's crossover I don't always get. But I'm like the silhouetting is a machine learning algorithm because you can't generate that. It's not a generative thing to generate it. You have to actually have tons of analysis that lets the machine learning algorithm determine what the edge is. So that's still like LLMs. It's fine.

Andy Ihnatko [00:57:13]:
It's kind of funny though because the new, the latest updates to Photoshop Creative Suite suites, they, they, I think they bought a. I can't, I wish, I can't remember the name of the company but a very, very famous company that does like AI Denoise and AI Sharpening and that sort of stuff. So in addition. So now when you go to the sharpen menu you have basically two or three options. You have the old fashioned. No, we're just using algorithms to do it. B Machine learning AI. And now the, and now this new like actual little AI, AI AI.

Andy Ihnatko [00:57:44]:
And when you try. I tried all three and the AI AI AI one was by far not the best one. It was like, it was, it was unnatural. It was, I mean it was fine. But when you then like zoom in you're like oh God, that's not, it's not wrong but it's not as good as simple like a simple basic like been around for the past 15 years. Sharpening algorithm.

Leo Laporte [00:58:07]:
I could say the same thing about the outpainting the new outpain painting in Apple's photos. Right. It looks good until you really pixel peek it.

Glenn Fleischman [00:58:15]:
Yeah, it's funny, I've used out painting a very little bit because I don't like. Well, I don't want to do most of the stuff I do has documentary aspects of it so I can't. The only out painting I'll do is literally in the margin that's trimmed off but I don't have that eighth of an inch so it's not even seen. But you have to give an image that goes to that whatever and then they literally cut it off. But that's, that's, that's sort of a,

Leo Laporte [00:58:36]:
that's fine because you're never going to see it. So. Yeah, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Andy Ihnatko [00:58:41]:
I'm just saying that those are the, those are the categories where it really tests like what you actually believe about how, how wrong AI is. Because I think most people will say oh well, an AI actor on an AI student set that that doing a script that was generated by AI. Oh, that's horrible. Horrible, horrible. But when you talk about tools like, like all the time, like we, you. I want to rotate this photo just like this, but I can't. That. That.

Andy Ihnatko [00:59:08]:
That introduces like empty space that needs a sliver of space that needs to be filled in or in video editing. Like, I just need this shot to go like half a second longer. I've. I turned off the camera too early. There's the. The beat is wrong. It needs to hold on that shot for another half a second.

Leo Laporte [00:59:29]:
Okay.

Andy Ihnatko [00:59:29]:
And it can generate a half a second of. Not just simply freeze and stay, but actually now the person is blinking and turning away and it looks perfectly fine because it's only half a second. Is that wrong? Because it's helping to fuel a very, very. What the director and the editor thinks is a very, very important creative choice. That's where it becomes really, really difficult and awkward to have these totalitarian arguments against AI. It's almost like we have to keep moving those goalposts in our head because they, they keep extending the length of the playing field about how good and how practical some of these tools actually are.

Leo Laporte [01:00:03]:
Other new features, new creator themes, new auto mask feature. That's actually. We talked about that color match. They've updated Final Cut camera too with clean HDMI out, which is nice. I'm surprised it didn't have that before. There's now Prores LT in there, which if Alex were here, I'm sure he would give us a dissertation on why that's good, but no idea. If you know, then you know. And Logic Pro has a redesigned chord ID that could identify extended chords and inversions more accurately.

Leo Laporte [01:00:37]:
That's got to be AI. That's pretty cool.

Jason Snell [01:00:39]:
Yeah, it's funny too because that was a feature before, so it's. It's like a. I think maybe at least my read on that is you're seeing the technology accelerate there where they built this AI based cord ID and then like I don't even know how many, like a year later maybe they like threw it, they redesigned it and that strikes me that they decided they could do it better and so they threw it out and brought in a new model that does it. But it's pretty cool that it just will look at your. Your tracks and know what chords you're playing.

Leo Laporte [01:01:06]:
That's a model upgrade. I'm sure that's all that is.

Jason Snell [01:01:08]:
Yeah, that's almost certainly. Yeah, maybe some design changes around it, but.

Leo Laporte [01:01:11]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway, bunch of new features if you're a subscriber, pixelmator Pro, I'm glad they're giving some love to pixelmator Pro.

Jason Snell [01:01:19]:
Yeah, a lot of connectivity between all those apps and pixelmator where there's more kind of like getting things in and out of pixelmator Now, I should also say for people who are fans of, like, the broader audience who uses numbers and Keynote and Pages, there are some feature updates in those apps that do not require the subscription. If you're not a subscriber to the Creative of Bundle, you will still have some new features in those updates too. And that's the thing they got to do now is they got to differentiate. There are a few, like, AI connected features or suite connected features, like the pixelmator stuff that they. That's just for people who are paying the subscription, but there are also a bunch of new features that are in there that are for everybody if for the free version of those apps. I hate, I hate that we have to differentiate between the free version of those three apps and the pay versions, but that's where we are.

Leo Laporte [01:02:14]:
Do you subscribe to iWork?

Jason Snell [01:02:16]:
I don't. I mean, I don't pay for the creator studio because I already have Logic and Final Cut on the Mac.

Leo Laporte [01:02:25]:
Me too.

Jason Snell [01:02:25]:
So all I'm really getting out of it then is Logic and final cut on iOS, where I might use Final Cut Camera and Final Cut on the iPad once a year or twice a year, in which case I should probably just turn it on for a month. And I don't find the AI features in. In the iWork apps compelling at all. So it's, you know, it's one of those things. Like, it would be a much more compelling thing if I didn't already have Final Cut and Logic, but I do so. And you can have those on the Mac and you just get to keep them. So I have no motivation to do that now.

Leo Laporte [01:02:55]:
If they upgraded pixelmator Pro significantly, I might. I mean, photo editing is one of the things I still really do a lot, especially on the IP pad. I might take a look at that for that.

Glenn Fleischman [01:03:05]:
But I'm super excited about the next story. I'm like, chomp, champing, chomping, champing.

Leo Laporte [01:03:12]:
Are you champing at the bit as one does the horse mite, as one

Glenn Fleischman [01:03:16]:
does at the MCP story, which is obscure.

Leo Laporte [01:03:20]:
So this is obscure, but if you're an AI user, you'll understand why it's important. Safari has an MP MCP server, so I, with my AI work work, have special versions of various Browsers that are controllable by the AI. Safari was never one of those, but now it is. So, Glenn, you're. This has made you champ.

Glenn Fleischman [01:03:42]:
Yeah, because I think, I mean, one of the. I think the great uses of coding agents is fixing web crud. Right. And solving problems. Like I could spend the rest of. I mean, I know it's like people who spend their entire career so far are doing web stuff, doing JavaScript and doing server side components. I know it's all split up now and some people are full stack still or whatever, but there's just so much. But I, like so many people have cruddy old sites and I've gone through and been like, hey, Claude, look at this cruddy old site.

Glenn Fleischman [01:04:13]:
I can't figure out what's wrong. And also the HTML is bad. Can you modernize it? Can you put an open graph? Can you solve the bugs? Can you clean it up? Can you pass a validation? And it would take me vastly longer if I could do it and not be worth it. But I think that's one utility. But I'm actually using Claude with something called. It's not Orchestrator. What is it? It's a headless Chrome browser that it can control. Playwright, I think.

Leo Laporte [01:04:40]:
Playwright, yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [01:04:41]:
Yeah. So it does. So I can say do this thing until it's right. And it just does it behind the scenes. This doing it in Safari makes it, I think. I mean, I know I could do it with other browsers, but Safari is the browser I tend to use. And I also, you know, I think Apple's integration is often better than things than third parties. So they're going to let it work with coding agents.

Glenn Fleischman [01:05:00]:
But I just love the idea of going to, you know, letting it have access to everything. Like, all right, here I'm on a site, mess around with it, figure out what's wrong, tell me and then I'll. We can deploy the fix instead of, you know, I just can't Keep all of JavaScript in HTML and in CSS in particular. Oh my God, I have some.

Andy Ihnatko [01:05:18]:
Oh, goodness.

Glenn Fleischman [01:05:19]:
Yeah. I mean, CSS justifies Claude code in my mind 100%. No human being can. It's the worst thing since send mail configuration files for those in the know back years ago.

Leo Laporte [01:05:32]:
Oh, my God.

Glenn Fleischman [01:05:32]:
Anyway, I'm just. The days I was excited for better integration.

Andy Ihnatko [01:05:35]:
I was going to say, like building my, Building my own site. It's like it was so stagnating because trying to get css to do 1/2 or 1/10 what I wanted to do was Impossible, Possible. Even when it was just, okay, I've got a commercial theme that is noted for being very, very easy to adapt just by using style sheets. Could not get anything to work the way I wanted to. But then once Gemini got really, really good at it, I could simply say, here's what I want you to do, here's what I think the approach should be. And now one of the great things about putting Agenic resources inside the browser is that now like, whereas the development cycle used to be, okay, I want to implement, implement this and it would generate some CSS and some JavaScript and I'd implement it. So, okay, it doesn't work. Here's what, here's what, here's a screenshot what it looks like and I think it's not targeting this correctly.

Andy Ihnatko [01:06:21]:
With when the Safari's agents is agentic, then the agent can simply put in the change, look, generate the page, look at what, what comes out and then realize that, okay, that didn't work correctly. So now I'm going to need to keep adjusting this, that and the other.

Glenn Fleischman [01:06:35]:
The iterative feedback is so great that you can say like, keep doing this until it's right is right. I feel like it's relatively new now in the agentic stuff. Like you could some of that before in certain structures or you could build them. But now I feel like a lot of the stuff I do is like, here's my outcome, let's talk about it and then just do it and leave me out of it until it's correct and then I can do the next design phase.

Leo Laporte [01:06:58]:
Were you the one that found a bug like your 10 year old website?

Glenn Fleischman [01:07:02]:
Oh, yeah, yeah. I said, what's wrong with this site? I've been running for 29 years.

Leo Laporte [01:07:07]:
29 year old, okay.

Glenn Fleischman [01:07:09]:
Yeah. And it said, oh, here's a whole bunch of injection things that you never, you know, they're never exploited to my knowledge. Here's like all this stuff that you should fix immediately. I'm like, oh my God. Well, you know, so I hit a button and it essentially ran through them.

Leo Laporte [01:07:22]:
This is a sad day today because this is the day that Fable is no longer available in my Claude Max subscription.

Glenn Fleischman [01:07:28]:
Oh, is it the expiration date?

Leo Laporte [01:07:29]:
Yeah, July 7th. I don't think it's been turned off yet, but I don't dare use it because if you use it and it's not covered, it's very, very, very expensive.

Glenn Fleischman [01:07:38]:
Today and this week in tech news, Leo the Port ran up a $500 million bill with anthropic Easily. He's fled the country. No sign of Leo.

Leo Laporte [01:07:47]:
I stayed up late last night trying to use every last drop of Fable before it was gone. I'm using it to do a big redesign of one of our most important workflow apps, our ad sales app. And it's doing a great job, by the way. It's incredibly good. So what I said is, look, I'm going to lose you tomorrow. Could you please. I'm going to have to use Opus 4.8. Could you just tell it how to do it so you know it can do it right? And I'm hoping it did that properly.

Leo Laporte [01:08:16]:
And we'll see. We'll find out. It did it. So far, so good. I mean, it's amazing.

Glenn Fleischman [01:08:20]:
And a friend of my wife asked me the other day, she said, what are tokens in this context? And I said, I don't know if I'm well enough informed, but what I want to tell you is, like, when you type something into an AI, it then actually generates all the instructions for the AI. You're not actually talking to the AI. And if you look at the transcripts of what it actually does, like, like, that's all the tokens, as I understand it. It's kind of. It's breaking it down to the task.

Leo Laporte [01:08:40]:
So it's tokens in and then it's tokens out too.

Glenn Fleischman [01:08:42]:
Yeah, tokens out you get. You're asking and then it has to summarize it. But I'm like, you're asking. Hey, Fable, talk to your slightly less intelligent sibling.

Leo Laporte [01:08:50]:
Yeah, yeah. Using tokens all the. It's tokens all the way down. Web browser integration, though, is very important, and I think it's nice for Apple to do that in Safari because Safari is not, not like the others. So to whatever degree you can make your site work well on Safari as well as on Chrome, that's a good thing.

Jason Snell [01:09:10]:
Also, I've heard from people who are aficionados of MCP servers that this is a really good one.

Leo Laporte [01:09:17]:
Oh, good.

Jason Snell [01:09:17]:
I mean, it is, it is. It's conflicting. Two things. One is AI moves really fast, so you always expect the newest one is going to be the best. But also it's Apple and Apple. It's like, got a weird relationship with all this stuff. It's the. It's the former of those.

Jason Snell [01:09:31]:
Apple is doing this now and it's apparently a very good MCP implementation. This is called Safari Technology Preview. You can download it from Apple's website. We, a lot of us call it Purple Safari because it's basically A second Safari app that runs but it's the stuff that isn't yet in the official shipping Safari. And so the icon is the Safari icon, but purple and you, you may, I mean it's been a great preview of all sorts of things. There's a bunch of, of, you know, that's where they implement stuff first. So you can look at it on your website and go oh, do I want to turn this new CSS feature? Like last year I think they did the feature where there's a new multi line composer for text and if you turn that on it reduces. It breaks text on lines differently in order to make them more pleasing.

Jason Snell [01:10:19]:
And that's a CSS feature and you can turn it on or not. And the nice thing, I was able to experiment on my website with that feature before it ever shipped to customers by using Safari Technology Preview by the purple Safari and this and then you go in and you turn on basically this allow remote and agents to control this browser at which point the MCP server is on.

Leo Laporte [01:10:42]:
So what people will do, this is the new world is they will point their AI, whether it's an agent like Hermes or Claude code or codecs at a page introducing the Safari MCP server and just say implement this, it'll turn away and you'll suddenly have an MCP server which is very handy to have.

Glenn Fleischman [01:11:05]:
Yeah, I saw a Dropbox extension people really liked. I never used it. That's it's end of life. I think the developer decided it's just they're not using Dropbox and I think John Gruber wrote about it, Nick Hare over at Pixel Envy and I was like, oh well somebody's just going to, to describe it and there'll be a, I mean maybe not a replacement. That's too much. Maybe there's other things going on. But when apps die now, as long as they're utility size, I think we're going to see and John wrote about

Leo Laporte [01:11:32]:
that or if they're open source and you can take the code and adapt it. Forking it is no longer the tragedy that it has to be. In fact, actually the tragedy now is that there are infinite numbers of forks of popular open source projects. If you go search for an open source project now on GitHub, you'll have to really work hard to get the original as opposed to somebody's fork of it.

Glenn Fleischman [01:11:56]:
And we need some kind of curation. We need a Yahoo for the best version.

Leo Laporte [01:12:00]:
This is the original.

Glenn Fleischman [01:12:01]:
Yeah, yeah, this is the one that'll actually work.

Leo Laporte [01:12:03]:
Interestingly, this isn't technically coming From Apple, it's WebKit. Right. So it's really WebKit doing this. But it is Apple. Right.

Glenn Fleischman [01:12:10]:
I love WebKit's posts. They're just so much more essential and open. They'll be like hey, we added 733 things and here they are. And this is kind of blow it all out. And they're not reserved in the way that other Apple postings often are or the tone of the developer site, you know, which is very flat.

Leo Laporte [01:12:26]:
If you go to the WebKit site it says a fast open source web browser engine which is just primarily used on Apple stuff. And I presume that everybody on the team works for Apple. Maybe not. I don't know know. It's pretty much that way with Chromium is that Chromium is pretty much a Google project. I don't know what WebKit is. WebKit was originally an open source tool. I think it came from.

Leo Laporte [01:12:53]:
What was it? Conqueror. The.

Andy Ihnatko [01:12:55]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:12:55]:
Kde.

Leo Laporte [01:12:56]:
The KDE browser.

Andy Ihnatko [01:12:58]:
Khtml.

Leo Laporte [01:12:59]:
Yeah. And. And then adopted by Apple and Apple's support I think keeps it alive which is good because we don't want to be in a.

Andy Ihnatko [01:13:07]:
We need multiple. Need multiple engines. Particularly given that how wired up Chromium is for sending signals.

Leo Laporte [01:13:15]:
It's like yeah, well and everybody, I would say everybody using AI who's working with the web is probably using some sort of Chromium MCP server. So it's really good to have one for Safari. Yeah. To make sure if nothing else to ensure compatibility.

Andy Ihnatko [01:13:29]:
Yeah. Particularly when these agents are the job is going to be hey, book me hotel. Hotel here. Make sure that it's kind of. It's not. It's near a place where I can order a pizza and don't have to eat from the hotel restaurant.

Glenn Fleischman [01:13:40]:
Yeah, right. My God, sometimes when you say things like that I'm like oh yeah, Yahoo Pipes is basically what we. What AI could do for us now is find me a pizza place within 10 miles of this thing.

Andy Ihnatko [01:13:50]:
It always. The history of the Internet is commerce and porn and pizza. It's like those three are the main drivers. How can I make it easier to get porn pizza or that pizza place

Glenn Fleischman [01:14:00]:
that took bitcoin briefly. I think they have a billion dollars of the bitcoin if they can find it. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:14:04]:
Yeah, that guy bought one one pizza for like 12,000 bitcoin or something like that. I think we have a title. Commerce, porn and pizza. Let me just put right that down.

Glenn Fleischman [01:14:15]:
That's it. I remember. Boy, that was funny. Many, many years ago, I met the Netscape webmaster. Really lovely guy, I'm forgetting his name, at a conference. And he said, this is maybe 97, 96. And he said he had been on a panel at another conference about video. And he said, yeah, we're really striving to get like, you know, 320 by 240 at like 12 frames per second.

Glenn Fleischman [01:14:38]:
And somebody next to him worked for a porn site and said, do you know how much people pay for that on our site? Like, we're already doing that. We're streaming. They don't care. It's like, all right, yeah. He's like, oh, okay.

Leo Laporte [01:14:47]:
You want 18K?

Andy Ihnatko [01:14:48]:
We got it.

Jason Snell [01:14:48]:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [01:14:49]:
It was worthwhile.

Leo Laporte [01:14:50]:
As good as the real deal. Speaking of good, Siri AI finally. Good.

Andy Ihnatko [01:14:55]:
Yay.

Leo Laporte [01:14:55]:
Yay. It can. And it's being, you know, it's interesting. Have you tried the new developer? What is it? Developer beta 3 is out.

Jason Snell [01:15:03]:
Yep. Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:15:04]:
So we've got to be close to the public beta because I really would like to try.

Jason Snell [01:15:09]:
Yeah, I mean, it's possible that this is a potential candidate for public beta release and that might happen next week. They only say July and sometimes it happens. I think it even happened last year where we all kind of assumed that a particular build would be the public beta and then it wasn't and it sort of slid back and then there was a public beta, but it had a different build than the developer beta, which means they did another build because there was. They were not ready to release that build. So. But yeah, I mean, I think they. I think what they do is they target mid month and have room to slip because they want to ship it in July. So, yeah, I would not be surprised.

Jason Snell [01:15:43]:
And I don't know anything about this. There's my canary. I don't know about the public beta. Sometimes I do, but I do not know right now. I would say beta 3 feels a little bit like it might be a candidate to be the public beta bet build, but only if they don't find it only came out yesterday. Right. So if they find issues, they have the ability to say, no, not that one. But you know, if it looks good, maybe there would be a public beta release, I don't know, next week sometime.

Jason Snell [01:16:08]:
But they've got time because they only promised July.

Leo Laporte [01:16:10]:
One of the most exciting features of Siri AI has now emerged in the third beta, the ability to talk to third party apps. And a 9 to 5 Mac has an example of checking your electric car for the battery level. That's just one Example, I mean, presumably this will happen with other apps as well. But this is good, you know, I mean there's obviously more you want to do than that. But it works with Tessie but not the official Tesla app. So I guess app developers have to turn that on. They have to. It's an intent, I presume that they have to.

Jason Snell [01:16:50]:
Right. And Tessie is generally for those who don't know, that's like the indie Tesla app that controls everything that. Because, you know, as, as is the story from throughout history, the official app from the vendor is slower to. To do new things and the ones that are built by fans and other third parties, they're on the cutting edge. So are we surprised that the fan indie Tesla app can do this? And I think I saw that the Ford is app does it too. So like it's obviously, I think, yeah, I think it's probably app intense and Tesla will presumably update their app. But like it's a first inkling, right, that of what, what you're supposed to be seeing here, which is Siri, AI is supposed to look at app intense and be able to figure out that, oh, I need to ask that app for this information so that I can give it back to you or tell that app to do something for you. That's the dream.

Jason Snell [01:17:41]:
And it's. I think it's natural that there's not a lot of that right now because it's beta season. Like developers of third party apps are worried about getting their apps running by the time that the OS ships, not for people who are in the beta. And this is always the problem is that there's stuff that it's hard to test during the summer because the apps aren't there. Because the app developers also are taking the summer to develop their apps.

Glenn Fleischman [01:18:02]:
Default folder didn't work for the first one or two betas and I was like, I'm lost with that default folder.

Jason Snell [01:18:07]:
Spoilers for my pick of the week, by the way. Spoilers.

Glenn Fleischman [01:18:12]:
But they've updated.

Jason Snell [01:18:13]:
But it's updated now. Thank you. Stay tuned.

Glenn Fleischman [01:18:15]:
Sorry.

Leo Laporte [01:18:17]:
By the way, that Discord chat tells me that they have extended fable to the 12th, so I got five more

Jason Snell [01:18:25]:
days working on it. Leo? Yes.

Glenn Fleischman [01:18:29]:
Before it's too late.

Leo Laporte [01:18:31]:
Well, there's been. It's so funny to watch. The place to watch this now is x.com, which I'm sad to say because I was off. But if you want to know, you know, the good and the bad of AI, that's the place to be. And I've been watching people Freak out. And like there was a lot of posts yesterday saying here's how to take Fable and, and, and take its rules and apply it to opus 4.8 so it's as good as Fable and which of course is nonsense. And then there was all this speculation that OpenAI would release their updated chat GPT or GPT 5.6, which is rumored to be very, very good, on the day that you could no longer use Fable.

Glenn Fleischman [01:19:10]:
That would be smart, right?

Leo Laporte [01:19:12]:
Like, oh well, you can always move over here. And so I have subscriptions with both, so I'm just waiting.

Glenn Fleischman [01:19:19]:
But my first, I was using Siri AI the other day because I'm writing, I have a mere, I want to say nine Take Control books to update this summer and two new ones to write. Yep, it's exciting. It's exciting when Apple changes everything. But it's at least the interface is not. Not completely changed the way it was the last year. But I was testing, I went to like, oh, where was it? I was someplace. And you could right click and one of the options. Oh, you're in.

Glenn Fleischman [01:19:45]:
It's a scare thing. You're in System Settings, Privacy and Security and you're looking at startup items and log up login items. So you right click and it has some options. At the top is Siri AI. And I'm like oh, I will say tell me about this login item. And it says the login item section is blah blah blah. I'm like, oh, you don't really, you shouldn't really be configuring because you don't have information about the thing I just right clicked on. But you're pretending like you do.

Glenn Fleischman [01:20:08]:
Maybe a later version. Well, but I thought that would be kind of awesome. If you click, you right click a thing in System Settings which has so many things now, particularly a specific installed thing, and say what the heck is this? It'll be like, oh, this is in System Agents and you should install Lincoln X to remove it and I don't know, something advice instead of just a listing.

Leo Laporte [01:20:30]:
I'm sorry, I have to leave now because I have some AI coding

Jason Snell [01:20:37]:
I heard from a friend of mine who's a developer who said here's what you do. Every time you get access to a new model, the first thing you do is you point it at your code base and you say find the bugs. I do that and then keep doing that until it can't find the bugs anymore and then somebody else. So you'll do that with Claude and then OpenAI will have a new Model. And you're like, all right, new model.

Leo Laporte [01:20:57]:
Model.

Jason Snell [01:20:57]:
Find the bugs because they do it. I think I might have mentioned this. Last week, Marco Armand released a beta of Overcast, and he said he found four incredibly subtle bugs that he'd been trying to track down and couldn't find in his own code that he wrote. And he pointed an AI tool at it and it found those bugs. And then he would look and he'd be like, why is that? And then he has that moment as a programmer. He's like, oh, right. But it was not something he saw. And then.

Jason Snell [01:21:25]:
And ask a new model to find your bugs. And it found them, which is just. It's just amazing. Incredible.

Glenn Fleischman [01:21:31]:
I love Cindy Crawford and she had no insight into my code base at all, though, so I don't know.

Jason Snell [01:21:35]:
Well, you got to ask an AI model and not a supermodel, and that was your big mistake.

Glenn Fleischman [01:21:40]:
Super.

Jason Snell [01:21:41]:
There are other questions to ask supermodels. Glenn,

Leo Laporte [01:21:48]:
Have you been playing Claude?

Jason Snell [01:21:50]:
But I wouldn't call Claude a super model.

Leo Laporte [01:21:54]:
No.

Glenn Fleischman [01:21:54]:
In the same way does the bathing suit issue of Illustrated siai. Although I think SI is already running

Jason Snell [01:22:02]:
AI storage Artificial Illustrated.

Glenn Fleischman [01:22:05]:
Oh, no, you said it come into existence.

Jason Snell [01:22:07]:
Yeah, sorry.

Andy Ihnatko [01:22:10]:
Also known as deviantart.com Let me ask for.

Leo Laporte [01:22:14]:
Is it just you, Jason, that's used developer beta 3. Anybody else?

Glenn Fleischman [01:22:18]:
Oh, I've got two. I'm just installing three now that I know about it.

Leo Laporte [01:22:21]:
Yeah. I'm just curious, have you been playing with it, Jason? Are there any other features you've noticed, new features?

Jason Snell [01:22:29]:
I've only started there. Like, yeah, that App Intents. Hints of App Intents is a good place to start. And what else is in there? It's little stuff. There's still some stuff trickling in and there's some tweaks going on.

Glenn Fleischman [01:22:47]:
Here's one I found in Apple Home. Just by accident, we installed a new camera in the house and we have three. Not because we're paranoid. That sounds terrible. It's just we've had issues. So we have cameras and we never see anything on them except raccoons and cats and squirrels, basically. But so I go to the home app, and now when you see video, instead of it showing you each camera device, you had to go to to see clips, now all the clips are lined up in a row, at least in the Mac version. And you can just scrol through your entire library of things that were motion

Jason Snell [01:23:20]:
sensor recorded, which is how we know that Apple is totally doing a security camera, because they wouldn't just be doing that out of the goodness of their hearts. There's a golden. Yeah, probably. Those are the rumors. Golden Gate Bridge wallpaper is in now because it's Golden Gate. That's nice. The Reminders app icon changed pretty dramatically in a nice way, I think. But it's basically instead of it being a dark bullet on a little lighter ring, it's a kind of a light bullet in the center of the darker colored ring.

Jason Snell [01:23:47]:
And you can tell I launched it and I was like, oh, reminders, what have you done?

Glenn Fleischman [01:23:52]:
We're also getting inline and messages now. You're getting stuff like every time you mention anything with a date or time or place, it'll be add to reminders and add to notes.

Jason Snell [01:24:00]:
I think that was a beta 2, but yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Leo Laporte [01:24:05]:
How does that work? Does it pop up? What is it?

Jason Snell [01:24:07]:
No, it's like underneath. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:24:09]:
It's subtle like the text suggestions.

Jason Snell [01:24:12]:
Yeah, it's a little like that. And then it looks. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like the tab grouping feature might be added to Safari. At the very least. The alert that it got added as a new feature is in there now. But is the new feature there? I'm not sure. Not 100% sure yet. We've only seen that because that's the idea that you can take your tabs and say to Safari, organize these for me.

Jason Snell [01:24:36]:
And it makes like little subgroups of your tabs. So have. You don't have a billion tabs.

Leo Laporte [01:24:39]:
And that's AI, right?

Jason Snell [01:24:41]:
And that's. That's. Yeah, that's AI. I. I don't know. I've only seen it happen in icloud tabs where it summarizes tabs that are open in other browsers of yours on your icloud account. But I haven't seen it in actual Safari yet. But that is a feature that's supposed to be coming.

Leo Laporte [01:24:55]:
Here's from MacRumors, the new Goldengate wallpaper. That's pretty.

Glenn Fleischman [01:25:01]:
I kind of love the Goldengate Bridge. I mean, not that I didn't like a lot of the other, you know, High Sierra or the other ones. I'm still waiting for macOS Fresno, but I don't think we're going to get it. MacOS Encino. I have to go to Star Trek. I don't think we're lower decks for that.

Leo Laporte [01:25:19]:
I doubt we're going to see Encino.

Glenn Fleischman [01:25:20]:
Wasn't it the Encino class in the lower decks? It was like the California class and

Jason Snell [01:25:25]:
it was the USS Cerritos.

Leo Laporte [01:25:27]:
But I'm Sure.

Jason Snell [01:25:28]:
Encino was one of the ships in the California.

Glenn Fleischman [01:25:31]:
There's one, there's one episode in which all the California classes come in.

Jason Snell [01:25:34]:
It's like. And it's not good names though.

Glenn Fleischman [01:25:36]:
It's the Vallejo.

Jason Snell [01:25:37]:
It's the. It's all the rejected Apple macOS names that were made into starships. I think that's, I think that's a die. I'm still holding out for Shasta. I feel like Shasta is going to be a great Shasta would future one for people who are not in California. A spectacular volcano that we have here. That makes for good photos, good photo opportunities at Shasta. So we'll probably get there.

Leo Laporte [01:25:57]:
It's also a sacred site with our First Nation folks. And it is, it is. You get that sense when you approach it.

Jason Snell [01:26:05]:
It is beautiful and magical.

Leo Laporte [01:26:06]:
And magical happening.

Jason Snell [01:26:07]:
Yeah. You're literally just driving through flat nothing landscape and then you look up and hovering above the mountains to your north is a volcano.

Leo Laporte [01:26:14]:
You're like, oh, Fuji almost. It's just, it's just there.

Jason Snell [01:26:17]:
Very dramatic.

Leo Laporte [01:26:17]:
Incredible.

Jason Snell [01:26:18]:
Beautiful.

Leo Laporte [01:26:19]:
So, yeah, I. So last question. When the public beta comes out sometime in the next couple of weeks, do it

Glenn Fleischman [01:26:29]:
probably. I love it.

Leo Laporte [01:26:30]:
It's pretty stable, right?

Glenn Fleischman [01:26:32]:
Yes, shockingly, I mean no. No one should do it on their primary machine if they're lose worry about losing work and productivity and need to be. But if you want to have fun and you're not, it's not like a mission critical thing.

Leo Laporte [01:26:43]:
That's my only phone. I think that's.

Glenn Fleischman [01:26:45]:
I want it. I've got a backup phone. It's my night phone. No, I'm just kidding. I got a backup phone that I got just for testing. I. It bought. I bought an old enough phone that is new enough to run every feature that I need to test on in the new releases.

Glenn Fleischman [01:26:56]:
But I spend the money to do that because I'm writing nine books.

Leo Laporte [01:26:59]:
Are you doing a take control for that too?

Glenn Fleischman [01:27:01]:
Which phones or. No, we're doing Joe and I do iOS and iPados 27. So we list all the new features. We're going to do a different thing this year probably because the OS, he does Mac OS, he's doing Mac OS 27 GoldenGate. The updates for the operating systems are all so focused on Siri AI and Apple Intelligence with some exceptions that we're probably going to do a Apple Siri AI book, an Apple Intelligence book and then link the two system update books to it. So we have, we have work ahead of us. As they say. It's fun Today, this year feels like a positive year.

Glenn Fleischman [01:27:37]:
Every time I poke at a feature, I go poke. And it goes, oh, that works better. Or it didn't break it right. And I'm like, last year it was like, poke. And it's like, oh, oh. I get my finger in there. Yuck, I gotta wash it off.

Leo Laporte [01:27:49]:
Now it's like those Roman gargoyle walls where you stick your hand in. If you're a liar, you're going to get your hand bit off.

Glenn Fleischman [01:27:56]:
Oh, my God.

Leo Laporte [01:27:57]:
That's all right.

Glenn Fleischman [01:27:58]:
Good.

Leo Laporte [01:27:58]:
Well, I'm going to. As soon as the public beta comes out, I'm putting it on my phone. And if I don't get your call, well, now you'll know why you're watching MacBreak.

Glenn Fleischman [01:28:08]:
Excuse. Auto reply. Leo has installed public beta. Cannot reply new OS.

Leo Laporte [01:28:13]:
Who dis?

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:15]:
You're watching Mac Break to file a radar on my behalf.

Leo Laporte [01:28:18]:
Just shake it as hard as you can. And then my watch says, did you just take a fall? Andy Inoco. Jason Snell sitting in for Chris Warren. Christina Warren, of course. Glenn Fleischman. Great to have all three of you. You're watching MacBreak Weekly. Let's talk about rumors.

Jason Snell [01:28:38]:
Rumors.

Leo Laporte [01:28:38]:
Nikkei says Apple will launch five. The five. Five new iPhone models to gain market share amid memory crunch. Well, I could think of. Let's see, the folding phone, The Ultra. The iPhone 18 Max Pro. Max. The iPhone 18.

Leo Laporte [01:28:57]:
Nothing.

Glenn Fleischman [01:28:57]:
Yeah. What would the fifth air.

Leo Laporte [01:29:00]:
The air. Do you think they're going to do another Air?

Jason Snell [01:29:03]:
Yep. German says that too. In the spring. In the spring, it's probably 17 for

Andy Ihnatko [01:29:07]:
the regular and eight, they're saying also with a slightly bigger battery and a second lens. Like a wide angle lens.

Jason Snell [01:29:13]:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [01:29:13]:
So less, which would be wonderful.

Leo Laporte [01:29:14]:
Bigger battery would make a difference.

Jason Snell [01:29:16]:
So this is the iPhone 18 model series. So it's right. It's 18.18Pro. 18Pro Max 18 or Air 2S or. Or what. What is the. The. The E.

Jason Snell [01:29:30]:
The E. It's not an SE anymore. 18E. And the folding phone.

Leo Laporte [01:29:33]:
So that would be six.

Jason Snell [01:29:34]:
That's six models.

Glenn Fleischman [01:29:35]:
Yeah. Maybe the folding phone is for real. I keep reading about it like it's for real. And I was like, are they really gonna.

Jason Snell [01:29:40]:
The folding phone? Well, I mean, we won't. We won't know until it falls, but it sure sounds like they're making them.

Glenn Fleischman [01:29:45]:
I saw somebody with one and they're like, oh, yeah, we have a couple of the Samsung one. I'm sorry. And they're like, yeah, we had a couple of them. Like, do you ever have Any issues, like, that's fine. I was like, okay. I guess it got. Apple just sat it out until they could perfect it.

Jason Snell [01:29:56]:
So typical Apple, right? They're like, yeah, we'll just wait, we'll come in and then people are gonna get excited and Samsung will be like, really? But that's how it goes.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:05]:
Thank you for helping US sell another 10 million screens.

Leo Laporte [01:30:10]:
The other rumor is that Apple has decided to up the production of the folding phone to 10 million.

Jason Snell [01:30:17]:
Interesting, right?

Leo Laporte [01:30:18]:
Some real confidence. They were originally going to make 7 to 8 million. This is all rumors.

Glenn Fleischman [01:30:23]:
Are any of us going to buy a folding Apple iPhone?

Jason Snell [01:30:26]:
Yeah, we're a bad set of examples. I will absolutely have one.

Glenn Fleischman [01:30:32]:
So I'm going to predict zero sales then.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:34]:
There are a lot of Vision Pro owners in this conversation. So we're not, we're not that good.

Jason Snell [01:30:40]:
I only have two Vision Pros near me right now. What are you talking about?

Glenn Fleischman [01:30:43]:
There's always. There's a spider and a Vision Pro with an eight feet.

Jason Snell [01:30:46]:
Yeah. At any time.

Leo Laporte [01:30:48]:
I actually have the Samsung Fold. I've had several of them. But I'm excited because I like the idea of it. I love my iPad mini mini and I love the idea of a phone

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:56]:
that is both that.

Jason Snell [01:30:58]:
I'm with you, Leo. I think I fear what it's going to cost. But as somebody who's very iPad. I use the iPad all the time. And so for me what I find intriguing about this is, you know, so many people are iPhone first and then maybe they have an iPad or not. But like my iPhone is only really when I'm kind of roaming around when I'm in the house. Yeah, it's mostly iPad. Could this product become my primary computing device? Maybe.

Jason Snell [01:31:30]:
But that's what excites me about it is that there's a, at least a possibility that I would have this kind of one device that could be my roam around phone and also sit down on the couch and fold and open it up and use it there. Like I use my iPad now.

Andy Ihnatko [01:31:45]:
For me the use case is always all those that like. Like when I spent the. I spent another Friday in Boston like a few days ago because I had a run, had to pick up the new. The new laptop and like that's the perfect circumstance for. I don't want to take even my iPad Pro with me. But I still. But the thing is I'm going to be on commuter rail for an hour on the way there, hour for way back. I'm probably going to be in town for the two or three hours and it's going to be super hot.

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:07]:
So maybe I don't want to do a whole lot of work like and assume that I'm not picking up. I'm not going to be coming home with a new MacBook. But like I need to have something in my pocket and a keyboard so that I can at least get some work done or respond to something that's very, very important. But it's not worth my taking like the big. Even, even a lightweight iPad with me. But the thing is like the. Whereas the older Rumors were about 2,000 to start with and maybe it'll go up for the now I think I don't know if it was. Ming Chiquo had a lot to say this week among them like basically saying that not only, not only the, the.

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:41]:
He was saying 6 to 7 million, the Nikkei upped that to 10. But he's saying that also, by the way only about 10% of those are going to be like made in, in the third quarter. So if, if they are planning to actually sell whatever the first round is for sale, it's going to be in very, very limited quantities. But the other thing, maybe this is updated to represent the price increases that we're all dealing with now. The. They're basically saying entry level 2,200 to 2,300, probably 2500 for the one that you actually want to. And that is to me rarefied air for somebody to safely say I want not just a MacBook but a really nicely outfitted M5 MacBook Pro or. And you know, I'm sorry, what I'm getting at is that there are not a whole lot of people, it's a niche product.

Andy Ihnatko [01:33:34]:
If it basically is people choosing between a really, really good iPhone Pro plus a MacBook Neo for when they actually need that kind of firepower, or that, that plus a. An iPad mini, I guess not that big. It's just, but the idea of folding something, putting your shirt pocket. Not a whole lot of people are going to say no, I'd much rather have this, not just this device but this version 1 hardship device which is going to be. I mean you always have. Even when it's something as robust as a MacBook, you would think I'm going to wait for the first revision just to be sure if I can. This is going to be. I imagine there's.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:12]:
I imagine that despite Apple doing all they can to make sure that this is a very, very nice rollout, there's going to be a disproportionate number of People that are going to have to go back to the Apple store a couple of times before this gets sorted out. But it's, it's hard for me to imagine $2,500 for a primary phone where you are absolutely happy that you have the extra convenience of having this dual device absolutely justifies 2500 bucks. Unless, unless you have the sort of buying power where just like, just like, you know, I, I think, I thought nothing about buying like a $2,200 laptop instead of something that cost $1,000 because it is that valuable to me and thank God I can afford it.

Glenn Fleischman [01:34:51]:
Hey, it's a hundred bucks. $2,500 is a hundred dollars a month over two years at 0% interest of Apple Cleaves 100amonth is. But it's, you know, if you're not, you're paying the tax up front, there's a couple things you have to do in some cases. Right. But maybe Apple will do a 36, 6 month tier for it or something to reduce the cost.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:08]:
I think Apple knows trade in too.

Jason Snell [01:35:10]:
So yeah, I think Apple knows who's buying, especially a first generation of this device. And it is not somebody who is saying if I buy this I have to buy a MacBook Neo. It's just not.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:18]:
I mean we have to do one for college.

Jason Snell [01:35:20]:
Yeah, this is a product especially the first generation, but it's at the top of their product line. This is a product that's targeted for the people who have the money to spend on Apple gear and they want the best and they want the coolest and they want the cutting edge. And this is going to be both of those things. And, and you know, it's not like Apple will say, well we do make an affordable iPhone and it's the iPhone 18 or the iPhone 17 or you know, and this is not that. This is a new category and they know that a large number of the people who buy it are not going to be weighing like whether they get this or a computer. They're going to get both because they've got the money to do it. And over time it changes. I agree Andy, that this is a first generation product.

Jason Snell [01:35:58]:
Right. So part of the appeal of it, but also part of the thing that a savvy shopper might be repelled by is the fact that it's going to be a first version and it's going to be weird and it's going to be weird on the hardware side where who knows what's going to be going on there and it's going to be weird on the software side because again, Apple's going to be shipping software for this for the first time and they're going to have to work on that. And you know, you can. Some of us, and I know our listeners are among them. Some of them, them love the ride. A bumpy ride, right? Because it's like, it's bumpy. But we're here. That's what life is here on the cutting edge.

Jason Snell [01:36:31]:
And we love it, but it's a little bit bumpy. And then there are other people who are like, hell no, not a. In a million years am I going to do that. Both are reasonable. Depending on what you want out of life, depending on what your budget is, I think it's fine. But yeah, I, I would have a hard time saying now, here's a, here's a tip that'll save you some money. Buy the expensive folding iPhone. I'm not.

Jason Snell [01:36:53]:
Because then you won't have to get an iPad. It's like getting an iPad and it's like, well, it kind of isn't. And also. No.

Leo Laporte [01:36:59]:
So it's not saving you money.

Jason Snell [01:37:01]:
You could buy, you could buy an iPhone and an iPad and a MacBook Neo for that price.

Glenn Fleischman [01:37:06]:
Apple's got to capture the margin or the sale revenue and margin that they're going to lose from not selling an iPad. So that's part of the price, too. There's a high price of manufacturer, but it's also because they are going to, I mean, it could cause iPad sales to crater in a specific chunk. People I don't think are going to go, yeah, I'm buying a folding fold and an iPad. So, so they have to. Apple has to deal with that impact as well.

Andy Ihnatko [01:37:26]:
Yeah. It's also a question about what the margins are on a device like this because those screens are hella, hella expensive. It's like disproportionate to any other phone they've made before. I said this before when Jon Gruber was on, but one of the things that really, really spelled that out to me was when Motorola, who are the kings of making incredible phones at affordable prices, like where you put them side by side with something that costs twice as much, much. And you can't see really where the money went on the more expensive ones, they finally came out with their like, iPhone ultra style, like, or Samsung style foldable. And I'm thinking, oh great, so maybe this would be like the first one of that size that like be $1500 or oh, $600 would be still, still be better. And it was exactly $100 less than the Samsung. That's how much these displays cost.

Leo Laporte [01:38:15]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:38:16]:
And it's, it's, it's going to be a ride.

Leo Laporte [01:38:19]:
Have you and Mike Hurley on Upgrade created a pool for the price, the final price of the Ultra yet? It feels like no would do.

Jason Snell [01:38:28]:
I, I agree. I think that when it comes to that will probably do it. We usually do a draft right before and so that'll probably be, there'll probably be some pricing related things because one of the great things for people who complain that Mark Gurman reports everything and spoils everything that Apple's going to announce and it's not fun any anymore and whatever like okay, one of the things that Mark Gurman can't be that good at is names and prices. Because the names and prices come out of the marketing group and out of the product group at Apple. They are not supply chain sources. They are not even software sources. Those are very high level and that's. So if you want your excitement it's going to be what's this going to cost? And what's it going to be called? Because sometimes those names leak like the Neo leaked like the day before but that product leaked two years before and we were talking about it two years before the Neo came out that they were going to do a Chromebook killer.

Jason Snell [01:39:22]:
But that's what it was clearly. But we didn't know the name until the day before and we didn't know the price until it was announced. Nobody got it right. So that's the, it's going to be fun to find out. And then you throw in this, the price increases and it's like, well now what's it going to cost? And I'm reminded of how, how when there was a rumor that the Vision Pro or whatever we, the Apple Vision, whatever we thought it was going to be called, the Apple Visor, there was a rumor that it was going to cost 2,500. And I remember being outraged and being like are you kidding? 2,000 is even too much. It can't be 2,500. And they're like how about 3,500? It's like, what? So yeah, we'll see.

Jason Snell [01:40:01]:
Apple is not shy to make things expensive. They're just not, they're shameless about it because they make lots and lots of money. But you know, so it'll be fun but it'll be a good guess. We have not done it yet and I think nobody knows except like a small number of people at Apple.

Andy Ihnatko [01:40:18]:
One question though, for, for Everybody is every. Is anybody surprised that there, if these rumors are true, that they're going to start off with well, we'll build 10 million of them and we think we'll sell through all of these.

Jason Snell [01:40:29]:
It's, it suggests that they really are high on the product and that they're probably going to be more aggressive than we think. That's. I think, I think you, you don't, you don't up your. If, if it's true. I don't think you up your estimate to 10 million if you're worried that you're going to have to set the price so high that nobody's going to buy them. I think you, I think you do that. If you're a little more aggressive and you're like we want these out there, we're going to price this pretty well. We think people are going to find this a hot product.

Jason Snell [01:40:54]:
Now they could be wrong too. But that is a, that, that's my reaction to that is that they seem to be doing that from a position of confidence which also suggests maybe they'll be a little aggressive on price.

Leo Laporte [01:41:03]:
Price.

Jason Snell [01:41:04]:
They have margin to give. They'll have margin to give in this product.

Leo Laporte [01:41:07]:
I think one of the most interesting rumors to me is that there might be a upgraded MacBook Pro sooner than later. Like the new design. We might see the new design sooner than later.

Jason Snell [01:41:22]:
Yeah. Gurman says that the low. So I think the original intent was the OLED model was going to come out with the M6 and it was come out at the end of this year, beginning of Next. And now Gman has said they're not going to do anything M6. So if that model comes out end of this year, beginning of next, It'll be an M5 Pro or M5 Max. The same chips we already have seen but with an OLED and touch screen and new controls and stuff like that. But what about the base model? Well, it turns out they are also doing a design for the base model and Gurman says that will get the M6 because the base model M6 is going to ship. And that design, which would be a new design but not presumably not oled, not touchscreen, but sort of like more reminiscent of the higher end models is going to happen.

Jason Snell [01:42:04]:
So you know, interesting quirk but because we always forget it's almost like a different laptop. Right. It's the one that's not the redesign though.

Leo Laporte [01:42:13]:
It's going to be the new look they said.

Jason Snell [01:42:16]:
He said it was going to be reminiscent of the look. So it's like they look, they're not

Leo Laporte [01:42:20]:
going to give it something that doesn't exist. That's looking back.

Jason Snell [01:42:24]:
Well, we don't know the sequencing of it. We don't know the sequencing of it, but because they may do the, the M5 Pro models first. In fact they probably will. Right. And those will be OLED touchscreen. And then in the spring, let's say they'll do an M6 base model.

Leo Laporte [01:42:38]:
Oh, now I'm confused. So you think the OLED touchscreen will not be even an M6 but an M5?

Jason Snell [01:42:42]:
Gurman says it'll be an M5.

Leo Laporte [01:42:44]:
Why?

Jason Snell [01:42:45]:
Yeah, because they, because they killed the M5 Pro and Max and that it will be an M5 or the M6 Pro and Max. So it'll be M5 Pro and Max and then a year later they'll do M7 but they'll just jump right over M6.

Leo Laporte [01:42:57]:
Would you advise against an M6? Nothing?

Jason Snell [01:43:02]:
No, I mean I'm sure it's a perfectly fine chip. They just want to move on to the next one. And if you're in the market for something like it'll be in that low end MacBook Pro, it'll probably be in the iPad Pro, it'll probably be in MacBook Air. And like it's not a stinker. I think it's more like they decided the high end ones weren't doing because they, they were, weren't worth doing because there were even more impressive high end chips right behind them and that maybe they should just skip to them. But I don't think there's going to be a problem with that. We're in for a bumpy year, year and a half of weird chip sequencing though, for sure.

Leo Laporte [01:43:36]:
Yeah. Speaking of weird, I asked my AI agent what the California class ships are in Star Trek and I am getting a dissertation.

Glenn Fleischman [01:43:44]:
Oh, did you see? I pasted a list in.

Leo Laporte [01:43:48]:
Yeah, I saw, but I, but I thought, well, let me. I didn't know about the USS Protostar. Did you know about that?

Jason Snell [01:43:53]:
Oh, that's the, that's the subject of Star Trek Prodigy, which is a different show. That's the animated show. That's not a California class though. I think that's a, well, experimental show.

Leo Laporte [01:44:03]:
Maybe it's hallucinating because I think it is. Yeah, yeah, the U.S. it says the Protostar is a California class ship which is a prototype vessel that, you know.

Jason Snell [01:44:12]:
Yeah, I don't think that's right. I think that's a hallucination. I was going to say, you know, nerd. Nerd, Nerd. Information About Star Trek on the Internet scraped by. AI pinch me. I had no idea.

Leo Laporte [01:44:22]:
So that's why I'm checking it with you, because it sounds like it has hallucinated.

Jason Snell [01:44:25]:
Yeah, I think so.

Glenn Fleischman [01:44:26]:
We've got things like USS Sherman Oaks. Great city.

Jason Snell [01:44:29]:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [01:44:29]:
USS Fresno, USS Burbank, home to wonderful studios.

Leo Laporte [01:44:32]:
I think those are much more interesting than the Protostar.

Glenn Fleischman [01:44:36]:
That's a terrible USS West Covina.

Jason Snell [01:44:38]:
That's a good USS Carlsbad. Bad.

Glenn Fleischman [01:44:41]:
Oh my God.

Leo Laporte [01:44:42]:
And somebody in the discord said, you know, Encino really isn't a city, it's just a neighborhood.

Jason Snell [01:44:46]:
So tell that to Encino Man.

Leo Laporte [01:44:50]:
Yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [01:44:50]:
Wait, there is no uss. I got that wrong. Encino is not one of the California. That's my belt. I just. I just say neighborhoods. I know.

Jason Snell [01:44:56]:
Apparently we just canonize it right here.

Glenn Fleischman [01:44:59]:
USS Glenn. Glenn Oaks or something. I don't know. USS Glenn Glendale. USS Glendale.

Leo Laporte [01:45:04]:
I actually am glad that they're not going to release the OLED, Mr. M6, whatever. Because that means my budget will be a little bit more capable of affording an ultra which is going to be M6 priced. Probably. Well, anyway, we've now just determined that the Protostar is not a California class.

Jason Snell [01:45:24]:
No, it's not.

Leo Laporte [01:45:24]:
Absolutely not.

Jason Snell [01:45:26]:
Totally different show.

Leo Laporte [01:45:27]:
But the West Covina is without a doubt Las Covina. All right, let's see. What are we doing here? What are we doing? I have so much more to talk about. Is there any. Andy, I couldn't find any. Is there any Vision Pro? Because we've got to do a Vision Pro segment or lose our identity as the nation's premier Vision Pro podcast.

Jason Snell [01:45:50]:
We can skip it.

Andy Ihnatko [01:45:51]:
It's fine. I didn't find a single darn thing there.

Leo Laporte [01:45:54]:
I did. I looked and I looked. Maybe I'll have my agent hallucinate.

Jason Snell [01:45:58]:
Okay, I'll tell you. You what? I have an item. I have an item.

Leo Laporte [01:46:02]:
Play the theme. Oh, what do you see?

Andy Ihnatko [01:46:06]:
What do you know? It's time to talk a Vision Pro.

Leo Laporte [01:46:10]:
However weak and feeble this item may be. It does.

Jason Snell [01:46:15]:
Thanks for the setup, Leo. That really helps me.

Glenn Fleischman [01:46:17]:
I still don't believe the Vision Pro exists. I don't think Apple would ever sell something like that.

Leo Laporte [01:46:21]:
They would.

Glenn Fleischman [01:46:21]:
Small market.

Leo Laporte [01:46:22]:
Jason, what is the latest Vision Pro news?

Jason Snell [01:46:25]:
It has come come to my attention that the. The ping pong app in the Vision Pro now supports the Logitech spatial stylus Muse. And I'll tell you, this is. This is why it's important to support hand controllers in Vision os, folks. And why Apple really missed the Boat by not doing it is ping pong. You know, table tennis on. On the Meta Quest is so good because you've got the hand controller and it maps perfectly to your like ping pong paddle. But you.

Jason Snell [01:47:02]:
Not the. Not the table tennis app on the Vision Pro or the pickleball app on the Vision Pro. Well, good news, everybody. This kind of weird spatial pencil that Logitech makes, the Muse, in addition to supporting a lot of weird, interesting 3D art things where you can literally draw in space with, which is wild. And I think it did a fishing app that it supported out of the box. Now it also supports those paddle games. And I'll tell you, holding it in your hand and playing table tennis, really good. They did a much better job with that.

Jason Snell [01:47:38]:
It's part of the story of watching this thing, they ship the product. But over years, slowly, you're watching all the pieces of this platform actually start to make sense, including spatial peripherals that are relevant. So that's my news is if you want to play a paddle game or do fishing or draw in 3D space. Logitech sent me this Muse as a review unit. I don't know what to write about it, but I've mentioned it twice on this show. Now.

Leo Laporte [01:48:04]:
There you go.

Jason Snell [01:48:04]:
Because it's deeply weird. It's kind of brilliant, but it's like. But what do I use it for? And I've got an answer now. Ping pong.

Leo Laporte [01:48:11]:
Ping pong and fishing.

Jason Snell [01:48:12]:
And that is the Vision Pro segment. Ta da. Now, you know, we're done talking.

Leo Laporte [01:48:18]:
The Vision Pro silo came back a couple of days ago. I haven't watched it. Good.

Jason Snell [01:48:26]:
It's a great show.

Glenn Fleischman [01:48:27]:
Excellent. I think you mean the Silo is

Leo Laporte [01:48:31]:
going to be the best.

Jason Snell [01:48:31]:
The Silo.

Glenn Fleischman [01:48:32]:
The Silo.

Jason Snell [01:48:33]:
Sorry, no, it's just a silo. It's not the Silo.

Glenn Fleischman [01:48:35]:
I famously said the silo once on Blue Sky. Jason took me to task and then somebody said the silo on Jeopardy. I screen captured it, sent it to you. They said the silo and it was wrong.

Leo Laporte [01:48:46]:
It was marked wrong.

Glenn Fleischman [01:48:47]:
No, it's not marked wrong.

Leo Laporte [01:48:48]:
It's not marked wrong. Well, because the, the. I think they just don't say you guys are the Jeopardy experts, but I'm Silo.

Jason Snell [01:48:55]:
It's a good show. It's a. It's a surprisingly good show, in fact.

Glenn Fleischman [01:48:59]:
Yeah, can't no spoilers. Can't do any spoilers.

Jason Snell [01:49:01]:
Rebecca.

Leo Laporte [01:49:01]:
Rebecca Ferguson.

Jason Snell [01:49:02]:
I think she's great.

Leo Laporte [01:49:03]:
Just adore her.

Jason Snell [01:49:05]:
Common rapper. Common is a scary villain. It's great. He's Great.

Leo Laporte [01:49:09]:
I was surprised. I. I didn't expect much from him and. And it's turned out to be quite good.

Glenn Fleischman [01:49:14]:
I'll say. Rebecca Ferguson is one of the. I think she's one of the executive producers. Right. She really wanted footage of her climbing and being in water and climbing out of water a lot because there was a lot of that. I still love the last season. There was a lot of that, but still a lot of it.

Jason Snell [01:49:27]:
Yeah, still good. And they're. They know where they're going because the Hugh Howey books obviously have mapped it out and they're going to do. They announced before this season that they're doing four seasons. They picked it up for two seasons and then they're going to wrap. So they. They know what story they're telling. It's based on the Hugh Howey books.

Jason Snell [01:49:42]:
So it's not going to be one of those things where you get. You get to the end and you're like, but wait. It's like, no, they've got a plan. And they're. This season they're doing. They started in the last episode of last season. They're flashing back to explain from sort of our time, how did the silo happen?

Glenn Fleischman [01:49:59]:
Which is also interesting. I remember being. So. I was watching it. I was in an. I was in another country. I was watching it on a giant TV with earbuds in because nobody. My family watches it.

Glenn Fleischman [01:50:08]:
And I, They. The rain started and I went holy allowed because I was so shocked. I wasn't expecting it. Can I say that on this show?

Jason Snell [01:50:17]:
Well, you did.

Glenn Fleischman [01:50:18]:
Oh, no. Will I ever be us back?

Leo Laporte [01:50:21]:
How closely does this hue to the Howie can.

Jason Snell [01:50:28]:
It's pretty good. They. I mean, he's involved. He. He is a. According to him, he is involved at a. He's not the showrunner, but he talks to them a lot. And I think that the idea is they are.

Jason Snell [01:50:41]:
It's a challenge because they gotta adapt it for tv, which means you've got a bunch of standing cast members and you can't do. Like, in this book, we go to a completely different place and we don't see any of your existing cast members for a while. You can't do that on a TV show. Right. So they've had to, like, move a bunch of stuff around, but it seems pretty faithful to the storyline, sort of filtered through what a TV show needs.

Glenn Fleischman [01:51:04]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:51:04]:
Yeah. You got to make a good TV show.

Glenn Fleischman [01:51:06]:
I haven't read the book, so I'm kind of excited when I'm not going to touch them. I'VE been avoid. I've somehow avoided all spoilers because I think enough people haven't read the books. They're all kind of, you know, cherry about it. So I want to watch all four seasons and then I'm just gonna go and devour whatever Murderbot coming back.

Leo Laporte [01:51:21]:
Speaking books.

Jason Snell [01:51:22]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:51:23]:
Books are so good, Alex.

Glenn Fleischman [01:51:24]:
First season was.

Leo Laporte [01:51:25]:
Love that show.

Glenn Fleischman [01:51:25]:
Good.

Leo Laporte [01:51:26]:
Now here's one I'm very nervous about. About. Apple has announced that they are going to make Neuromancer.

Jason Snell [01:51:33]:
Yes. They've been teasing it for like a year now.

Leo Laporte [01:51:36]:
One of my favorite books of all time. The book that really introduced us to the cyber space.

Jason Snell [01:51:42]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:51:43]:
Do you think it can be made into a. I don't know.

Jason Snell [01:51:46]:
Totally. We just read it. Glenn and I just read it for the incomparable. There's an episode. We read all three of the. Of the Sprawl novels by William Gibson from the 80s. And yeah, it's totally. I mean it.

Jason Snell [01:51:57]:
It's a. It's an almost like a noir detective

Glenn Fleischman [01:52:01]:
story, but it's very scene based. It's got lots of scene. We're talking about it like has points of view change and it's kind of moves. It's like it's already interleaved stories. Well, not all the books, but I think. And I know they're only talking about the first one, but it has, it just has great visuals. And I'm thinking of like when I was reading it, I was like, oh yeah, this in space would work great because they've already, already show. So many shows have shown us interesting space environments.

Glenn Fleischman [01:52:26]:
Of course they can do it and make it feel like it should for this show because it's. It's feasible to do.

Jason Snell [01:52:31]:
It's right today. Today you can depict these things. It's. It's just, it's mind blowing to think that Gibson wrote this on a typewriter and had never used a personal computer before. He was kind of inspired by going to a video game arcade, like. And yet it is so prescient because he is. He is an observer of culture and he extrapolates culture. He's not extrapolating technology.

Jason Snell [01:52:51]:
The technology there is to kind of like buttress his observance of culture. So, yeah, I'm excited. They've only. They showed they had a still, I think basically of the Chutsubo. And then they've got this trailer which is not, you know, from the show, it's of the show as a TV show.

Leo Laporte [01:53:08]:
It's reminiscent of the opening lines of the novel.

Jason Snell [01:53:11]:
That's what it's referencing, right? Yeah, exactly. So we haven't really seen any footage from it, but they keep hyping it and it sounds like they're literally. It's a miniseries, so they're literally adapting the whole novel.

Glenn Fleischman [01:53:22]:
I'm so excited.

Jason Snell [01:53:23]:
Very excited.

Glenn Fleischman [01:53:24]:
I mean, Johnny Mnemonic. Not a great film, not a good film, not really bad dolphin.

Jason Snell [01:53:29]:
And then it's amazing. It's never been adapted up till now. Just that short story, Johnny Mnemonic. But the thing is, the Matrix kind of ate its lunch and the Matrix was deeply, deeply inspired by Neuromancer. But once they did the Matrix, it was sort of like, well, I guess we can't really make another VR adventure for a decade plus. Right? Like, because it's. Everybody's just going to think about the Matrix and now maybe we've got it at the time where we can. Where we can do it.

Jason Snell [01:53:55]:
I'm really looking forward to it.

Leo Laporte [01:53:56]:
Was it Amazon that made the Peripheral? Peripheral.

Glenn Fleischman [01:53:59]:
But they only did one season.

Jason Snell [01:54:01]:
Yeah, one season.

Leo Laporte [01:54:01]:
And then shame, because I thought that had a lot of promise.

Jason Snell [01:54:04]:
I did too. Really good. Another Gibson novel. More recent Gibson novel.

Glenn Fleischman [01:54:07]:
So many shows cover off in their prime.

Leo Laporte [01:54:10]:
In their prime, so to speak.

Glenn Fleischman [01:54:11]:
Their Amazon Prime.

Leo Laporte [01:54:13]:
Amazon does that.

Glenn Fleischman [01:54:14]:
Unintentional.

Leo Laporte [01:54:15]:
They seem to. They Netflix too. They have a short fuse, a short attention span. I hope Apple will give Neuromancer its due. I know they'll spend the money. Did they? So that. Why did they Release this trailer July 1st? Is it coming or is it.

Jason Snell [01:54:29]:
I think. I think just to keep people talking about it, they did that. They did that set preview and now they've done this. And then there'll be a trailer at some point and then they'll give it a date. I think it's shot.

Leo Laporte [01:54:40]:
Oh, interesting.

Jason Snell [01:54:41]:
I think it's shot. I think they said production started on it like back in January or something like that. So I think they. I think they've shot it now. They have to put it together and do the effects and all of that. But I hope, I have high hopes for it because it's a classic.

Leo Laporte [01:54:53]:
Finally, before we get to our picks of the week, an Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max has been buried in a time capsule to celebrate America's 250th cosmic orange. It will be open 250 years from now. I wonder what they'll make of Cosmic Orange. I really do.

Andy Ihnatko [01:55:13]:
I wonder how long before that battery ignites and sets fire to everything else

Glenn Fleischman [01:55:18]:
in a time capsule.

Andy Ihnatko [01:55:20]:
And how Apple PR 250 years from now. Is going to like, respond to that PR crisis.

Glenn Fleischman [01:55:26]:
Cotton.

Jason Snell [01:55:26]:
Maybe maybe remove the battery and then just put in a USB cable.

Leo Laporte [01:55:31]:
It has been filled with Items from all 50 states. It will be buried in Philadelphia or was buried in Philadelphia on the 4th. If there is anybody left 250 years from now, they may be digging it up. It might be Charlton Heston saying.

Jason Snell [01:55:47]:
I was going to say, what will the apes think of this?

Glenn Fleischman [01:55:51]:
They should just put a USB C cable in there, Jason. Just that and no other that will baffle cancel them. And it'll be like, oh, this standard, the one that we adopted. It has caused peace and prosperity for the last 250 years.

Jason Snell [01:56:02]:
Yeah, they throw out the phone and they're like, all hail the USBC cable.

Leo Laporte [01:56:07]:
They might look at that phone as the progenitor of everything that went well, either right or wrong, in the following 250 years.

Glenn Fleischman [01:56:14]:
Like, they bury X in there too. That would be great.

Jason Snell [01:56:16]:
But yeah, they're gonna. They get that and they back away and spray paint that. Like, this is not a place of honor on it.

Glenn Fleischman [01:56:22]:
Do not build this torment Nexus. Here is the torment Nexus.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:26]:
And. And that is, by the way, the, like the. The America 250, not the Freedom 250 pipe capsule. So it's not just so.

Glenn Fleischman [01:56:33]:
Oh, it's a real one.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:34]:
It's a real.

Jason Snell [01:56:35]:
It is actually a real one. Yeah.

Glenn Fleischman [01:56:36]:
It's not gonna be. It's not gonna be dug up three weeks later and sold on ebay.

Leo Laporte [01:56:41]:
It's not gonna have Kid Rock in it or anything like that.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:43]:
There was probably.

Glenn Fleischman [01:56:44]:
We put him in a time capsule. Is that illegal? I don't know.

Jason Snell [01:56:48]:
I don't think so. I don't think so. You could. It's. That's buried Alive. It's basically the Cask of Amontillado. Except you don't want that.

Glenn Fleischman [01:56:54]:
You can put pet rocks.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:56]:
We should just like, tell Keith Richards and Willie Nelson what they should tell the people who open the time capsule. Like, how to charge the phone and Mel Brooks.

Leo Laporte [01:57:06]:
Put Mel Brooks in there.

Andy Ihnatko [01:57:07]:
Now, I know it's going to sound weird. That can only get apps from this one app store. And it's not. You can't sideload anything. They were a little bit freaky.

Leo Laporte [01:57:13]:
Is there a directory of time capsule somewhere? Like, are we due to someone up.

Glenn Fleischman [01:57:18]:
You have. You have tapped into. Excuse me, I'm booting up my Glenn module for time capsule. There is actually an association that formed itself based in part on the crypt of civilization at Ogletree Oglethorpe University in Georgia, which I wrote an Atlantic article about a number of years ago because the vault of civilization was established by this very wacky guy who revived the university. And he wanted to put stuff in there for. I don't remember. It was like 3,500 years, some insane amount. So in the basement of some building, they put in a bazillion things.

Glenn Fleischman [01:57:53]:
It was well documented. They had my relative, Robert Sarnoff, one of the. Or David Sarnoff, rather, one of the.

Leo Laporte [01:57:59]:
David Sarnoff is your relative?

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:01]:
Yeah, he's one of my mom's cousins. He sent me.

Leo Laporte [01:58:02]:
He invented radio or.

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:04]:
No, no, no, he didn't invent the radio. He. He. He invented a lot of myths about himself, including that he received the SOS west from the Titanic, which he may have been present. It's unclear if he personally received it, but he parlayed that to becoming head of RCA for many decades. They got David Sarnoff to come out to dedicate the door for the vault. Anyway, there's some. Ogle 3.

Leo Laporte [01:58:24]:
Show the screen, if you will. You keep showing my screen when I

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:26]:
don't have anything to show Oglethorpe University some of the stuff there.

Leo Laporte [01:58:31]:
Right there. That's it.

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:31]:
Oglethorpe. Yeah. It's in the basement. And you can't see it because it's just a door. There is a picture of a door. And these guys are somehow. Some of them are former Oglethorpe students, including. I want to say it's.

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:41]:
Newt Berger is a local. I think it's. Newt Berger is a local Seattle area. Well known storyteller and documentary maker.

Leo Laporte [01:58:49]:
Look, they got a map of all the time caps.

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:51]:
Anyway, so I was doing a story about Craig Maud, the most interesting man in the world.

Leo Laporte [01:58:55]:
I love Craig Maude.

Glenn Fleischman [01:58:56]:
Yeah, he's incredible. He was trying to preserve a site he'd done and they wound up. I think they were etching it on nickel plates so that they could store the website forever for like 10,000 years. And it turned into a whole story about him and this Oglethorpe thing.

Leo Laporte [01:59:10]:
Wow.

Glenn Fleischman [01:59:11]:
Yeah. So there is. You can find a directory, find people.

Leo Laporte [01:59:14]:
Time Capsule six.

Glenn Fleischman [01:59:15]:
And now I will be. Let me hit the reset button on the Glenn Time capsule module to turn it off. I didn't know that I knew something about it.

Leo Laporte [01:59:22]:
And there is, by the way, which is nice. Instructions on how to build your own time capsule.

Glenn Fleischman [01:59:26]:
It's good. I think they got fed up. That you couldn't find. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:59:29]:
Select a retrieval date. What is the shortest and what is the longest window for a time capsule. I'm Wondering.

Glenn Fleischman [01:59:35]:
Oh, I think the Oglethorpe one is one of the longest. I don't know what the. I don't know what the shortest is.

Leo Laporte [01:59:42]:
Who cares about the shortest? It's over.

Glenn Fleischman [01:59:44]:
Yeah. Well, we put it in the closet, then we opened it the next day.

Andy Ihnatko [01:59:47]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:59:47]:
I mean, that's easy. It's the long ones.

Andy Ihnatko [01:59:50]:
We needed a typewriter for a definition. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:59:53]:
I wonder if it says at any point, do not include electronics, especially phones.

Glenn Fleischman [01:59:57]:
Yeah, there's some interesting stuff. The guy who ran Oglethorpe University, he was. I would say he was not a racist. That's how you started a sentence, right? There are some interesting things. I wound up buying some old books of his and just to research it got a little further.

Leo Laporte [02:00:11]:
He's nuclear racist.

Glenn Fleischman [02:00:12]:
He's not exactly.

Andy Ihnatko [02:00:13]:
He had some thoughts about Canadians that were.

Glenn Fleischman [02:00:16]:
Yeah. There are a few things in there. There's an inventory of what's inside. There are a few things that I think would not pass muster.

Leo Laporte [02:00:22]:
Do not put a time machine into the time capsule. That's all I could say, because everything goes backwards and it's a mess. You're watching MacBreak Weekly with the Autodidact. The phenomenon.

Glenn Fleischman [02:00:35]:
Phenomenal.

Leo Laporte [02:00:35]:
Glenn Fleischman filling in for Christina Warren. I wish we had an extra seat for you, Glenn, because I just. I love having you on the show. Fantastic. Also here, Andy Inotko and the wonderful Jason Snell. And we are all glad you are here for the show. Now, ladies and gentlemen, time for our picks of the week. And since, Glenn, you're our guest of honor, I'll let you kick things off.

Glenn Fleischman [02:00:57]:
Well, I'll. I'll just do a weird thing as I usually do, which is I don't seem to have a. A Mac or technology related pick of the week because I'm gonna.

Leo Laporte [02:01:03]:
It doesn't have to be. It could be anything.

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:05]:
I'm gonna pick finding a turtle on a bike path and taking it off to the side of the path for safety, which is what I did on Sunday.

Leo Laporte [02:01:11]:
What's the website for that?

Jason Snell [02:01:13]:
I was.

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:13]:
Yeah, Turtle move. Turtle to off the side of. It's like a Blade Runner question. It's like you find a turtle in the middle of the bike path.

Leo Laporte [02:01:18]:
It is, isn't it?

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:19]:
What do you do?

Jason Snell [02:01:20]:
Literally another. You pass the void comp test.

Andy Ihnatko [02:01:23]:
Profitability.

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:24]:
I'm biking along and I see this thing moving up ahead. I'm like, what?

Jason Snell [02:01:26]:
What?

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:27]:
What is this?

Leo Laporte [02:01:28]:
Glenn is not a replicant, everybody.

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:30]:
It's just a turtle. It's near a slew. You know, it's near a wildlife area. But it was looked like it was coming from this five lane road. I'm like, buddy, come on, this is not the right place for you.

Jason Snell [02:01:39]:
So I picked now here's the interesting

Leo Laporte [02:01:42]:
it was actually Mitch McConnell.

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:43]:
Oh, that's it was. He transubstantiated his nobody knew.

Leo Laporte [02:01:49]:
Well, good on you, Glenn. You are a savior of church.

Glenn Fleischman [02:01:52]:
One turtle. That's my that was my goal this week. Apparently my goal and I fulfilled it.

Leo Laporte [02:01:57]:
So that well done. Bravo. And apparently our producer or you has put in a video of I like turtles.

Glenn Fleischman [02:02:05]:
I don't know about that.

Leo Laporte [02:02:07]:
Is this you rescuing a turtle?

Glenn Fleischman [02:02:09]:
No, probably.

Leo Laporte [02:02:10]:
No, it's just a kid who likes turtles.

Glenn Fleischman [02:02:13]:
I don't know, maybe not just got an awesome face paint job.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:16]:
What do you think?

Leo Laporte [02:02:17]:
I like turtles.

Glenn Fleischman [02:02:20]:
I had a tortoise when I was growing up. We were great friends. But then eventually one year it hibernated and it never came back.

Jason Snell [02:02:29]:
Jason Snow, Pick of the Week well, let me tell you what I saw walking down the street yesterday.

Leo Laporte [02:02:36]:
I like turtles.

Jason Snell [02:02:40]:
Glenn mentioned it earlier. It got a lot of love on a recent member episode of Accidental Tech Podcast and I thought this would be a good time to mention it because it hasn't been recommended recommended since Andy recommended it like hundreds of shows ago. It's default folder X from Sinclair Software.

Leo Laporte [02:02:56]:
Is this still around?

Jason Snell [02:02:57]:
This is one of the new beta that supports Goldengate just came out. This is an app I've been using since the 90s on classic Mac OS. Yes. And what it does is when you got an open or a save dialogue on your Mac and you want to have it open to a default folder that is different from what the system wants, you can set that that, you can set it globally. You can set it per app. So like my writing apps open in the folder in Dropbox that I keep all my stories in every single time. It's got a bunch of other great features it can bring up like Chrome around the Open and Save dialog box to let you navigate to the right place or find the right thing for you. I think the killer feature is if you've got a whole bunch of windows open and then you choose Save and it says, well, where do you want me to save this? And you know you've got that folder open on the desktop in Finder, but it's completely covered and it's going to take you many steps to go out to the finder and get that and then drag it back in and whatever.

Jason Snell [02:03:49]:
It's got this feature where you just move Your pointer, you hover it over where that folder is. You know where it is, even though it's not visible. And like a little dotted line goes around it and says, oh, this one. And then you click and it moves to that folder in the safe or open dialog. It's just a classic Mac utility that makes it a lot easier when you're opening and saving files.

Glenn Fleischman [02:04:09]:
It's not used 10,000 times a day is option up arrow, option down arrow, which is move between recent folders. Because it doesn't always. I'm saving in a lot of places. Sometimes you just go. Instead of like navigating, you go up, up, up, up. And it's. Oh, there it is.

Jason Snell [02:04:22]:
It's got a recents pop up too, if you want to look and be like, where do I put this? Oh, yeah, right here. It's just really good. And. And there's a reason it's been around for 30 years.

Glenn Fleischman [02:04:32]:
So glad he's still.

Jason Snell [02:04:33]:
And still. Well, yeah. And I thought that what better time. What better endorsement for a very old tool than the fact that it just got its beta update that anybody can download for Goldengate. So it's actively being developed by John, the developer who's been developing it since I saw this on usenet in the 90s when I was in college.

Glenn Fleischman [02:04:51]:
It was a replacement for Desktop for me. I felt a name I haven't heard. I miss Desktop so much. And default folder is the best thing since disc. There's my $40.

Leo Laporte [02:05:02]:
It's keeping his kids in college.

Glenn Fleischman [02:05:04]:
He doesn't. What does he charge for updates? I can't even if you pay updates,

Jason Snell [02:05:07]:
I'm not even sure you do.

Glenn Fleischman [02:05:08]:
It's not whatever he wants. Whatever amount of money he wants.

Leo Laporte [02:05:11]:
I should amortize that over 30 years. It's a buck 50 a year. It's worth it, Every bit of it. Default Folder X from St. Clair Software, STC L A I R Software. Thank you. What a. What a memory.

Leo Laporte [02:05:29]:
He also does App Tamer, which I don't.

Jason Snell [02:05:32]:
Yeah, I just. I love these apps that have been around. Like, it's like James Thompson's PCalc. It's like literally these apps have existed since the 90s and they still exist.

Glenn Fleischman [02:05:39]:
Is that a quote for me on the front the Mac world quote?

Leo Laporte [02:05:41]:
It is me. Tip top on my utilities list.

Glenn Fleischman [02:05:45]:
I think that is me. I'm not sure.

Jason Snell [02:05:47]:
Who among us has not given five mice to default folder in their career? I think I have. All have.

Glenn Fleischman [02:05:52]:
Yeah, I know. Doctor Shouldn't.

Jason Snell [02:05:54]:
Very nice.

Leo Laporte [02:05:55]:
Five mice. And now Andy Inatko for his pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko [02:05:59]:
I deal with a lot of PDFs and I do read a lot of free ebooks. And I finally found an, an app that I like, a cross platform E reader app that is not. Is open source but not too open sourcey if you know what I mean. It's called Redest R E A D E S t. Go to redest.com and it is available for pretty much any platform you can possibly think of. There are iOS versions, Mac versions, Windows versions, there's an Android version, there are versions for Linux. And again that's the scary thing when you say oh, it's open source and it's available for every platform, you know that that sounds like okay, so it basically performs like a HyperCard stack that was designed for a 4K screen, like buttons and pop ups everywhere. No, it's a very, very clean, very, very nicely done Apple app.

Andy Ihnatko [02:06:47]:
It supports, I got it in front of me epubs, PDFs, mobi, Kindle, FDB2, comic book, CBZ files, text files. I just wish it supported HTML because when I need to capture something from an article that I need to make sure I have a local copy of it. I have lots and lots and lots of HTML files, but it's very robust. It will do things like you can select stuff and oh, look that up in the, in Wiktionary, look it up in Wikipedia. It does text to speech. You can do side by side reads of similar documents, you can customize the appearance so that it looks exactly like the way you want it to. Which is another problem that I have with a lot of reader apps where it's like this app has every feature I want but the layout and the page design looks like but. And I can't deal with that.

Andy Ihnatko [02:07:39]:
And that's the only reason why I can't deal with this. So, so I think it's kind of. It hasn't been around for a long time but it's gaining momentum and it's on GitHub. But if you go to Redesk.com and give it a trial again for people like, people like me who again I've got every. I'm invested. All my platforms are Apple except for my phone. So it's nice to have like be able to start reading something like on the, on the bus on my phone, then come back to my MacBook and have the exact same PDF in the exact same place synced up and with all my notes that I've attached to it. This also by the Way supports notes.

Andy Ihnatko [02:08:20]:
It's a very, very full featured reader, so good stuff. And again, it's free.

Leo Laporte [02:08:23]:
Pair it with a Caliber and you're an old Kindle and you've got something here.

Andy Ihnatko [02:08:27]:
It actually integrates with calibre, I think.

Leo Laporte [02:08:29]:
Oh, yeah, I'm sure it does.

Glenn Fleischman [02:08:31]:
Calibre what you want.

Jason Snell [02:08:33]:
No, it's caliber.

Glenn Fleischman [02:08:34]:
Oh.

Leo Laporte [02:08:36]:
Is there really a canonical. Well, maybe for you Jeopardy. Champions there.

Jason Snell [02:08:40]:
I think. I think. I think we. We dealt. We talked. We thought it was calibre for a long time, and then I think somebody revealed that it actually is just Caliber.

Glenn Fleischman [02:08:48]:
I get a fight in my house during Jeopardy. Last night over Babel versus Babel. Oh.

Leo Laporte [02:08:52]:
And what is the conclusive.

Glenn Fleischman [02:08:54]:
They're both okay. Babel is preferred in the uk, but Babel's fine. That's what I learned.

Leo Laporte [02:08:58]:
I. I learned. Thanks. Show that I had completely misinterpreted the Tower of Babel. The Fable of Babel. Or is it the Fable of Babel?

Jason Snell [02:09:07]:
So, yeah, if you listen, it's Babel. If you watch Star Trek, it's Babel. If you did Hitchhiker's Guide to the

Glenn Fleischman [02:09:12]:
Galaxy with the Babel, Babel wasn't built infinitely high. It had languages written on the top or something. Isn't that it?

Leo Laporte [02:09:19]:
Yeah. And it was an attempt to unify the languages of the Earth. And God said, no, you gotta all talk different times.

Glenn Fleischman [02:09:27]:
I've got this. I've got a thing. This is a misprint. Apparently. It's from the Folks along now foundation. You can see that. Yeah, it's got super micro printing on it and.

Leo Laporte [02:09:43]:
Oh, that's neat.

Glenn Fleischman [02:09:43]:
This was a struck one. The person who created it gave me not one of the ones they were selling because there was some minor error. Anyway, you can look at it under a microscope with one kind of lens. So I think in the future you'll be able to review. They have larger versions that have the Universal Declaration of Human rights in like 75 languages.

Leo Laporte [02:10:02]:
What's on there now?

Glenn Fleischman [02:10:04]:
What's on what? The one.

Leo Laporte [02:10:05]:
What would I read if I had a super microscope?

Glenn Fleischman [02:10:08]:
No, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I think, is the text. And then it's in a bunch of languages. There's other information on it. So there's like a disk that I

Leo Laporte [02:10:16]:
thought it'd be better if it was like the Library of Congress.

Glenn Fleischman [02:10:18]:
Wow. That is. You can't do that with nickel printing. Apparently, ironically, the person who invented it, she's allergic to nickel, so she can't handle it.

Leo Laporte [02:10:24]:
Oh, no. Oh, no.

Glenn Fleischman [02:10:26]:
But it's A great thing for the future, possible future descendants of us who have forgotten things. Well, Mr. We won't see.

Leo Laporte [02:10:33]:
Mr. Fleischman, I thank you so much for spending some time with us. We really appreciate it.

Glenn Fleischman [02:10:37]:
Thank you.

Leo Laporte [02:10:39]:
What do you want to plug? You've got the Take Control books.

Glenn Fleischman [02:10:42]:
I would love to talk about a thing that I've been putting things out into the universe with the help of certain, as Jason calls them, albino alligators. Claude Co. There's a story behind that. Jason could tell, but maybe he already has anyway. But I've been doing projects that are outside of my ability by myself and I've been doing code assisted things. So one of them is fruitspecs.com, which is a site you can go and search on hardware stuff about Apple and OSes and other kinds of things, and you can say like, all right, which one of the items I added? These are like off like people writing books kind of things, but other people have been using it too. So I like which version is the last version of this phone that will let me. If you do which in the upper right corner there, which OS I think it is.

Glenn Fleischman [02:11:27]:
And you can say, you know, you can say, like, what versions will this run? Like what hardware will run Goldengate and whatever. You check a couple boxes.

Leo Laporte [02:11:38]:
Oh, this is handy.

Glenn Fleischman [02:11:39]:
Yeah. And then it gives you the thing that I did for myself. It gives you markdown and RTS output you can download. So if you just want a list you can use and a book somewhere else.

Leo Laporte [02:11:47]:
Very handy.

Glenn Fleischman [02:11:48]:
Yeah. So you do that and then if you scroll down, it'll show you all versions. Yeah, it's complicated.

Leo Laporte [02:11:54]:
And I could copy it as markdown or copy. Oh, that's nice.

Glenn Fleischman [02:11:58]:
But you can just do. I'm doing this all the time while I'm writing books and I thought, I've made this tool for myself. I'm just going to make sure everyone has access to it. The other one is Mr. Plimsoul, which has been a fun little project I

Leo Laporte [02:12:09]:
have installed on my computer.

Jason Snell [02:12:11]:
I think that was a pick of the week.

Glenn Fleischman [02:12:13]:
But yeah, that's been fun. I don't know how many people are using it, but it's. I needed it and I made a Mac app and now people can have

Leo Laporte [02:12:21]:
it for free, which is, Yeah, I have Mr. Plimsoll. I have my Plimsoll line installed.

Glenn Fleischman [02:12:26]:
It's fun.

Leo Laporte [02:12:27]:
Even the genesis of the name is so awesome. Now, unfortunately, I have too many items on my menu bar and I can't remember which is which. Which one is Mr. Plimsoll. I don't know.

Glenn Fleischman [02:12:38]:
It's the one. It looks like. Like a London.

Leo Laporte [02:12:40]:
There it is. There it is. Yeah, I got it. Okay, now I forgot what it does, though.

Glenn Fleischman [02:12:43]:
It does. It's a. It tells you your volumes are getting too full. There you go. Nobody else had. I mean, I didn't need to write it. I just couldn't find a utility as writing a six colors column.

Leo Laporte [02:12:54]:
Oh, I am. Look at this. I'm 76% Mr. Plimsoll. Thank you.

Glenn Fleischman [02:12:58]:
So if somebody wrote in and said, how do I tell if my volume is getting full? And I said, should be a tool.

Leo Laporte [02:13:03]:
And there wasn't.

Glenn Fleischman [02:13:04]:
So like, well, we all write something. And that's my first.

Jason Snell [02:13:06]:
I actually got a text from Mr. Plimsoll the other day and I texted Glenn. I was like, it's exciting. It happened. And it was installing a software update and I think it crossed the 90% full threshold. And then it rebooted down to 80% again. I was like, okay, it's fine.

Glenn Fleischman [02:13:18]:
That's great. But it's. Otherwise, you don't know. And you get. I had one. I got a warning from IT a few weeks ago. It's like one of my Mac went insane. I think it was time machine snapshots.

Glenn Fleischman [02:13:25]:
And there's a point, you know, there's like the event horizon for a Mac sometimes where it's so full you can never delete anything from it. This happened to one of my kids. So I'm like, it hit 90%. I'm like, I'm running downstairs to the computer, like, quick delete files, reboot. And then it was fine. But this is so cool.

Leo Laporte [02:13:40]:
You can have notifications via email imessage. You can even phone. Will it call you?

Jason Snell [02:13:47]:
It will.

Glenn Fleischman [02:13:47]:
No, it'll. It'll do web hooks.

Leo Laporte [02:13:50]:
Oh, nice.

Glenn Fleischman [02:13:51]:
So you can enter or Pushover. It'll do push. What's the one that you like, Jason? It's called Push.

Leo Laporte [02:13:58]:
Pushover.

Glenn Fleischman [02:13:59]:
Yeah, Pushover. Which I didn't know about. And the Claude was like, hey, do you want to add Pushover Webhook support? I'm like, yes, I do. And tested it through. And so Pushover is a nice little utility also great functionality.

Jason Snell [02:14:10]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:14:11]:
There's another one called NTFY that is cross platform. I think it's worth looking at. I use that for some things as well. Mr. Glenn. Thank you. And everybody should check out Glenn's many things at G L E N N F U N. Because Glenn is fun sometimes.

Leo Laporte [02:14:29]:
Thank you, sir. Andy Anako is Now on the web, fully human written, no AI involved at I.

Jason Snell [02:14:36]:
It's all AI. It's all AI on Andy. And I said, you don't know how

Andy Ihnatko [02:14:42]:
much I went back and forth about making that joke. But then I thought, there's, ironically, there's going to be some AI scraper that identifies that and then downgrades the site

Leo Laporte [02:14:52]:
AI stands for, in this case, Andy Ihnatko. And there's the site I H N A T K O.com. Going quite well, it looks like.

Jason Snell [02:15:02]:
That's great.

Leo Laporte [02:15:04]:
Happy for you. And then of course, Jason Snell, who is very active sixcolors.com all his podcasts sixcolors.com/jason, including upgrade, he does with Mike Hurley. And anything particular you want to mention. I know Glenn is a regular on SixColors. We should.

Jason Snell [02:15:20]:
Yeah, Glenn. Glenn is writing there. And of course, Glenn helped us help me help. We funded last week. So Design in California is a new podcast coming this fall with me and Mike Hurley. We funded the Money Sound there. Our final number was 303030, which I think is amazing. $303,000.

Glenn Fleischman [02:15:42]:
Took two weeks to drop it in your account two weeks after it's over. And I was like, Jason, when do you hear the sound of like.

Jason Snell [02:15:47]:
Yeah, I think I got a week left. Left before the kaching happens. The bills are already coming in, but the kaching will happen. So, yeah, so that'll be a new project about the history of Apple, stories from all over the 50 years of Apple that we're going to be doing this fall. So.

Leo Laporte [02:16:03]:
Awesome. And you're probably deep in the writing stage of that one, I would guess.

Jason Snell [02:16:06]:
Yeah. Cranking up. Well, the beauty of Kickstarter is, you know, we did enough to provide samples, but we didn't, like, we didn't jump into the project because we need to make sure that. That it would exist. But yes, now I am cranking up the writing machine.

Glenn Fleischman [02:16:19]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so happy. People were so excited about it because we knew that you'd do well with it because you've got a dedicated audience. But, you know, just, you know, it's happened overnight after 11 years of building success.

Jason Snell [02:16:31]:
Overnight success from. From Mike and from me, but we got there.

Leo Laporte [02:16:35]:
Well, if you see Jason in the library, you know, he's doing some research for his exciting new podcast. Andy's in the library, but he's the only one there.

Jason Snell [02:16:45]:
So that's where he goes if you see him there. That's because he's there.

Leo Laporte [02:16:49]:
It's very quiet in the library.

Andy Ihnatko [02:16:50]:
Quiet Exactly. It's quiet, it's private. There are no. It's. It's. It's summer. Which means that, hey, wow. I spent my entire winter in spring making my motorcycle even louder.

Andy Ihnatko [02:17:00]:
Now it's time to rip forward and backward outside of Andy's office window.

Glenn Fleischman [02:17:06]:
Art Buck Rockwell column years ago, where he was visiting Italy and he was talking about the Italian sport called Far Remore, which it just translates as to make noise. And it was how they had all these people designated at different places around Italy to keep him awake. It was amazing.

Leo Laporte [02:17:25]:
Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Jason. Thanks to our club members for making this possible. We do MacBreak Weekly on Tuesdays, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern. Eastern, 1800 UTC. I mentioned all the places you can watch it in the club. YouTube, TikTok.

Leo Laporte [02:17:38]:
No, keep saying TikTok. No. YouTube, X.comm Facebook, LinkedIn, Kick and Twitch after the fact on demand versions of the show on the website, twit.tv/mbw. And of course you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player and you'll get it automatically as soon as it's available. Sad to say that though, our time has come to an end. Which means it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you, get back to work because break time is over. See you next time. Bye bye.