MacBreak Weekly 1042 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's here, Christina's here, Jason's here, and of course there's a new iPhone. There are several new iPhones, a new Apple Watch, and I have a prediction about one of the features you're not gonna like. MacBreak Weekly, next. This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 1042, recorded Tuesday, September 15th, 2026: Tassels Galore! It's time for MacBreak Weekly.

Leo Laporte [00:00:37]:
Yay! The show we cover all the latest news from Apple. Christina Warren is here with her brand new microphone arm. Yay!

Christina Warren [00:00:46]:
Hello, hello.

Leo Laporte [00:00:47]:
Looks like you have a robot holding, uh, the— holding out a, uh, little grilled black grilled cheese sandwich to you or something. I don't know, maybe I have too vivid of an imagination.

Christina Warren [00:00:58]:
I mean, I like it.

Leo Laporte [00:00:59]:
So I think it's because of all this scary robot talk now. I'm kind of in the scary robot.

Christina Warren [00:01:04]:
Yeah, I was gonna say you're in the scary robot thing. And so you can't, you can't, you can't see it, but I am wearing a, uh, a Weezer, um, oh wow, or crew neck rather, because I went to their concert on Sunday. I did.

Leo Laporte [00:01:16]:
They're still around, are they?

Christina Warren [00:01:17]:
Hey, they are still playing the songs like it was 1994. And the crowd, which was very mixed age, it was younger than I was expecting. I was expecting like a specific age group, and it was that, but it was also younger than I was expecting. They got a big boost from Windows.

Leo Laporte [00:01:30]:
Was it Windows 95?

Christina Warren [00:01:32]:
It was Windows 95. Buddy Holly was on the music video, was on the CD-ROM.

Jason Snell [00:01:36]:
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte [00:01:36]:
Came with Windows.

Christina Warren [00:01:38]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:01:38]:
And so that tells you how long ago this was, 31 years ago.

Jason Snell [00:01:43]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [00:01:43]:
And they've since released like 7 other albums also called Weezer. But no, I mean, they, they, they, they, but they, they still have, they still have songs. But you know what I appreciate about them? Because I've seen them live a number of times. They understand that they are a legacy act and they've been a legacy act basically since that first album came out. And they know that people are there for the hits and they don't— they will play some deep cuts and some things, but like, they're not here to play the new stuff. They're not here to like get you trying to buy their new record. They're like, no, we know that you want to hear, you know, yeah, you want to hear Buddy Holly at some point tonight and they're going to give it to you. You want to hear Beverly Hills, you want to hear Island in the Sun.

Christina Warren [00:02:19]:
And I appreciate that.

Leo Laporte [00:02:20]:
It's like going— we have that here in the summertime in the county fair. The acts that show up at the county fair, like the Righteous Brother. It's like the one guy who played with them for 5 minutes. And of course they got to do the hits. That's Andy Ihnakto. Hello, Andrew. He is our Righteous Brother.

Andy Ihnatko [00:02:37]:
Thank you very much. With you, my man. Yeah.

Christina Warren [00:02:40]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:02:41]:
Who can ask, who can ask for anything more than, well, there are lots and lots of people who love the work we've done and will come out to hear us play that music for them live. That's just wonderful.

Leo Laporte [00:02:51]:
It always feels a little bitchy when a band said, you know, especially it's the lead singer says, I'm so sick of those songs. I'm gonna sing you some of my new stuff. It's like, no, we are not sick of them. I imagine, I imagine that they sound exactly like the record and do it now.

Andy Ihnatko [00:03:04]:
I imagine that there's like sort of an adolescence to like that kind of fame where you're like, oh no, I've got new ideas. They're not just about like those first 2 albums we did. And then you kind of get over it and you, you, you stop resenting the hits that like made you famous and gave you a fan base. And you are just appreciative that you have an audience still.

Leo Laporte [00:03:23]:
It happens to, it happens to Jason Snell, our friend from Sixkillerz.com.

Jason Snell [00:03:26]:
That's why we do the Vision Pro segment is 'cause the way We need to play the hits right here on MacBreak Weekly. Play the hits! That's what we gotta— I went to a concert this weekend. It was a music festival up on the top of Mount Tamalpais here in Marin. And one of the groups I thought, I thought mistakenly, was a Talking Heads tribute band.

Leo Laporte [00:03:45]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:03:46]:
But it turns out it was Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads.

Christina Warren [00:03:50]:
Oh, the keyboardist. Wow, he was Talking Head.

Jason Snell [00:03:52]:
It was one Talking Head and then 10 other musicians playing Talking Heads songs with him, which was actually pretty cool. But I don't think it's a cover band if you've got a member member of the band.

Leo Laporte [00:04:02]:
No, that's— I think we've learned that now.

Jason Snell [00:04:03]:
Nor, to your point, Leo, nor did they claim it was Talking Heads, which is the problem. It's when you're like, well, that was the Beach Boys issue.

Leo Laporte [00:04:10]:
Exactly.

Jason Snell [00:04:11]:
But it's really just a guy who played with a guy who played with Lynyrd Skynyrd once, right? And you're like, that's not it. That's not the same.

Leo Laporte [00:04:18]:
We're in cover band land here in Northern California now. All the bands have very clever names like Fleetwood Macramé. Yep. And AZD She and things like that. What was the name of the Talking Heads cover band? Uh, it did—

Jason Snell [00:04:30]:
it Well, he referred to them as the Remain in Light Orchestra, which is pretty funny.

Andy Ihnatko [00:04:37]:
Perfect.

Jason Snell [00:04:37]:
But they were billed as Jerry Harrison and 50 Years of Talking Heads. Just, just—

Leo Laporte [00:04:42]:
I remember meeting Jerry Harrison. He was at a retreat.

Jason Snell [00:04:46]:
He's a local.

Leo Laporte [00:04:47]:
Yeah, he's local. And he was at a retreat I was at, and I'm sitting across from him at the table eating breakfast. I'm going, damn, you look really familiar. Do I know you? And he said, yeah, I was the keyboardist for the Talking Heads. And I went, oh.

Jason Snell [00:04:58]:
Yeah, that sort of thing happens here. We walked into a diner downtown and Carlos Santana was in the corner.

Leo Laporte [00:05:05]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:05:05]:
And we only identified him because of his hat, his trademark hat. I was like, oh, it's him. I could tell.

Leo Laporte [00:05:11]:
He's not exactly mobbed, which I think he should be, but— Well, you're Carl Santana.

Jason Snell [00:05:16]:
You just take the hat off and then nobody knows who you are.

Leo Laporte [00:05:18]:
He was sitting all alone at a table eating a bowl of clam chowder. And I thought, that's Santana over there.

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

Leo Laporte [00:05:24]:
Pretty wild. Yeah. That's what we get here in Northern California.

Christina Warren [00:05:27]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:05:28]:
No, I moved to Marin County and the first Christmas shopping season, I ended up sitting one table over from George Lucas at the mall.

Leo Laporte [00:05:34]:
Brace yourself. You know who's moved into your neighborhood?

Andy Ihnatko [00:05:38]:
Who?

Leo Laporte [00:05:39]:
Lady Gaga.

Jason Snell [00:05:40]:
Really?

Christina Warren [00:05:41]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:05:42]:
All right. Well, I look forward to seeing her.

Christina Warren [00:05:43]:
And she has a baby now.

Leo Laporte [00:05:45]:
She has a baby? Good for her.

Jason Snell [00:05:47]:
Nice.

Andy Ihnatko [00:05:47]:
I don't know why I heard that news. I thought, oh, good for her. I hope she's happy. That's wonderful.

Leo Laporte [00:05:51]:
And for all the people who tuned in to say—

Jason Snell [00:05:53]:
I look forward to Stephanie walking around.

Andy Ihnatko [00:05:55]:
What a perfect duo. Again, the thing is—

Jason Snell [00:05:56]:
Stephanie is going to be out on the dog path.

Christina Warren [00:05:58]:
It is a duo. It's Lady Gaga's duo. She's got a new addition.

Jason Snell [00:06:02]:
Yeah. That's— I love it. Again, again, we're playing the hits here, aren't we?

Leo Laporte [00:06:09]:
We should rename this to the Leave for the Graduation Podcast.

Andy Ihnatko [00:06:13]:
It's like we've, we've got, we've got this, this bottle of champagne that was shaken up and we don't want to take off the foil because as soon as we pop the cork, it's going everywhere. So this is our last chance to just sort of relax.

Leo Laporte [00:06:25]:
And, and then there's poor John Ashley, our producer, who's back from vacation. He's my guy to come back.

Jason Snell [00:06:33]:
Yeah, this is, this is what he gets for making us talk about Taylor Swift in the pre-show instead of the actual show. Yeah, anyway, that's right. I did nothing to contribute to that conversation. New operating systems, eh?

Leo Laporte [00:06:44]:
John Turnus.

Jason Snell [00:06:44]:
Apple event, eh?

Leo Laporte [00:06:46]:
Turn us on, Johnny, turn us on. Uh, John Turnus had his debut on Wednesday, and, uh, in fact, he was at the Emmys last night in a, uh, Pretty bland tuxedo, I might add, showing off the glaring front-facing camera, uh, on the, uh, Duo. He was— it was so bashful. It was so cute to Deadline.

Christina Warren [00:07:10]:
He's so cute. He's so cute. And his suit's fine.

Leo Laporte [00:07:14]:
Yeah, so fine. He took the stage. Now, Jason, you didn't get a last-minute invite.

Jason Snell [00:07:18]:
I did not. I watched it from my chair.

Leo Laporte [00:07:22]:
It must— it gripes me. It must gripe you to see all these, like, influencers there who really aren't tech journalists, but I guess that's the point.

Jason Snell [00:07:29]:
It's a marketing event. That's the point. They have a huge audience. And I mean, you could argue that not journalists is even better for Apple because I saw a bunch of those videos and they're kind of just repeating the PR points.

Christina Warren [00:07:41]:
Literally just saying the PR points. Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:07:43]:
And I, I had a, I remember having a good conversation 15 years ago with a PR person who was a very good PR contact of mine. And she said, look, my job is sales ultimately. And like, that's never forget it. And I think You just gotta, you just gotta keep it real. Like Apple's job, uh, and what they choose to do in terms of everything is about goosing sales. And if they can, I, I, if I look, an influencer with a huge following who's going to repeat their talking points is probably gonna sell more phones than me.

Andy Ihnatko [00:08:14]:
Even when, even when, even 15, 20 years ago when Jason was being invited because he was the head of Macworld, when I was being invited because I was the technology reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, We don't flatter ourselves into thinking that we are the chosen people, that we are so important that Apple wouldn't dare not invite us. In both then as now, they invite the people that are going to be useful to them for the purposes that they had for this product launch. And there's nothing shameful to Apple about that. It's just simply the way it always was.

Jason Snell [00:08:39]:
That's the business.

Andy Ihnatko [00:08:40]:
I mean, it's a mug— If you try to figure it out, like, if you try to figure out like why you got invited, why you didn't get invited, that's a mug's game.

Jason Snell [00:08:46]:
No, that way lies madness. Also, I mean, you know, that is not It's not like I don't talk to Apple PR all the time. It's not like I haven't gotten, you know, review units of every iPhone ever and every Mac, you know, release ever.

Leo Laporte [00:09:01]:
It's just a delay.

Jason Snell [00:09:03]:
It's just a difference.

Leo Laporte [00:09:04]:
Apple's smart because the first day is when you get the most impressions. After it's been out for a week, nope. So you will have, I'm sure, and this I guess would be the note for our audience is make no judgment about any of this until some actual people have it and bang on it for a while. It's— you can't look at it and give it a review. You have to have it for a week or two and try it out, and that's when you should make your decision. Although Apple makes it hard to do that because already if you're ordering an iPhone 18 Pro Max, you're out a month or so.

Jason Snell [00:09:38]:
Yeah, the— do you know, did you notice that, that they, they always make you, um, the pre-orders happen before the reviews drop?

Leo Laporte [00:09:44]:
Interesting.

Jason Snell [00:09:44]:
Yeah, just a, just a technique.

Leo Laporte [00:09:46]:
Just, well, they didn't do that with the Duo, which is interesting. We have to wait a month to order the folding.

Jason Snell [00:09:50]:
Yeah, but there aren't going to be any reviews before then.

Leo Laporte [00:09:53]:
That's true. They're not gonna, they're not, you're not gonna get a— that's interesting.

Jason Snell [00:09:57]:
Nobody got a Duo last week, right? They got, uh, they got 18 Pros, but they didn't get a Duo last week.

Leo Laporte [00:10:02]:
And the embargo on the 18 Pro is probably this week. Yeah, like Wednesday usually.

Jason Snell [00:10:07]:
Yeah, tomorrow is probably.

Leo Laporte [00:10:08]:
So let me just see what the, what the current— if I'm going to order an 18 Pro Max, Lisa did get online.

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:13]:
I said, oh, did you get the Wild Cherry?

Leo Laporte [00:10:16]:
She said, no, I got black. I'm gonna put it in a case and make them think I'm an idiot. Which is nice. It's always nice to know that the— but so let's— she said black because I'll probably get it sooner. And of course, if you really want to get it soon, you get the $2,500 2TB model. And let's just see when, when that would be coming. I'm gonna buy that one.

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:39]:
The box that that phone comes in, is it big enough to live in? Yeah, that's the operative word.

Leo Laporte [00:10:43]:
No AppleCare. It makes me mad you have to pick everything until you get the date. Now that one is October 7th, but you could pick it up Friday. Yeah, she said that. She said I could have gotten it, but she said, but I don't want to go to the store because they keep, they keep stock in the stores.

Jason Snell [00:10:58]:
They don't want people who didn't pre-order to go home unhappy.

Christina Warren [00:11:01]:
Yeah, they need a certain amount of stock in the stores.

Leo Laporte [00:11:03]:
So I'm going to order the, uh, well, it's the same thing if you order, uh, the 256 gig, which is probably what most people should get. We're talking In-store Friday, uh, and then, uh, mail order, uh, in the first week of October or second week.

Christina Warren [00:11:19]:
Which isn't bad.

Leo Laporte [00:11:20]:
Uh, yeah, that's fine. I think she's— she did it pretty quick. I, I, I went down, she was working out. I said, oh, I forgot to remind you, 5 AM, uh, you better order your phone right now. And she, you know, it's like a couple of weeks, so that's fine. Uh, I'm waiting for the Duo. You're waiting for the Duo, Christina?

Christina Warren [00:11:38]:
Yes. Yes, you will. You will all be proud to know that I did keep my promise to Jason Snell. I did not buy an 18 Pro Max. It was—

Leo Laporte [00:11:44]:
We had to tie her to the mast and blindfold her.

Jason Snell [00:11:47]:
No, no, no, no.

Leo Laporte [00:11:49]:
Yep.

Christina Warren [00:11:49]:
Genuinely, because, you know, like part of it is honestly because like we don't know what the reviews are going to say. I don't know how well that, that focal length, uh, variable focal length thing is actually going to work. I, I have a feeling it's going to be Mickey. Yeah, sorry, sorry, variable aperture.

Leo Laporte [00:12:05]:
I'm gonna tell you something about variable aperture that'll make you feel better. I was talking to Chris Markwart, our photo guy, on our photo show on Friday. He said it's a gimmick because, you know, having— it's wonderful to have a physical aperture on a camera with a large sensor. Yeah, that's when you get beautiful bokeh. You will not get that beautiful bokeh. I said, but I saw bokeh in the pictures. He said That's computational. The sensor on the camera is so small that you're not really going to get that bokeh because of the blades.

Leo Laporte [00:12:38]:
There's 6 blades, which is, you know, fewer than most fancy cameras. It's very cool looking. It seems to me primed for, you know, breakage.

Andy Ihnatko [00:12:48]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:12:49]:
The other benefit, he said, really the real reason— now, this is Chris's point of view and he hasn't played with it yet, as nobody has. He said, is so that you get the starburst, because that's the one thing you will get with the 6 blades, right? On a point light source, you'll get 6 starbursts.

Andy Ihnatko [00:13:07]:
I'm more clear.

Leo Laporte [00:13:07]:
And he says that will make people go, oh, you have, you have aperture, physical aperture.

Andy Ihnatko [00:13:16]:
Or you can put like a little filter on the front that costs you all of 28 cents.

Leo Laporte [00:13:19]:
Do the same.

Andy Ihnatko [00:13:20]:
What I'm thinking, when I was thinking, I was thinking the exact same thing. I mean, I I'd be shocked if it actually has an optical effect. However, I'm curious to see if it's part of the amount of data that the pipeline collects. If it says, well, you know what, in addition to testing a whole bunch of different exposures and different tone maps, I'm all— the camera is also gonna try a bunch of different apertures, not to see which is the best, but basically see if it can collect more information that way.

Leo Laporte [00:13:49]:
You think the shutters, the blades will go—

Andy Ihnatko [00:13:53]:
I don't know. I mean, I'm trying to— the thing is, like, this This has been tried on Android phones a lot and it has not become part of, oh, well, gosh, of course, if it's a premium Android phone camera, it has to have variable apertures. And I think there's gonna be a reason for that. But there has to be a reason why Apple decided to increase the manufacturing cost, increase the manufacturing complexity, make it, as you say, it's another moving thing and a thing that gets dropped a lot. I'm sure that they did the math and decided that we can deliver— this is how desperate we need to be to improve photos. It's possible that It's, it's also there to improve videos because if you can mechanically stop down or wide or open a wider aperture, that means it gives you different shutter speeds you can have, uh, when you are capturing action or stuff like that.

Leo Laporte [00:14:41]:
But let's not forget, they didn't increase the size of the sensor.

Andy Ihnatko [00:14:45]:
Right, exactly.

Christina Warren [00:14:46]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:14:46]:
Teensy weensy.

Andy Ihnatko [00:14:47]:
Again, again, that's why as I was watching this, I'm thinking that it's not going to create better pictures, but I wonder if Apple's doing it because again As we know, it takes like what, 40 different— it collects 40 different categories of data every time you push that button, and that happens at a microsecond. And maybe part of that data collection is going to be stop, f-stop small, f-stop large, not again to get different views of the image, but to collect more data and make better decisions. And then again, I'm guessing because I know that Apple did this for a reason. They're not in a desperate position where they have to be. There is, there is a— I think Honor, Honor has a phone that actually has like a motorized periscoping—

Leo Laporte [00:15:31]:
Yeah, that's wild, isn't it? We talked about that too.

Andy Ihnatko [00:15:33]:
And that's what happens when you have a company that's kind of desperate to like get some attention. Apple is not desperate for attention. They would only make this if they were certain that it would lead to better pictures or better video. I just don't know how that would actually work.

Leo Laporte [00:15:46]:
Well, we'll see. We'll see.

Christina Warren [00:15:48]:
We'll see. I think the bigger thing I would look at, like with 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max, 'cause they look like great phones. I think if you have a 17, At least if you're like me, like I, I am not upgrading. I, I have my word.

Jason Snell [00:16:00]:
I will do not upgrade.

Christina Warren [00:16:02]:
That I am not upgrading.

Leo Laporte [00:16:03]:
Well, that's the main reason I bring this up, Christina, so that you and I do not have FOMO.

Christina Warren [00:16:08]:
We don't have FOMO, right? What I was going to say though is I think the bigger, like when I look at the 18 Pro and the Pro Max, I think that it is, it feels like almost like the finalized like form of the iPhone as we've known it kind of pre Duo where they, they reinforced, you know, added, um, you know, uh, a better heatsink. So it has better thermals, has better performance, better battery life, right? They made improvements to the camera, even if they aren't really massive improvements, they've made improvements to the camera. So it really feels like, you know, I thought the 17 Pro, uh, Max anyway, like last year was a fantastic phone, one of the best iPhones in years. And this looks like that's just even more refined. And so if you have somebody who's on a 14, a 15, maybe even a 16, depending on your budget and your upgrade cycle, This is a really nice upgrade. And I think that, uh, you know, we'll talk about it more, but I think that like I've had friends who've been asking me, you know, should I get the Duo? Should I get the, the 18 Pro Max? And, and it's going to come down to, I think for most people, if you value using your phone for, you know, wide range of things and including as a camera, this is going to be a really terrific phone. And yeah, they raised the price $100, but that's better than I think.

Jason Snell [00:17:15]:
Well, we should talk about that.

Leo Laporte [00:17:16]:
I was expecting prices were not, uh, Yeah, we thought they might be hundreds of dollars more. They're $1,999 to start. Yeah, I'm gonna buy 256 gigs. I'm gonna live dangerously.

Christina Warren [00:17:27]:
I'm gonna do 512.

Leo Laporte [00:17:29]:
Yeah, Lisa did 512 too, but I'm looking at my current Pro Max, my 17, and it does not— it's 183 gigs after a year of use.

Andy Ihnatko [00:17:38]:
Yeah, unless you're shooting lots and lots of 4K video and not having, not having the opportunity to dump your— to sync your, uh, your photos and your videos back up to the cloud routinely, I think 256 is fine. If I had the— if I could have when I bought my, my Pixel 11 Pro, if I could have gotten 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage, I would have saved the $100 and gotten less storage.

Leo Laporte [00:18:00]:
Every $100 counts when you're saving up for a 512-gig Mac Studio M5 Ultra. That's all I'm saying.

Jason Snell [00:18:05]:
That's true. My current, uh, 17 Pro is a, is a 256, and it's fine. Yeah, I think— yeah, if I recall correctly, we, we said this last week, um, Andy pointed out that the Samsung Fold starts at $1,999, I think.

Leo Laporte [00:18:20]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:18:20]:
And so I think we all agreed. So I was interviewed after by NPR, which was fun because there's a whole swath of people who say, oh, I heard you on NPR, that never otherwise care about anything I do, but they hear me on NPR. And the question was what we had talked about the day before, which was, is this price ridiculous or reasonable? And what we said last week was, I don't know, 6 months ago this would have seemed perfectly reasonable. And now it seems like it's actually kind of aggressive. And I think Andy specifically was like hoping for a $1,999 because that sounds like the price of this phone if the Samsung is $1,899. Now, I think if you look at the step-ups, it's very clear that they— I think they were aggressive with the $1,999 and they're probably eating margin there more than they would like to. But I think they didn't— I think they were worried that putting— starting this above $2,000 would have been kind of a black mark on the product. And so they— and so, yeah, I mean, $19.99 is— Mark Gurman said this is the price that they have been shooting for all along.

Jason Snell [00:19:27]:
And despite everything out there, I think they just decided we got to go out at $19.99.

Leo Laporte [00:19:31]:
Do you think they had to eat margin to do that?

Jason Snell [00:19:34]:
I mean, eat margin. I mean, I don't think they're losing money on it, but I think they're not making as much margin on the $19.99.

Leo Laporte [00:19:40]:
Yeah, no one's suggesting that they lose money.

Jason Snell [00:19:43]:
No, but I think there's a number. I mean, we don't know because that spreadsheet is deep. Right, deep knowledge at Apple. But I'm sure there's a number that popped out that said this should be priced at X, and I bet you $1,999 is below that number.

Andy Ihnatko [00:19:55]:
Yeah, it's really competitive. And also notice that Samsung— Samsung decided to put on the scuba gear and just swim underneath Apple's rowboat before the announcement and drill a hole in there by saying, how about for a couple of days we'll knock $250 off the full date? Which is— which is— which they kind of have to do because they now have a, a, a passport-sized foldable that is inferior to both, uh, Apple's and Google's. I mean, it's not, it's not even dust resistant and has a couple other things that the other— that you kind of want the other 2 to have. So, but that's— they were very, very puckish all last week. We'll talk about it later.

Leo Laporte [00:20:29]:
As far as I'm concerned, it's a non-starter because it's Android, and I just don't think Android uses the real estate well. And I've had many Samsung folding phones, and I, I— it looks like Apple has done a lot to make iOS 27 on that phone work well.

Andy Ihnatko [00:20:45]:
I'm sorry, Chris, I'll let you talk. I just had to blurt out that that was something that was so impressive to me that it's almost as if they had like iPhone Duo OS. They made so many modifications to it.

Leo Laporte [00:20:56]:
Yeah, thank you, Yeezy.

Jason Snell [00:20:57]:
And now I'll shut up.

Leo Laporte [00:21:01]:
Uh, uh, so there's a lovely, uh, video that began the event. Uh, we were debating back and forth whether that was all practical effects or if there was AI or CGI used in that video. And again, our photo guy Chris Markwardt said, no, I think it's all practical. I think they actually— it said shot on iPhone, and he said, I think they really did shoot it on iPhone.

Jason Snell [00:21:23]:
I'm sure they touched it up with VFX, but that's okay. I, I don't think it was like—

Leo Laporte [00:21:27]:
They rented the back lot at Universal to do it.

Jason Snell [00:21:30]:
I mean, clearly, clearly.

Leo Laporte [00:21:32]:
And, and spent a lot of money on that shoot if you look at all lighting and gear they used and so forth. Um, and then it's very touching at the end. Tim Cook steps forward.

Jason Snell [00:21:45]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:21:46]:
In kind of a, a weird gloomy light. You put—

Jason Snell [00:21:49]:
Actually, that's a, that's a shot-for-shot match from a James Bond movie.

Leo Laporte [00:21:53]:
Oh, really?

Jason Snell [00:21:54]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:21:54]:
How did you— you are good.

Jason Snell [00:21:57]:
Uh, I will put a link in. Um, but Todd Pizziri, my pal, the internet's pal who works at Industrial Light and Magic.

Leo Laporte [00:22:06]:
He is very much a movie guy.

Jason Snell [00:22:07]:
Did a whole post about it called Apple Event Film versus James Bond.

Leo Laporte [00:22:14]:
Was the whole film a James Bond?

Jason Snell [00:22:17]:
No, but there is a, um, the, the, uh, Skyfall opening shot is a match for Tim Cook. And, uh, and then of course at the end of the video Uh, there's an aperture that is referring to the closing aperture, and that is, uh, and that is, uh, very much a James Bond homage as well.

Leo Laporte [00:22:37]:
That's subtle. That's quite subtle. I think that's, you know, they must have had fun doing that. And, and do you think that Mr. Tern— oh, look at that, even the irising of the phone matches the irising of the James Bond.

Jason Snell [00:22:52]:
I mean, good. Bless Todd for that. So that's, that's why Tim Cook looks like that, is they're trying to be cinematic, right? And they're trying to match— they're probably even more references there or references they were trying to at least, uh, 'cause they want it to be very cinematic. I, what I like about the Tim Cook thing is rather than it being, I would like to hand off, or let's pretend Tim doesn't exist, especially keeping in mind that most people who watch that video don't know anything about CEO transitions at Apple. They don't, honestly. They're just interested in the phone. So how do they do it? How do they say, who the hell is this guy? I thought that was actually like spot on in terms of tone. 'Cause I agree, you expect Tim Cook and you're like, oh, Tim Cook.

Jason Snell [00:23:30]:
Yes, he is in these videos. And Tim Cook steps forward in that James Bond kind of lighting and he says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that guy, he's the guy.

Andy Ihnatko [00:23:37]:
Not me.

Leo Laporte [00:23:38]:
That's—

Jason Snell [00:23:38]:
and then he's gone.

Leo Laporte [00:23:39]:
The guy's walking on behind him. Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:23:41]:
Which is just— I think that's— I think that was so well calibrated and a little deprecating on Tim Cook's part, right? He's saying, I'm not the guy. He's the guy now. Bye. And like, that was the right way to do that. So I thought that was fun. In a, and again, I also think that tonally Apple struggles sometimes with like, are we a little too jokey? Are we a little too—

Andy Ihnatko [00:24:01]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:24:02]:
I think this was straight up. It's like, hey, we can shoot some action stuff on the iPhone and isn't it fun spectacle? And then you get the theme, which is opening shots, which leads to, this is John Ternus's opening shot as CEO. And then they're out of there. And like, I didn't cringe. Um, so I thought that, I thought, I mean, honestly, that's the real test here is like, was it okay? And did it do the job? And I think it did. I think, I think that was— I think it was solid.

Leo Laporte [00:24:26]:
I think we can actually say that this was a perfectly executed CEO transition in every regard.

Jason Snell [00:24:32]:
That was the goal. Yeah, I think that was Tim. Somebody— I saw a report the other week that said explicitly what I've assumed all along, which is Tim knows how difficult it was for him to take over because of Steve Jobs's illness and, and all of that. And he wanted to nail Yeah, this transition and have it be— he wanted the report was like textbook. I want to— I want this to be taught.

Andy Ihnatko [00:24:55]:
Didn't he say that explicitly? Yeah, he said that explicitly. He wants this to be the smoothest handover.

Leo Laporte [00:25:00]:
Well, it was beautifully done. And did you see how Samsung mocked it?

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:03]:
Yes.

Christina Warren [00:25:04]:
Oh my gosh.

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:05]:
So many sour grapes.

Jason Snell [00:25:07]:
Go ahead.

Christina Warren [00:25:07]:
I was going to say Samsung really—

Leo Laporte [00:25:09]:
that just makes me mad. Whatever.

Christina Warren [00:25:12]:
Jerky. No, I mean, honestly, all of Samsung's tweets and the whole behavior, I was just like, okay, you know what? Take the L. Like, this is not your day.

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:18]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [00:25:18]:
Like, just be— for, for once, don't—

Leo Laporte [00:25:22]:
Well, and Apple shot back.

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:24]:
No one cares when you're done.

Leo Laporte [00:25:25]:
You made the screen. Yeah, in interviews, Apple shot back. They said— the executive said, well, you know, the specs were out, so a number of people copied us, not pointing out that Samsung made the screen, so they really didn't have to steal this.

Christina Warren [00:25:38]:
No, they didn't really have to steal the scraps, but the specs are still—

Leo Laporte [00:25:41]:
But Xiaomi might have, Honor might have, you know.

Christina Warren [00:25:43]:
Sure. And, and Samsung— I mean, look, if we want to be real, Samsung, and I realize that's many different divisions because the shyball way that that company works is incredibly complicated, but I would not be surprised if the contract for making the iPhone Duo screens for that division of Samsung made more money for Samsung than the, the, the Fold 8, right?

Leo Laporte [00:26:04]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [00:26:05]:
Right. So, so the Z Fold 8. So, I mean, their, their marketing can, can do whatever the heck they want to do for marketing, but like, come on, guys.

Jason Snell [00:26:12]:
Also, and I think this is an important point, Apple being in the folding phone game, and in particular with this shape, is a validator of the category. It's a validator of the shape. And not only is Samsung making money on the displays that they made for Apple, but I really believe this, it will sell more Samsung folding phones because everybody's talking about folding phones. And if you don't, I don't think people are going to be like so much weighing, do I buy the Samsung or do I buy the Apple? I think that people want Android or they want iPhone, but I do think that even Android people will look and find it a validator. They're like, oh, maybe there is something there. Maybe I should be interested in this category. And that's good for companies that make folding phones like Samsung. So like they should take the L and it's not even really an L.

Christina Warren [00:27:03]:
Yeah, no, exactly. Because, because like you said, I mean, even them running, uh, like to Andy's point, even them running carrier promos, you know, a few days in advance, I mean, fine, do whatever you need to do because yeah, at this point, and we all said this last week and this is is going to be even more true. The best-selling foldable of all time will be the Duo the minute that it goes on sale, and, and it's just going to outsell everything else that's ever existed in aggregate. But this does prove the category, and there are plenty of people who for whatever reason don't want an iPhone. And if you're looking at something, you know, to get into that foldable market, this is now going to be the— for better or worse, and, and I'm not going to make a judgment about that because I haven't touched any of the phones, but for better or worse, this is going to become the blueprint of what a foldable phone in like 2026, 2027 onward looks like, right?

Leo Laporte [00:27:49]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [00:27:49]:
The form factor might evolve past then, but for better or worse, this is what people are going to be thinking about when they think about a foldable. And so, yeah, this validates the category. This is going to, I think, lift up things in general. And I mean, it obviously, some of this is going to come down to execution on Apple's part. I don't know how well this is going to sell vis-à-vis other things. But if you, if you look about, if you look at this and say, okay, this is going to be a long-lasting form factor. Yes, other companies have been doing this for 7 years. Yes, there was another company who even, I, you know, hilariously released a phone that looks similar called the Duo.

Christina Warren [00:28:25]:
None of those, we can talk more about that at another point.

Leo Laporte [00:28:27]:
And you mean Microsoft?

Christina Warren [00:28:29]:
I do mean Microsoft. And, and, and, and, but, but also So the comparisons there are unfair for a lot of reasons, but—

Leo Laporte [00:28:35]:
Well, especially since Apple did the Duo first with a laptop mini.

Christina Warren [00:28:39]:
Well, sure. But I was just more going to say like the Surface Duo was not a real foldable phone. It was a 2-screen device. I bought it.

Leo Laporte [00:28:46]:
I was— see, this is the thing. I like this form factor so much. I bought the Duo.

Christina Warren [00:28:52]:
I almost did.

Leo Laporte [00:28:53]:
Yeah, it had some real flaws. Well, I returned it almost immediately because it was 2 screens with a hinge. It didn't have a— But most importantly, the software really didn't use the dual screens the way Apple is.

Christina Warren [00:29:05]:
I was going to say, I was going to say, I mean, this is, this is the real thing, is that it's come— going to come down to the execution, where I think Apple does potentially have a real leg up over everyone else. And we will have to wait to see. The, the SDKs aren't even out yet. But the, the thing is, is that, you know, from what we've seen, from even the, the limited hands-on we've had, this looks much more Like realized and executed, and so yes, we've had seven years at this point of folding phones. None of them have taken off. If there's any chance for this category, it's not all going to go to Apple. It's but it is a device like this, and and hopefully you know Samsung and Google and you know Xiaomi and and Huawei and all the other companies that make phones will be able to take lessons from this and hopefully improve the software too, so that if this category. is going to exist, and that's, that's not a guarantee, there, there will be— it will be a better experience for all of us.

Andy Ihnatko [00:29:59]:
Yeah, I think, I think you're absolutely right. I think that part of this, the development of really, really good passport folding screen displays, is going to set that as the default of this is what people expect when they see a foldable, whereas before it was kind of like this in-between sort of thing. Uh, but also it reminds me of what, uh, smart multitouch smartphones were like in like the late 2000s, like in 2008, 2009, where every Android benefited from iPhone, iPhone benefited from Android because they were seeing what each other were doing. And app— like Apple was doing this, was doing stuff like, oh well, maybe notifications shouldn't be a card that obscures the entire screen until you actually actively dismiss it. Maybe it'd be cool if they were kind of like on a screen, on a roller that you could simply scroll down. That's a good idea. Like take that. Uh, just like on the, uh, uh, on the Duo, I mean, I'll, I'll take Snoopy wherever you can put it.

Andy Ihnatko [00:30:56]:
Okay. And the idea of having like, well, let's, let's, let's have— let's help the, the— when you're taking pictures of kids, have them smile, we'll have a little animated like Snoopy dancing around. That was something that Google put on the Pixel Fold.

Christina Warren [00:31:07]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:31:07]:
But again, and, and I'm sure that— and, and so many people, I can't— so many platforms now have been, uh, at least demonstrating How you can do that same beautiful transition of like blurring, like the top screen going out of focus, the inner screen getting into focus. It was so compelling and so absolutely right the way to do that transition that Samsung— someone, a developer for Samsung, a Samsung developer showed off how that would work on a Samsung. They've got it working on the Pixel. They've got it working on so many different things.

Leo Laporte [00:31:44]:
And once you see it, it's trivial to do it. And they're gonna do it. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:31:47]:
Yeah, but like I said, it's going to be great. You need competition in a vibrant market that's not quite found its feet yet. It is the most wonderful time to be observing these things.

Jason Snell [00:31:57]:
And there's no brand to validate a phone, a smartphone market like Apple and like iPhone. And that this is iPhone Duo is important, that even though it's picking up lots of tablet things, it's a phone. It is. Yeah, it's going to validate the entire Android folding phone ecosystem plus provide some lessons for them. That, you know, 'cause Apple really, that's the, that was my thing about this. Apple does a new piece of hardware, iPhone hardware that's unlike any iPhone hardware ever made before. And all I could think of coming out of the event was the software. And that says something like that.

Jason Snell [00:32:30]:
That was the, I don't know how all you felt, but like, Yes. That's why I have always loved Apple products is for moments like that where I'm like, oh, look, they went to town with the software. They didn't half bake it. It's fully baked. Like, so there's sometimes there's new Apple hardware that comes out and we all sit here the day after and we say, this is a nice start. And here are 5 other things that they could do. Or you ask in a briefing, sometimes this happens where you're like, but what about this? And they're like, well, it doesn't do that. Or they'll say it does other things that are nice and they won't say it, but they know it doesn't do that.

Jason Snell [00:33:04]:
And, but, but like day one, you're like, well, here are 5 directions this product could go. And over the next few years, you see them fill in those directions. There's almost nothing in the Duo that is an obvious low-hanging fruit thing that they didn't do. There's maybe one or two, but like they went to town and that was that kind of like Apple magic that they put in extra, extra software effort to, to go beyond. Because honestly, the hardware I'm sure is very impressive, but companies with impressive hardware pedigrees have been iterating on folding phones for 7 years, right? But on the software side, they knew that that was a place for them to push that advantage that they've got. And they did. And like, I love to see that. And I think it shows you in part, you put, you know, you do a, you embark on a software project at Apple that is imprinted with the iPhone priority level and it gets the high priority, right? Like they put everything into this and it shows, and that's why it's so exciting.

Leo Laporte [00:34:02]:
Yeah. I have to say, this is, you know, Apple started as a hardware company with Steve Wozniak's Apple I design. and pitching it to the Homebrew Computer Club. But by 1984, they became a hardware and software company with Steve Jobs' vision to own the whole stack. And this is where they really benefit, and no one else can do this. And Microsoft couldn't even do it when they wanted to release the Duo with Windows Phone on it, and they couldn't.

Christina Warren [00:34:30]:
Yeah, well, I was gonna say, I mean, the interesting thing with that, with the Surface, I can give a little bit of insight here because I did work at Microsoft at the time, and this is public information, none of this is private, but it's stuff most people won't know. You know, as we discussed, it was not a folding phone. It was a 2-screen phone, which is a very different thing. And when that phone was released, it came out in 2020, but I think it was announced in 2019. And when it was announced, the Android APIs did not exist to be able to do multiple screens on an Android device.

Andy Ihnatko [00:34:59]:
They—

Christina Warren [00:34:59]:
you sort of had some folding screen stuff and whatnot, but to have 2 distinct screens and have one app in each place didn't exist. And so Microsoft actually built and maintained for a number of years those libraries because Google didn't want to take them on. Google was not interested in doing that. And so, you know, that— but that was a challenge that they had to take on. Yeah, they'd wanted a Windows Phone. Eventually it had to use Android because Windows Phone didn't exist anymore, but the infrastructure was not there. And the problem that we— I always had with the Surface, you know, Microsoft Surface Duo, which was a really interesting device, was through no fault through Microsoft, because they didn't control the entire stack. They couldn't make it do everything they wanted it to do.

Christina Warren [00:35:43]:
And eventually Google did actually wind up adopting some of those libraries and building things in. And now you can do a lot more like what you couldn't do in 2019, you can do now natively in Android, but it didn't exist then. And this is an advantage that Apple has that no one other than Google, you know, with their fold devices with the Pixels really has that ability to control the end-to-end experience. And Google has the additional pressure of also having to build an operating system that OEMs can use, right? So they can't just customize it just for their own purposes, even though they sometimes do that. And so Apple, I think, is because they can nail both of those components. That's, that to Jason's point, that's kind of what makes it special. That's what makes— people really like using Apple products because it's the same person who's controlling everything from top to bottom. Now, sometimes that can lead to negative things, right? But I think when you nail it, you really nail it.

Christina Warren [00:36:38]:
And it's because, you know, the people who are working on this stuff are all able to be in sync with one another and are able to make the software and the hardware work. And they can find those edge cases and really think about, okay, how will this be used? What do we need to build to make this work correctly?

Leo Laporte [00:36:53]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:36:53]:
And the background of that story, I mean, that's such a good point that you made that Google just absolutely dropped Yeah. They dropped the ball forever on the idea of putting an Android app on a screen that is not a phone screen. It was just ridiculous. Samsung, when they came out with their Fold, they had to basically write their own systems of what happens when this hits a big screen, and can I have 2 apps side by side at the same time? When they decided to do DeX, their desktop thing, they had to, again, create their own multi-windowing system for Android.

Leo Laporte [00:37:26]:
Android.

Andy Ihnatko [00:37:26]:
Whereas Apple basically already had all this stuff baked in because it was all iOS. It was all OS X to start with. The other thing is that Google does not have a fraction of the control over the developers as Apple does. Apple can and would simply say that, oh, by the way, by X date, we will not approve updates to your iPhone apps unless they behave properly when they run on an iPhone Duo. They also have the ability to support their developers in such a way that They know that they're not investing their time and money learning a set of APIs that are going to be completely gone in about a year or two. Honestly, I mean, I think a lot of Android users would do well to consider buying an iPhone Duo just in the same way that— for the same reasons why any Android user would do well to think about buying an iPad Mini or an iPad instead of an Android tablet.

Leo Laporte [00:38:20]:
We're going to take a break. There's still lots more to talk about, obviously. Apple announced some very interesting other things. Shipped iOS 27 yesterday, uh, macOS 27, uh, visionOS 27, all of that and more coming up. You're watching MacBreak Weekly with Andy, Christina, Jason.

Jason Snell [00:38:40]:
Uh, I just—

Leo Laporte [00:38:41]:
a little note, but I thought it was very cool. One of the presenters at the Apple keynote was Miriam Azimi. She presented as the camera image scientist talking about the, uh, well, I think very cool image authority that they built into the iPhone 18 camera. She is— you may not know her name, but she was a dissident in Iran.

Christina Warren [00:39:07]:
Hmm.

Leo Laporte [00:39:07]:
She talks about being driven blindfolded to court in Mashhad in an intelligence vehicle thinking it was the end. And I think Apple really honored her and Apple an Iranian dissident, um, by putting her on stage. She was very publicly opposed to the Islamic Republic, uh, got in a lot of trouble. Um, and God bless Apple for hiring her and, uh, and then putting her up on stage without saying anything.

Christina Warren [00:39:38]:
But I just want to acknowledge it.

Leo Laporte [00:39:39]:
Yeah, I like that.

Christina Warren [00:39:40]:
That's very cool.

Leo Laporte [00:39:41]:
Yeah, really, really, uh, you know, significant. Let's talk about the watch because that was a little bit of a surprise. It's funny, the day before, Mark Gurman had everything— price, name, he had it all. So he's got some leaker in there who's, you know, showed in the video, I think. But one of the things they announced, the new watch, it's gonna be, I think, more controversial. I didn't hear a lot about it already.

Christina Warren [00:40:09]:
Yeah, already I'm here.

Andy Ihnatko [00:40:11]:
I hate this freaking thing. And Apple— well, and Apple— and we're talking about that, we're talking about the idea, the, the feature where, uh, your Apple Watch can rewind. Thank you very much. Uh, it's— and it's not just one feature. Basically, it's always, it's always listening and basically internally making a recording so that you can, so you can rewind and listen to— get captions for whatever was said in the past 15 minutes in case you missed it. There's also a feature that it will act like an AI audio badge where it will They'll provide you with summaries of what you talked about, who you've talked with, that sort of thing. Apple's been bending over backwards. They published a PDF, a white paper about the privacy.

Andy Ihnatko [00:40:50]:
They've been doing lots and lots of interviews. They have lots and lots of support documents explaining that there's no transcript available. There are situations in which the watch will inform the person you're talking with that you're rewinding and you're looking at a transcript. Apple doesn't see it, it gets destroyed. They're point by point by point by point. If there's a— that is absolutely the most privacy-focused way you could do a feature like this. I'm not upset about that. I'm upset that the feature exists.

Andy Ihnatko [00:41:22]:
In many ways, I'd almost rather have there be a transcript because now I'm counting on someone throwing something back to me or bring something up that I said during a meeting or during like waiting for an elevator 2 and a half weeks ago based on a summary that an AI made And I can't say what I said to somebody at an elevator 2 weeks ago. I might be able to say, no, I definitely didn't agree to anything like that because I wouldn't have agreed to anything like that. I don't care what your watch tells you. Uh, I think that this is a really, really crummy world to live in where you don't know when there is someone who's taking notes. And no matter what they do with it, it puts you on the defensive 24/7. And it's yet another thing that chips away at Apple's uh, legacy of saying we believe that privacy is a basic human right. Privacy, privacy, privacy. Nobody cares about privacy as much as we do.

Andy Ihnatko [00:42:11]:
But we do see that if we— if they think they have a feature that will be compelling enough that will convince people to get the new watch, okay, we can bend a little bit. And I just hate it.

Jason Snell [00:42:22]:
I think I want to pick apart those 2 issues that Andy just said because I think that it's interesting To consider the 2 issues, because one issue is what, what these features, these 2 features do, which is, you know, there's, there's questions of legality, there's questions of consent, there's questions of privacy. So the idea that you have a device that is recording and that Apple says they're not, it's flowing audio, it's in a buffer, it's being processed, it's not being saved. Andy's absolutely right.

Andy Ihnatko [00:42:54]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:42:54]:
This is probably the most privacy-focused version of this feature you will ever see. Um, and so there's that, which is like in a 2-party consent state where both parties need to agree to record, is, is it recording if it's in a buffer, but it's not being processed until you press a button at which point you notify people? Or is that, you know, can you really, is that going back in time, which is not a thing that, that we can actually do? Uh, but then, you know, and you could argue like a lot of voice assistants are also buffering audio. And is that recording and are they illegal too? And like, there's a whole legal case and a moral case there. And I think it's worth talking about that. But the other part of this that Andy got at right away, which is why Andy is such an insightful person, is, is this useful for anything? Like, is Apple doing this because they've got a use case that they think is actually useful? Or is this more like Apple saying, oh geez, there are a lot of AI wearables out there. And if anybody's going to do this, maybe we should do it with the Apple Watch. So let's try it. and see what happens, 'cause I am not convinced.

Jason Snell [00:43:55]:
First off, like if your server is telling you the specials and you're confused, and then while they're standing there, you double tap to get to rewind what they said to see, just ask them to say it again slower. Why are you doing that?

Christina Warren [00:44:08]:
Right.

Jason Snell [00:44:08]:
That's a terrible use case. I heard people trying to be like, well, what if you're in a bus station and you hear the announcements? Like, good luck getting it to transcribe an Echoey bus station announcement from your Apple Watch. But okay, okay. And then the note-taking, as Andy pointed out, it's not going to be Andy said this thing by the elevator, right? It's going to be a discussion was had about these topics and it was agreed because they're not going to identify speakers. It was agreed that we would do this, which is just going to lead you to, I thought we all agreed that we were going to do this. And then somebody else says, we did not agree. And where are you then? Are those notes any good to anybody? And I think that is so— I think there are like 2 issues here. One is, is this a useful feature at all, or is this Apple kind of trying too hard? And then separately, all of the consent recording issues that are out there that, that, you know, Apple is trying— I think that— I think actually Apple is trying to build this the best way it can be built.

Jason Snell [00:44:59]:
But to Andy's point, should we build this? And does it help anybody?

Christina Warren [00:45:04]:
No, I think you both nailed it, right? I have, I have a lot of problems with this just as a, you know, on a fundamental level, on like a Fourth Amendment perspective. I don't like this. I don't like that this is happening. Do these things already exist? Yes. Does Apple need to be the one who builds it, even if, to both Andy and Jason's points, they are probably going to be the one who builds it better than anyone else? I don't think so. And to your point, Jason, I do wonder if this is a little bit like, let's just, we see all these AI wearables, let's throw something against the wall. Because I will say, I have colleagues and I actually bought one of these things and I haven't really used it myself, but I bought one of these things that looks kind of like a a, you know, a USB, you know, credit card type of thing that is an audio recorder that basically just transcribes audio for you. And you can plug it in and it can use an AI model to basically let you know what, what was said.

Christina Warren [00:45:54]:
And I have a colleague who swears by it during meetings. And I can see how in those types of scenarios, that sort of thing would be useful. And I could also see saying, okay, well, if I'm in a business meeting and I don't want to have to— I forget to hit, you know, record meeting notes or something in whatever app I'm using, it would be nice to be able to go back, you know, 5 or 10 minutes and, and, and review what someone said. Um, if also to Andy's point, I had a transcript, that would be lovely. Uh, but that's not what this is. And so instead, you know, you, you open up a lot of scenarios where, yeah, why couldn't you just ask someone to, to repeat what, what was said? Um, 2, I'm also wondering, I'm like, even if that is a scenario, how— what am I going to miss if I'm asking my watch to repeat what was said to me, right? Because now I've got to, I've got to focus on that. And then now how am I going to catch up? I don't know. It just, it feels like, you know, something that is searching for a problem.

Christina Warren [00:46:46]:
I also wonder too, and I'm sure that this has been dealt with, but like if you do have this feature turned on, is your battery life on your watch going to now be worse because it's got this always-on kind of buffered thing? Um, and, and then there are the legal challenges too, because some states don't care at all. And then there are other states, including California, which care quite a lot about these sorts of things. So I don't know. I'm, I'm not going to be getting a new watch anyway. But if I did, I would not be enabling this feature just because there's part of me that goes, oh yeah, it'd be interesting to be able to use my Apple Watch as a note-taking device. That could be an interesting use case for an Apple Watch. But that's not what this is. So at least right now—

Leo Laporte [00:47:26]:
I ordered the new watch immediately. I have owned many of these devices in the past. I can't wait to turn it on. My only fear is, I mean, there are legal issues. Apple's done their best. I think the white paper is worth reading to kind of dodge those. It's unclear, for instance, California is a 2-party state. It's unclear whether by Apple saying, well, we don't, we record it in a ring buffer, so we don't save more than it looks like 30 seconds.

Jason Snell [00:47:54]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:47:54]:
We analyze it and then we delete it. So it's unclear if that gets around 2-party consent. I'm not sure that it does. I think this is one that'll go to the courts. Uh, I'm gonna make a prediction. Apple, this is gonna be like Microsoft Recall. There will be complaint after complaint after complaint. Apple will end up not either not shipping it or modifying it to make it even more useless.

Jason Snell [00:48:16]:
Or, or, and also I, I think some of it is on, like it'll all be turned off by default.

Leo Laporte [00:48:20]:
But I'm gonna say I've been highly disappointed because, uh, I've, I've been looking for something exactly. I wore the Bee computer. You may remember.

Jason Snell [00:48:27]:
I have a theory.

Christina Warren [00:48:28]:
I had a Bee as well.

Jason Snell [00:48:29]:
I have a theory. My theory is, if we're talking about policy, and this may— this does not justify Apple doing this, but I have a theory, which is Apple is worried about being behind in AI, right? Obviously. And it's got a lot of wearables, and it looks at AI wearables and it's like, well, wait a second, we have wearables. Why are we going to get scooped by AI wearables? We could do that too. And, and, and so my theory is Apple decided, let's build the ideal version of an AI wearable from a privacy standpoint. Let's build that. And, and this is the gambit. Either all of society will just say no, never, in which case all their competition has also been told no and that they're not behind because nobody can implement this product.

Leo Laporte [00:49:14]:
Yeah. If Apple can't do it, no one can do it.

Jason Snell [00:49:16]:
Exactly. Or there is a path forward and then that product exists. I mean, that, that's It's not a wild theory, right? It's like, we're going to do the best version of this and say, here is the tech industry's best attempt to do this in a non-evil way. And if society says, no, it's all banned, Apple's not behind because nobody can do it.

Christina Warren [00:49:37]:
Right.

Jason Snell [00:49:38]:
So that's smart.

Leo Laporte [00:49:39]:
That's an interesting point of view.

Jason Snell [00:49:41]:
But it may not be worth the image hit to them. They must have spent a considerable amount of money and hardware design.

Leo Laporte [00:49:46]:
I mean, they put this exclave into the Apple Watch. So it is non-trivial. Somebody on Twitter, I can't remember if it was Micah or Jennifer Pattison-Tui, I can't remember who said it, but I thought this was a great insight that this is a first step into the AirPods with camera, that this same kind of technology will appear in the AirPods with camera.

Jason Snell [00:50:07]:
100%. Yeah. With the same argument, right? Which is like, we're not really recording video, we're just processing it to see what faces are on.

Leo Laporte [00:50:13]:
It did the same thing, right? It's not a picture.

Jason Snell [00:50:17]:
Yeah, this is like dipping your toe in the water for that product. And it makes me wonder if this product or this feature is just soundly rejected. If they take the, that camera AirPods thing and are like, maybe not, maybe not.

Leo Laporte [00:50:30]:
I, I, I, on, you know, as a contrarian, and of course, as you all know, I'm all YOLO'd out about AI and all that. Um, and I have no privacy and I don't care.

Andy Ihnatko [00:50:40]:
Exactly. You're talking, you're talking 8 to 10 hours a day. There's nothing we don't know about you.

Leo Laporte [00:50:45]:
Yeah, uh, I, I record all our conversations, believe it or not. I hope you're not shocked by that. Uh, um, uh, I think especially now, the other thing that maybe you guys don't have on your radar, I'm getting old, and I have many family members who have suffered from Alzheimer's. I've watched them lose their memories, including my— both my mother and my father. And I have— one of the things I've embraced about AI is the notion that I can store more and more of my life's context in an AI and have it be available to me later when I don't remember stuff. You know, I, you know, people probably think I'm nuts, but I had— I have my AI now has mined 20 years of Gmail, my Fastmail, all my mail is now in the AI for querying. And I think this is just another way of getting my life, you know, remember we talked about this Gordon Bell's device that he wore around his neck that took photos every 30 seconds. And he did it for the same reason.

Leo Laporte [00:51:45]:
His wife, Gwen Bell, had suffered severe Alzheimer's, and he realized that his brain and my brain are not going to be able to continue to recall the things I've experienced. And it's, I think, a wonderful idea to have a device that can do that perfectly.

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:00]:
So yeah, even for smaller things. I mean, I just met my new neighbors who moved in a couple of weeks ago.

Leo Laporte [00:52:05]:
Do you remember their names?

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:06]:
I can remember the name of the guy because it's the name of a character in a movie that I like.

Leo Laporte [00:52:12]:
That happens to me all the time.

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:13]:
I can't remember her name. And so, yeah, I would love to have a device that, again, would simply feed this into what Gemini knows so I can just say, oh, I've already forgotten her name. What was her name again? But as Jason sort of said, it's okay for me to get over my shyness and my awkwardness and say, I'm sorry, I know you told me your name, but I was enjoying our conversation so much that it just slipped my mind. Can you remind me?

Jason Snell [00:52:36]:
And I'll write it down.

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:38]:
I think it's not so much that this is bad technology, so much as so long as the person who is being recorded has knowledge and information about what's happening, I think that takes the edge off it. That's why I keep coming back to the idea of— I think a badge is the best form factor. It is an obvious thing you're wearing on your lapel or on your chest magnetically, and people will recognize it. And again, I would not begrudge somebody for saying, look, my memory is really, really bad, or I have a neurological situation that I just can't remember things unless it's being recorded, unless it's being databased for me by this AI. I would absolutely understand that. My problem is that I hate to live in a world in which, oh God, someone is wearing AirPods, so therefore they might be recording me right now. And can I be efficient in my language, or do I have to say, when I said okay, I don't mean I agree to the thing you're discussing. I'm saying I understand what you're saying, allow me to come back to you with some thoughts about whether— why this is a terrible, terrible idea.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:43]:
I think informed consent is absolutely required.

Leo Laporte [00:53:46]:
I don't think it's likely that Apple is so sanitizing the content that they feel like it's completely anonymized.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:56]:
I'm sure, I'm sure they feel like it's useless.

Jason Snell [00:53:58]:
And not recorded.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:59]:
But if I don't—

Leo Laporte [00:54:00]:
but this is what happened. This is what Microsoft did with Recall. Uh, is, you know, it made it useless. It was only that machine that you're— that Windows machine you're using. If it were really to be useful, uh, Recall, which took screenshots and kind of made notes on everything you're doing on your computer, would be on all my systems everywhere, ambient recordings everywhere. I want my cameras, I want everything. And, and then the AI could chew on it and create a useful database, searchable database of activities Uh, things I've agreed to, dates I don't remember, people I don't remember. Uh, I think that that's hugely useful.

Leo Laporte [00:54:39]:
I think we're in a really interesting cusp right now. Yeah, everybody who's watching has been paying attention to the news this week about killer AIs. First of all, I just want to say that's BS. Yeah, I was gonna say it's marketing. It is not real. Don't worry about it. I just, I'm just telling you from the depths of my heart, there are all sorts of agendas at play here. None of them have to do with AI killing anybody.

Leo Laporte [00:55:05]:
People kill people, not AI. And I think that we are at a cusp between either just general acceptance of these smart devices in our midst and surveillance or complete abrogation. Well, I would love to see a middle path. I just don't know if we're going to get a middle path.

Jason Snell [00:55:25]:
I have I've vacillated on this too, where I've thought to myself, oh, you know, we're just going to live in a state where like everybody knows everybody's got a camera and a microphone everywhere. 'Cause we already have the cameras and microphones.

Leo Laporte [00:55:35]:
We kind of do.

Jason Snell [00:55:36]:
Yeah, but they're not always right. But like, yeah, I mean, there's a photo— you could be taking a 4K video, you know, and recording audio with noise reduction, all those things too. All of that is already possible. It's not necessarily ubiquitous.

Christina Warren [00:55:50]:
I walk around with my camera.

Leo Laporte [00:55:50]:
I walk around with my smartphone in my breast pocket like this. And the cameras are pointing out. And I realized recently, you know, I really need to walk around with it with the cameras pointing down because it's making people—

Jason Snell [00:56:00]:
But at the same time, so, so we also have the— in this era, the idea that like even across our political, our polarized political divides here in the United States, where you normally think sort of like everybody in a red state's going to be on one side of this and everybody in a blue state's going to be on the other side of this, right? But like even in red States. You've got people—

Leo Laporte [00:56:21]:
It doesn't divide up like that.

Jason Snell [00:56:22]:
That's what's funny. Taking baseball bats to flock cameras, right? And so that is a, that is a very public cultural, broad cultural reaction among some people to the idea that at every intersection, on every block, at every front door, there's a camera, and that camera can now record what cars drive by and every face that it sees and log it all and pass it all up the chain to some security apparatus somewhere for use that they didn't consent. And again, being in public to one degree is being, you know, in a public space and you're not entirely protected there. But it is an interesting time on that score. Are we going to say as individuals, are the courts going to say, are people who make laws going to say there need to be some rules here? Or the other way we go is there's no assumption of privacy anywhere.

Leo Laporte [00:57:22]:
And we'll see.

Andy Ihnatko [00:57:23]:
And I don't know what's going to happen. Silence is often mistaken for consent. So even if this is a futile battle, we have to speak up and say, this is not right. This is not okay. I'm not okay with this. I'm not going to accept this. I'm just going to simply live in a world where I have to wear my perv glasses everywhere I go.

Leo Laporte [00:57:38]:
I really do.

Christina Warren [00:57:39]:
I mean, and I think that if you, as long as the people around you are either informed, if it's not a public scenario, or, you know, like, you know, you're not doing what the people do where they modify the light and things like that. I think that's fine. Um, I, I think that a number of people—

Leo Laporte [00:57:54]:
Do I have to wear a sign on my head that says, uh, I'm old and, and I'm losing my marbles, so please—

Andy Ihnatko [00:58:00]:
No, you just, you just need to have Hannah Waddingham march behind you with a bell saying, shame! Privacy shame!

Leo Laporte [00:58:08]:
Bing!

Jason Snell [00:58:09]:
Yeah, you need like the equivalent of a student driver.

Christina Warren [00:58:12]:
Yeah, it's like, yeah, a placard.

Leo Laporte [00:58:13]:
Don't get mad at me.

Jason Snell [00:58:15]:
Person recording everything.

Christina Warren [00:58:16]:
I'm only recording for my own memory, not to sell your data.

Leo Laporte [00:58:20]:
Well, that's the thing. I don't have any intent. Now you raise an interesting point in our chat, Christina, is that I may not intend to ever let this out of my custody. It's all for my own benefit, blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't stop law enforcement.

Jason Snell [00:58:34]:
Right. That's why Apple— I mean, that is why Apple isn't recording and they're only summarizing things in text, but—

Leo Laporte [00:58:41]:
Without names, by the way.

Jason Snell [00:58:42]:
Without names.

Leo Laporte [00:58:43]:
They don't assign names to anything.

Jason Snell [00:58:45]:
So that may mean that it's not really actionable from a law enforcement standpoint. Maybe it is, you know, the participants agree they're going to rob the bank. They're going to want it, but it might not, it might not be clear enough. And you could easily say, well, I didn't agree to— we were going to rob the bank. I don't know what it's talking about. That's obviously a whole thing.

Leo Laporte [00:59:01]:
That's from the TV show.

Jason Snell [00:59:03]:
You can't catch me. You'll never take me alive, copper. But, but it also goes to the flip side of that, which I mentioned earlier, which is if you do all of that, is the result useful?

Andy Ihnatko [00:59:13]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:59:14]:
Is it— is it— are those transcripts useful, or do you look at them and you're like, what?

Leo Laporte [00:59:18]:
We'll find out. We maybe will find out. I still believe that Apple's gonna pull this one back. I don't think they're gonna release it, but we'll see. I ordered the watch immediately.

Christina Warren [00:59:29]:
Yeah, I mean, look, it looks like it's a decent, you know, upgrade, um, you know, year on year. And they did come out with the gold version of, uh, of the Hermès, um, model, so it's now available in silver and gold. Now I'm not I'm not going there. I'm not doing that.

Leo Laporte [00:59:42]:
Oh, you're tempted though.

Christina Warren [00:59:43]:
Yeah. A little, a little. But silver goes with more things, so I think I'm just gonna keep that. But, and they brought the ceramic back, which is great 'cause I loved the ceramic.

Leo Laporte [00:59:53]:
I wish I could get a ceramic. I'm so sad that they didn't offer that in the Ultra.

Christina Warren [00:59:57]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:59:58]:
So I just got another black one. It'll match all my bands.

Christina Warren [01:00:01]:
It'll match all your bands and it'll look great. But I do, I'm with you. I think that they're probably gonna have to listen to the feedback on this. They're never gonna roll it back.

Jason Snell [01:00:10]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [01:00:10]:
Because, And again, like people are pointing this out in the chat, now it creates a stigma of anybody who has an Apple Watch because you can't just tell which one is which. I mean, sometimes you can, but it's difficult. And so if now all of a sudden the people you're with, and here's the thing too, even if we know it's only 15 seconds, even if it's only a summary, even if it's only all these different things, the, it's going to be similar to recall where the consensus is going to be everything you're saying is being recorded all the time. And that's going to become the, the narrative. And so if that's the narrative, then, and people are going to be side-eyeing you when they see you with an Apple Watch, like Apple doesn't want that. I, I do think that this is a much bigger discussion we have to have going forward about how we live in the world with these, you know, devices and how we balance that with, with individual liberties. But, uh, I, I don't know if this is a thing that Apple needed to get involved in here.

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:04]:
Yeah. I'm thinking about like what I would have advocated for if this feature was going to go ahead anyway. I would have advocated inside Apple that, okay, if this feature is turned on, then the screen of the watch is turned— is filled with just white alternating with red at maximum brightness. And this will have a two-pronged effect.

Leo Laporte [01:01:28]:
Oh God. This means—

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:29]:
no, no, I'm saying this means that the person You're the problem, Andy.

Leo Laporte [01:01:33]:
You, you're the problem.

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:34]:
No, no, no, listen, listen, listen to me. This is a clever solution. I think it's, it's, it's a— I'm trying to compromise here. A, people will know that, okay, there's, there's some sort of a recording happening, but what the nature of which we can discuss. Uh, but it would also mean that the battery drain would be substantial. So you're not going to turn that feature on unless it's something very, very valuable and very, very important. I don't want— like I said, my problem is that I don't want to be able— I don't want to see somebody who's wearing an Apple Watch and one Again, informed consent. It's such a big thing.

Jason Snell [01:02:03]:
That's the danger with the gambit that I was talking about earlier is that it risks the reputation of the Apple Watch to do this.

Leo Laporte [01:02:12]:
Yeah. Everywhere you go will suddenly be a SCIF and you'll have to hand in your phone and watch. I ended up talking to my AI about, I want to record everything that's going on. And it finally said, yeah, you can do it. Just bring the Zoom stick.

Jason Snell [01:02:25]:
Just get a Zoom recorder.

Leo Laporte [01:02:26]:
Put it on the table. It's the most obvious It's the ugliest, ugly contraption and you can record. But see, you don't understand the point of this from my point of view is full-time recording, not I'm going to record this conversation or that conversation. It's having everything I do. If I could make it that would only record my voice, that would be fine. I don't need your voice. I just need to know what I agreed to. And then I'll make a point of saying—

Andy Ihnatko [01:02:51]:
That's fine.

Leo Laporte [01:02:51]:
Oh, nice to meet you, Charlie and Sarah. And then that way it'll have, you know, the names of the people and stuff like that. Yeah, it's not going to happen, unfortunately, because of people like you, Andy. So screw you.

Andy Ihnatko [01:03:07]:
Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte [01:03:08]:
I just hope you get old someday and know what it's like not to remember nothing.

Andy Ihnatko [01:03:15]:
My soul is as the— my strength is as the strength of 10 because my soul is pure.

Leo Laporte [01:03:19]:
Yes, it is pure. And I completely understand your point. I just I just want it. I know I'm not gonna get it, but I want it. And I'm definitely not wearing a watch if it goes Bieber, Bieber the whole time it's recording. That's definitely not happening. But it was just get a siren hat.

Andy Ihnatko [01:03:38]:
No, no. If any device that says Bieber over and over again, you're not talking to anybody for more than 3 seconds, 15 seconds anyway.

Leo Laporte [01:03:47]:
Bieber, Bieber.

Andy Ihnatko [01:03:50]:
I know.

Leo Laporte [01:03:51]:
And, you know, I want, I want meta glasses that I can record everything I'm looking at. And it's just none of that's gonna happen. There are— if they call it perv glasses, you know, I'm not gonna wear perv glasses. I'm not a perv. I just want to remember your name and face. I don't have it.

Andy Ihnatko [01:04:12]:
Sigh.

Leo Laporte [01:04:13]:
Anyway, I'm just gonna have to go through life like human, like where you just forget stuff. And, you know, yesterday everybody got the official iOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27. Oh, and iPadOS.

Jason Snell [01:04:34]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [01:04:34]:
Almost left that out. All of the new 27s are here. Um, there's, there's an Easter egg in the, uh, iOS 27 apps. Dog Cow makes an appearance.

Christina Warren [01:04:46]:
Claris!

Leo Laporte [01:04:47]:
Yay!

Andy Ihnatko [01:04:48]:
Yes, that's the whimsy that we were missing. I don't— I know this couldn't have been like just John Ternus, hey, the second that I'm CEO, I'm bringing back Claris the Dog Cow. But that's the sort of thing— I'll just give me a little crumb. Don't make me think that you're seeking out whimsy and destroying it to make sure this is the blandest experience possible.

Leo Laporte [01:05:06]:
So where is this? This is in the Glass settings and display?

Jason Snell [01:05:10]:
Yeah, if you scroll down down, uh, to the end and then you try to scroll further, you will get an additional image of Claris the dog cow at a swimming pool or a pool at Apple Park, something like that.

Leo Laporte [01:05:20]:
Oh, I love that. That's— yeah, that's little touches like that that make Apple an approachable company instead of a $5 trillion behemoth trying to take the money out of my pocket and succeeding. Uh, a couple of things to know about Apple Intelligence. This one really intrigued me, and I, I don't know how true this is, so I'm going to ask you guys. This came from PDFU. I don't know who PDFU is on X. iOS 27 and GoldenGate have private hooks that let apps add Siri extensions and replace Siri's AI server backend with third-party models. And he shows Claude running.

Leo Laporte [01:06:05]:
This would be very cool. How long before somebody gives me a switch or an app that I can do this? Because I pay for subscriptions to some very high-end models. I'd love to have Claude or Astra in my Siri.

Andy Ihnatko [01:06:19]:
Yeah, also we've been working with our favorite agents for the past 2 years now since they got actually good. And I really want to bring the experience that Gemini has accrued with me into the desktop, into the OS level sort of stuff. I also don't like having to train. It's not just that I think that Gemini is good for my for my needs, but also I know where it's not good. And so just like, just like having a human assistant, you know that if I give them a lunch order, I'm going to write it down. I'm not going to just simply tell them. They're not— because they're gonna screw it up. That's the sort of stuff where it's— you almost don't even notice how good Apple intelligence is because you, you're happy with the assistant that you have and you don't want to train a new person.

Leo Laporte [01:07:00]:
Yeah, I mean, Apple understands most people will use Siri AI and be happy, and that's fine. But there are a few of us who would like to maybe use something else. Apple's trying to offer this because they can.

Jason Snell [01:07:12]:
I think they've got an exclusive partnership with OpenAI that has not quite lapsed yet. And this is a 0.1 or 0.2 feature where they're gonna open it up to everybody. And this has been a point of contention. If you see on Vibrian Caddy toward each other, John Gruber and Mark Gurman, because Mark Gurman said this was happening and John Gruber said it's not in there, so you're a sucker. And the answer is, It's not in 27.0. Jon Gruber is right, but Mark Gurman is also right in the sense that they are working on it and apparently they are planning on rolling this out. I, again, my suspicion is that the deal they made 2 years ago with OpenAI precludes some of this from shipping right away, but that they are going to get to that point pretty soon. And isn't— and that is great, right? Like that.

Christina Warren [01:07:55]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:07:55]:
I think the whole point here, this is why everything Apple does is like for the 80 or 90% or 95%, depending on what it is of the people, the general public who just wanna do a thing with a query in Siri in this case, great. For the people who want more, what you do is you build an API that lets people do more with something else that's more advanced. And that would be, you know, using another model. Like they should be okay with that as long as you're doing it on their system, they should be pretty happy with that. And I think they will be. I think this is coming.

Leo Laporte [01:08:25]:
It would make me more interested in buying a Duo. Yeah, frankly, I mean, one of the reasons I want a Duo is because it's a big screen for AI, right?

Jason Snell [01:08:32]:
Right. And then you plug in whatever model or models you choose and you can just say, use, you know, whatever, use Claude or whatever for this and have it do what you want it to do. Why? Like, yeah, it's a great idea. Apple, I think some people have a misunderstanding about Apple's attitude toward AI. Apple is all in on AI now. And they're not just all in on Siri AI, they're all in on AI. And if you sit in any demo. Like, I'll go back to that story I told about being at WWDC and having them take me into a demo area where they were showing off those 4 Mac Studios with the cluster with Thunderbolt running a local model with a terabyte of connected memory.

Jason Snell [01:09:15]:
Like, they love that their devices do this. This is why the A20, you know, the A20 has the GPUs with the neural accelerators. It's got 2 neural engines in it. And that's for the phone, right? And then on the Mac, they are adding more and more AI features to their, to Apple Silicon because Apple makes their own chips and they benefit from local AI. So it's not just like they wanna be good with the cloud AI, they want you to be able to run things on local models. Like they're in, they're in, they're a little behind in some areas. They haven't built their own model that can, that can catch up, but they also know that they benefit when you tie into other people's models because you're using their hardware. So Like, it's— this is a thing that's going to happen.

Jason Snell [01:09:57]:
It's, it's on its way. That this got spotted, like, it should not be a sign of like, I want to do this, why is it a private API? It really is more like, just wait, it's going to be— it's coming.

Leo Laporte [01:10:07]:
There's another reason, and that, uh, it's kind of, um, there might be other motivations. This is, uh, Tim Hardwick writing at MacRumors points out that this might be in response to the DSA in Europe, or the DMA, I should say, the Digital Markets Act. which requires Apple to, you know, be interoperable, give third parties access to iOS hardware. And there was this lawsuit. Elon had sued Apple, an antitrust lawsuit, which got dropped yesterday.

Jason Snell [01:10:39]:
Hmm. Hmm.

Leo Laporte [01:10:41]:
We don't know what the settlement was, but X said Monday they've resolved their claims against Apple. Apple that alleged that the iPhone maker conspired with OpenAI to unlawfully monopolize markets for smartphone generative AI chatbots.

Jason Snell [01:10:57]:
They resolved that their thing was BS and that it was a waste of everybody's time, and Elon was just doing a tantrum because they weren't high enough in the App Store rankings.

Leo Laporte [01:11:05]:
Look, it didn't go to court, so it sounds like Apple said something to Elon that made him, uh, stop kicking and screaming.

Jason Snell [01:11:11]:
You know, you know, we've got this API and our deal with OpenAI expires in, right, in, in 45 days or in—

Leo Laporte [01:11:17]:
Soon people will use Grok in, uh, with, with—

Jason Snell [01:11:20]:
And then everybody will be using his AI. Sure, sure.

Leo Laporte [01:11:22]:
Yeah, sure. Actually, GrokBot's pretty good. I've played with it.

Christina Warren [01:11:26]:
Yeah, GrokBot is pretty good.

Leo Laporte [01:11:27]:
It's— I have to say, and I'm, I'm shocked because I've been using, uh, Meta's Muse. So there's this new category, uh, for those of us who've been playing with AI for a while, we use, uh, things like OpenClaw or Hermes agents locally, and all of our data is there. It's stored, and then it calls the AIs, but it has all this information about us. It's a great way to use an AI. It's agentic is what they call it, AI. But, you know, most normal people aren't going to dedicate a computer to this and do all of this rigmarole. So, uh, this is the latest thing, and there are a number of companies doing it. GrokBot is one of them.

Leo Laporte [01:12:07]:
They basically reserve space on their servers, giving you a virtual machine with its own storage, memory, and CPU, and you can use it on your iPhone or whatever. Muse is new from Meta. It's actually really cute and really good. There's a company called Instinct that's coming along I've been playing with. Same idea. You use it in either an app, like, and I think this is why Apple did a Siri app. I think they realized these were coming. So that's what—

Jason Snell [01:12:36]:
Mm-hmm.

Leo Laporte [01:12:36]:
Maybe the Siri app is gonna become. income, but you can also use it in messages. So that's— so I message Instinct or I message Muse and it will tell me stuff. I said, hey Muse, don't forget to wake me up at 5:00 AM on October 16th so I can order that iPhone Duo. And now please help me find $2,000. Have you tried the Muse one yet, Christina?

Christina Warren [01:13:01]:
I have, and I haven't spent a lot of time with it. And I have personal objections to a lot of things from Meta. it's good, right?

Leo Laporte [01:13:09]:
Like, I know, it's the same thing with Grok, right? I don't want to admit it, but yep. Look, I mean, truthfully, all of these big companies seem slightly evil.

Christina Warren [01:13:19]:
No, totally. I mean, look, I do think that, that there is something here about cloud-based, you know, agents and, and being able to kind of be always on and do your tasks. I mean, a lot of people have— they, they didn't get a Mac Mini, instead they got like a VPS from Hetzner or something and, and put put, you know, Hermes or OpenCLAW on that, and which I think is, is very valid. Uh, but I mean, there is something to having an always-on kind of companion that you can message with, but most people are not going to want to do what you and I have done, which is, you know, setting up a, a framework or a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio, uh, as, as you're saving up to do, to do all of that stuff. Now, obviously you're wanting to do—

Leo Laporte [01:13:53]:
I have a dream.

Christina Warren [01:13:53]:
A lot of this locally, but even if you're not interacting, you know, with local models, it's just, it's really nice to have this always on. kind of companion that can, um, have awareness about what your tasks are doing, do things for you in the background. And, and granted, some of the apps themselves, you know, some of the services will do a certain amount of that, you know, like the, the ChatGPT app can remind you of something, but it's not—

Leo Laporte [01:14:15]:
Well, they have Cowork. I mean, they all have—

Christina Warren [01:14:16]:
Yeah, they have Cowork, right? They all have, they all kind of aspects of this, but I think there is something to be said about the kind of having this always-on, always accessible thing. And I mean, in a world—

Leo Laporte [01:14:25]:
Is that what Apple's Siri app is going to end up being, you think?

Christina Warren [01:14:28]:
I mean— I don't know. Yeah, I mean, because in a perfect world, what I could kind of see would be if you had a dedicated slice of compute that lived in Apple's cloud, right, that had access to all of your stuff, that I, I would pay a subscription for that. Like, I wouldn't pay a subscription for, for Siri, uh, for, for, for, uh, Siri AI, right? Like, I mean, I'm gonna get that as part of my, you know, iCloud, uh, um, uh, you know, Apple One whatever plan, right? Like, I'm gonna get that.

Leo Laporte [01:14:56]:
I would imagine iCloud Plus will eventually include that. You know, they added Apple Arcade and Apple TV to iCloud+.

Christina Warren [01:15:01]:
I was going to say, yeah. And so I would imagine that they add, you know, like Siri AI+ or whatever, but I'm just saying I would not pay for, oh, I'm going to have more answers or I'm going to have slightly whatever capabilities. What I would pay for would be, oh, I can have an always-on persistent agent that lives, you know, on Apple servers that I'm going to trust that has the memory and the information and the context from all my Apple devices that I would pay for. I would pay a lot for that actually.

Leo Laporte [01:15:27]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [01:15:27]:
And so I think that's where— You already did.

Leo Laporte [01:15:29]:
You bought a framework, right? I mean—

Christina Warren [01:15:31]:
Absolutely. I already, I bought a framework, you know, and, and, but, but I'm just saying like to have the, the, the always-on persistence aspect that I'm not having to maintain myself.

Jason Snell [01:15:39]:
Exactly.

Christina Warren [01:15:39]:
Yeah. I think that they could do really well with that. So I hope that that's where this is going. I don't know how long that will take. I mean, you know, we're in a little bit of a, of a crisis right now when it comes to components and, and, and whatnot. But, you know, if they can build the data centers fast enough, I guess, I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:15:53]:
I think the very fact that Apple announced the M5 Ultra with 512 gigs of RAM, tells me that Apple's looking ahead to a day sometime, someday in the future where hard drives and RAM aren't, you know, in such short supply and that they can provide people with what they want. So I mean, I don't know when that this, you know, RAMageddon is going to end. Yeah, I find it sooner than later, to be honest.

Christina Warren [01:16:16]:
I hope so. I hope so. I mean, but even then, I still think I'm not necessarily envisioning people— I mean, I do think you'll have individuals like Like those of us on this podcast and, and people who are listening in who will buy their own Macs potentially to use as their own devices. But what I'm actually envisioning is more of Apple having to compete for GrokBot and for Muse and for, for anything else where, you know, I'm just, I don't have me, my mom doesn't have to worry about this. She doesn't have to worry about buying any additional hardware.

Leo Laporte [01:16:41]:
I don't know about your mom. Uh, wouldn't most cons— many consumers anyway think I'd rather do this with Apple than Meta or X? Right?

Christina Warren [01:16:49]:
1,000%. Whether that's earned or not, I think, is, is up for debate, you know, because as Andy has pointed out, you know, Apple has made like—

Leo Laporte [01:16:57]:
Well, already Muse is giving me ads, so—

Christina Warren [01:17:01]:
Right. I was going to say, you know, and sometimes Apple's security posture, privacy posture feels more like marketing than anything else, but it works. And, and I will say, even putting that stuff aside, like if you live in the Apple ecosystem primarily and provided you can still connect it to, you know, your, your Gmail and your your office and other stuff like that too, which I can't imagine that there would be any reason you couldn't. Um, yeah, I think that this would be something that a lot of consumers, my mom would certainly, my mom would not ever do anything with GrokBot. And I don't think she would do anything with Muse, but I think that if Apple had something like this, that was just basically kind of like, you know, Siri Cloud or whatever, you know, I have no idea what they would call it. Yeah, I do think that if it provided value, that would be something that she and plenty of other people would be very interested in doing. Again, whether it's unfair or not, I think that a lot of us look at Apple and say, yeah, I'm going to trust them more than I'm going to trust these other companies whose primary business is, is data, and, and Apple's is not. You know, they, they sell hardware and they make a lot of money off of hardware.

Leo Laporte [01:17:59]:
Right. Um, Jason, you as a Northern California native understand the joke that you wrote here. macOS 27 Golden Gate Review, bridging the Tahoe Although I don't think Golden Gate bridges into Tahoe yet.

Jason Snell [01:18:15]:
Well, no, but it's like, it's a bridge and, you know, there's an OS gap between Tahoe and Golden Gate. And I'm trying, look, I'm trying real hard to come up with new headlines for operating systems.

Leo Laporte [01:18:25]:
Are you taking over John Syracuse's mantle as the author of the definitive—

Jason Snell [01:18:30]:
No, because I only write 5,000 words. I'm doing the same stuff that I did at Macworld, which is I think 5,000 words is often what I admire.

Leo Laporte [01:18:40]:
You know, I admire John and I always refer to his review. I've never read the whole thing.

Jason Snell [01:18:43]:
Well, they're very long. They were all— I mean, he doesn't do them anymore. He's retired, but they were very, very long.

Leo Laporte [01:18:47]:
You know who's taken over? Federico Viticci is now—

Jason Snell [01:18:50]:
He writes a very long iOS review. And I think Andrew Cunningham writes a long OS review with Ars Technica of macOS. And he's taken the mantle directly from John, but like, I don't know, everybody picks their level. I, I, that's the level that I have sort of chosen.

Leo Laporte [01:19:02]:
I can't absorb it.

Jason Snell [01:19:03]:
Or 20,000 words. I write as much as I think I have to say and then I stop and I don't get— there's a level below which I will not go.

Leo Laporte [01:19:10]:
So tell us, what do we, uh, what is the high, what are the high points? Well, I mean, the best, the new Golden Gate.

Jason Snell [01:19:17]:
I mean, if you're, if you skip Tahoe, you pick up all the features from Tahoe when there were a load of productivity enhancements that were really nice. Um, and in Golden Gate they have undone not everything, but all of the most egregious, uh, UI changes. Because they— it was really kind of a badly put together, last minute rush job, uh, implementation of Liquid Glass in Tahoe. And in Golden Gate, they have undone a lot of that. The sidebars are, uh, better everywhere. The toolbars are clearer, the buttons are clearer. Um, so it just all— it all looks better and works better, which is important, right?

Andy Ihnatko [01:19:56]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:19:56]:
Like, you gotta, you gotta have it be functional in that way. So it's, it's, yeah, I mean, job one is make it palatable for people who didn't want to use Tahoe or who hated using Tahoe.

Leo Laporte [01:20:07]:
It isn't a Snow Leopard release though. I mean, there's a lot of new stuff, right?

Jason Snell [01:20:11]:
It's not. I mean, there are, there are fixed bugs, a bunch of Siri AI obviously. And I would argue on the Mac, especially having one box that you type in, if you do Command+Space and you start to type, it is both Spotlight and Siri now. Whereas before there were like 2 ways you could type to your Mac, one of which was Spotlight and one of which was Siri. Which is dumb. There should only be one way to type to your Mac. So now there is. And that, that's, and Siri AI, you know, we've talked about it all summer, but like, it works fine.

Jason Snell [01:20:41]:
Like for what most people do with chatbots, which is just ask basic questions, it works fine. And they added, you know, these other platform features that are also available on the Mac, like describe a shortcut, describe an extension. Eventually here we'll get to the point where those will also be in Siri, right? Like right now they're not connected, but the goal is that if you say, I would like this thing to happen every day on my phone or on my Mac, that you could tell that to Siri and Siri would be like, oh, oh, oh, I can build a shortcut that does that. Right now you have to go to Shortcuts to do it, but it works. It is not super complicated. It only works with Apple Actions, but it works. And describe an extension I've used that multiple times this summer, and, and it's, it's a little esoteric, but if you're ever sitting on a web page and you're like, you know, I really wish this web page would not show me that or would show me this, uh, you can just have it build a Safari extension for you that does that. So my examples in the article are I use a site for scheduling and for scheduling meetings for podcasts, and it has 2 items in the, in the menu bar, and one of them is like schedule a meeting and one of One of them is take a poll, both, but both of them are used to schedule meetings.

Jason Snell [01:21:52]:
And the one that I want is not schedule a meeting, it's take a poll. And it, I always click the wrong one. So I said on this site, hide the schedule a meeting link. And if I ever click on a link to the URL for schedule a meeting, redirect me to the poll link. And that's it. It's done. It's just for me. And it's completely solved my problem on that website.

Jason Snell [01:22:15]:
description to describe a Safari extension, and I've got it. And, you know, I have another website where there's a missing tool, missing item that I have to keep remembering what's the URL for that because they took it out of the menu bar on the webpage. And I just described an extension that said, could you add in the navigation on this site, could you add a link to this URL? And it was like, got it, chief. And it did it. And that's it.

Leo Laporte [01:22:39]:
I love that. That's how AI works.

Jason Snell [01:22:41]:
Simple, right? Simple, where it's like, I just want this to be slightly different. It's not even like I wanna build my own ad blocker. It's just like, can you hide this thing that I click on by mistake all the time? And it will just do it. Or can you do a redirect on this site when I click on this? And it'll just do it. So some really nice features. Touchscreen Macs are coming and you can tell because they added touchscreen, complete touchscreen support to Sidecar, which is how you can use an iPad as an external Mac display. And the best review I can give of it is it just works. It's fine.

Jason Snell [01:23:13]:
If you try to navigate the Mac interface from, uh, that's via Sidecar on an iPad now, it just works as you would expect. You can tap on things and double tap on things and drag things around and it just works. So I anticipate that those touchscreen Macs will not blow anybody's minds. They will be like, again, they didn't need to do a weird affordance and have things like draw a big ring around your finger when you touch the screen and stuff. It just works exactly as you would expect it to work. And, you know, you could scroll with your finger and whatever, and it's all fine. So like, this is the good— I think these are the, these are the good news things about it is they added some nice productivity things. Oh, and there's a bunch of Photos features that I know we talked about in June, but nobody pays attention in June.

Jason Snell [01:23:56]:
They only pay attention now. Now we have new AI features in Photos. Photos cleanup is way better. There's like 2 versions of cleanup. There's the old one, which runs on a model on your Mac, but there's a cloud model that you can use that's better, especially it's better at inventing what that background pattern is behind the thing you just erased, which is the key if you're gonna erase something in a photo is you need to replace it with a background that looks realistic and fits in with the rest of the background. And they do it, they have an extend feature that's nice, although again, it gets weirder the more you extend it. would say be judicious in how you extend it.

Leo Laporte [01:24:31]:
It did a pretty good job with your picture of the WWDC keynote.

Jason Snell [01:24:36]:
I mean, yeah, it filled in a bunch of— it knew there was a crowd with a bunch of people holding cameras up, and it kind of like drew the people who were holding the cameras up, and it drew the rest of the frame around the stage, and drew the rest of the tree, you know, drew a tree over there behind it. Yeah, it just— it will make things up. I Um, I mentioned in the story that I, I tried to extend a picture of my son's graduation photo, and he, you know, he's got his cap and gown, and his, uh, his cap's got the tassel on it. And I extended it, and it added like a weird lamp that was not there and a giant tassel hanging from the ceiling. Like, it assumed we were in—

Leo Laporte [01:25:13]:
AI.

Jason Snell [01:25:14]:
It's like the AI model was like, oh, tassels, tassels, are we? Let's do big tassels. Like, no, no, no, no, no. So, I mean, that's my— it actually is great if you need just a little headroom. Oh, I wish I'd given myself more headroom.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:28]:
Right.

Jason Snell [01:25:28]:
It works really well. Just inspect what it's done. Like, we took a bunch of graduation photos. So his graduation was at Autzen Stadium at the University of Oregon. I tried to extend one of those photos and like it added a roof to the stadium. It's not there. And I was like, I can't use that because that's like, it's fab— it's obviously fabricated in a way that I'm going to know and I just don't want to deal with it. it.

Christina Warren [01:25:49]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:25:49]:
You know, eventually these models will get better and they'll look at, and they'll be able to look at the context of the photos you took at the same time. And that, you know, that's kind of the dream of an extend feature is like if you've got other photos that you took that were horizontal, but this one is vertical and you, and, and, and you want to extend it horizontally, that it will, the model might even be able to like look at the next photo over and say, oh, that's what was up there. I can, I can draw a version of that. But this doesn't do that. This is purely generative based on the single image that you're putting up there. But it works okay. Just use it with caution. And then the reframe feature that they've got, you really need to use with caution because the, the more you try to change the camera angle, the more it has to invent.

Jason Snell [01:26:30]:
And you very rapidly get in the uncanny valley where it's inventing the sides of people's faces and it looks weird and artificial.

Leo Laporte [01:26:35]:
Or putting, you know, tassels everywhere.

Jason Snell [01:26:38]:
Yeah. Which, you know, I mean, yeah, it's going to look at a picture of you wearing a fez and it's going to be like, oh, everything has Fezzes now. I got it solid.

Leo Laporte [01:26:46]:
So are we— question asking for a friend— are we gonna get those touchscreen Macs next month?

Jason Snell [01:26:53]:
Gurman says yes, and I, I think that it makes sense when you realize that we had that report from Gurman that they're not gonna do an M6 and they're gonna jump to the M7 for Pro and Max chips. If that's true and those are coming next fall, And all the touchscreen Mac OLED touchscreen Macs are going to be is existing chips. You kind of want to ship it now and start the clock so that you can replace them in a year. If you ship—

Leo Laporte [01:27:19]:
Otherwise it's too short.

Jason Snell [01:27:21]:
First off, the M5 has been out there for ages. So like you might as well ship it now. Shipping an M5 Pro MacBook Pro in March of next year and then replacing it in the fall seems a little bit silly. So So it makes sense to do it now. And Gurman has said by the end of the year they will ship that. But again, don't get too excited. It won't have the M6 in it. It will be M5 Pro and Max.

Leo Laporte [01:27:45]:
You know what?

Jason Snell [01:27:46]:
She really—

Leo Laporte [01:27:47]:
I'm asking for my wife. She really wants a good screen. And I think it's worth waiting for an OLED screen. I don't think touch is worth waiting for.

Jason Snell [01:27:54]:
Well, it's coming.

Leo Laporte [01:27:54]:
And I don't— and she's perfectly happy with an M5. Gurman says it might even be a Max, which would be great.

Jason Snell [01:28:00]:
Yeah, there'll be a Pro and a Max variant, right? Like those chips already exist.

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:04]:
Yeah, they're out there.

Leo Laporte [01:28:04]:
They're selling them now.

Jason Snell [01:28:07]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that'll happen.

Leo Laporte [01:28:09]:
Probably 8 gigs of RAM, but other than that, it'll be fine. No, no, I think Apple has a secret RAM cache somewhere they're finding.

Jason Snell [01:28:17]:
Well, yeah, and they're stealing from— I think they're stealing from other products. I think you're seeing lesser products' kind of availability stretch as they steal RAM to put in the products that they're gonna launch. But—

Leo Laporte [01:28:26]:
Gurman says a lot of new stuff coming sometime next month.

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:30]:
All the home stuff too.

Leo Laporte [01:28:31]:
All the home stuff? Will that be next month also?

Jason Snell [01:28:33]:
With Apple not doing any home stuff in the iPhone event, it feels to me Yeah. If you, if you think back, there are many, not all years, but recently there have been many years where Apple has done an event around Halloween. Sometimes it's right before, sometimes it's early November, but like around Halloween, they often will do a press event in New York City. This is one of those things where I get a phone call and it says, Jason, fly to New York City next week. And I'm like, all right, okay, I guess.

Christina Warren [01:28:59]:
Sigh.

Jason Snell [01:28:59]:
Um, but, uh, and like, make no mistake, I will do it. If Apple asks me to fly to New York, I'll do it for a product launch. Sure. Uh, otherwise they won't ask you again. So you say yes. So, um, it is— it seems to me that that's what they're gonna do again. Like, they're gonna do it. Just, there's so much out there, it's hard to imagine that they're not gonna have some sort of product event in— and most likely, you know, they always change just when you think you got a pattern down.

Jason Snell [01:29:25]:
They're like, oh no, we're doing something totally different. But if there's a pattern, it'll be like late October, early November.

Leo Laporte [01:29:31]:
We're gonna take a little break and talk about Emmys and Vision Pro. When we return, you're watching MacBreak Weekly with Christina Warren, GitHub queen, keeping busy at the Git, at the Hub. Do they have a nickname for it? Like, we're here at the Git. You can't say the Git. You got to maybe say the Hub.

Christina Warren [01:29:53]:
No, no.

Leo Laporte [01:29:53]:
Say the Hub.

Christina Warren [01:29:53]:
No, yeah, we're the Hub. I mean, we're known as Hoppers internally.

Jason Snell [01:29:57]:
Hoppers.

Christina Warren [01:29:57]:
That's Hoppers.

Leo Laporte [01:29:58]:
That's good. I like it.

Christina Warren [01:29:59]:
Yeah, we're Hoppers.

Leo Laporte [01:30:00]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:30:01]:
All right.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:01]:
Excuse me. But Boston is the hub. We had it first.

Christina Warren [01:30:05]:
This is fair. This is fair.

Leo Laporte [01:30:07]:
From the hub, Andy Inatko, also from the library, and Jason Snell from sixcolors.com. He's got a Vision Pro sitting right over his right shoulder in case he needs to whip it out at any time.

Jason Snell [01:30:20]:
At any time.

Leo Laporte [01:30:22]:
Which he might, because the Vision Pro 2—

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:24]:
It's like Jason Bourne with VR.

Leo Laporte [01:30:27]:
Is coming up. Uh, Vision Pro time. I'm sure all of you in your minds just hummed the Vision Pro theme because we all know it so well.

Christina Warren [01:30:42]:
What do you know, it's time to talk Vision Pro.

Leo Laporte [01:30:47]:
Poor John Ashley, I caught him off guard.

Jason Snell [01:30:50]:
Oh no, see, look, I blame my vacation. I'm still I'm rusty right now.

Leo Laporte [01:30:55]:
Vision Pro? There really isn't any Vision Pro news. I've just taken the OS 27 news and wedged it in. Are there Vision Pro updates in Vision OS 27? Of course there are.

Jason Snell [01:31:11]:
Yeah, it picks up a bunch of the features of the other 27 OSs and it creates like a new, like they've got some Siri support in there and there's like a little Siri sphere, I think, that's in there now. And yeah, they're keeping it alive and keeping it in sync. And that's really, you know, I think that's all that we can ask for.

Leo Laporte [01:31:27]:
It's a big day, but I feel like it's one guy in an office somewhere.

Jason Snell [01:31:32]:
Yes, probably.

Leo Laporte [01:31:33]:
Yeah, he got the Vision Pro assignment and he says, all right, fine.

Jason Snell [01:31:36]:
Yeah, sync all that stuff in there, buddy.

Andy Ihnatko [01:31:38]:
There's actually a whole separate support document for like improve what's new for enterprise and education Vision Pro.

Leo Laporte [01:31:45]:
Oh, interesting. So that's good. They're looking for a, Super exciting.

Andy Ihnatko [01:31:49]:
Software updates can be enforced on a supervised device when it receives a return to service erase command.

Leo Laporte [01:31:55]:
Oh. And there's the new Thorsmirk transforming environment. Turns your space into Iceland. Thorsmirk.

Jason Snell [01:32:07]:
Well, that's a nice space.

Leo Laporte [01:32:08]:
I love Iceland.

Jason Snell [01:32:10]:
Never been there. Oh, they got visual intelligence is tied in there. So you can, you can, anything you're looking at, you can apply visual intelligence to using Apple Vision Pro.

Leo Laporte [01:32:17]:
Notice nobody calls Vision Pro nerd glasses. I mean, perv glasses. Because—

Christina Warren [01:32:22]:
That's true.

Leo Laporte [01:32:23]:
Because—

Christina Warren [01:32:23]:
I can't.

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:24]:
It ain't subtle.

Jason Snell [01:32:25]:
It is its own disclosure.

Leo Laporte [01:32:27]:
It's as bad as the siren helmet that Andy wants me to wear.

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:31]:
It's gotta be a kink, not a perv sort of thing. Yeah.

Christina Warren [01:32:34]:
Also, they don't let you have the perv apps in the App Store, so you've just gotta use Safari for it, which makes it way less immersive.

Leo Laporte [01:32:42]:
Much less pervy. And that's your Vision Pro update from the world's premier Vision Pro guy. Your, uh, your dad— I didn't know this, uh, Matthew Rhys is your, is your father, Christina?

Christina Warren [01:32:59]:
No, no, no, no, I'm joking, I'm joking.

Leo Laporte [01:33:01]:
You're joking?

Christina Warren [01:33:02]:
Like, like, like saying, like, like in stan culture, like you, you call someone like your mom or your dad or whatever.

Leo Laporte [01:33:07]:
And, or in my case, secret girlfriend.

Christina Warren [01:33:09]:
Yeah, precisely, precisely. No, but yeah, uh, this is a great segue though to the Emmys, uh, where Apple—

Leo Laporte [01:33:15]:
So cute, by the way. he got a standing ovation for his second win. He won— there are so many categories in the Emmys. This is my personal pet peeve, that he won Best Actor in a Drama and Best Actor in a Limited Series.

Christina Warren [01:33:33]:
Yes. Well, to correct, it was, it was Best Actor in a Comedy Series. Comedy. Lead Actor in Comedy Series and then Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Anthology.

Leo Laporte [01:33:42]:
We're talking about Widows.

Christina Warren [01:33:44]:
Bay, which swept the Emmys. It got, I think, the most awards of the night, at least the main—

Leo Laporte [01:33:49]:
by far beat The Pit.

Christina Warren [01:33:50]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:33:51]:
Nobody thought that would happen.

Christina Warren [01:33:53]:
Well, I mean, I kind of— well, I didn't think The Pit was going to sweep, but yeah, certainly Widow's Bay did great. It was a great night for Apple at the Emmys. Yeah, 14. And I think that they got the record of most nominees for a new show, period.

Leo Laporte [01:34:06]:
Now, as you point out, Stephen Root got supporting because I love him.

Christina Warren [01:34:10]:
I love him.

Leo Laporte [01:34:10]:
Everything he does. He's one of my favorite actors.

Christina Warren [01:34:15]:
And they're coming back. They're going to have a second season. So, you know, the showrunner, she won for Best Writing. Like, they did really, really well, which was really—

Leo Laporte [01:34:26]:
Kate Flynn won, which she's great too.

Christina Warren [01:34:27]:
Yeah. So, that huge win for Apple for Widow's Bay. Yeah, Matthew Rhys, again, he won twice, which now he actually has all 3 acting lead awards. He won for The Americans in 2018, and then he won won for comedy and for limited series. So, but that was really nice to see him, like, win twice.

Leo Laporte [01:34:46]:
It was nice to see his co-star in The Americans, Kerry— what's her name?

Christina Warren [01:34:53]:
Kerry— Kerry Russell.

Leo Laporte [01:34:54]:
Russell standing there in the audience cheering for her old friend Matthew. I thought that was great.

Jason Snell [01:34:59]:
They're married.

Christina Warren [01:34:59]:
No, they're married. Well, they're not married, but they have children together. They're in a long-term relationship. They're not technically married. Dear friend.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:06]:
Yes.

Christina Warren [01:35:07]:
Yeah, no, I mean, they are married.

Leo Laporte [01:35:08]:
I should read people magazine more because I did not know that. I just thought—

Christina Warren [01:35:13]:
Yeah, no, they met on that show and fell in love on that show for real. And—

Jason Snell [01:35:18]:
She is very supportive of her former co-star, Leo.

Christina Warren [01:35:21]:
Yes. Yes. She was also nominated. She lost, but she was also nominated. And it was funny because at one point Variety, and they were wrong, and I was about to correct them, and then someone clearly saw it. They're like, oh, it's the first time they've ever been nominated the same time together. I'm like, no, they were both nominated for The Americans the same year.

Leo Laporte [01:35:36]:
Come on.

Christina Warren [01:35:38]:
But yeah, I mean, she was nominated for Best Actor.

Leo Laporte [01:35:41]:
Best Actor and Actress in a Wedding. So, you know, Betty Gilpin won. I love her so much, and I'm so glad she won.

Christina Warren [01:35:48]:
Rhea Seehorn won too.

Leo Laporte [01:35:50]:
Yes, for Pluribus. I think this is Rhea Seehorn's first Emmy.

Christina Warren [01:35:55]:
It was her first win and nomination, I think.

Leo Laporte [01:35:57]:
Yeah. Fantastic. She definitely deserved that. 6 wins for Pluribus. Outstanding Writing for Vince Gilligan. Lead Actress for Rhea Seehorn. Is it Rhea or Rhea? I'm gonna get an email from— Rhea. Rhea.

Christina Warren [01:36:11]:
It's Rhea.

Leo Laporte [01:36:11]:
Let's call her Rhea. And Production Design for a Narrative Contemporary Program of 1 Hour or More.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:18]:
There are a lot of Emmys.

Leo Laporte [01:36:20]:
Okay. Outstanding Picture Editing for a Drama Series.

Christina Warren [01:36:22]:
That was last week's ceremony.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:24]:
It takes them 3 nights to— Is that like 2 shows before the telecast and then the telecast?

Christina Warren [01:36:30]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:36:31]:
Although, you know, they're in early— Outstanding Director, Saul Metzner. That's good. Uh, Margo's got Money Trouble. We talked about this last week, and Palm Royale. We talked about those last— those are last week's. So 89 nominations across 15 programs and, uh, a record, uh, 29 wins, which I think finally we could put to rest the notion that Apple TV is not great. It's good.

Christina Warren [01:36:59]:
Oh yeah, no, I don't think that's ever been— I don't— to me, that's—

Leo Laporte [01:37:01]:
I didn't like it for the first year or two. Oh no, the first couple years.

Christina Warren [01:37:04]:
No, once they bought the Sony guys, And it became that, right? But that's, but, but that's been 6 years now. So I think that that argument has gone away. My only argument that I've ever made for folks is that if you were to compare, like, especially when they raise the prices, right? And, and, and obviously most people get things in a bundle, but when they raise the prices, I do have to say, just because they don't have the back catalog that everyone else has, it, I think it is a harder argument. Like if I had to choose between HBO Max and Apple TV, TV, I'm— and, and I can only have one, I'm going to choose HBO Max. And, and it's not because I don't really love the quality of the content on Apple TV, it's just that I have 30-plus years of back catalog on HBO Max that I can watch in addition.

Leo Laporte [01:37:46]:
And now you can get Dr. Pimple Popper on HBO Max, and so there really is an unlimited supply of great content.

Andy Ihnatko [01:37:53]:
What do you have to pay to polish off Band of Brothers?

Christina Warren [01:37:56]:
It's, it's true, it's true. But Uh, but I, but I think that, that, that's the only, considering they don't have the back catalog content that the other streamers have. No, they've done well. The fact that they're originals, I think they are far more successful and they've taken it a lot more seriously than Amazon or Netflix has. Like Netflix early on, I think maybe the first decade or so for Netflix, the first 5, 6 years, Netflix really did kind of hone in and was like, we, we care. Now it's completely, it feels anyway, as an outsider, feels completely algorithmically determined about what they're going to, you know, approve and not, and what they're going to renew and not. Amazon has some good content too, but Apple has really done a great job. And it was—

Jason Snell [01:38:36]:
I agree.

Christina Warren [01:38:37]:
I was really happy with all the, uh, all the wins last night. I was also— I was glad that The Pitt got Best Drama and that Noah Wyle won. I felt like— I'm a huge Pitt fan, but I was like, you know what, that was the right number of awards. They didn't need to sweep. Um, they, they had their big moment last year. I was really glad to see what it was based on. do so well. And, um, yeah, it's great, great night.

Christina Warren [01:38:55]:
Um, and I will— my only Taylor Swift mention I will make, I'm so sorry, but there was a very funny sketch that they did. Um, it's on NBC's website, uh, with Mariska Hargitay. She was the host of the show, and they did an SVU sketch about basically, is she going to be at the Emmys or not? Because Travis Kelce was playing at the same time. She was at the game. And she was at the game, but she did a pre-taped segment, and the whole thing thing was, it was incredibly well done, and it was the best acting that Taylor has probably ever done, which is not saying a lot, but she was actually good in it. So that, that was a, that was a cute little moment.

Leo Laporte [01:39:29]:
I didn't watch that, but I'll have to find it. Sounds good. Uh, that's, and that's our, uh, you know, that we call it now the back of the book, the media and Vision Pro section of the show. Uh, and that's all I got. We're gonna take a break, and you, my friends, you are gonna deliver your picks of the week. Now, our picks of the week. Let's start with Christina Warren.

Christina Warren [01:39:53]:
Okay. All right. So my, my first pick this week— I technically have 2, but the first one is just a concept right now. But Spigen— Spigen, I don't know how you say that.

Leo Laporte [01:40:03]:
How do you say that? I've been wondering myself.

Christina Warren [01:40:06]:
I've always said Spigen, but I am very open to being wrong. We've talked about their cases before, and they definitely have Uh, always done like some of the, not always, but for the last, I don't know, probably 6, 7 years since the iPhone X, I think they've done retro style cases that kind of look like the iMac, uh, uh, from, uh, from 1998. And they, they put together a, uh, a concept. Uh, this is not a real case yet.

Leo Laporte [01:40:30]:
I hope they do this.

Christina Warren [01:40:30]:
But I hope they do this because if they do this, and I'm not even joking, I had friends who were like, okay, this alone is enough to make me want to buy the phone. Um, and, and basically making it look like an iBook. Um, the case. Yeah, it's just so cute. It— I, I want this. I want this badly. Uh, ideally, ideally with, um, so you can access the screen on the front. I, I don't necessarily want that to have a back on it.

Christina Warren [01:40:53]:
I'd like that to be open, but that's so cute.

Leo Laporte [01:40:56]:
I, I think they're gonna do this. I really— I mean, why else would you tweet?

Christina Warren [01:40:59]:
Why else would you tease it? Yeah, I mean, like last year they had, and I still have it on my, my device, um, they got the— or I guess earlier this year.

Leo Laporte [01:41:05]:
Yeah, they do retro stuff.

Jason Snell [01:41:06]:
Look at the beige one, right?

Christina Warren [01:41:08]:
Right.

Jason Snell [01:41:08]:
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte [01:41:09]:
I hope the yellow is just like the real beige Mac. Yeah.

Christina Warren [01:41:12]:
And I mean, it came exactly, you know, looking at that color and I love it. And that's been a great case. Um, so that was, that was my main pick, but the one thing I did want to mention and shout out to John Gruber, uh, for noting this, they did this on Twitter, uh, X, whatever. I know not everybody likes Twitter, X, and X cancel, Nitter, things like that keep getting taken down. There are lawsuits, all kinds of stuff. Regardless, there are 3 different extensions, one for Firefox, one for Safari, one for Chrome, that will basically, if you click on a link that goes to a tweet, it'll just open it up in a modal window and let you view it.

Leo Laporte [01:41:48]:
Oh, so it doesn't take you to x.com. You can actually see the tweet without going to X.

Christina Warren [01:41:54]:
Exactly. You can actually see the tweet without going to X. So you don't have to deal with the logins or any of that. That's, that if you're, again, it's on all web browsers and it works on mobile, which is nice. So if you're somebody who, you know, you don't want to visit for whatever reason, I am on Twitter still, but if you're not, these extensions I think are great. So.

Leo Laporte [01:42:13]:
It's got a great name, Litterbox.

Christina Warren [01:42:15]:
Litterbox is really funny.

Leo Laporte [01:42:17]:
Yeah. So it's available for free. Uh, so you install it from the App Store and then it adds that to your browser.

Christina Warren [01:42:25]:
Exactly. That's for Safari. And then.

Leo Laporte [01:42:26]:
Oh, I see.

Christina Warren [01:42:27]:
And then there's one called Dumpster Fire, which is for Firefox. And then Post Peak is the one for Chrome.

Jason Snell [01:42:35]:
Nice.

Leo Laporte [01:42:35]:
Very nice. Love it. Very good recommendations. Thank you. Andy Inatko, your pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko [01:42:43]:
We were talking earlier about that wonderful transition when you open up the iPhone Duo. And I mentioned that like as soon as that video Like streamed, everyone was trying to see, oh, how can I get this going on a Samsung Fold? How can I get this going on a Google Pixel Fold? And someone said, how can I get this going on a MacBook? And it's posted to GitHub. It's called MacDuo. And it will— if you have a, if you have a modern enough MacBook that it has like an actual, like, it has the hinge sensor—

Leo Laporte [01:43:16]:
Is this when you close the lid, this Yeah, that's hysterical.

Andy Ihnatko [01:43:20]:
He actually put together like 6 different types of transitions. I don't think it's a— I don't think it's a— it's a system extension, so it's not as though it'll— it basically lets you see how cool that would be on your MacBook. It is on GitHub, like, it's all like— so all the code is up there, so you know that it's not— it's not signed, unfortunately, so macOS will say, oh, I'm gonna protect you from seeing something whimsical and fun that you'll enjoy. You're welcome. Uh, but you have to click through it and, but it gives you instructions on how to do that. Uh, but yeah, it's just silly.

Leo Laporte [01:43:51]:
Exactly.

Andy Ihnatko [01:43:53]:
It's like, I want this as a, as a, as a system extension. I would have this installed immediately.

Leo Laporte [01:43:59]:
There's a way to know that your MacBook has started to open or close.

Christina Warren [01:44:04]:
Yeah. They have a proximity sensor.

Jason Snell [01:44:06]:
Yeah. Somebody made a utility a while ago that added like a creaking sound. Oh, that's very cool. When you open and close it.

Leo Laporte [01:44:13]:
You can actually have an aperture if you want.

Jason Snell [01:44:15]:
Just like how the iPhone Duo has it, it is reporting that on the Mac.

Leo Laporte [01:44:21]:
Ah, that's very cool. Mac Duo, it's on GitHub, of course. And it's free, of course.

Jason Snell [01:44:25]:
All of this stuff is.

Leo Laporte [01:44:27]:
Very nice. Jason Snell, your pick of the week.

Jason Snell [01:44:31]:
Well, back in the earliest days of the App Store for the iPhone, there was a game that these 3 guys came up with called Strategery. Which was at the time a slightly more current reference to the Will Ferrell sketch on Saturday Night Live where he played George W. Bush. They asked him to describe his, his foreign policy, and what— and his response was one word: strategery. And strategery was a risk.

Leo Laporte [01:44:56]:
You mean Bush never said that? Will Ferrell said it, and it's in my head that George W.— the W—

Jason Snell [01:45:01]:
No, no, it was Will Ferrell. I think George W. Bush said it later, but it's because of Will Ferrell. Oh my god. Strategery was a Risk clone. I love Risk, one of our favorite games.

Leo Laporte [01:45:11]:
And the best thing about it is that you can never get anybody to play Risk.

Jason Snell [01:45:14]:
Unlike Risk, where you have to like move a bunch of pieces around on the board, this automatically rolls the dice for you. It automatically moves the armies. It was on a, on a generic board, not on like a world map. So Strategery was great. We reviewed it well. My old pal Lex Fridman gave it a great score on Macworld back when we were reviewing all those first wave of iPhone apps. apps. We ended up putting it in, we gave it like a, like a, an award for best strategy game on the iPhone.

Jason Snell [01:45:38]:
We love this game and it's been playable up till iOS 27, but in iOS 27 it crashes. And so the iOS 27 betas came out and it broke.

Andy Ihnatko [01:45:47]:
Oh.

Jason Snell [01:45:47]:
And, and it was very sad. And a bunch of people who still were playing it were sad about it, including my friend Lex Friedman.

Christina Warren [01:45:54]:
No.

Jason Snell [01:45:54]:
And Lex was like, what if I made a new version of Strategery? So he did. He did. And that is not the end of the story. 'Cause then he was like, I kind of feel bad that I'm knocking off this game that I love. I wonder if I could find the developers. And he and I both were like searching our old email archives to see, do we have any? I was like, all I have is this email address. He's like, I already have that. It didn't, it doesn't work.

Jason Snell [01:46:18]:
I'm like, okay. He mentions one of his collaborators and he's like, ah, let me look and see where that guy is. Oh, that guy works at Apple now, which is hilarious. Like, what Lex said. was, guess where he works? I'm like, Apple is going to be the answer here, right? Um, Lex got in touch with them. They, uh, have all like basically grown up and become adults and gone on with their lives and have stopped updating Strategery, obviously, but it still worked for a very long time. Great. And, uh, and Lex basically said, well, I want to, I want to solve this problem of it not running on 27.

Jason Snell [01:46:51]:
And essentially Lex bought Strategery And on day 1 of iOS 27, there is a Strategery version 4 update that includes, uh, not only Lex's rebuilt version of Strategery with the blessing— it's in the— like, if you paid a dollar for Strategery in 2010, you get this update for free. If you haven't bought Strategery, it's $5 now, inflation. But, uh, it's actually the official update to the And, uh, there are a few people who are very unpleasant people, I would say, who are like, it's not the same, which, no, it's not. He, uh, there's an Easter egg. If you tap and hold on the Strategery logo for 5 seconds, it opens the original game inside the new game.

Leo Laporte [01:47:36]:
Oh, nice.

Jason Snell [01:47:37]:
Uh, but Lex has put a lot of work into it because he's been playing it, this game, for like 15 years, more than 15 years, and loves it. His press release is also amazing because he quotes his own review from Macworld and then says, I still agree with this review, but now it's a conflict of interest, which is hilarious. Anyway, it is a—

Andy Ihnatko [01:47:54]:
it is a—

Leo Laporte [01:47:54]:
Did he vibe code it? How did he do it?

Jason Snell [01:47:56]:
Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a combination, but there's a lot of AI building going on there.

Leo Laporte [01:48:00]:
Yeah, that's the beauty of AI now. You can take a game and do that.

Jason Snell [01:48:04]:
But it's incredibly detailed. And then of course he, he also got access to the original because, um, he's working with the original developers. So the original app is in there too. Anyway, it's a fun game. It really is. You can have enormous maps or small maps. There's like a chaos mode where you— there are certain terrains where if you take them, you spin the wheel and good or bad things happen. Tough computer opponents.

Jason Snell [01:48:26]:
It's just— I mean, and again, I think the worst thing about Risk was always— well, there's 2 things. One is you're invading actual spaces in the world and it brings to mind the—

Christina Warren [01:48:35]:
Kamchatka.

Jason Snell [01:48:35]:
Yeah, Kamchatka to Irkutsk. It brings to mind kind of a little, a little bit of the unpleasantness of actual war. Maybe this is just kind of like completely made-up terrain that you're taking over. So there's that, uh, about it too. And then again, having to manage all the little plastic pieces and all those dice and calculating out what to do, and the computer does that for you. Computers are real good at that stuff. Anyway, Strategery, it's back if it ever really went away. And, uh, thanks to Lex for bringing it back.

Jason Snell [01:49:02]:
strategerygame.com, or just search for Strategery on the App Store.

Leo Laporte [01:49:06]:
Good. I expect because of AI to see a lot of things revived. know, that, uh, that have been abandonware. Yeah. I'm glad he got the original developers back involved.

Jason Snell [01:49:16]:
Yeah. He just felt like that was the right way to do it. And, and I love that he's, if anybody who bought the original game gets this update for free, it's not a new version. It's just, it's just the next version of Strategery.

Leo Laporte [01:49:30]:
Very nice. Great recommendation. I'd like to remind people, if you don't use Homebrew on your Macintosh, you absolutely should use Yes. Homebrew, it's the missing package manager, and it's the way I install pretty much everything, including App Store apps, binary apps, and of course, all of those Unix-style apps. That's how it started. Homebrew 7 came out 2 days ago, and it now has a GUI. It's got stronger sandboxing, which is very important these days. It's a little faster, and it does end macOS 10.15 support and Intel Macs.

Leo Laporte [01:50:12]:
But if you are on a modern Mac, you probably should upgrade. And if you don't use Homebrew, this is a great time to give it a try. It's a, I think, a must-have on all Macintoshes.

Christina Warren [01:50:24]:
Yeah, and their maintainer, Mike McQuaid, is a fantastic guy. I worked with him for many years. And no, Homebrew is great. If you are on an older version of macOS that the newest version does not support. Um, they have a whole migration path. You can use MacPorts. But, uh, so, so if you're on like a legacy Mac for retro reasons, but yeah, otherwise I think they are supporting, you know, the last, last 2 or last 3 versions, I think.

Leo Laporte [01:50:47]:
And if you're already using it, I think Homebrew, if you just type brew update, you will get the latest version 7.0 on there. And for security reasons, I think it's probably a good idea to do that. A lot of of lately we've seen a lot of these repositories be compromised. I don't, there's no reason to think Homebrew has been. I've never seen that, but it's a good idea. I like the sandboxing things like that.

Andy Ihnatko [01:51:11]:
There's also a GUI app for it now, isn't there?

Leo Laporte [01:51:14]:
There's a GUI, yeah. Isn't that great? Yeah. Well done.

Christina Warren [01:51:17]:
Yeah. There have been a number of third-party ones for years, but now the fact that there's an official one, I think is awesome.

Leo Laporte [01:51:22]:
So yeah, brew install homebrew-app if you don't already have that homebrew-app and brew.sh if you don't have Homebrew. Homebrew, get it. It's all free.

Christina Warren [01:51:30]:
It's all free. And the people who package it and maintain it are very, very good folks.

Jason Snell [01:51:34]:
They work hard.

Christina Warren [01:51:35]:
Yeah. How do you know him?

Leo Laporte [01:51:37]:
Did you work with him where?

Christina Warren [01:51:38]:
Yeah, he was at GitHub. He was a Hubber for a long, long time. And actually was like, that was part of his primary job even at GitHub was that because we use Homebrew for all kinds of things.

Leo Laporte [01:51:48]:
Oh, I didn't know that.

Christina Warren [01:51:49]:
And then he left a bit ago to start his own thing. doing Homebrew more full-time. But yeah, I know he was a Hupper for a very long time. Great guy. And yeah, we still have people at GitHub who are contributors to Homebrew because a lot of the infrastructure for how Homebrew works is very, is tied very closely to GitHub. And so, yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:52:11]:
Oh, that's interesting. So it uses GitHub CI/CD and stuff.

Christina Warren [01:52:14]:
Yeah. No.

Jason Snell [01:52:15]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [01:52:15]:
And more than that, even like in terms of like how you do the packaging itself, well, they both share Ruby base. So there's similarities there, but even like putting that aside, Like the way that you would do a package and stuff and the way things are maintained happens on the backend. Like GitHub is the place where, you know, packagers will come in and say, okay, I want to maintain this bottle. And you create a file, a Brew file that will, you know, have the information there. And most, not all, but most of the libraries that are served from Homebrew are coming from official GitHub sources. And so that's part of how the policy works in terms of making sure you're getting the latest update or not is that if it's a library or something, for instance, it's making sure that it's been verified as being the latest version from upstream, you know, from like, you know, whoever made your utility or whatever. Or if it's an app that it's going to whatever the official, you know, DMG is from, from the provider. Um, but in some cases, there are also people can maintain their own.

Christina Warren [01:53:08]:
They're called, uh, uh, um, I guess like casks. Like you can have your own tap if you wanted to host something on, uh, on, uh, you know, a lot of people do that.

Leo Laporte [01:53:16]:
Yeah.

Christina Warren [01:53:17]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:53:17]:
So, so for instance, my Emacs version is, is tapped on, uh, on on Git. Yeah, GitHub.

Christina Warren [01:53:22]:
Exactly. And so a lot of times, like, if you're not part of an official— if it's not part of the official, like, like, homebrew package system, um, there will still be people who will have their own taps that they're maintaining, usually on GitHub. I mean, you could do it on, on another, uh, Git host as well, but, but GitHub makes it easy.

Leo Laporte [01:53:36]:
So by the way, it's not mine, like I wrote it, it's RailwayKit, right? But the one I use—

Christina Warren [01:53:40]:
The one you use is, is, is using—

Leo Laporte [01:53:42]:
There's one other benefit to being on GitHub. You can be a GitHub sponsor, and if you Homebrew and you love it. I'm, I'm shocked only 733 people are sponsoring Homebrew, whereas I know that the users are in the hundreds of millions. Uh, I've been donating $5 a month, uh, to, uh, to, uh, Homebrew for as long as I can remember because I use it and I depend on it. And, uh, so that's another good reason to be in on it.

Christina Warren [01:54:07]:
I mean, you know, when it first came out, like MacPorts and DarwinPorts, and there were, uh, a whole other projects too that predate it. But, uh, Homebrew really made it easy to do this sort of thing. And, um, I remember when they came up with the Linux version, I don't know, probably 8 or 9 years ago, and there was a lot of question at the time. It's like, well, why bother with this? You know, if you have apt or, or, or, you know, something else. And honestly, that's not a bad, uh, question to ask, except if you are a Mac user and you're more comfortable with those things, the fact that, that Homebrew also exists on Linux is great. And, uh, the, the closest, uh, Windows equivalent for anybody who's watching that would be— there's, there are a couple. There's Scoop, there's Chocolatey, and then, uh, Winget is one that Microsoft—

Leo Laporte [01:54:49]:
Yeah, I used Chocolatey for a long time until Microsoft came out with their very own, uh, Winget. It's quite good. Yeah. Thank you, Christina Warren. She's film_girl everywhere. And of course, she's Christina Warren, the Christina Warren. She's a hubby, hubber, Hubber.

Christina Warren [01:55:05]:
I'm a hubber.

Leo Laporte [01:55:05]:
I'm a hubber.

Christina Warren [01:55:06]:
She's a hubber. I'm a hubber.

Leo Laporte [01:55:08]:
Could be hubbies. That would be kind of cute too. She's a hubber, developer relations at the GitHub. Thank you, Christina. Thanks for installing the arm, the robot arm that is reaching through.

Christina Warren [01:55:20]:
It's great.

Leo Laporte [01:55:21]:
Thank you to Andy Ihnatko, who brings his own arm to the library every week just to do this show. Andy's website is ihnatko.com. I-H-N-A-T-K-O. You remember that because I-H-N stands for I have no idea how to spell Ihnatko.

Andy Ihnatko [01:55:37]:
Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:55:38]:
I-H-N, and the rest is easy. Atko. I-H-N-A-T-K-O. Thank you, Andrew. Everybody should become a premium member of his wonderful website, by the way. And Mr. Jason Snell, read his moderately length— moderate length review of macOS 27. And so much more.

Leo Laporte [01:55:58]:
All the reviews are there with Dan Moran, and you've got Glenn Fleischman, and you've got the Jackalope. You got everybody at sixcolors.com. Jason's fabulous podcasts are at sixcolors.com/jason.

Jason Snell [01:56:11]:
Thank you, Leo.

Leo Laporte [01:56:12]:
Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Christina. Thanks to our Club Trip members for being here. We do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday, 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch it We just do it live, even if you're not a club member. Well, if you're a club member, you can watch in the Discord, but everybody else can, and many Discorders also watch on YouTube, Twitch, because Discord's terrible at video, but YouTube's great. Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kick.

Leo Laporte [01:56:38]:
Hello to all of you watching on those various platforms. You don't have to watch us live on a Tuesday. You can get a copy of the show at our website, twit.tv/mbw. We put video up on YouTube as well. There's a dedicated channel for all of our shows. Start at the main channel, youtube.com/twit, and you can go from there to all the other shows. Or probably the easiest thing to do, the thing I encourage people to do, because I believe in the basic goodness of RSS-style podcasting, and we want to keep it alive despite the assaults from the apps Like Spotify. You want to go to your favorite podcast client.

Leo Laporte [01:57:19]:
Marco Arment makes a wonderful one called Overcast. There's of course Pocket Casts, many of them, and subscribe. That way you'll get it automatically, audio or video or both, when we're done of a Tuesday. Now, I'm sorry to say it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you, you, my friend, you have to get back to work because break time is over. See you next week. Bye!