MacBreak Weekly 870, Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Jason Snells back, Andy and ACOs here. Alex, Lindsay two. Apple says we stopped billions of dollars of fraud in the App Store. Maybe there's a little subtext there. We'll examine that. T S M C is now completely bought up by Apple. 90% of their capacity for the year. We'll talk about that and what that portends for. June 5th and WW d c. That and a lot more coming up. Next, I'm MacBreak. Weekly

(00:00:31):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is MacBreak Weekly episode 870, recorded Tuesday, May 16th, 2023 Building My Beaver Dam. This episode of MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Hello Fresh America's number one meal kit. Get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. Go to hellofresh.com/MacBreak 16. Use the code MacBreak 16 for 16 free meals, plus free shipping. And buy Miro. Miro is your team's online workspace to connect, collaborate and create together. Tap into a way to map processes, systems, and plans with the whole team. Get your first three boards for free to start creating your best work yet at miro.com/podcast. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news, news from Apple as we get prepared for ww d c just a few weeks off. All we've got is rumors caves and tremors. Mr. Jason Snell visiting from his home in beautiful Marin. Did you have a nice time with mom on Mother's Day?

Jason Snell (00:02:01):
I did. I did. It was well for her birthday. She, she is the unlucky type who has her birthday right around Mother's Day, so Oh, she always gets the the twofer. But it's nice. And you Yeah, we had a, we had a nice time. Of course. Apple announced, you know, final cut as you know, final cut and logic for the iPad on her birthday. Happy Birthday Mom. <Laugh>. I had to explain her. Did you did tell her what those were?

Leo Laporte (00:02:20):
Did you have to write a whole bunch of stuff that day?

Jason Snell (00:02:23):
I, I wrote about 2000 words that day, but it was, it was while she was doing something else. So it was, it was it worked out. But it is, I feel like Leah, we're, the log jam is breaking a little bit. We're getting the, this week was a clear the next week for Apple, where it was like, let's get some stuff out there that we're not gonna spend any time on in June. So that's nice to have a little bit of news at least.

Leo Laporte (00:02:42):
Yeah. Well, we'll get to that in a moment. Welcome back, Jason. We missed you. Thank you. And we did, you don't have to talk about the iPad version, in fact, final cut. We did that. Thank you. We did

Jason Snell (00:02:50):
That for you. Esta, thank you <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:02:52):
Andy Ihnatko here from WgBH in Boston. From his home in New England. Hello there. New.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:00):
Hey there. Hi there. Ho there? Yeah. You got, see, as soon as I saw like the, the news that dropped this morning, I was like, oh, some product manager probably like bought like a new shirt or something. Or new shoes. Cuz they were in the keynote up until like three days ago. And then, yeah. You know what? You got cut. We're gonna do you as a press release on Tuesday. Hey. But if you stay in your office, we'll let you do like a day's worth of briefings with the media. Oh, aw, Aw.

Leo Laporte (00:03:26):
Also here from the beautiful office hours, do Global and oh nine oh.media. Alex, Lindsay. Hello, Alex. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to be here. So, I'm sorry, did Apple drop some news this morning? You scared me Andy, a little bit.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:41):
<Laugh>. Yeah, it was a, it was, it was more, it was more of a flex. They, they, they, they dropped a a press actually, the two things the one, the, the, the one that I'll mention is that they, a press release mentioning it, Hey, we save, we, we prevented over 2 billion worth of fraud on the app store. <Laugh>. Gosh, I wonder, I wonder if the fact that you can't side load apps has anything to do with the fact that we're able to prevent people from being victims of fraud on the, well, I don't, that's not for me to say I'm sure, but hey, for no reason, put this

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
A shame if you would, to have to let that fraud go through. They also terminated 428,000 developer accounts for potentially fraudulent activity. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> 105 million fraudulent developer account creations blocked, 282 million fraudulent customer accounts deactivated, and 1.7 million app submissions turned down. Some of them is probably not fraudulent, but just Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:41):
Exactly. Somewhere <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:04:43):
And, you know, it's something we don't like about it, you know, so 400,000 app submissions rejected for privacy violations. Okay. 150,000 apps submissions rejected for spam. Copycats are misleading users. Copycat can include copying software that Apple provides and nearly 29,000 apps submissions rejected for containing hidden or undocumented features. That's, you know, what, for the most part, I'm sure that's good. Sure. That by the way, does not add up to 1.7 million. There's still more than a million apps, so we don't know why they were rejected. And that's kind of the state of the app store. All right. Good for you. Apple. You're right, it is a little bit of a, Hey, you know, they are gonna have to though this summer, they're gonna have to do what the EU wants 'em to do, and the EU, at least they'll have to off offer side loading, right? I mean, that's not a, that's not, it's the

Andy Ihnatko (00:05:34):
End of the year, isn't it? Or is it the summer? Yeah, it's the end of

Leo Laporte (00:05:35):
The year. End of the year. Ok. But it's kinda, yeah, stories

Jason Snell (00:05:38):
Are that they're, they're building it into the os but it won't be anything they announce yet. They're just working on it behind the scenes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:05:43):
Yeah, I I'm sure, I'm sure they've got crews of, of engineers working round the clock to make sure they've got exactly. Compliance without creating a feature that anybody ever want to bother to actually use. That takes finesse. And I'm sure they're investing all the manpower of the,

Leo Laporte (00:06:03):
I'll be honest, they should just go ahead and do it because Yes, no matter what they do, people at 99% are just gonna keep using the app store. Yes. Most people are not gonna say, you know, and so what are they worried about? Epic or somebody saying, Hey,

Alex Lindsay (00:06:17):
Well, I mean, as the, as again, as the advocate for the user <laugh>, I would say that the thing that I'm concerned about is that you have a Facebook or you have somebody else, or, or someone says, we're only going to release stuff on this new one. Which means that as a user, I, you know, I, I now have to jump out if I want to use it. It's large companies going down

Jason Snell (00:06:36):
The path that's suicide for almost anybody but the most committed user to something like Face. Do we really think that Facebook, cause keep in mind, Apple's gonna make everybody jump through a bunch of hoops and have that dialogue box that comes up that says, if you do this, you may die. And then you say yes, just to get Facebook. I, I, I don't, I could, I dunno, for maybe for something like Steam or, or the Epic store or something like that, that they might be able to talk people through it. But most people are gonna get to that wall and they're gonna be like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'd

Leo Laporte (00:07:02):
Love to put steam on my iOS devices. That's a good, that's a good example. And I think Steam users would probably do that, right? Because they want steam. Right. Regardless of what hoops Apple provides. Is that a

Alex Lindsay (00:07:12):
Huge, well, I think the, the, the detriment

Leo Laporte (00:07:14):
To Apple, I mean, is that like, oh my God, this is the end of the world for Apple. If the steam stores on Apple,

Alex Lindsay (00:07:20):
I guess the biggest hope will be whether they fork it or not. If they just fork it and say, if you're in the u eu, you can only, that's, that'll devastate the store. Any, any, you'll never get a, a much on the side loading If, if Apple says, well the EU said we had to do this, and so we'll only do it on eu phones. I don't agree. Think that that'll be the end of it. Because

Jason Snell (00:07:38):
Once they engineer it and it's known to exist, you've provided a template. I, I keep thinking about this. And I think the way it works is if they do something, cuz that's the story that we've, I think talked about before, that they may be readying this with some very specific system features that basically detect where you're from and Right. Only enable it in certain circumstances. But I will say once it happens there, every other regulator can look at that and say, oh, you've got this thing that you built for the eu, you now you need to turn it on for us. And, and then it's just

Alex Lindsay (00:08:08):
The questions. If you buy another, another two years,

Jason Snell (00:08:11):
<Laugh> Yeah, you do.

Alex Lindsay (00:08:12):
Like that's, you know, that's, I mean, you buy another two years in the United States, you have a problem cuz you have a court system, you know, so <laugh> so that, you know, the barely there's Yeah, but I'm just saying that a court system that right now would probably not support doing the regulation that they're trying to do. So, so the, so the, so the, I I think it would be probably a pretty uphill battle, you know, in the United States to get it done. And without the United States market, the side loading is kind of dead in the water. I

Leo Laporte (00:08:34):
Guess I'm, I'm still asking though, why bother doing this? Just let it happen because nobody's gonna use it.

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:42):
Because Apple does not like to be told what to do when it's something that they don't want to do. That's petulant.

Leo Laporte (00:08:47):
That's a 10

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:48):
Year old, that's Apple <laugh>. That's, that's the magic of Apple. You know, that's, I I've, and I'm not, I'm not joking about that.

Leo Laporte (00:08:54):
So they're doing it out of Ulence. No other reason. I just

Alex Lindsay (00:08:56):
Don't, I don't think so. I think that they're really doing it out of the concerns that I'm putting out. You

Leo Laporte (00:09:00):
Know, like that nobody's gonna use it, Alex. If you have that as an option, you're not gonna use it. Nobody's gonna use it. People, the, it's the tyranny of the default. We know this already. People use Microsoft's Edge browser. <Laugh> have been a great majority of Windows use. People are not gonna side load end of story. The only people will be, you know, gamers maybe for Steam even then. That's only because you can't get it otherwise. Right. If Apple would just let everybody, you know, put their stuff on the main store, then nobody would use it a a side loading thing ever. I I, I, you know, I'd love to see the stats from Google cuz Google does allow that on Android. And I suspect that's a very tiny minority of people use it.

Jason Snell (00:09:44):
Right. To Alex's point too, I mean, one thing, the EU thing, if it does happen, might show is like Apple has said it's a Pandora's box. Well, we'll see. Right? And, and, and that could be very interesting cuz it may be that Alex has proven right and that it is a Pandora's box and that nobody else is gonna open it. It could also be that Leo has proven right. And it turns out to not be that big a deal and Apple's like, oh, I guess we shouldn't be that worried about it. Or maybe, you know, maybe it'll be, we have

Leo Laporte (00:10:11):
A data point though, we'll find out. We have a data point out. We, we know from Android, we know

Jason Snell (00:10:15):
From Google. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:10:16):
Maybe. I mean, you know, it's, it's a different, different, different platform. <Laugh>. I mean the, the, and so the, the, it's

Leo Laporte (00:10:21):
An even more likely to use side loading platform if you ask me than Apple users. Apple users name love their warm, you know, gated community and are, I think even less likely to side load. So I think if, if there's no site, I, I, I wonder if we could get some stats on side loading on Android. I, I,

Andy Ihnatko (00:10:38):
I think that, I think just, just, just, just quick, quick sidebar here. That the remember that China does not have access to the Google Play Store. So it is a, it is a, a market that has huge Android penetration where almost everything is side loaded from like China only app stores. So it's, it's, I I just don't think it'll be that big of a deal. I think, I think that Apple is going to is gonna limit it to just the countries where they absolutely have to do it. Remember that there was a rumor was just a few weeks ago about apple reshuffling some fundamental architecture about the, about bankos to be able to turn features on and off Avaya where based on where the phone is registered or where the phone is actually located, or where the, where the, the, the phone number is, is registered to. Yeah. So that, that does seem like they're trying to make this into a turnkey system where <laugh>, if, if a, if a law gets passed on Tuesday, they can comply on Wednesday, as opposed to trying to figure out all this holistic stuff and seeing what, what's gonna break.

Alex Lindsay (00:11:36):
And, and the thing is that, and what they'll, I, I still think they're just gonna fork the eu and then any problem that occurs, anybody that gets defrauded, anything that goes wrong will be you know, press release.

Leo Laporte (00:11:46):
Yeah. You'll, there'll be more of these, there'll be more of these self-serving press releases in the app store. But I,

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:51):
Including the fraud that including the fraud that already happens on the app store.

Leo Laporte (00:11:54):
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:11:55):
Yeah. And I think that, oh no, that's, I think my fundamental thing is two years ago.

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:58):
But, but this is, but this, this one

Leo Laporte (00:12:00):
Now it's really a problem.

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:02):
Now it's because of now it's because of side loading. Yes. I

Alex Lindsay (00:12:04):
Think my argument fundamentally though is that they're not a majority holder in the market and they, and that the EU probably shouldn't be doing this at all. Like, you know, it's not, it's not their business. You can

Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
Make a, you can make a philosophical argument. Agree.

Alex Lindsay (00:12:17):
90, it's 90% of the market, but truly

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Practical point of view, it's meaningless in the long run. And Apple should be stop being petulant and say, fine, whatever you want.

Alex Lindsay (00:12:27):
I don't think it's has the right to do what it's doing unless it says it does. And I don't think Apple has the requirement to do any more than they have to because it's a dumb idea. You know, like it's a dumb, it's, it's dumb to, it's, well, that's where we

Leo Laporte (00:12:37):
Disagree. I think it's meaningless,

Alex Lindsay (00:12:39):
It's wrong. It's not, it's not dumb, it's wrong. It's well's, apple's. That's that,

Leo Laporte (00:12:43):
That's the 10 year old point of view. Like, oh, I'm not gonna do it 10 year old. Wrong philosophically, whether it's meaningful, practically is to me more anyone tells

Alex Lindsay (00:12:51):
Someone tells me to do something that I think is wrong. I do with a minimum requirement, minimum effort. <Laugh>, it's mvp. Like is, if you tell me that I, that I should do something that I think is wrong. There's another

Leo Laporte (00:13:02):
Phrase that called compliance.

Alex Lindsay (00:13:04):
Yeah. That's, I've done that since I was, you know Yeah. Younger than 10. Yeah. That's what, that's

Leo Laporte (00:13:09):
What teenagers do. But you don't,

Alex Lindsay (00:13:11):
Well, you know, <laugh> Yeah, everybody does. That's almost everybody does. When they're forced to do something they don't think is a good idea. You'll, you'll meet everybody does that like all the time. Like is his minimum, minimum requirement when you're forced to do something that you is, that is something you don't wanna do.

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:27):
But, but sometimes you are wrong. It's, I'm not you, but not you specifically. I'm saying that Sure. There are people who, like, you know what,

Alex Lindsay (00:13:33):
Small,

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:33):
Small claims court said that you definitely owe me $680 to repair this dent that you put in my car with my kids. My security camera saw you do as my next door neighbor. So guess what? You're gonna come by and you're gonna give me 68,000 pennies like in bags dumped on my driveway. Like that doesn't mean you're right. That means that you're being a jerk about it. That means that at some point you have to accept this reality and say that, okay, this is the world that I live in. I fought the good fight, and now we have to, now we have to, in the eu,

Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
I don't think

Alex Lindsay (00:14:02):
A

Leo Laporte (00:14:02):
Good fight has standing. I mean, <laugh>, let's face

Alex Lindsay (00:14:04):
It. Right? So they have standing, they, they can say this Apple is, they Apple can say that. I mean, the EU can say that and Apple can be philosophically saying, we don't think you should be able to do that, and we're not gonna give you any more than you asked for. Yeah. And, and I think that's

Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
What Apple's gonna do. I don't doubt that in the, in the least.

Alex Lindsay (00:14:20):
Yeah. And I, and it's what I would do, but we'll

Leo Laporte (00:14:22):
See what it makes.

Alex Lindsay (00:14:23):
I absolutely give you the one, not one millimeter more than what you asked for. Apple

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
Also launched new concert discovery features on Apple, apple Music, and Apple Maps. So now you can look at the map and see a concert. And here you, yeah,

Jason Snell (00:14:36):
This is they already had this in the Photos app. If you look at your historic photos, if you've been to any concerts, they actually have this built in where they know the location and they know the time and they actually have a, a, a database of live events. And they will say, this is the so-and-so concert at this. It's pretty, the first time you see it, you're like, whoa. Like, how did it, how does it know? And they're trying to, trying to extend that, which is smart, extend that to other places. This is a very small thing to announce. I wonder what, like, I, I guess this was part of their this is Keynote OS Cycle and then Ker os Cycle, and they need to make good on it before the next cycle begins. Yeah. This

Leo Laporte (00:15:10):
Is an old thing though. I mean, I remember many social networks, probably Apple's own ping network doing this kind of thing. Spotify and other music playing things will say, oh, I see you like Sam Brown. He's gonna be performing down the road. I've, so I guess it's good to incorporate into Apple Music. And Apple

Alex Lindsay (00:15:30):
Apple Maps I used, I mean, I've used bands in town to do the same thing. Yeah. Bands

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
In town. That's it. Yeah. That's been around for decades.

Alex Lindsay (00:15:36):
But, and, and, but it's hard to figure out though. Here's the thing that, that this solves is that bands in town doesn't give you a map. <Laugh>, at least that I knew of. And so it's, it's really, I actually thought saw, saw it, and I was like, this is gonna be something I'll use all the time. Like, like literally I, when I travel, I'm gonna be like, I wonder, I wonder if Code the weRock is playing somewhere nearby, you know, or, or something like that. And, and be able to see that. That'd be

Leo Laporte (00:15:58):
Awesome. Ben's and ten's been doing it since 2007, so it's, you know, anyway. It's good. Yeah. It's built into the iPhone.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:06):
That's great.

Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
That's fine. B yeah. Woo-Hoo. do you think this is, these are all things that Apple was gonna announce at wwd C or

Alex Lindsay (00:16:15):
I don't know if that one was, would, would've raised high enough to end up in wwc? Here's

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
One that's a, that's actually timely, which I, it was accessibility day. When is accessibility day today? Today leave. Happy accessibility day. Apple in in celebration or commemoration introduces new features for cognitive access, accessibility along with live speech, personal voice and point and speak in magnifier. What's the cognitive one that's interesting?

Jason Snell (00:16:42):
Yeah, so there, there's like a, so every, they d they've done this for the last, they definitely did it last year. I think they've done it for the last few. And essentially what's interesting about it is they are pulling forward features from the next OS cycle that they're gonna announce in June. But they're pulling these forward to highlight, and they're not gonna be the only accessibility features, but they like to pull some hi highlights forward, because Apple has talked a lot about being committed to accessibility features. So for this day, they decided to do this again. And you have a cognitive one. It sounds like there are a lot of things that are like being able to react with a basic emoji set if you can't use the typing system. Right. So they, they've tried to do, there's a lot of stuff in here as like a simplified launcher where you can set a, a certain limited number of apps with big buttons tr to basically make it so that there aren't multiple layers of interface. That everything's sort of on a simple single layer of interface. And the argument there is that may be for very young or very old people who, who cannot. Yes. Samsung has for the

Leo Laporte (00:17:38):
Interface, has long offered on its Android devices an easy mode that is big, simple. And of course there's been phones for seniors for years, like the jitterbug that have big buttons and things like this. This is what Apple says. Assistive access uses innovations in design to distill apps and experiences to their essential features in order to lighten cognitive load. The feature reflects feedback from people with cognitive disabilities and their trusted supporters focusing on activities they enjoy and that are foundational to iPhone and iPad, connecting with loved ones, capturing, enjoying photos and listening to music. My mom, who's 90 and is, you know, cognitively slowing down, her memories really gone. That's the first thing to go short term memory. I put I had already digitized all the family slides and I made a slideshow on her Amazon Echo. She loves it. That's exactly the kind of thing, you know, she wants to see slides from the good old days.

(00:18:35):
And that's the kind of thing Apples doing. Here's a, here's some pictures of this simplified interface. The photos interface. Very simple. I actually like that interface. Yeah. I mean, not all of us. I, we are all suffering from cognitive overload, to be honest. <Laugh>, I got really, I got really relaxed just looking at the interface. Isn't that pretty? The pictures they chose, I don't. Very nice. Yeah. And then here's the camera. It's got a big button says take photo. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Don't, don't see any problem with that. Here's cars of an accessibility

Jason Snell (00:19:02):
Feature that says never sideswipe, never let any app sides swipe.

Leo Laporte (00:19:06):
Well. So I'm looking at that and I'm wondering that I would use what, what the a what the UI is for this photos. I guess you could scroll up and down, right? Or what?

Jason Snell (00:19:13):
I think that's it. I, they, they said specifically they're trying to get rid of lots of hierarchy because Yes. Apparently big surprise hierarchy is a little bit confusing. Yeah. For all of us. Yeah. Not just people with cognitive disabilities. So, and if you live long enough, you're gonna need accessibility features. Right. That's the bottom line. And you don't, you don't, I mean, accessibility features are some of the best features. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:19:34):
Unless we, I prematurely we all will. Here's, this is fun. I love the, no, this, this is to dispel the notion that people with cognitive issues are somehow, you know, boring slugs. Dance party. Dance party, dance party baby. And it's very simple. It's got a play button and a pause button and it just puts dance music on. And you know what? That actually, my mom would love that. Yep. Here's here's a simplified emoji list with big, big, big, big ones. So mom can just, you know, I, I will do this for my mom for sure. I think this is great. I likes a idea. This idea. Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Snell (00:20:09):
No, I was gonna say that, that they also have this feature that they actually specifically said was of use for als. Although I'm sure there are other uses for it, but it's such a cool idea, which is that they're, they will let you build a voice. It's a, it's a computer text to speech voice, but it builds on device using an algorithm on device. They interview you, you basically have to say a bunch of words. So you can't use a canned voice of somebody else because it's asking for very specific words. And that's their way to sort of like, make sure that you've got approval for using the voice. But the idea here is that people with some conditions, they lose the ability to speak. I was actually thinking, Andy, Andy's old friend Roger Ebert, where this happened to him and they tried to build him a voice. Technology has gone to the point now where if you know that you're in a situation where you may lose your voice, you can go through this step and then after you lose your voice, you can, you can use the speech, text feature on your iPhone to communicate and it comes out in your voice. I think it's really that I think it's just a cool, amazing feature for people who are potentially, you know, in that terrible condition of not being able to speak.

Leo Laporte (00:21:14):
I actually did this, there's a company already doing this called Acapella. And you can, it's exactly as you said, Jason, you record a bunch of, I it was two for me, it was 215 phrases, things like I'm typing this, so please be patient. And it, and then you give it, you read all of those and then it, I have to find the the email from them. Let me see. Cuz they sent me my my my voice. Cuz I did, I spent quite a while <laugh> doing this let's see. Yeah. M mov here it is. I'm gonna go to the website. Yeah, no,

Jason Snell (00:21:55):
It's one way to prevent abuse is it actually requires a lot of time.

Leo Laporte (00:21:58):
There's lot effort to, yeah. And you can add what's nice. You can add custom messages. I could say Jason, I need to go to the toilet now. <Laugh> and <laugh>. And then you would have, I have a nickel <laugh>. You would, you would, you would have to respond. Let me just log in real quickly to my voice and I'll, it's not perfect, but you know what it is in it's observably your voice, which will, yeah. For caretakers, this would make a huge difference Here. Let me let me play a little bit of my what would you like me to say? Let's try this one. Jason, can you open a window please? And here's my voice. Oh, I ha it, it generates it. And then I have to play it. You don't have my sound on. Would you like to turn on my sound and we'll try it again? Jason, can you open a window please? It's pretty good. Jason, can you open a window please?

Jason Snell (00:22:54):
Okay. Leo, I usually do Mac and not Windows, but I'll do it for you.

Leo Laporte (00:22:58):
So this actually, they, they, they have apps on iOS and Android. They have a variety of ways. So what you would do is you'd record your voice. You get three months free access, the Acapella Move app on iOS and Android or the TD Talk app on iOS. So, so that's basically what Apples do. I wonder if Apple's voices will sound better.

Jason Snell (00:23:19):
Yeah. I wonder what tech they're using for.

Alex Lindsay (00:23:21):
Yeah. And, and when I saw 15 minutes, I was like, well, what, where's the 20 hour version? <Laugh> like, look, I would love to map it completely and have me just read lots and lots and lots of things to, to give it what it needs to really map it as opposed to, I mean, I feel like 15 minutes is great, but what, for those of us who want to turn it up to 11,

Leo Laporte (00:23:38):
Let me and, and also, also just being able to preserve that part of yourself Yes. And keep that part of your identity. Yes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:23:45):
And it's, it's, it's no small thing. Let me play

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
You one more, Roger, just to, just, cuz this is longer. Welcome to Mc Break Weekly and the show that is full of rumors, Cavs and Tremors. That's pretty close. I mean, you could tell it's me, right? Did Roger use something like this?

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:00):
No, no. He, because

Leo Laporte (00:24:01):
Stephen Hawkings voice didn't, it's sounded very mechanical. Right.

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:05):
And American, but also, and America. The,

Leo Laporte (00:24:07):
It's,

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:08):
It's, but this, but this is, this really gets into like what we're talking about here. Stephen Hawking had the ability to have a much, much better voice model than the one that he was using on his chair. It is a very, very old basic voice model. But number one the voice that had trained, it was one of his friends eons ago. And secondly, he did regard that as his voice. He did come to think of it as, well, why would I change my voice? Just like you wouldn't change your voice. Roger. Actually, I, I, I can't remember which one it was, but he, he he picked of the standard macin talk voices he picked the one that had the that he, he said made me see, made me sound like Lawrence Sir Lawrence Olivier. And that was like, that, that was one of the ones he, he, he always stuck to.

(00:24:48):
But he had that, there was a company I think in Ireland that was because he was Roger Ebert and cuz he had resources and because also he had, he was a professional broadcaster and he had thousands of hours of recordings of his voice. They were able to create a synthetic version of his voice that even 15 years ago was absolutely recognizable as him. There was something off about it, of course, but it was definitely recognizably him. And now, I mean Google just Google Research just showed off a paper three months ago about a model that requires minimal training. Like Alex said, there's a, it'll, if you have five seconds of voice, it can get something that is okay, I recognize the identity of this person. If you can give the model two to five minutes of voice, it can give something that's good enough for phone.

(00:25:37):
And if you give them 10 to 15 minutes, then it's probably good enough for ongoing conversation and then the more data you give it. But the thing is, you e even starting with just five five seconds to a couple of minutes is enough. So how many people have voicemails that they've sort of kept on their device? We're getting this is, this is something that, that that I really enjoy the thought of about what technology can do that think about when you lose a loved one unexpectedly. And our morning, everyone has a different kind of morning process, and a lot of our traditions are objectively weird. Okay. And so if if I decided that, you know what, I really, I'm missing my mom, something terrible. I, but I have a whole bunch of her voicemails to me. I'm going to build like a two minute voice model of her so that whenever I ask about the weather above for my smart speaker, I know it's not her, but I will be, I'll be hearing her voice like every single day, and they'll sort of help me get through this process. And then a year later I'll switch to something else probably. But this is the, this is the sort of, these are the sort of problems that technology could never have predicted they could solve. But now we have the opportunity to see why are, where does that in our rehabilitation, when we lose our voice, where does this fit when again, we're grieving for a loved one? And these things are not questions that we can actively ask ourselves because we have solutions.

Leo Laporte (00:26:52):
Yeah. I they've been using 11 labs to do the virtual Leo doctor do in our I r c as mentioning that he had posted something in our Macedon, which I missed. Dr. Dwayne, I apologize about this. But the one that we use from 11 labs isn't, isn't perfect. I think they're getting better. I really do. Yeah. Roger used, according to scooter x sir proc.com back, but that was in 2009.

Andy Ihnatko (00:27:27):
Yeah, I, I actually, I actually wrote him like for the, for his first few months, a piece of software that every time there's something that he wanted it to do, he'd like email me like at 1:00 AM and then, oh, I tried to, I tried, I tried, I tried to give, get him a rev by like three or four in the morning. Wow. and that, and, and that's, and that's another thing. I mean, these tools that are designed to be one, one size fits all, but you have peculiar inf peculiar uses and peculiar needs. Some things that you really, really want to be able to say immediately and quickly. I mean, a again hanging out with Roger after he lost his voice, part of the adjustment that people around him had to make was that I think everybody who listens to the show understands the idea of we are waiting for each other to finish their thought.

(00:28:10):
And then, but we have something we really wanna say. And unfortunately was really hard to get those cues from Roger. And I'm not gonna keep talking until I'm really tuned into his expressions to see is there something that he wants the, he wants the focus cuz he wants to actually type something and say something or write something out and hand the note for someone else to say, these are the things that technology should be working on. We shouldn't be gadget. Watches are nice <laugh> and like fake photos of, of squirrels running for Congress. Also fun. But this is, it's not that these things are waste of time, but there are opportunities for technology to fundamentally improve lives and collectively as society, we should never just stand by and let the pitch go by.

Leo Laporte (00:28:51):
Yeah. Dr. De says that his partner lost her mom last summer. So he took old videos, synthesized them at 11 labs and have her, had her mom's voice read a favorite poem for her. Yeah. And apparently it was quite moving. Here's the 11 labs Leo voice, which I am not moved by. Jason. I need to go to the toilet now. Actually that's pretty good <laugh>.

Jason Snell (00:29:17):
It's, it's not bad. It's got well, it's got better. It's got better intonation, but does, does, but sounds less like you

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:23):
Personally.

Leo Laporte (00:29:23):
Jason, I need to go to the toilet now. No, that's me.

Jason Snell (00:29:27):
Okay. <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:28):
Just go in the chair. That's why it's a bucket seat. Leo <laugh>. Next week we'll get you astronaut diapers.

Leo Laporte (00:29:35):
So this is what Apple is saying about they call it live speech and personal voice, advanced speech accessibility with live speech and iPhone, iPad and Mac users can type what they want to say to have it be spoken out loud during phone and FaceTime calls as well as in-person conversations. So I guess some people have, it's easier for them to type than it is to Yeah. I guess that makes sense to speak. Like Steven Hawkin. Yeah. Users can also save commonly used phrases to chime in quickly during lively conversation with family, friends, and colleagues. Here's the example. You weren't kidding about the view or Jason, I need to go to the live speech has been designed to support millions of people globally who are unable to speak or have lost their speech over time. This is Fanta. I mean, God bless Apple. Well, I mean, this is great.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:25):
I think that where I see this going if, if enough people sign up for it, is that you get the texts and when, when it plays out the text, it's in the person's voice. Like if everybody, when that be cool, you know? Yeah. That's, this is how it starts as a lot of Apple stuff starts as accessibility and then becomes a general feature. You know, so you started off with, okay, we're gonna do this because there's a, the, you know, this is a great place to test it. This is the first people that will need it. But I could definitely see any text I that that comes in. Just if, if there's a voice connected to that text. Right. I I I get to hear it.

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:58):
Yeah. Just, just think this, this is, this is exactly, this is so fascinating cuz this is part of what Google was showing off last year, the year before with their one-to-one conferencing system where it's not just you've, you, you feel as though there's a pane of glass between yourself and the person you're speaking with across across the country. And it's not just because it's high definition. It's not just because the frame rate is very high. It's because it is, the system is literally creating a 3D model of the person you're speaking to and putting that in the screen to next to you so that it wor it works if you change your viewing angle. The 3D model changes as well as though as though it's a 3D object that you're now seeing at the, the other side of, I mean, we worry about the, the one of the longest questions about increased resolution, increased frame rate increased virtual reality stuff has been yes.

(00:31:49):
But how are we gonna get like 4K 60, 120 frame per second video with real, with surround sound getting pumped through pumped through like a average, like home home broadband? And the answer is, you don't. You just send the actual data. You se you, there's a 32nd delay in setting up the call in which the avatar, an avatar and a voice model are, are sent to sent to your screen so that it can just simply get the text that, that someone is saying and get like the, the movement data from that from that simple like HD camera and then tell the puppet at the other end. Here is how Andy should look. When he is doing exactly this at this moment. That's, it's really quite interesting. And that's one of the things that makes VR an augmented reality more interesting than just hovering directional arrows and a cartoon fox that waves at you to tell you that you have a call coming

Leo Laporte (00:32:44):
In. Here's the poem. Dr. Duke posted it in our discord that he got synthesized for his wife, his partner. Oh,

Speaker 5 (00:32:55):
My life was warmth and light. Your smile, your laugh, your gentle touch are the treasures that I cherish much. I remember the day you came home a bundle of joy. So lovely.

Leo Laporte (00:33:04):
That's pretty good. And as I held you, yeah, that's 11 labs. I mean, I don't know her mom's what her mom sounded like in real, and it's a little robotic, but still probably good enough. The other thing that he points out, which is really cool, you can also do it in foreign languages in your voice. So suddenly I could speak French or Spanish or German. It's not perfect, they say, but, so this is what the interface will be. It does look a lot like acapella. It even reminds me of acapella. I wonder if Apple's licensing it. So you'll be reading 150 phrases, like grabbing a cup of coffee this afternoon sounds great. That doesn't mean that's the only thing you could say, but they, they have a bunch of them like that in acapella that you might want, but that they can also synthesize your voice from, this is great. Now, when is this available? Did they say next to

Jason Snell (00:33:50):
Uss? Next to USS revision?

Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
I think 16 or is 15 point whatever. No, I

Jason Snell (00:33:56):
Think it's six. I think it's gonna be 16.

Leo Laporte (00:33:59):
Okay.

Jason Snell (00:34:00):
Later, you know, later this year. Something later this year is what they say. But yeah, it's probably

Leo Laporte (00:34:04):
September. Yeah, it's the next, next iOS. In other words,

Jason Snell (00:34:06):
An another feature. So my friend Shelly Brisbane, who has low vision is wrote about this story on six colors that she's really, you know she pointed out something that's a very cool idea. They've got this door detection, any, any device with lidar. There's like door detection and person detection and they've added this new feature a as a part of this wave that's called Point and Speak. And the, the way she described it is, if you're a low vision or blind person standing at a vending machine, it won't just tell you that it's a vending machine. If you hold the, the phone up and put your finger on a button, it'll say, that's the Coke. And the next one it'll say, that's Pepsi. So that it'll actually read or a microwave. It'll be like, that's the power button. That's the one. So, so it'll actually tell you what, what button your finger is hovering over so that you can control like a button interface in the real world. If you're blind to low vision, just another, you know, right. Like they're, they're just building more of this stuff on top. And you can imagine how it unlocks possibilities that weren't there before. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:10):
Shelly also mentions in that article@sixcolors.com that made for iPhone hearing aids are coming later this year. This is something Apple I've, I expected Apple to kind of jump on with the Adva advent of over the counter hearing aids. I was at the audiologist the other day. He said, well, this is the latest. He showed me a pair from Starkey and a guy said, try this for a week. And I did. And it was improved $6,000 please. And so I said, you know, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait and see what else comes along cuz this is, this would probably be a bad time to buy traditional hearing aids. I would think this, there's something about to happen.

Jason Snell (00:35:46):
Feels, feels like Yeah, this was

Andy Ihnatko (00:35:47):
Like an innovation inflection point.

Jason Snell (00:35:49):
Yeah. There was some MFI hearing aids before, but they're gonna, the, the Mac didn't support it, so now it's gonna be on the Mac.

Leo Laporte (00:35:53):
Oh, I get it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I have resounds, which are mfi. And so there's a list on the Apple website. I get it. So it's not, it

Jason Snell (00:36:01):
Does feel,

Leo Laporte (00:36:02):
It's always work with my iPhone for instance. It's a little weird to, I can answer calls and just kind of talk like this and people say, well, how are you hearing this? Well, it's coming through my ears my hearing aid. So there're quite a few manufacturers that are making those for the iOS platform, but yeah, Mac, that'll be nice. Sure, sure. I listen to audio on my Mac.

Jason Snell (00:36:22):
Yeah. And it does feel like we are on the precipice. I think OTC revolutions in terms of over the counter Yeah. Computer hearing aids slash headphones slash whatever. Right. Like for, for not just people who need hearing aids, but for everybody to hear, hear better and different in different situations. Right.

Alex Lindsay (00:36:40):
I think OG augmented hearing at, you know, at a persistent augmented hearing, I think is just on its way. You know, they're gonna for everybody,

Leo Laporte (00:36:47):
Not just us. Hard of hearing times.

Alex Lindsay (00:36:49):
You decide when you want to hear, when you don't want to hear what you're listening to in the background, what you know. I think that there's gonna be a point where we just put things <laugh>. A lot of people just put things on their ears and they filter the world as they, you know, as they want to. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:37:01):
The fact that everybody's wearing AirPods these days makes it more socially acceptable too. There's a real resistance. You only I get a lot of stuff from my audiologist when I visited. He said, only one in five people who need hearing aids wear them because of the stigma. Right. Yeah. And, and the problem if you don't wear them is cognitive decline. Yeah. You start to, the universe starts to get dialed out and you don't you don't, you kind of, there is a, a direct correlation between not wearing hearing aids and cognitive decline, which explains a lot for me personally. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:37:38):
And, and speaking and speaking of stigma, like some of these technologies actually are enhanced by the use of a, of a camera. Like a lot of the technologies that Google is putting out with it will, it, it can focus in on individual speakers because it's matching sounds to lip movements that it sees. So we could find ourselves in a bit of a pickle soon where here is an adaptive technology that a segment of the population almost absolutely needs in order to have in, in order, in, in order to be able to hold a conversation in the general world. But you have to be okay with the fact that you have to not freak out by the fact that there is a camera that's pointed at you. Right. While this person is using this technology. Right. And a and if it's a company like Google that's, that's doing it, oh boy, do they have to contortion themselves to say, here are all the reasons why. There's no possible way we can get access to what's the camera is the, it's all being done on device. We turn it all into German <laugh> so that even we can't understand it all this sort of stuff. I mean, it's, there's so much adaptation that society has to make with every piece of technology. And a lot of it is just getting, deciding what abstract fear is now important enough that it's worth,

Leo Laporte (00:38:54):
We're gonna be cyborgs. Let's face it. Remember the m MIT guy was his name that walked around and he had like a Dr Man. Yeah, Dr. Man. He had all this stuff around him and everybody thought, yeah, that's cute. But I think that that, I mean, it won't look so clumsy, but that's coming. And I think just the fact that so many people wear AirPods, you don't know if they're just listening to music or they're using it for augmented hearing.

Alex Lindsay (00:39:14):
I mean, the one, the, the thing that I wear the most is the, the open calm, you know, the Yeah, yeah. Open Calm.

Leo Laporte (00:39:19):
I love

Alex Lindsay (00:39:19):
That. Open calm

Leo Laporte (00:39:20):
Bone.

Alex Lindsay (00:39:20):
I bought that casino Bone conduction. Yeah. And I have 'em on, I have 'em on a lot when I'm on <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:39:25):
Yeah. At least it is too. She's got her aftershocks on all the time

Alex Lindsay (00:39:28):
Because I can hear everything and I'm doing my thing and I put my little head, my little headset back and it turns off. And, and so then I, you know, but if someone calls, I just swing it down and start talking. And it's but I listen to stuff, I listen to a lot of audiobooks on it. Yeah. And and it's, and it's just great to have, but it, it doesn't, what's interesting about it is it doesn't feel like I'm cutting the whole world out. It's just like, it's just this other thing that's going on while I'm doing my thing.

Leo Laporte (00:39:51):
Well, enjoy accessibility Day. It's eight. It's probably something we should all be looking into since as you said, Jason, we're all headed that way one way or the other. Just,

Alex Lindsay (00:40:01):
Just because of the timing I just, we are gonna do we're, you know, we're, we're office hours is gonna do accessibility for seven weeks over the summer. Oh good. So every Saturday we're gonna take in our education day, the educators take the summer off. And so we're gonna turn that into Accessibility Day or accessibility Saturdays for starting in mid June.

Leo Laporte (00:40:21):
It's actually May 18th is Global Accessibility Awareness Day or gad. And if you go to accessibility.day, you can see,

Alex Lindsay (00:40:31):
So today is just Global Apple Press releases come out on Tuesday's Day, <laugh>. Yes,

Leo Laporte (00:40:35):
That's right.

Alex Lindsay (00:40:37):
<Laugh>. It is the best day though. Tuesday is the best day. Like we, it

Leo Laporte (00:40:40):
Is, from my point of view, it gives us a show. It's, it's the best day. You

Alex Lindsay (00:40:43):
Know, we, we, I, because I, someone asked me like, why does everyone put out things a Tuesday? I'm like, it gives you a day to prep it on so you don't have to work the weekend on Monday and then it, otherwise it's maximum distribution across a week. The set of weekdays before you go to the weekend and everyone forgets what you were talking about. But that's why it's all on Tuesday.

Leo Laporte (00:41:00):
And I do, this is one press release. I would, you know, read it's apple.com/newsroom. Especially this detection mode that Shelly was talking about at Six colors. Because it's really an interesting use of all the technologies. Not just the camera, but the camera. The lidar, as you said, Jason, the lidar scanner on device machine learning to announce the text on each button as users move their fingers across it. What it really, it gives you basically a voice interface to any device. You know, blind users are used to having screen, but this is like having a screen reader for anything you point your finger at. For

Andy Ihnatko (00:41:36):
Reality.

Jason Snell (00:41:36):
Yeah. For reality. How about that? I

Alex Lindsay (00:41:37):
Wonder, wow, I wonder if a headset, like a Inside Out Heads headset would be, and I know could actually be useful for someone who's low sight, not using it as the headset, but they have it on their head and they're just looking around. It's a camera pointing at things because it's got cameras, it's got lightar, it's got all those things. What, what are the

Leo Laporte (00:41:56):
Odds? Apple mentions this when they release the VR headset, like, which has cameras pointing out, by the way,

Alex Lindsay (00:42:02):
Solid 50 50 <laugh> <laugh>, solid <laugh>,

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:06):
The, they're, they're, they're gonna be throwing a lot of darts in the vague direction of where that's,

Leo Laporte (00:42:11):
And he'll do this, you know, and in this, and this, Glen Fleischman and I have a little bit of a, a, a a bet going on, on a Mac on on Twitter social. Cause Glen says they're, this isn't gonna be for sale, they're gonna talk about it, but it, they're gonna maybe do a lending program, but this isn't gonna be for sale. And he says, if it is, it won't be till later this year, which is probably accurate. Right. but I I, I think Apple, we, but his contention essentially is they would never release anything this clunky. And my contention is yeah, maybe the design team didn't want them to, but they were overruled. Yeah. That's what seems to

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:45):
Rumors we're getting reports from the, from from the from the parts chain basically saying that a an immense num a num an immense number of components Yeah. That would support millions of these headsets is being basically moved to Apple. So Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:02):
I I've I think they're making them. Yeah, I think so. I, I,

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:05):
I don't, I don't think, I don't think they're, they're, they're hoping for, they're, they think an iPhone like success is, is possible. But I do think it's more than, Hey, we're gonna make a hundred thousand basically at cost to make sure that we put them in the hands of the developers and the f and the forward thinkers who absolutely need to have a head start. It's like, no, we, there are a lot of people who give us two to $3,000 for one of these and we're going to make a couple million for those people who will give us two to $3,000 for them. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:43:29):
There, there was a Wall Street Journal report, which I, I don't know, my sort of Apple plant bell rang there where I'm like, Hmm. Where it feels like, cuz I think Apple does sometimes go to the journal and has historically, but whether it's an Apple initiated thing or not, it felt very much like doing the work that Apple wants people to do right now, which is set the bar where it is. Right. Don't get excited. It's gonna be very expensive. There aren't gonna be very many units just trying to manage expectations because what they don't want is to have that day arrive in June and have them unveil this thing and have everybody in the world be like super disappointed cuz it's not what they expected. And when you put a story in the Wall Street Journal that details low sales expectations for the first round and a high price and all of that, it, it feels very much like that's exactly the story Apple wants everybody to know going in so they don't think, cuz they're already gonna think it's the next iPhone.

(00:44:25):
Right. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Calm it down. This is the first step in a much longer journey. Cuz yeah, this is anybody, cuz I disagree with Leo's pessimism about the long term here, I think. But the truth is, yeah, this product by all accounts, it, there's no way that it's, it's gonna be the hit that blows people away. It's, it really hit at most, it's going to be step one on a much longer journey. I think their best to hope for in fact is for everybody to be totally blown away with the technology and say, well this is great, but it needs to cost a third as much <laugh> for us to use

Alex Lindsay (00:44:57):
It. Well and you know, the, the, the watch was a pretty expensive watch when it came out and it was a pretty niche market <laugh> that was, that was, you know, starting it and then it was now the, you know, that's what you see everywhere.

Jason Snell (00:45:09):
Yeah. This is gonna be like that the more extreme Right. They're not gonna sell as many of these as they sold watches in year one. Right. But,

Andy Ihnatko (00:45:16):
And, and go ahead. So

Leo Laporte (00:45:17):
Palmer lucky, the guy who created Oculus Rift sold it to Facebook and then went off the deep end. But that's another story tweeted, tweeted a couple of days ago, the Apple headset is so good.

Alex Lindsay (00:45:31):
I'm a little like, why would they show it to, to Palmer Lucky? Like, I don't don't

Leo Laporte (00:45:34):
Know the last guy you would show it to. Right. But maybe Yeah, I just don't, and then Jason Callis goes on Twitter saying, if anybody has one, I will gladly give you something. I can't remember if, oh boy <laugh>, I will gladly pay you Tuesday. I don't for an Apple headset today. Well, yeah. Would pa how would Palmer Lucky know? You think this is just him trying to pretend, trying to pretend he's think

Alex Lindsay (00:45:56):
So don't,

Andy Ihnatko (00:45:57):
If if you've, if you've seen a headset, there is no way in hell you're talking about it. Yeah, there's, I've seen all, all I'm saying is that I think most of the people in this conversation have had hardware early and even on simple things that are just, Hey, here's the next version of something we've been making for five years. The amount <laugh> of, of of the, the amount of arm twisting they put you under to make sure you understand exactly when you're, you're allowed to say anything about this and what the definition of anything is. If anybody has seen something that is, that apple's not shipped yet and they're saying, talking anything about it, that's, that, you know, there's an easier way to make sure that Apple never talks to you ever again. <Laugh>, you can just simply not answer the answer the phone. Okay, here's,

Leo Laporte (00:46:40):
Here's Glen Fleischmann's toot apple rarely ships inelegant products. Everything leaked makes it sound ridiculous. So if all the rumors are wrong, the actual thing has to be legendary. And I think it defies some of the laws of physics. Hence my disbelief, hold on. My personal disbelief, which obviously Jason, you have your right to your wrong opinion, but my personal disbelief is this sub, this category is already dead. That like, meta has already moved on the whole thing. Is it Certainly possible? It's certainly possible. And Apple is late to the party and it turns out everybody left already. Certainly

Jason Snell (00:47:16):
Possible.

Alex Lindsay (00:47:17):
I I can, I can just say from having headsets that aren't publicly available, that when it works, it really

Andy Ihnatko (00:47:24):
Works. Yeah. Like,

Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
You know, so, so the thing is,

Alex Lindsay (00:47:27):
Is that it's at, you know, once youre, once you crest over about 96 frames a second and about 6K per eye, you get into a different world that is pretty, pretty

Leo Laporte (00:47:38):
Slick. I will be Dunno, fresh box that you are wrong. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:47:45):
I won't be able to get it for five years. That's how long I'll take for this.

Leo Laporte (00:47:49):
So

Alex Lindsay (00:47:49):
Everybody question is back and

Leo Laporte (00:47:52):
Let it roll over you. You're watching magic. Happy. Actually, I'll send you a hello fresh box just cuz you deserve to eat some delicious, amazing food flavor is in full bloom at our sponsor. Hello Fresh. Enjoy the tastes of this is so good. Chef crafted recipes featuring ripe seasonal ingredients delivered right to your door. This is not your grandfather's food box. This is the best wait. In fact, I just made which one? Well, this looks good. I have this in the fridge, creamy lemon herb pork chops. This, this is from our most recent box Tuscan pork tenderloin. But this is the one I just made, which was pork sausage and bell pepper risotto made from scratch. It was so much fun. They give you the whole every ingredient no more, no less than you need. Plus this nice recipe card and you're learning. I think it's great cause you're learning these great skills and man, some great recipes.

(00:48:44):
This May Hello Fresh is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month for a limited time authentic recipes created in partnership with Chef Serani of New York's Tago restaurant cult. I, I. This'll be our Xbox. We already ordered this. Enjoy a cultural taste tour right in your own kitchen. I just love that it's expanding your horizons. You know, we got in a bad habit. I think we all did during the pandemic of takeout. Right? Not good for you fattening and not f not as good as it could be. Hello. Fresh is I think, the new takeout, right? Don't call for takeout. Hello, Freshs. Quick and easy meals make feeding the family a cinch without that high price tag. Cause you really do pay. I mean, how often do you look at the takeout? The food costs less than delivery. Their new fast and fresh options are ready in just 15 minutes or less, and the quality is spectacular.

(00:49:42):
The red Bell peppers in our HelloFresh kit that I made this delicious risotto recipe with, I've never seen them so perfect. So beautiful, so, so sweet. They travel from, and it's because they travel from their farm to the home in less than seven days. They are super fresh. They do more now than just delicious dinners. You could take your pick from 40 weekly recipes, but you can also choose for more than a hundred items to round out your order, including snacks, easy lunches, desserts, pantry, necessities. Every family needs this. It all comes in one box. On the delivery day you choose so you don't have to scour the grocery store for that one ingredient to complete the recipe. Everything you need is there. Fresh pre proportioned. It cuts down on food waste and makes it really a snap. They're like your sous chef in the kitchen.

(00:50:29):
They're there handing you one by one the ingredient. So you could put this together. Ooh. And if you're housing or hosting a get together, HelloFresh and HelloFresh market makes dinnertime a snap with the deliciously easy options that will please everyone at your table from fit and wholesome to pescatarian to veggie. You know, that's always a problem. You're having a dinner party and one person says, oh, I'm a pescatarian. And you gotta, oh, I've gotta, well, hello Fish makes that easy. They've got a meal plan for you and whatever your lifestyle. Plus you can easily swap out proteins and sides to your liking. Check, save money off your growing to-do list with the help of HelloFresh. Hellofresh is cheaper than grocery shopping. 25% less than takeout. And it's so much better. Plus the satisfaction of making it the house smells amazing. Everybody sits at the table and you made it.

(00:51:17):
It's just a great feeling. Hellofresh America's number one meal kit. Go to hellofresh.com/MacBreak 16, we've got a great deal for you. Offer code MacBreak 16 for 16 free meals, 16 free meals, and free shipping hellofresh.com/MacBreak 16. Please use that URL so you can take advantage of this. Hellofresh.Com/Macbreak 16. And then the offer code is MacBreak 16 for 16. Free meals plus free shipping. It's delicious. You just, you owe it to yourself. Just at least just try this cuz it's, it's, it's wonderful. Hello, fresh. Anyway, I'll send you a box if I'm wrong. <Laugh>, I, you know, I haven't been as committal in this as I, I feel like I ought to be. So before wwe C I'm gonna go out on a limb and say VR as, as demonstrated by Facebook's Oculus demonstrated by the HTC V, which I think was better than the Oculus is a dead, dead is a doornail product category. Apple is not only late to the party, everybody's already left. I'm gonna say that I'm seeing it. It's a recording. Make a mark <laugh>, take it, put it somewhere. And then in six months, you all can laugh at me. But I, I really feel strongly this is having, I haven't used that special thing you've used, but I've used a magic leap, Alex. I've used a lot of this stuff and it's not un un the HoloLens very underwhelmed

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:50):
Leo there. That would be a much bolder statement had you not demonstrated that You have access to voice, voice synthesis, technology and that you can basically edit <crosstalk>, whatever. It's

Leo Laporte (00:53:00):
Anthony, make sure you have a variety <laugh> statements here. I'll give you another one. This is gonna be the hottest product category since the iPhone more. You need more. Apple had a good idea but they fumbled in delivery. I

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:17):
Can't believe our state senator is a cockatoo <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:53:21):
There. That's a good one. Who knew that all this time Atari was developing the killer headset. There, there you have a few choices you can work

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:30):
With. I just got my television a miko and it's awesome.

Leo Laporte (00:53:33):
<Laugh> apple has nerfed up 90% of TSM C'S three nanometer capacity for the year 2023 90%. This is according to dig times. So sorry everybody else. <Laugh>. Holy cow. This is of course the process that M three, who got that 10? Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:54:00):
Right, exactly.

Andy Ihnatko (00:54:02):
How did app who, who who got fired at Apple cuz they left anything on the table.

Jason Snell (00:54:06):
Yeah, I, I love, I mean the thing that we don't talk about, I think enough just in general, not us in particular, but in general, is Apple scale. Like this is a game they've been playing for more than a decade now. Remember when they bought all the Ram Yeah. <Laugh> at, at a set price for the next like three years and they bought all the capacity and then everybody else is like, we need memory. And they're like, sorry, we sold it all to Apple for a price that's way lower than your, you would pay now anyway, because they ordered it in advance. This is Apple, like the scale of the iPhone, especially the money that Apple has to spend the money they've got in the bank so that they can spend billions of dollars now for you to build that factory for the chip that they're designing that you're gonna need to fab in four years. Right? Like all of this is the, I I I don't wanna say it's the Tim Cook secret sauce, but it kind of is, right? Like they, they have so much market power and so much money that they can define what's available <laugh> and then take most of it for themselves. And it's one of the reasons that the Apple silicon story is so powerful is that they have that scale

Andy Ihnatko (00:55:16):
And, and another reason, it's another reason why Apple is so valuable in their culture that they make plans. They can make long distance plans and they know what they're gonna go after and then they can execute on those plans. It's not a, well maybe we'll try this or maybe we'll do this as an experiment. It's like, no, they, if, if they're, the fact that they're doing VR goggles means that they know where it's gonna be in five years and what they intend to ship in five years. The fact that they need to book all this, they can commit all of this money towards three nanometer manufacturing means that they know exactly what the roadmap is not just for this apple silicon, but the device is gonna go into for the next several years. And that's not something that it does, it's not unfair at all that they book this, they book this all out, they've got the money and they're making the commitment. Other companies, they just, for, for a lot of reasons, they don't have enough control over their market to be able to say, this is what we're gonna be, we're gonna be doing in three years. They can say, this is what we hope we're gonna be able to do be doing in three years. It depends on how the market responds to the next two years of stuff that we planned three years ago.

Leo Laporte (00:56:19):
Yeah. There's a, there's

Jason Snell (00:56:20):
A this is my, one of my favorite sayings is from Omar

Alex Lindsay (00:56:22):
General Bradley, the, you know, amateurs talk about strategy and professionals talk about logistics and Apple is a master of logistics.

Jason Snell (00:56:30):
Yep. That, that and that, that's the, you know, that's what we see here. And Andy, Andy makes the point too. This has shifted into a higher gear now with Apple silicone because Apple designs their chips so they know Exactly. It used to be they took stuff off the shelf. Right? Right. Like they took an intel part from here and whatever Intel made it, they could choose what Intel part they wanted, but they were choosing based on Intel's choices about what goes into chip A and chip B and Chip C. And now, not only, and they were privy to some of Intel's roadmap. Right. But now it's like they make the roadmap and not only do they know what the chip is gonna be, but as Andy said, they know exactly what computers it's gonna be in. Right. Right. Like, they know that going in three years in advance.

Alex Lindsay (00:57:13):
And as you see all those chips slowly unify, you know, where there's, you know, we're, we're coming together where they're making the same type of chip or this, and eventually maybe even the same chip, you know, in, in some cases the same chip across all of the platforms. It, it gives it just an entirely different scale than it had in the past.

Leo Laporte (00:57:30):
So the iPhone, what is this, the f I'm getting the numbers are all confusing. 14 Promax has the A 15 chip. Is that right? I'm so confused. Oh gosh. <Laugh> don't do it. Me, I'm glad it's not just me numbers. I thought I was having cognitive difficulties. Okay. <laugh>, the numbers are confusing, but the next generation,

Jason Snell (00:57:51):
The 14 pro has the a 1616,

Leo Laporte (00:57:55):
The 15 is in the 14. Nothing. and so the next one, the 15 will have the 17 <laugh>, which is the 17, is the 17 a three nanometer? No, I know the 16 is not right.

Jason Snell (00:58:11):
No, they're, they're they're not, they're, it's their enhanced five nanometer. Okay. It's not the real three nanometer process. This new wave is gonna be the three nanometer process

Leo Laporte (00:58:20):
And that will be iPhone 15 this

Jason Snell (00:58:23):
Fall running an A 17 in iOS 18. Yeah, I know, I know.

Leo Laporte (00:58:28):
And then, but also, so Mark Germond says, and we, I was all, I was really hoping, cuz in, so there were rumors floating around and I hate rumors, but there were rumors floating around that maybe this 15 inch MacBook Air that Apple's supposedly gonna announce in a couple of weeks that the WW d c would have an M three. Now Goman saying no, no, the first M three s may launch by the end of the year.

Jason Snell (00:58:50):
Yeah. He says that although that story, his story is peculiar cuz he's really just talking about notes about the configurations in an M three PRO chip and then extrapolating. And I don't know if the M three PRO can really be attached to the M three. Right. Presumably the M three will come earlier. So when he talks about the M three s at the end of the year in a story where it's all about the M three PRO being spotted by some third party app developers, I'm not sure he actually means the M three as a whole product line by the end of the year or if he, the M three pro itself that he's writing about by the end of the year and he leaves it kind of unclear himself, which mark's a pro. I suspect that means that he, he's not sure and he's not gonna say anything, claim anything that he doesn't know for sure. So it may be the M three could come sooner. Remember the M two MacBook Air came last summer. So an M three MacBook Air and I mac later the fall is Yeah. Or, or, or 18 months later is not unreasonable. Yeah. But his detail here is about spotting a an M three PRO in the wild. Essentially

Leo Laporte (00:59:51):
The company has begun, this is a quote from his power on newsletter. The company has begun putting next generation max with the M three chips through their paces, testing them with third party apps to ensure compatibility with his software ecosystem that, you know, that's pretty close to a release, I would imagine. Maybe not. He does double down on the fact that the the 15 inch will have an M two chip in it. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:00:15):
I I do think it's interesting. The only, the only news from the street that I've seen is that Costco is selling an enormous number of studios and Mac Minis for very discounted prices.

Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
Yeah. The discounts and also M one s

Alex Lindsay (01:00:29):
The M one Mac M one Mac was selling for like 2 99 or something. Yeah. 2 99 and 3 99 and Costco and the studio was selling the Bass Studio, whatever was selling for 1499 less than the Mac Mini Pro <laugh> at Costco. And it just feels like the timing is odd, you know? Yeah. Given before WWE C cuz it's not, it's not the kind of machine we're expecting, but it just does seem like they're dumping a lot of hardware out. Yeah,

Jason Snell (01:00:55):
Yeah. I mean it's, it's not a, it's not the same message. Right. I I, I would not be surprised if they announced that MacBook Air next Tuesday. I would not be surprised if they announced it in late June. Right. Like <laugh>, they, they, it, it really could be anything you want. Could it, because it's a, because it's an a it's a nice idea. I think it would sell really well. But is it part of the message of wwdc? It is not. Right. Right. Like, it's not that same message. So you could give it its own little stage some other time. So maybe they will, I mean, do we

Leo Laporte (01:01:24):
Expect, I'll have announcements every Tuesday from now till wwdc we're gonna hear some little tidbits. This is all this stuff. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. Yeah. So there's three weeks

Alex Lindsay (01:01:34):
And in rehearsal they're probably in rehearsal going, yeah, let's cut that out. And then it comes Tuesday. A Tuesday,

Leo Laporte (01:01:40):
Let's refining it

Alex Lindsay (01:01:40):
Now let's make that a Tuesday.

Leo Laporte (01:01:42):
Yeah. So the 22nd and the 29th, some stuff will leak out. And then June 5th of course is d c That's a Monday. Which is unusual, isn't it? For, is it normally they didn't No,

Jason Snell (01:01:56):
Not for wwdc. Not for

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
W That's Friday. That's normally Monday through Friday. Okay. So Monday, June 5th we will of course cover the keynote cuz there'll be a lot of interest in what Apple does announce what whatever it is. What are your, do you want to, do you guys wanna do predictions or do you care? It's kinda silly to do predictions I guess, but I, I, I'm saving up my pennies for something <laugh>. I an M two 13 inch M two MacBook Air. I'm very happy with 14 inch I guess, but I wouldn't mind a 15, what is it? It's 12 13, 14. I can't,

Jason Snell (01:02:29):
I'll make a prediction, which is that there won't, they won't announce any hardware that's shipping anytime soon. Oh, okay. And that, that, that, the only hardware there that I would expect to see would be maybe a Mac Pro announcement that it's coming like later, much later. And the headset, and I think otherwise they're gonna be talk talking because traditionally it's an OS event. Right. It's all about resing the OS platforms. I

Leo Laporte (01:02:55):
Plus we expect them to be really pushing the VR headset.

Jason Snell (01:02:59):
VR headset. That's, they

Leo Laporte (01:03:00):
Want, they want to have a lot of space for that, I presume. Yeah. As a platform. What is it XR os, what is the os? The

Jason Snell (01:03:07):
Well reality OS or xr o s Yeah. But, and it, since it is an operating system showcase, it will be interesting to see how detailed they get about the hardware if they unveil it, because they may be a little bit vaguer than they might be if it was shipping, because they're gonna be talking about it in a context of getting, also getting developers excited about developing for it as a platform. So it's, it's almost like it's hardware inside a software platform as an announcement. And then whenever they get closer to shipping, like they did with the Apple Watch, they will reiterate maybe at the iPhone event what the hardware details are. And, and they might not even give a price out in, in June. Right. Because it's not time yet. It's not gonna ship anytime soon.

Alex Lindsay (01:03:48):
Yeah. Yeah. I I I I think that I'd be surprised if they show any hardware other than, other than the headset and I'd, I'd also be surprised if they show much of anything other than ar vr, you know, like, I think that, that, I think that the whole keynote is this is their big coming out party, you know, like they're, they're, they're gonna be showing this at scale, you know, and, and they've been working on this for probably five or six or eight years. Yeah. So I think that it's, you know, so I think that it, this is gonna be a I don't think they're gonna have, they want anything to be a distraction. So I wouldn't be surprised that we see a couple more releases coming out before then just dumping things into the system that they can kind of mention. But I also think that we may see the office tools, you know, start to support U S D Z. I think people noticed in the screen captures and final cut that there was another tab that said models <laugh>, you know, like that were, that were in the, in, in the tab. So you know, so those are the

Leo Laporte (01:04:44):
3D models not in Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:04:46):
Yeah. 3D models. Yeah. So, so I think that I think I I would be, I, you know, we'll see, but I, I'd be surprised if we see if it's not at least, if not half 75 to 80% ar you know, in, in the keynote. Yeah. I,

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:02):
I, I agree with that. I think that, I think that the other big thing they're gonna be talking about is going to be more refinements to the iPad to bring it up to the level of a thousand dollars computer which is pretty much what they're selling these things for these days. I've, I'd, I'd love, I'd love to see them also talk about refinements to stage manager, which if they, if we, if we hear nothing about Stage Manager, I would then be concerned for the future of future development of that feature. I, I, I would not, I would not be suspicious at all if at the very beginning they thought, okay, we got stage manager, we love it here inside the spaceship, now we gotta cross our fingers and see how the people react to it. And we will pay close attention to what they say positive and negatively. And that will help us actually get this where it needs to be within the next two or three years. So if they say, Hey, we, we, our customers stage manager <laugh>, and now we're happy to announce we're making it even better. I, I, I'm, I hope that if we don't see refinements to stage manager that would auger poorly for the feature. I think there

Jason Snell (01:06:06):
Have been some reports that, that, that that's in the works. And I've also heard sort of through the grapevine that the, the stage, it seems like the stage manager team sort of never stopped working on Stage Manager. If you've noticed, every iOS revision that comes out has Stage Manager updates in it. Like they keep tweaking it. Sometimes it's frustrating. You're like, okay, now I know how Stage Manager works. And they're like, no, no, it looks, it works different now, but I think they are. So I think they've just kept on the treadmill there. And, and I am with you Andy so much of what Apple does, you just want 'em to not ship it and walk away. Because that's a bad habit that Apple got into and they need to get out of, which is, you know, shipping is the start of the story and not the end of it. And Apple, a lot of times was like, look, we gave you a thing goodbye. And it's like, but, but it doesn't work. And there's a bug in there. They're like, Nope, see you later. So I hope Stage Manager just keeps improving cuz it needs it. Right. And, and they need to not walk away from it. That would be delusional. Yep.

Alex Lindsay (01:07:01):
Stage. I'm be really interested to see also with the, with the lo I think we talked about this last week, but the logic and Final cut as to whether they use the, they use the iPad as a development tool. So the, the iPad's great because you could pick it up. You have ar potentially vr, you can move it around and simulate what you'd have in the headset, you know, so if you were developing something in Final Cut or logic and being surround sound, you could simulate a lot of that stuff inside of your iPad. And it feels like the timing of when you re when they release the final cut and logic could be kind of like, you already know that it's out shipping starting next week. But here's how you, here's how you use it with as a development tool for, for the AR experience

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:40):
Speak. Speaking of that, it's an interesting question about, remember that when the iPad was released, they allow Xcode could, could, could simulate an iPad so you can target it as a developer without ever having been seated with one. You think that there's going to be some sort of simulator so that people, developers can at least try to start to get a handle on what it would be like to target apps and code for that device. I don't know how they, I don't know how necessarily would work cardboard, but it seems like it's too easy a thing too, too easy an opportunity. You can make it

Alex Lindsay (01:08:11):
Outta cardboard.

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:13):
Yeah. That was great. I

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
Thought, I thought I killed that one. Yeah,

Jason Snell (01:08:17):
I know. But it was so

Leo Laporte (01:08:17):
Good. I feel like Stage Manager is akin to Microsoft's release of Windows eight where they attempted, not Clippy, no, windows eight was an attempt to add touch to Windows. It was widely reviled by users. They hated it. And in, in the long run, what Microsoft did is just kind of, kind of like Homer Simpson fading into the Ivy. They just pucci faded it back into

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:45):
The Poochie, went back to his own planet. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:08:47):
Yeah. But it's still all there. It's just kind of, it's kind of recessed into the operating system. I bet you that's what Apple does with Stage Manager. It was to forefront. It's, it's too different. I'm surprised. Do you still use it, Jason? You, I guess you feel like you have to, to cover

Jason Snell (01:09:03):
It. I, I mean, I, I never, I turn it off on the Mac as soon as I was done with my review <laugh> on the iPad. I do use it sometimes because there's some contacts in which the iPad is better with it on. But the truth is, I don't use Stage Manager on, on my iPad as the default. Yeah. It's off by default vacation. I think Ally, I'll be like, now I'll turn it off.

Leo Laporte (01:09:23):
I guess what I'm saying is there's good ideas there and I understand what they're trying to do and, and it's kind of what Andy's talking about, which is to make the iPad more useful as a computing platform. But it, but it, it's failed I think in terms of its affordances and its usability. So I think what they're gonna do is what Microsoft did, which is fade into the iv but keep the afford, keep the, you know, get rid of some of those affordances, but keep some of the underlying functionality. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:09:51):
I think, I just think it was kind of too big of a swing because if there was ever a, a type of computer that justified and kind of celebrates a tiled window interface, it really is the iPad. I don't, I don't have to worry about moving something out of the way because I've just created a new workspace or created a new project and now something's covering up an, an essential part of another window. I really do like the fact that I can just pick up a win pick up a a, a pick up an app, ex app window, slide it in, and suddenly I've got two equal pans or I've got a two-thirds, one-third sort of layout. I really wouldn't mind if Apple decided to go another step further from there. And basically let me split vertical pains to have a top and a bottom or to have three in three in one screen.

(01:10:37):
Obviously you can go nuts with that. And there's a, there's a hard limit. But the fact matter is, I'm like Jason, I am the only times I use stage manager are when I really am, this really is the only, the only alternative I have available to me to get a certain project done. Like a, again, I'm in, I'm in Boston for the entire day. The only machine I brought with me was my iPad Pro and the keyboard cover. And it turns out that there's something a little bit more complicated than I anticipated. And then I will reactivate stage manager just so I can have more, more windows of more things. Exactly. from more disparate apps. At the same time, I just wish that it was so nice that just like slide over and those other basic features they added a couple years ago, it became part of how I use my iPad and just isn't, unfortunately,

Jason Snell (01:11:24):
I don't think they're done with it. I don't think they've given up on it yet. I, and I do think we'll know, like with the Touch bar, I think we'll know when they've given up on it, but I don't think they have yet. Also, there, there are some rumblings that Stage Manager, the reason we look at Stage Manager on the Mac and the iPad, and I'm like, well that's kind of weird, but okay is that Stage Manager is also the metaphor they're using on the headset <laugh>. And so, I don't know, like they may be really motivated. Boy, that's just gonna make Leo like the, the stage manager stuff even worse if it's, if it's all about the VR headset too. But like, I think they, I think like Andy said, I think it's worth another crack because I don't, I think they took a big swing and they didn't quite get it, but they've put in a lot of work and they haven't, even during this cycle, they haven't given up.

(01:12:04):
And I, I think there's some advantages to it also, I, I don't know what you guys talked about last week, but I looked at the final Cut Pro running on the, on the iPad and my immediate thought was, oh, you need a bigger iPad now, <laugh>. And, and if you have a bigger iPad or you have an iPad on an external display and there are some rumors out there that it might even, you might be able to even do that and run it lid closed, which would be really nice and attach it to a big display. Once you get in situations like that, you gotta have stage manager and it needs to work better. But like, they just need, they, they, they need to take some more shots at it cuz it it that this ain't it, right? Like they're, it's not quite there.

Andy Ihnatko (01:12:40):
Shine for the lunch, pet lunch tray, iPad.

Leo Laporte (01:12:42):
I think Jason has spare CPU cycles because while he is having this conversation here, there's also an excellent conversation going on in the club to Discord. You know, members

Jason Snell (01:12:52):
Get

Leo Laporte (01:12:53):
More Twilio <laugh> members get more and it's, and I don't want it to slide by the wayside cuz it's actually a very good conversation. Your position on the MacBook Pro or sorry, the Mac Pro. Mac Pro? Well, Knox Harrington started it off by saying, I find myself wondering how the Mac Pro works with the all in one nature of silicon, apple, silicon. It's not expandable. And then you reply, it's a real head scratcher. Mac Pro needs are kind of antithetical to the entire premise of Apple silicon to which dragon Slayer throws in they're gonna have to drop apple silicon. That closed architecture will be a limitation, which I disagree with, but it is a conundrum. It is a head scratcher. How do, where do, where does Apple go with the Mac Pro? I think

Jason Snell (01:13:40):
Part, part of the premise there too is that like, when you really think about it, what, what devices does Apple sell? Almost every device Apple sells is a mobile device. It's an iPhone, it's an iPad, or it's a MacBook. Three quarters of the Mac that are sold are MacBooks, right? Like at least if not more. Last time they reported that they were in the three quarters range. So almost every like, so the Apple silicon strategy makes sense for Apple's product line as a whole. When you start talking about high-end pro hardware, that's where you're like, oh <laugh>, like all of the, everything that works for the bulk of Apples process doesn't quite do it. So the question, and, and the truth is you're like, well, they can just make a variation. It's like, do you take your chip team? Do you take your entire philosophy that the chip team excels at and then say for this little tiny product that is very important to certain users, but sells nothing in the grand scheme of things, let's fork our chip strategy or change our str chip strategy. Maybe they do, right? Like maybe they do, but it's, that's a hard, I'm glad I'm not making that decision because I, I think that there's a real strong argument that, that above a certain point, apples just won't go. And that if you can't take the, you know, m whatever ultra that level of performance, if you need more than that, apple doesn't have a platform for you because the alternative is they will have to build this parallel universe chip platform for Apple silicon on on just the Mac Pro. Yeah. But

Alex Lindsay (01:15:06):
You

Leo Laporte (01:15:06):
Weren't here last week. Let me, let me, you weren't here last week, but we had this almost identical conversation when we were talking about Final Cut Pro for the iPad. And Alex you made I think what was the absolute definitive point, which is that Apple is going to, well, and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but my sense of it, or my feeling is Apple will abandon that pro market in favor of the creator market. And that's what they've done with Final Cut. Am I misstating your

Alex Lindsay (01:15:31):
Point? No, a hundred percent. I I I think that, I think that Apple has lost, you know, they've lost Hollywood, like they're not gonna get that back. I mean it's, it's mostly locked up in Avid. And there's some premiere in between that. And the only thing that's really taking ground is resolve. And they're not people, you know, traditional editors are not going towards Final Cut. But in the creator market, in the educator market you know, final cut Yeah. Is a big deal because they're not getting paid by by the hour and they wanna get things done quickly and they, you know, and they don't have to go through a colorist and have, you know, have 10 editors working on it and all the other things that, that happened there. And so, so it just makes a lot of you know, makes a lot of sense for Apple to really focus on the market.

(01:16:08):
That makes sense because editors are gonna ask for a bunch of quirky little things that then they're not gonna change anyway. They're gonna, I tell you, this is what I need to switch from Avid and then they're not gonna change from Avid. And, and so they're, you know, there's no, there's no ROI for Apple there. But what I will say is that there is, the one thing I would distinguish is that there, I think that there's still a market for the Mac Pro because right now we have nothing that lets us put cards in our computer <laugh> other than the Intel one. So I think that just, you know, they don't even have to make the pro some kind of crazy beefy machine. It's just having an enclosure that I can put cards in would be really useful. Cause right now it's a really good business for sonnet and o WC because we're buying all their, all these enclosures for all the cards that we need.

(01:16:49):
So it just feels like, you know, they, they you know, having something that, that lets you put 3, 4, 5, 6 cards in it along with, you know, you put a bunch, couple ultras in there at the same time you, you know, do a bunch of other things there. And I think that you end up with a, and I and I do think that there's an aspirational benefit to Apple of people having the really beefed up machine. It's a, you know, there's a you know, there's a reason to have an F1 machine that that is pushing the outer envelope of what's possible. And I think that that, I think that that is still, I think it's still important to Apple you know, for people to, to, to have that, that scale. Cuz there was a point where I was, you know, very clear, you know, before the M one came out, I was pretty sure that my time using Mac as a professional platform was almost over.

(01:17:37):
Like, it was just like, you know, I'm buying, I'm buying more and more PCs and more and more limit Linux boxes and I'm putting four GPUs in them and I'm doing all this other stuff. And I was, and before the M one came out, I figured, ah, I got another two or three years and then after that my home computer and I'll be answering email on a Mac, but everything else will be a PC or, or a Linux box. And you know, the M one changed that. But I do think that there's a, you don't want people to think that I'm gonna get to the end of this, the yellow brick road <laugh> just, just, it's just gonna end. There has to, I think that that the existence of that high end machine that will do all the things that I may scale to, I think is pretty important to have because I think it affects the intake on the other end as well. When you're buying into the machines, knowing that it can, you can get there I think is important.

Jason Snell (01:18:21):
I think the question is how does Apple define that top end? Because I think, yeah, I think you're right Alex, but I think that, I suspect what we'll see is what are the limits that you can do within the Apple silicone paradigm instead of it being, okay, we broke out the ram and we broke. Like cuz that breaks sort of what Apple's trying to do. Do. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:18:39):
Right. I think But but I think that cards would be helpful. Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:18:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and maybe even like ram you know a cash and lots of storage with fast lanes and like, but without, because I think some people really expect that it's gonna look like a traditional computer, like the Intel Mac Pro. And I think you are, you are, you're right on. Which is it, it will have capacity in all of that, but it will otherwise look a lot like that high end Mac studio. It's gonna be as much performance as you could possibly get out of an Apple silicon paradigm plus all the stuff around it. Not we broke Apple silicon just for you. Yeah. Mac

Alex Lindsay (01:19:15):
Pro. No, no, I don't think they should do that. I don't, I don't. They're gonna do it. Yeah, we're gonna add some extensibility. We're gonna have a ton of io we're gonna have a ton of, you know, you know, we're gonna have you know, I don't know, six or four or six or eight lanes of Thunderbolt, you know, that, that are, that are going through it. We're gonna have spare no expense

Jason Snell (01:19:31):
Cards. Right. <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (01:19:32):
Yeah. And, and so, and, and I don't think it has to be a $60,000 machine. I think it can be a, you know, 20,000 machine or a 15,000 machine. But I, but I do think a lot of lanes that you can do stuff with, I think that it's, and I think that it helps show off the, the, the chips as well. I don't think, but I definitely agree with you that I don't think that they need to break anything. I don't think there's no reason to break that stuff out. I think that they, if anything I would take two ultra, I don't know what pancakes that have all those things and stick 'em in there or have up to four of 'em. You could put a four of 'em in the run 'em all parallel and let 'em do a bunch of things. I mean, that, that would be interesting. Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:20:04):
For, for me, the

Alex Lindsay (01:20:04):
Thing that kind of pushed me, pushed my

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:06):
Belief system about a Apple's attitudes towards the pro market was during the earnings call, the q and a, when, I think it was the first time I'd heard, heard Tim Cook say explicitly the phrase that we are permit primarily a consumer mar a consumer company, not a pro, not a not a pro company. And so that kind of Jason might have, might have some other thoughts about this, but again, I can't remember a time when those words specific, Hey, we are, we are a consumer oriented company. And then the implication being that, yeah, and of course we have enough, we build enough powerful stuff that we can make a top end creator or research level Mac. But essentially we, when when you come to, when you come to the classic form factor of a Mac, essentially the hot plate form factor is where the most powerful Macs we intend to, to, to make. And we're not intending to make big boxes with slots of them that cost upwards of $12,000 as a base.

Jason Snell (01:21:01):
And what I mean, what a pro is, has changed over time what pro markets, like Alex said, some pro markets are gone. And that's, and that's okay because there are other markets like Apple now talks Apple's number one pro market is people making iPhone apps, right? That's their number one pro market. It's developers, right? And then there are other, there are lots of other professional level people. And the power of the, of the Apple silicon platform for, for Mac users at the high end is actually very impressive. But like your, the markets change and your targets change. And I, I, over the years, I have written a lot of stories about very angry people who are understandably angry that Apple has decided, or the market has decided for Apple, that their personal area is not gonna be a place where Apple is particularly strong. And they get really irate about it. And it's like, I understand why they're irate, but that does happen. Sometimes markets change and Apple will be like, you know, if that's what's required to hold onto that market, yeah, we are just not gonna do it. And nobody wants to hear that they're abandoning your market. Apple kind

Leo Laporte (01:22:07):
Of said that when they dropped computer from the company name, they kind of acknowledge that what we're really are is a consumer electronics company. Yeah. And I think that the market, and think of them that way. That's a good, that's a really good niche. They're almost a 3 trillion company.

Andy Ihnatko (01:22:22):
$62 billion in cash and, and Pushable securities on hand. And

Leo Laporte (01:22:26):
They, you know, they don't have to do everything. In fact, that I think is a very important thing that Steve Jobs taught them is you don't, you should say no to most things. And I don't, I don't have a problem with that. I understand how if you're a Mac lover, you want to, you want to do that. But there's pc my only,

Alex Lindsay (01:22:41):
My only if you do

Leo Laporte (01:22:41):
Anything you want with PCs and you can put Linux on 'em if you want. And you know, the sky's the limit. So it's still out there.

Alex Lindsay (01:22:48):
My only regret was that I didn't buy as big a studio as I would've bought, you know, like I don't really need the Mac Pro, but I was gonna get one. I was like, oh, I'm gonna save money and you're holding off. Yeah. And so I held back and then it didn't, nothing happened. Honestly, otherwise I would've bought a bigger, bigger machine.

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
Even with your photogrammetry, probably the Mac Studio you got is probably pretty sufficient. Yes.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:05):
Oh, I can dump it <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:23:07):
I can still dump

Alex Lindsay (01:23:07):
It. You know, so, so I I I could use more. I mean the Ultra with some more Ram would've done better, you know, like it's, it definitely, and I'll, it's probably somewhere in my future if, if if Apple definitively says we're not gonna get a a Mac, we're not gonna do a Mac Pro, I'd probably be in the market for the M three. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:22):
Wait and see the M three, the M three Ultra, because the M three three nanometers, there's a lot. I think it's credible to believe that the M one and M two were not so different. But the M one M two jump to M three is gonna be significant and, and that is really gonna be the one you want anyway.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:41):
Yeah, quite possibly. And so I, I, and, and I do think that Apple's going down the right path. I mean the creator market, the education market, the corporate market all of those markets are far bigger. In fact, I think their, their biggest problem is not so much and they do a pretty good job of it, but it's not so much the hardware of the software, it's just the wetware of, I think Apple could, could lean a lot harder into training to make sure that people are taking full advantage of it. Cuz I think that, you know, they do some, they do some training there, but I think that they could spend a lot more money there to make sure that people are actually using their products at the full capacity.

Leo Laporte (01:24:12):
Do they have to, clearly what Apple is doing now is looking for the next 10 pole. Do they have to look at cars? Do they have to look at vr? Do they have to look at health? Do they have to look for a new tent pole? Could they just say, Hey, we're doing, we're doing great. I think it's

Alex Lindsay (01:24:28):
Risky. You know, you, you can, you know, like the you know, Nokia and, and Blackberry, there's a whole, that whole movie I watched watch the trailer for that Blackberry movie

Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
Looks really good. Oh yeah, yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:24:36):
You know, you can get into a vertical, you know, or a couple verticals and think that you own the world and then suddenly it's gone. You know, it's

Leo Laporte (01:24:43):
Clearly what they're worried about. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:24:45):
I think Apple worries about, I think Apple worries about 1997 every day. Like I think they think about it all the time. You know, it's, it's, and and I think that the so I I, so I I I, I think that they, and they could do a lot of things. I mean, I think of, I look at lots of products in my house going, I really wish Apple would just build one of these so that I, I didn't have to <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
It's tough.

Alex Lindsay (01:25:08):
Just not happy with it. You

Leo Laporte (01:25:09):
Do wanna also not spread yourself too thin. You do wanna

Alex Lindsay (01:25:12):
Yeah, exactly. You don't want to, but when you're that big, you're like, can't you just hire a hundred engineers to go, I don't

Leo Laporte (01:25:17):
Think it, you've said this before, it's not that easy, is it? They're not out,

Alex Lindsay (01:25:20):
It isn't easy. But I'm, but, but as, as Andy has said before, but you have the money, you

Leo Laporte (01:25:24):
<Laugh> you have the money, but

Alex Lindsay (01:25:26):
It's, it's harder now because get everybody to come back and they're trying to get everybody to show up and they keep on losing people because they, yeah. They have to. They have to come to the, they have to come to work.

Leo Laporte (01:25:33):
So one other thing Erman talks about, I think it's very interesting, is the pending war between Apple and Meta. He uses as his sole data point. The fact that Meta is pulling the Messenger app from the Apple watch <laugh>, it's pretty, and then launches WhatsApp for where os and does not say whether what Apple come to Apple Watch os, but he, you know, he is pointing out which one thing that is perhaps reasonable, which is Meadow wants to own the mixed reality headset market and Apple's coming on strong, presumably in that market.

Jason Snell (01:26:10):
Yeah. But even there, isn't it, if Apple comes in and succeeds, isn't that a validation of their focus on that market? I don't, I like Well, and

Leo Laporte (01:26:16):
There's also add one more data point meta hates at t t the app. Oh yeah. App tracking and they claim it costs some billions.

Jason Snell (01:26:25):
This, this feels like one of the flimsier marker. I mean, this is low down in his newsletter, right? Like it's not, I like it though. I like it. He, he, he does great work. But this one I'm like, you know, can we connect those data points and be like, oh no, they took this watch app away and they're adding this watch app on Wear Os and therefore this means war. And I'm like, yeah, except if there are places where meta, meta meta never

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
Put Instagram on the iPad. I mean that, you know. True.

Jason Snell (01:26:52):
It's true, it's true. And I do think, I mean, it, it's a little like talking about Sherlocking, it's like Sherlocking is not, apple comes in, in, your product is dead. It's act it's actually, it can be an opportunity. Cuz Apple very rarely does everything that's in those apps. This is a little like that too, which is like, you know, I know it's scary. I mean, I know I'm basically saying Welcome Apple seriously to vr, right? <Laugh>, but that it kinda like, it, it, mark Zuckerberg has spent so much money trying to validate this. If Apple comes in and has a product that people are like, whoa, maybe this is the future. That's good for meta in the sense that it will show that they did not throw all that money away. Now if Apple throws its money away, then maybe Meta says, see it wasn't just us, and then they run away. Well, I don't know. The, the,

Alex Lindsay (01:27:34):
The, the, the thing that will hurt is if Apple comes in at $3,000 and sells more units than meta sold, you know, at 1500 or 300. Yeah. Like, that'll be brutal because, because, you know, they, it's so much work to get these headsets down into the down into a consumer level cost. There is so much going on in the headsets that I think $3,000 is completely reasonable if you have a high performance headset. And it's, it's kind of, to be honest with you miraculous $3,000 is a miraculous number for a headset, you know, to, to do what, what is, you know, if it's high performance. And, and we haven't seen high performance yet because everyone's trying to fit into $300 or $600 or $1,500. And that's not miraculous. That's impossible. You know, and, and so, so I think that I think that it's gonna be really, it's gonna be really hard for meta if, if Apple pushes really big numbers of, you know, not, and when I say really big numbers, just more than meta, you know, in the same with, in the same category at twice or in some cases six times the cost

Leo Laporte (01:28:32):
More. What I should more that just a little bit of history in case you were wondering what Jason was talking about in 1981 when IBM entered the PC industry, apple famously, Steve Js famously bought an a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal saying, welcome, I B m seriously, welcome to the most exciting important marketplace since the computer revolution began 35 years ago. And of course the PC and PC compatibles almost immediately ate Apple's lunch. So I, it's, it's something like mission accomplished. It's just one of those, one of those things you never <laugh>, you never forget. Stop.

Andy Ihnatko (01:29:07):
All I'm saying is that I hope, I hope that Meta doesn't decide to like, make a cardboard apple headset and roll it out on a cop and that work out for Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (01:29:16):
Microsoft did that for the iPhone, right? They had a funeral, mock funeral for the iPhone. Was it the iPhone? Yeah. Yeah. Foolish <laugh>. You know, hubris, I still

Andy Ihnatko (01:29:26):
Hubris have a zoom around somewhere. There's a zoom around somewhere in my,

Leo Laporte (01:29:28):
In my, yeah, no hubris the Greeks. And and it's been true ever since. Let's take a little break and then we will talk about apple TV plus and a big executive departure. But first I want to tell you about a tool we've been using Miro. It's hard for me to describe what Miro is, cuz it can be anything you want it to be. So here's the problem that almost every team, every every group that's working on a project, whether it's your, you know, high school science project, or you're developing the next great consumer product, you and your team are going from tab to tab, from tool to tool. And in that process, the context switches. This is natural ideas just go, whew. They disappear. They disappear. Information goes, who with Miro, M I R o. That doesn't have to happen because now you have a collaborative visual platform that everything goes into.

(01:30:24):
All your great work goes in no matter where you are, no matter what time zone team members are in, no matter what tools they use. Fact, we use, for instance, in our mural board, we use Zappier and Google Docs. But, but the information gets put into one spot. I don't know how to describe this because it could be anything you want. It's completely plastic. It's completely, whether you're working from home in a hybrid workspace, it's, it, it, it's, it's something that everyone can use to collaborate, to brainstorm. Miros. Infinite shared boards give product teams a perpetual space, a single source of truth. They just drag and drop insights and data, import it from any tool. Nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten. It's not a notebook, it's not a whiteboard. It's, it's everything. It's more than bo more than both. It's a synergy. It covers a breadth of use cases.

(01:31:20):
So you can build, it's very visual. So you build visual assets, it texts works great and mirror. You can present findings, you can run brainstorms with cross-functional teams. You can zoom in to get the detail. You could zoom out to get the overview. You can build out your product vision on a mural board by Dr. Brainstorming with sticky notes, with comments, with live reactions. There's a voting tool. I love the timer. So if you're on a me, you know, in a meeting or in a Zoom call, you can come to consensus quickly. You can express yourself of course, in creative ways and bring the whole group together around one idea, whether it's a wire frame you could draw with a pen tool. Forget napkins. You've got Miro putting images and mockups on the Miro board. Kind of a dream board, a vision board, Miro users report saving up to 80 hours per user per year.

(01:32:07):
That's like two weeks of vacation a year just by streamlining conversations and cutting down meetings. And don't we all wanna do that? My strongest recommendation is you, you go to the Miro verse. When you go to miro.com/podcast you, you don't even have to log in. Although one I I'm gonna tell you right now, you can create your first three boards free. So you can't, I would suggest you do that miro.com/podcast. Create the account, get the three boards, then go to the Miro verse because this is an, a amazing collection of things people have created with Miro. And it'll give you a much better idea of what you can do with Miro. A mind map a retro, a SWOT analysis. What a Harry Potter retrospective. That's from the UK government. Anything. Right? It takes over from if you've been using Vizio other visual tools like that, it can do all of that.

(01:33:04):
You can sketch with a pen. You can it's so I can't really describe what Miro could be to you, cuz I don't know. But you can find out if you go to miro.com/podcast. Your first three boards are free. Here's a, a something WebEx posted, a post meeting summary after your WebEx meeting, just some great stuff. Pitch decks brainstorming miro.com/podcast. Your first three boards are free. Your team will always stay connected with realtime information. It gives project managers and product leads a bird's eye view of the whole project. Nothing slips through the cracks. It's so successful. They have more than a million monthly active users. That gives you some idea. It's a tool you will want to use. Get your first three boards for free. Start working better. Miro, m i r o.com/podcast. Miro.Com/Podcaster. Thank 'em so much for their support of Mack Break Weekly.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:10):
I I could give it a little testimonial for that. Mur amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:34:13):
Yeah, I, so

Alex Lindsay (01:34:14):
I, I built I built an app with wwe t you know, the <laugh> from Worldwide

Leo Laporte (01:34:20):
Tech, another sponsor of ours. Wow.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:22):
And, and they and we built an app together and they love, I mean, they, they built everything inside of Miro. Yeah. And so I spent days, you know, days worth of time in Miro with them, you know, thinking through the whole process and methodically laying out everything we're gonna do and the timelines and all the bits and pieces and all the ideas and all the things that it has to do and all the bits and pieces and, and it came out great. <Laugh>. Yeah. So, so, but, but as the testimony for both of 'em. But, but I was like, oh, this is, I don't even know how I would've, I don't know how we would've done it without Miro. Like, like

Leo Laporte (01:34:51):
It was, that's the challenge, right? When you have, that was the hard part it was working on an app together, like your ideas, and then the developers to implement. And that's the journal. And they're

Alex Lindsay (01:34:59):
Asking questions and then we're color coding things, and then we're tying things together and we're grouping them over, okay, this is the stuff that's good to have. This is the stuff that we have to have, this is the, you know, like we, and, and and, but you, but when you have, a lot of times you say, oh, this is the stuff that good to have. And then it just disappears. It rolls off the end. And you know, and so it, it's somewhere on the board that you, you keep, you kind of keep a corral of that, that information. It was super, super powerful. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:24):
We we, you were not here when the six color charts came out last week with the Apple results. We used them though. Jason, thank you very much.

Jason Snell (01:35:37):
Thank

Leo Laporte (01:35:37):
You. I appreciate that. One of the things with my compliments that stood out was growth in services. Right? This has been very profitable for Apple. Much of it's the app store, but I wonder if Apple TV Plus is part of this, they're losing an executive in charge of TV plus and sports pe Not

Jason Snell (01:35:59):
The creatives though. It's the, it's, it's the business guy at the top who runs it. It's, it's actually, and it's interesting cuz they say that he's being re basically he's got people who report to them. There's a guy who's in charge of sports, and then there's an open position that they've created. So it, it sort of almost sounds like he was in charge of, he was like a roll up guy and now they're just gonna have a, a person in charge of sports and a per person in charge of the business side of tv because he

Leo Laporte (01:36:24):
Came from Hulu in 10 years ago. Yeah. Makes you wonder, help build this, I guess.

Jason Snell (01:36:30):
Is there a, is there a lot of departures as, as noted in that report in the services area? I do wonder if there's like a succession style intrigue going on around Eddie Q. Is Eddie Q planning on retiring and they're, they're going to the mattresses and they're settling all debts? Or, or is it really just the natural thing that happens at Apple, which is you work at Apple for a while, you make a lot of money, and then you go somewhere else? I don't know, you collect

Leo Laporte (01:36:54):
Your stock and then you go back to gm <laugh>. I think things are changing at Apple. Maybe a little succession happening. <Laugh>, who else left? There's the third major exit from Apple's services organization. Vice President Peter Stern and Michael Abbott Stern ran services businesses and was dis dad's boss. This does lend itself to that. That's succession theory. Yeah. Abbott meanwhile oversaw Apples Cloud services group. Abbott's the guy who's going to GM to help them design their good luck gm, their Apple CarPlay replacement. Good luck. Gm. so you think Eddie is retiring? What's the theory here? You got? I don't

Jason Snell (01:37:46):
Know. I, I just, when you see all that movement, you're wonder like, is something else going on there? I really don't wanna start a rumor that Eddie Q is retiring or something, but like, what I see, this is like something's going on. And I don't know whether it's, it, it, because it seems unlikely that all of these things are random. That, that this, I mean, it could be, but it, I'd say it's unlikely there's a transit more that there's so transition going on. There's, yeah. And it may not involve somebody like Eddie leaving. It may be more like our, our services business now is not what it looked like eight years ago. And it doesn't, like the sports and TV thing is a great example where they had the one guy in charge of sports and tv and now they're gonna have two people. The the guy who's in charge of sports and somebody they're gonna hire in charge of tv. And, and so it may be that too, which is just like, we're gonna do a reorg. We're gonna give people new responsibilities. Some people are gonna take that as an opportunity to step off and, you know, cash out. And other people get to step up. And it may, it may simply be that, because that business really has changed enormously in the last decade

Leo Laporte (01:38:45):
Services. Now, as you point out, 20% of apple's revenue, one fifth of apple's revenue, it's a big deal. Again, it's not TV necessarily, but TV's a part of it. And Apple has big ambitions with TV between Major League and it's getting better and soccer and it's getting, we're starting

Alex Lindsay (01:39:01):
To get,

Leo Laporte (01:39:02):
We were talking on Sunday, Amy Webb said, repeated the thing I've said before, which is something's missing from Apple's shows. Like, it's just a little too f con

Alex Lindsay (01:39:11):
It's a little too overproduced. Like there's

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
Yeah. Like they have too many notes.

Alex Lindsay (01:39:15):
It, it, so I mean, like, now I'm starting to enjoy, I mean I'm starting severance

Leo Laporte (01:39:20):
Something. There's a great shows. Severance is great. There's a lot. Slow Horses was amazing.

Alex Lindsay (01:39:23):
I'm really, I'm really enjoying Silo pretty,

Leo Laporte (01:39:27):
I, for me, the jury's out on that. I we've only seen three episodes. I'm getting hooked.

Alex Lindsay (01:39:32):
I got hooked. Yeah. Like we got, we were like, did you read the books? It took us No. Yes. Haven't read the books. I don't, I don't read, I don't read fiction because then it would ruin the show. That's right. Like, so I don't wanna know what I'm missing. I just wanna enjoy the show as it is. And so that's, that's why books

Jason Snell (01:39:45):
My trick is just read books, movies outta 'em that are un adaptable. And then you're fine. You can read those books. They'll never make a movie out of Watch Man, Shirley.

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:55):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:56):
They, they, they don't have a Game of Thrones yet, do they? But then nobody does. Everybody's struggling to find that Game of Thrones. I think

Alex Lindsay (01:40:03):
Ted Lasso is the closest, like, big hit that they've had so far. Yeah. But yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:08):
Yeah. And to, and to be fair, like they've gone beyond I, I have to say that my pers my preconception of Apple TV was always that. It it's about the custom show. It's about their, their exclusive content. And they don't, they haven't been really doing much to build a, a catalog. But now they've got a couple TV shows that they've been meaning to catch up on. They got, they got Marooned which that gene Hackman Gregory Peck NASA astronauts being stranded in space, being rescued by the rescues in 1970 as Mr. Science, 33,000 did are little later. Are

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
They making a, are they remaking it or they have the actual moment? No, no. They, they

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:44):
Have, they have, they have it. And that's, and that's such an esoteric but cool movie. This, that, that would get, that, that would get my attention. Like on any

Leo Laporte (01:40:52):
Service. Okay. As opposed to, okay. Oh look, another, another like True Crime Pro podcast turned into like a five episode streaming. Okay. They, we are hearing that a severance has been hampered by the writer's. Strike that. They, they were wording on it. They've to stop. Well, some, some stuff's done, right? So some

Alex Lindsay (01:41:12):
Stuff is done, but the problem is then some stuff says, oh, we're just gonna go shoot. Well, the writers are part of that. They

Leo Laporte (01:41:16):
Kind of need, writers are

Alex Lindsay (01:41:17):
Part of all, every, they're sitting there shoot you, they're, they're rewriting it every day while they're on set. It's,

Leo Laporte (01:41:24):
I feel like Apple stuff,

Jason Snell (01:41:25):
That's why known.

Leo Laporte (01:41:26):
I feel Apple stuff lacks edge a little bit. I don't know what, how to describe

Alex Lindsay (01:41:29):
It. I think it, it goes through one too many rounds of Polish. Yeah. Like, that's the, like, to me, that's the problem with, even, even with Silo, which I'm enjoying, it just feels like it went through one. Mm-Hmm. You know, it went through the polisher. There's just no mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, there's just a couple sharp edges that are mm-hmm. <Affirmative> missing somewhere there. Yeah. That it just goes through it. And, and it, it's beautiful. I mean, like, I I, as a production person, I look at it and go, wow, that was really expensive. You know, <laugh> like, that was a really nice car, you know? And so but, but at, I still feel like everything I watch there just feels like it's one they could afford one more round. Where, you know, cause we always say in production, you know, you don't finish any project. You just run out of time. Like, you know, you just submit what you had and there's a certain edge to it. And it just feels like they did finish every project

Jason Snell (01:42:12):
<Laugh>. When it works, I'd say it works because I, I do sort of agree with you. There's a look and a feel to them. I think when it works is when it's either fantastical or dreamlike sort of intentionally. Yeah. So like Severance I think works because it's so polished. It's uncanny and that's what they're going for. And it's a good fit of material to style. I think for all mankind, sometimes when it really works well, it's the same kind of thing where it is meant to be this sort of fantastical thing. I think maybe even Ted Lasso ar arguably is a golden glow of happy, you know, it's not really realistic. It's, but then

Leo Laporte (01:42:47):
There's MGA Dune, right? You can go too far in that direction as well.

Jason Snell (01:42:51):
I, I, I don't know, I I kinda like, I kinda like Sga Doon thought was, I likes, I thought it was funny and I liked,

Leo Laporte (01:42:55):
It's funny, you know, the kind of offhand references to Munich musicals, but Ghosted was god awful. The And Slow

Jason Snell (01:43:02):
Horses is interesting because it's actually out of there. They have a UK production executive. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's tell it's out of a different part of Right. And with a different sensibility in, in a lot of ways. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:13):
Slow Horses was a very, not Apple, apple TV Plus. In fact, at first I looked at it, I said, oh, they bought this. They didn't make this. Yeah. But they did.

Jason Snell (01:43:19):
No, they hired a BBC executive to head off their Euro. You know, what

Leo Laporte (01:43:22):
Was good? Teris Tetris was pretty good. Did you like Tetris?

Alex Lindsay (01:43:25):
Tetris was really good. I really enjoyed Tetris.

Jason Snell (01:43:27):
I really enjoyed it. I don't think it's a very good movie, but I didn't care cuz I really enjoyed it.

Leo Laporte (01:43:31):
<Laugh>, maybe that's why I liked it. You're right. Yeah. There, there were some structural issues with it. Luck, which should have been a huge success fell on its face. Even though you know, they had Pixar's disgraced John, John Lasseter. John Lasseter. Right. helming it you know, Lassiter had the magic touch at P Pixar, but maybe something happened at Fired because he was, well, I know John pretty well. He was a hugger. He hugged me. Might have squeezed my buttocks, I don't remember. But I don't think it was personal. <Laugh>. He was a hugger. That was his thing. So I'm gonna, I don't know what happened. I, I, I don't, I don't, I don't know him. But yeah, I like John a lot. I'll Oh, and he's very talented, but he couldn't make luck a success, which is interesting. Yeah. I don't know. Although luck, luck was even Pixar's going through a slump. I think, yeah.

Jason Snell (01:44:23):
Luck was a success in the sense, like, there's an argument to be made. Cuz my somebody I do a podcast with another podcast in a different place Julie Alexander from, from parrot Research, she says that Luck actually did okay for Apple. Like, based on Apple's apple size of its audience, and the fact that they want more children's and family friendly programming, that luck kind of did what it was intended to do. And luck on Apple TV is never gonna do the same kind of number that luck on Amazon or on Netflix is gonna do. But that it sort of like did its job. It did not break through and become a thing that everybody's signing up for Apple TV for. But that in the context of Apple service, it did its job of providing that content. So it depends on, I think the challenge here is Apple really does want, what's the biggest that an Apple TV plus show can be? Is it Ted Lasso? Is that as big as it will ever

Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
Get? So, yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:45:16):
And, and the

Leo Laporte (01:45:16):
Problem, the Morning show was a flop, right? That was, they put all their eggs in that basket and it big cast big money and flop. You know, I noticed that the I noticed that the Will Smith vehicle emancipation is no longer on their front page on their website. I'm thinking that was

Alex Lindsay (01:45:36):
A bad time. And the hard as you, you, you play really hard like foundation. I didn't even make through make through.

Leo Laporte (01:45:41):
And they've brought it back by. They renewed it.

Alex Lindsay (01:45:43):
Well, they probably want So you

Leo Laporte (01:45:44):
Cannot watch a second season now.

Alex Lindsay (01:45:46):
Yeah, exactly. I'm, and, but even like, you know, that there's huge risk. I mean, I think that H B O kind of got into a mode where they figured this out, even though I don't know if they'll continue to figure that out, but they, you know, with, with, they had a lot of things, you know, that, that did well. But like with the One ring from Amazon is, you know, flop Ola, it's okay. Yeah. They spent so much money on that.

Leo Laporte (01:46:09):
People just acquiring the rights spent like a quarter billion dollars for the rights.

Alex Lindsay (01:46:12):
But, well, they spent all the monies on that, on that. And, and so I think that trying to s you know, knock something out of the park, I think Apple needs to continue to do. I do think that they're, I'm seeing, I'm, I'm, I guess I'm finding myself watching it more often than I did before. Like, that was the Yeah, because like, me too, I kind of have a, you know, if I see that there's a pile of shoulds somewhere in a, like, oh, this is gonna be a big pile of shoulds. I won't watch it. Like, if I see any should,

Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
Well, you know they spend a lot of money on Extrapolations. Right. This was a very preachy climate change show with big budget stars including Meryl Streep and Big writing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and not so hot.

Alex Lindsay (01:46:52):
I just, I just think I, I don't preach. My problem is I, I wanna sit down and I wanna relax, which is the only time I wanna watch tv.

Leo Laporte (01:46:59):
I wanna see the end of the world. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:47:01):
I don't, I just don't want any shoulds. Like, I just wanna watch, I just wanna watch a show. They should have it be a show.

Leo Laporte (01:47:05):
They should all over. You should. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:47:07):
They, they just, and, and so the thing is, and like 90% of Apple's stuff has been, you know, should ridden. Do not

Leo Laporte (01:47:13):
Watch

Alex Lindsay (01:47:14):
Ghosted. You know, and it

Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
Looks like it's gonna be a great popcorn.

Alex Lindsay (01:47:17):
Did watch Ghosted. What'd you

Leo Laporte (01:47:18):
Think? It's horrible. It was horrible. It's horrible. I didn't even finish it. Here's the thing, it's like the perfect popcorn movie. Great cast.

Alex Lindsay (01:47:23):
My, here's the funny thing is my family enjoyed it. And of all people, my daughter enjoyed it. And she's not like a, like that kind of like, she just thought it was fun. And, but, but I, I was like, I, I it it, it gets into that whole thing I was talking about where it felt like it ev every sharp edge had been worn off. Yeah. There was no, you know, and, and it was just like this, it was like the perfectly produced action film that had no soul. Like, just nothing completely cared about. Yeah. That you, you know, and it was, you know, it had, it was like we put all the ingredients in, but there's just like, I don't know. There's nothing, no carbon into it. Noer.

Leo Laporte (01:47:57):
And you kind of said this, this is true across the board, streaming networks are all kind of fumbling. You just described the Netflix movie too. Yeah. Right. This should have been a Netflix movie, actually. Yeah. At least.

Alex Lindsay (01:48:08):
At least it's properly compressed. I mean, like, Netflix is <laugh>. I mean, it looks,

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
It looks good on your 4k ole, that's

Alex Lindsay (01:48:15):
For sure. I watched, what did I, I just watched the, the, the oh, the J Lo vehicle. I just can't think of the name of it right now. Mother. The mother. We watched that. I mean, you know, it was a Saturday night. We figured we'd watch it. It's Mother's

Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
Day, it's got J Lo

Alex Lindsay (01:48:29):
What could, same thing kind of, not kind of soulless. You know, and, but, but the, it was okay. I mean, it was, it was, okay,

Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
I'll tell you, here's the hazard. But it

Alex Lindsay (01:48:36):
Was horribly compressed. Like it was like,

Leo Laporte (01:48:38):
Oh, that's funny. Looks

Alex Lindsay (01:48:39):
So bad. It looks so bad. And I was like,

Leo Laporte (01:48:42):
Netflix, only you noticed that, by

Alex Lindsay (01:48:43):
The way, Alex, Netflix compression falls apart on the Apple tv. It seems to be only, it literally seems to be what they're doing. There's something about the manifest that they're using inside the Apple tv. But on the Apple TV, I got a Wired connection, a one gig connection. I got, you know, like there's no reason for this to be low quality and it falls apart in the dark scenes. So if you see a movie like Gray Man or like the Mother, which are perhaps, you know, a lot of dark scenes, you're just looking at like, my look, when my kids ask what is happening to the image, then I know that, you know, we're, we're now getting into the land of it's not working. So it's,

Leo Laporte (01:49:17):
Anyway, the hazard of having a movie like Ghosted, which has so much promise and then falls on its face, is so much more, I feel li less likely to try to sample an Apple TV show. Now I'm gonna, you know, by the way, because I'm an Apple one subscriber, I'm gonna be getting every, you know, this is, yeah. You know, this comes along with a package. But I'm much more, much less likely to sample. I'll look at something, I'll go, boy that, you know, invasion now that looks interesting. And then it breaks my heart and I don't wanna take another chance again. You know, there's too much other stuff that you can watch out there.

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:51):
Yeah. I, I just don't know of any streaming service that I, that I've been exposed to where it really justifies a month to month subscription. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:49:58):
That's a good

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:58):
Point. I mean, I've got, I've got Netflix, cuz that's my baseline. I don't, I don't know what I wanna watch. Let's see what's available on X, but Hulu is mostly there. So I can watch Bob's Burgers and Archer <laugh>, like basically, basically Fox Network, like animation without having necessarily recorded on my click server and everything else is like Disney plus, it's fine. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna subscribe to it for a month. I'm gonna have like, almost marked on the calendar. I'm here are the, here are the 5, 6, 7 things I wanna watch in this month. And then as soon as I'm done, boom, cancel Apple TV Plus, once Ted Lasso is off after this, the third season, again, it's, I I, I'm like, you, I'm gonna continue to subscribe to it because it's part of this package that kind of makes financial sense. But it's, it's disappointing as a lifelong Apple fan to think that the only reason why I have this Apple product is because <laugh>, it's, it's a, like, keeping a fluorescent light fixture on it costs less money to just have it. Right. Or, or, or my, or my, my landline with my cable package is like, it's, I I don't need it. I don't use it. I have nothing connected to it, but my package is cheaper if I have this, I don't have this thing. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:51:05):
Well, and, and I think that one of the big scary things for a lot of the streaming companies is that Apple and Amazon don't have to make money at it. Like they don't, they're playing a different, it's kind of very Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:51:15):
We've talked about that. That's

Alex Lindsay (01:51:16):
Right. And, and so that's the thing that as, as this gets more competitive. Cause I know that for me, like now we, like, maybe I wanna watch Paramount because the Picard thing looked really good, but I haven't, like Paramount and Peacock came out too late and I was like, I've already subscribed to too much content. Right. I don't want anymore. Right. And so and so, but I, but if I buy another one, I'm gonna get rid of one. And I think that now that people are starting to shift and figure out that, I don't know if I need to keep on paying for all of these. Apple and Amazon are the ones that are most likely to just keep those subscribers because it's part of a larger package. It's kind of a Kaiser Soze model. You know, they're, they're always paying more than, than the job

Leo Laporte (01:51:48):
Was worth. I don't care how much Max costs, I'm gonna buy it for succession, but I admit succession only has two more episodes. And then, and then I don't know, then I don't know what happens after that. It's,

Andy Ihnatko (01:51:58):
It, it's, it still just makes financial sense for me to, if, if they if they make the mistake of making these series, like available for purchase on iTunes or available for purchase on the Google Play Store or anywhere else, rather than subscribe, I'll, once I find myself getting hooked on something, I will just buy an entire Inspire season. Yeah. And then I've got it. I don't cheaper worry about it. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:52:17):
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:52:18):
And patient you have and you have a forever, you

Leo Laporte (01:52:20):
Have to be patient. That's the problem. Or forever ish. Yeah. Ish. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I guess one, one of the reasons these networks are looking at sports, right. Because that's the kind of thing Yeah, that's right. That builds

Alex Lindsay (01:52:31):
Loyalty's a big one. Yeah. Sports is the big one. It's the, it's the only thing that you, you know, and not only do you sit there, you'll sit there through the ads because you're, you know, you're in a live experience and so to Yeah. It's in fact this is, this was a big week for, for that because Peacock

Jason Snell (01:52:44):
Got an N F L playoff game exclusive to Peacock.

Leo Laporte (01:52:48):
Oh my

Andy Ihnatko (01:52:48):
God. So one

Jason Snell (01:52:49):
Of the NFL playoff games will be available, except in the home markets, a playoff game for the first time will be available only on streaming. Really? Interesting. Right? Yeah. Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:52:59):
That's so dystopian that in Cocaine Berry, you got me. You had me, you, that, that

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:05):
Seems like a way to educate the populace on how to pirate your content without your <inaudible>

Leo Laporte (01:53:09):
<Laugh>. Exactly.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:10):
Honestly.

Leo Laporte (01:53:11):
Wow.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:12):
I did, I I, I, I figured out how to get the, I I I was using, I was using my VPN to watch Eurovision because I did, I was not gonna subscribe to Paramount Plus just to watch Eurovision for, to as totally worth it as it would've been. It's like if I <laugh>, if I can just flip select this popup menu in my V P N and pretend to be Irish on Saturday and get to see the, see the final versus sign up for this channel that has only this one thing that I'm interested in. You know what? I'm gonna do the paralegal thing. I'm gonna hold my nose and pretend that God is looking the other way. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:53:47):
God's always watching you, Andy. I'm sorry. God.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:49):
God. You go, God created Eurovision. Okay. I, that's the kind of God that I believe in. The God that created Eurovision. I think that he, she or whatever would stand by whatever. Are you,

Leo Laporte (01:53:58):
Are you happy with the the outcome of this year's eurovision?

Andy Ihnatko (01:54:02):
It was bat seating insane and I loved every moment of it. Okay. I think to me, to me, spoilers, it's the pre semifinal ones. It's the no spoilers, but the, the, there's only like my second year really paying attention to it. I never

Leo Laporte (01:54:15):
Watched it before. I knew about it cuz a Abba and whatever, 76 and the,

Andy Ihnatko (01:54:19):
And the, but

Leo Laporte (01:54:19):
I watched it this time and it was like, oh, <laugh>,

Andy Ihnatko (01:54:24):
It's, well, it's just, it's, it's, there's a, there's a video. There's a video that I'll, that I'll share to you, like later on. Because it just, it's this beautiful explanation of why people, why Europeans love Eurovision, but explain by a French French lady. Cause Yes, it is extra. Yes, it is over the top. It is just explosion of joy and happiness that gets us through. Okay. You know, another sunless Joy

Leo Laporte (01:54:48):
Summer. Really well. Okay. I actually lo I thought France was robbed personally, but that's,

Andy Ihnatko (01:54:53):
It's, it was, it's, it's a hell of a lot of entertainment and there's no, and, and because it's not American, they didn't try to make us care about anybody in this competition. Yeah. That's probably why it was I doing so much. Wasn't

Leo Laporte (01:55:05):
A bio,

Andy Ihnatko (01:55:06):
Wasn't Deborah, you've been, you, you, you, you've sacrificed a lot to be here. Eurovision. Yeah. Some, my, my grandmother,

Leo Laporte (01:55:13):
She, she

Andy Ihnatko (01:55:14):
Spoiled the horse. Her arch.

Leo Laporte (01:55:15):
Is that uniquely American? Is that the story there? Because Oh my gosh. Will, well, Lisa watches both idle in the voice, right. The two big American singing competitions. Yeah. And she will, she skips all of that, you know, tear jerk and drama in between Olympics. Singing none in the Olympics is like, I don't need to,

Andy Ihnatko (01:55:35):
You know. Oh yeah. I should be in chemotherapy right now, but I think the spirit of music is gonna kill my, kill my pancreatic cancer <laugh>. You coach Gloria, you, you speak for all of us. Like, oh, for God's sake. She's not even a good singer.

Alex Lindsay (01:55:47):
By the way. You were mentioning the Leo. Have you seen the, for the Abba thing, have you seen the Stockholm Syndrome on this? Is music on Netflix?

Leo Laporte (01:55:55):
No. Is it about abba?

Alex Lindsay (01:55:58):
So this is, this is music is one of the best series on Netflix, in my opinion. And it's all about, like, it has one whole episode on autotune and one whole episode.

Leo Laporte (01:56:05):
Oh, yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:56:05):
I watch that. Things that make, yeah. And, and but one of them is the, it's, they call it the Stockholm Syndrome and it shows how Abba, oh,

Leo Laporte (01:56:12):
That's that factory. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:56:14):
But, but Abba first got made it pop, you know, suddenly made, that's

Leo Laporte (01:56:19):
How Britney Spears created. She went to Stockholm and they the hell of it out

Alex Lindsay (01:56:24):
Of it. But it showed all the out of them came all of these Swedish producers and then out of that, and, you know, yep.

Leo Laporte (01:56:31):
Now they're pretty Is this the the story of Fire Saga on Netflix? Is this the one you're, is this the one you're talking about? The, the back backstory of the Will Ferrell movie <laugh>. The Will Ferrell. No. Will Ferrell at, at Eurovision? Is this what you're talking about? No, I'm not. But this is, to me, this is exactly what Eurovision looked like. I thought so. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:56:54):
Especially before like the semifinals, the country set are like, look, if we win this, we have to host it next year. And we don't want to do that. We are just gonna be absolutely crazy and be fun. <Laugh> and cr create create such a wonderful show that nobody will think we're taking it seriously. <Laugh>. And we will know, we will not be on the look for this eurovision, the whole

Alex Lindsay (01:57:14):
Thing is all so preproduced that the edit is automatic. Like the edit is pre pre-programmed, you know, for the live show. So it's literally, there's a software that I saw at I B C that just does the, does the Eurovision edit for each one of these performance

Leo Laporte (01:57:27):
Because they know exactly when it begins edit. They

Alex Lindsay (01:57:29):
Rehearse it. All the, all the camera operators know exactly where they need to be. The artists, you know, rehearse it. They get it all. They figure it all out so that the edit, that's why the edit looks so clean and pre edited. It's live, but it's basically pre like, pre edited. They don't, it's an amazing thing. It's an amazing use of technology.

Andy Ihnatko (01:57:48):
The only thing that's live is the vocals. All the instruments have to be, it has every, it has to be less than three minutes. And all of the performances could only be vocal of everyone

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
Else. This is what I didn't like about it. It's like, where's the band? It's a recording.

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:01):
The, the vocals are live for, for a lot of reasons. They're like, no, he can't have like a 80 piece orchestra that's playing for, I don't know. Again, there's a, I I just put it in the Discord a YouTube or column, how

Leo Laporte (01:58:11):
To Eurovision. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:14):
And it will, it will make, it will make you into a fan. Just like it made me into a fan last

Leo Laporte (01:58:17):
Year. <Laugh> from cast how to Euro and she has

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:22):
French and she wonderful French accent <laugh>. And she is very, very excited to about vision.

Leo Laporte (01:58:27):
All right. I'm willing to get into it. I am. I am. So apparently I didn't know this. There'd been significant outages.

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:36):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:58:37):
App Store, apple Music, apple Podcasts not showing on the system's status page even this was yesterday. I hadn't, I hadn't experienced this. And this is not the first time this has happened. What's going on?

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:52):
It's been, it's been happening kind of kind of routinely like weather was down for, for, for a long time. Services are spotty. Even the, the Apple card stuff is occasionally down. And the, is an article nine to five map <crosstalk>. There's still an

Leo Laporte (01:59:06):
Issue on weather, by the way, aro on the Apples. I'm looking at the Apple status page. There's still an issue on weather.

Andy Ihnatko (01:59:12):
And so they, they have a rundown January 19th, February 20th, 23rd, April 1st, fourth, fifth, sixth, 10th, 15th, 24th. May 2nd, fifth, ninth, 11 may, the May 11th, apple ID services currently down for many users unable to log in or make payments apple weather not working for some users. Third time in this month, apple Music down for some users. Incl plus Apple Card and Apple Support. Yeah, I mean that's just, I I agree with the headline in nine to five Mac. It's just like that's, these outages are at an unacceptable level. That's, it basically shows that, I'm glad it's Apple has put a lot of investment in their future into expanding their services business. But if they don't have it, right, if they don't have some, if services they've been running for years now are not rock solid. Oh boy, they've got a lot of explaining to do. All

Leo Laporte (01:59:59):
Cloud services have outages once in a while, but this seems like an abnormal number. It, Alex, do you have any insight? I mean, you're, you know, all about how this stuff

Alex Lindsay (02:00:09):
Works. I don't, I I think they're probably making a bunch of changes for wwe c <laugh>. I think that that's my guess

Leo Laporte (02:00:14):
Is that they're, maybe

Alex Lindsay (02:00:15):
They're updating a bunch of things and they are and they're, yeah, I think that's

Andy Ihnatko (02:00:20):
The, not, not, not an excuse though. That's, it's not

Alex Lindsay (02:00:22):
An excuse. I'm just saying that I, I think that there's just, they're, they're probably making some significant changes for

Leo Laporte (02:00:26):
Wwe C and that's when these happen on every cloud service, you know, oh, we, we pushed a new configuration and it broke everything. Hey,

Andy Ihnatko (02:00:35):
Hey, I'm sorry that you couldn't pay for dinner on your, on Mother's Day because we had some server problems and you, we couldn't process your Apple card. That, that sort of stuff is like, no, I don't, I don't, I you're not my best friend and I'm not, I'm not encouraging you to pivot from a job you don't like into this wonderful new dream of running a cloud service. You are a 2 trillion company that is, I've paid for services from. They should be reliable of random outage every now and then. That's just the luck of the draw. But again, when you have two or three months in which I've, I'm almost every time, every time that this comes up in one of my newsfeeds or someone talk tells me about it, I have to figure out was it, was this something new today? Are they talking about the thing from two days ago? Are they talking about the thing from last week? That's bad,

Leo Laporte (02:01:18):
Man. Yeah, that is bad, isn't it? Here's the down detector snapshot from May 12th a couple of days ago. And that, that really, the, those, those flat lines that's flat lined not good. Not good. Yeah. I wonder what they're up to. It does feel like they're, they're doing something. Maybe this is a prelude to being much more reliable. Let's cross our fingers anyway.

Andy Ihnatko (02:01:46):
<Laugh> may, maybe they're moving from from Amazon to to Google Cloud servers. Maybe that's what they're doing.

Leo Laporte (02:01:52):
There was a leak. This is from nine to five Mac that claims Apple uses a multi-step sting operation to identify and fire leakers ahead of ww d c in, you know, they, they leave out commas. They put in commas on Wednesday. This is this story was from May 10th. So on last Wednesday morning the leaker account that was on Twitter, claiming to no broad range of details of apple's upcoming software releases went silent. The source posted an update in which they claimed Apple identified their source and fired her through a multi-step sting operation. The leaker analyst 9 4 1, I guess had a single source inside of Apple.

Andy Ihnatko (02:02:40):
Yeah. And he was, and he, he broke, he was leaking information about the release of Final Cut Pro for, for iPad. And of course, the day this, this, this this story about his source being fired from Apple and being the, being targeted by a Sting operation came I think the day over the day after that was released, cuz that was the, the canary that Apple was using. They ga they, they released released information for new versions of Final Cut Mac and and the final cut for for iPad different release dates for each person who was suspected of being the source of the leak. And so when the leaker basically said, Hey we're not seeing this until 20 20, 24, we're not gonna see final cut for, for iPad until later this year. Essentially. That was, yep. That was <laugh> a cubicle eight plea. Can you come to the office and bring everything in your office with you? It's, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:31):
Also, analyst 9 41 kind of kind of blew it by saying it's my sister and she's working in with Craig Feder, <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:41):
That was,

Leo Laporte (02:03:41):
That's pretty much gonna narrow it down there. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:45):
And nine, nine to five Mac decided to follow that up by talking about, well, yeah, this is, this is why when we get information, like we don't just simply cut and paste because there can be this, these are techniques that we've been hearing about, not just from Apple, from other companies elsewhere. There's like, oh, sure. You, you can have you, you can have antsy codes that are 19 spaces, but they only actually display one of them. There can be like certain language, there could be the placement of a comma in press materials. Something is a certain shade of blue. Again, all of these combined together that if someone is foolish enough to simply copy, copy, paste, or quote directly, it allows a company that's suspicious of eight people to figure out which of the eight was doing it. And this, this, this person. Oh boy, I don't, I dunno what they do for a living, but it's not, it's not reporting or, and if it is reporting, it's not something that they, that they were counting on doing for more than <laugh> for more than like eight

Leo Laporte (02:04:37):
Mortgage payments. Yeah. Because that's not, you're, you're not gonna last that way. Chance Miller writing a nine to five max says the entire story leaks of li Reeks of lies and saving face. But you know, I, I can remember back to Steve Jobs where they would have differing there was a

Alex Lindsay (02:04:54):
Story,

Leo Laporte (02:04:55):
You know, a little bit about this, Alex, don't you, when,

Alex Lindsay (02:04:58):
When Steve, when, because it used to be, I mean, apple, you didn't, you didn't even have to beer, beer board them. Beer boarding is, you know, you take everybody out to drinks, <laugh>, you just keep tell people break down. And and you didn't even Apple employees back in the nineties, you could just get all kinds. You didn't know what the next year or two is gonna happen is gonna be. And then suddenly, I mean, it felt like a week, it was just like, Nope, nobody's talking. And and I asked somebody about that, that might know. And, and they were like, well, Steve, Steve gave out a code. I he gave out a product name to three executives just saying, this is what's coming up and da, da, da, da. And he said you know, don't, if, if, if this leaks out, you know, no one's gonna, you know, you're, you're all three of, you're getting fired. And it leaked out. And it wasn't even the right product name. It was a different product name, but all three of them got fired. Like he didn't care. And they were pretty relatively high up. And they all got fired that week. And no one, everyone stopped talking. Yeah. <laugh> was there a lot of apricot orchards in the Apple campus. A lot of secrets get buried in

Leo Laporte (02:05:58):
Those apricot

Alex Lindsay (02:05:59):
Orchards. But that was it. That was, that was the that was the story. The story was, it's three, three people who took, took the hit. And some people had said that they weren't even sure if it wasn't Steve that leaked it himself. So he could just make the point. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:06:11):
I learned that from Game of Thrones. It's always a good idea to put the heads of your enemies on spikes on your outer walls just to let 'em know. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (02:06:17):
Exactly. So that was a little spike thing, but it, it was like, it felt like, and again, it felt like it was just night and day. I don't know if Jason remembered it changing, the weather changing so quickly, but we weren't, and you and Andy,

Jason Snell (02:06:28):
We weren't using Invis, you know, secret sources back then because that was the, it was actually Mac Week, which was their, that was their whole thing. And, and yeah, they Apple, yeah, in the nineties leak. But the fact is the Apple leaks today, mostly it's from the supply chain, but it still does happen. It's these, you know, yeah. I mean, nine to five Max point is good. And Mark Erman makes the same kind of argument that they, you know, they're, they're trying to give the information that they feel good about, but not play the game where they're so precise that their sources can be identified. And we have this now phenomenon of random leakers appearing on Twitter or in forums, and they could be liars or they could be true. You could actually set up like five different accounts, each of which makes a guess. And the one that's right, <laugh>, you say, see, this person's reliable and then you can play that game. But the, at the same time they're playing professional game and they're amateurs and they can get burned. So it's possible that this really happened. Who knows? But like, this is also why the professionals, it's not like Apple doesn't leak, but they keep it, you know,

Leo Laporte (02:07:34):
Watch slow horses for the details of dead drops and and, and other SecOps. Cuz you really gotta study that stuff.

Andy Ihnatko (02:07:42):
Yeah, I, no, it's, I mean, this, this is, this is why like, some people have access and some for years and years and years. And some people don't because the people who they, they, they have sources that they know that I'm not gonna, the information I'm gonna give is going to be used in this context. This person is not a bozo. They have never burned me or the other people that I know who've spoken to this person before. I mean that, that means that you're not gonna be the first person to say, Hey, here's the official, it's an orange, but it's sort of a tangerine orange. But they're not calling it tangerine. They're calling it mofo golo jolo <laugh>. And like, so you're not, you're not gonna be the the person who breaks the story, but it does mean that you are the person who, when they speculate about if there might be new colors, they happen to take a lot of guesses that happen to turn out to be correct. I,

Leo Laporte (02:08:30):
I will defend the press's you know, constant desire to know and the, and the right.

Andy Ihnatko (02:08:35):
Oh yeah. That's,

Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
That's, that's our joke to know I will defend that. But on the other hand, having watched now a really dull Google event and a really dull Samsung event all the air was let out of the balloon by pryor leaks. I kind of understand Apple's des design. I mean, we're still talking about what are they gonna say at WW d c? We will right up to June 4th. It does, and we almost, it does the

Alex Lindsay (02:08:56):
Excitement, we think, and I will say like as a, as a good example of all these leaks and all the other talks, if Apple doesn't come out with a headset in June, like all of us are gonna be kinda like, what?

Leo Laporte (02:09:07):
Well, if that's the other thing, they reserve the right not to. Right. But by not announcing, by not teasing, they, they can always stop at any point. There's

Alex Lindsay (02:09:16):
Lots of stories that, of Apple killing products days before, like just taking it, taking that section out of the Yeah. You know, out of the, out of the keynote. Like, we're not ready to talk about that, or the presentation wasn't as good as it could be or whatever. And so, you know, it, it, they, they have all that freedom without managing, without having to manage expectations in that area. But, but what's interesting is in a lot of companies like Apple a lot of people are willfully not interested. Like they are. They do not want to know what the other silo is doing because them having that head in their head can get them in trouble. You know, like, and, and so you can always tell when people have been there for a long time, been at places like that in a for a long time, it's cuz someone starts talking around them about something new and they just go somewhere else. Change the subject. Like, I don't wanna, yeah, I don't wanna be I don't wanna know even know what's happening. It,

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:02):
It is, it is a Darwinian career track where the people who cannot survive in that environment emotionally don't let, don't stay there very long. I mean, it's, it's really, really difficult. You can be a really important researcher, researcher in audio technology, and you were competitive. They were comp companies were competitive about hiring you and you've got a glorious offer from Apple. And now you find yourself, we want you to develop an algorithm for this. Like, okay, but it'll help for no is this for phones? You don't need to know that. Just an algorithm for shaping this with this sort of resources. And it can really get you down that, I i it's, it's one thing if I'm creating a transistor that could be used for anything. It's another thing if you tell me that, by the way, we got the contract to do a lot of the circuit logic for the lunar lander. So we are building something that will hopefully put Americans on the moon by the end of 19, end of 1969. That's the sort of thing that gets you up early in the morning and gives, it gives you your, your greatest job satisfaction. And I think that these com compartmental compartmentalization of Apple, it helps the secrecy ball growing and that's valuable. But sometimes they're, they're not, it's not every worker who wants to work under those circumstances.

Leo Laporte (02:11:19):
Hmm. What else shall we talk about? I think, oh, one more thing. This happened to me this week. It was kind of sad. My iPhone said, I'm not gonna tell you about any more covid 19 exposures. So just forget about it. April, you may remember back to April, 2020 in the throes, the first throes of the pandemic, Google and Apple got together and proposed a, an exposure notification system that would require cooperation from the states. California was one, Washington state was another. And I had them turned on both. Never got any <laugh>. I think I got one from Washington State like three weeks after I got Covid. But <laugh>, it, it wasn't a system that was destined to work for a variety of reasons. But they have now turned it off. It's over states have turned off the covid 19 exposure notifications now that the public emergency is over.

Andy Ihnatko (02:12:18):
It. It was pretty exciting though, how quickly that system got put together. And with two companies like Apple and Google for the, did, did anybody else have a a not, not a, not a, a shiver of excitement, but oh my God, I'm seeing a combined Google and Apple logo. It's, it's like I'm in an alternate universe where <laugh> a couple fell on hard times or Google fell on hard times and a check was written. Now they're both the same company.

Leo Laporte (02:12:45):
Yeah. apparently 26 of the 52 states released apps, wait a minute, 52, that's the number of deck cards in a deck. 50 states <laugh> less a little more than half of the states released apps to make full use of notifications. 36 million Americans, that's all install an app or enabled exposure notifications. Remember exposure notifications first had to be an app from the state and then Apple and Google allowed you to turn it on in the settings, which I did cuz I wanted to be a good person. I'm only 36 million other people. Did, there is some evidence that the tech, according to End Gadget, the Tech Prevented Cases Washington State's app may have prevented 5,500 cases in its first four months, even though most of the population wasn't using it. California's Department of Public Health says is still studying the benefits of the state's apps. Certainly that would be an appropriate thing to look into. This isn't the last time we're gonna have a pandemic. It might be a good thing to know, you know, is this the way to do it or are there other ways to do it? It's, and gadget says, don't be surprised if health agencies and tech companies are better prepared going forward. Oh no, I will be surprised. <Laugh> <laugh>, I will be very surprised. I I expect nothing but incompetence. Depends.

Andy Ihnatko (02:14:04):
It depends on such stake for the next major federal election. I, yes. If it, if it's gonna send people's good best interest to actually save lives, great.

Leo Laporte (02:14:12):
Otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. let me take a little break and then if you would my friends prepare your picks of the week in just a moment of first though a little plug for my dear friends. The, the people who are Club Twit members, Patrick, how many Club Twit members do we have now? Yes, he can do a little. Elroy will tell you, I think, do we know 7,000 plus 7,500.

Speaker 6 (02:14:38):
7,050.

Leo Laporte (02:14:40):
7,050. That's very nice. Thank you to you. Those people are paying seven bucks a month or more to get ad free versions of all of our shows to get access to the Club Twit Discord, which is a blast. 7,337 says, Patrick, that's kinda late <laugh>, isn't it? It's late <laugh>. Is that accurate? <Laugh>? it's actually Tet, but that's, you know, close enough. <Laugh> thank you to all of you. Our members access to the the Club Twit Discord I think is part of the fun. You also get the shows that we put out in the club, but don't put out in public. We do a lot of events thanks to our community manager, aunt Pruit. He does a great job. In fact, we've got five events upcoming. A fireside chat with Sean Powers, the host of Floss Weekly, the Home Theater Geeks we do every Thursday.

(02:15:35):
What do we, once a month? Something like that. Yeah. Once a month on Thursday, June 15th. The next one. That's an example of a show that we do. We did for a while, couldn't generate enough ad support or ad or listener support to continue. So we canceled it, but we brought it back in The Club Club members are paying for it and, you know, if it grows and, and generates an audience and advertising, we'll put it out in public. Stacey's book club's coming up in the next month. The Terror Formers, Anna Neitz newest book. We're gonna, and John John Jammer be's a little nervous about this on July 14th. It'll be an after hours inside Twit with, with whiskey and Fun for all. And then a fireside chat with Rod Pile and another success story out of the club this week in space launched, if you will, in the club and now is public.

(02:16:22):
We also do the HandsOn Mac Show, hands on Windows Untitled Lennox Show the GIZ Fizz. And as I said, Scott Wilkinson's, home theater geeks in the club. And if you're club member, you get to you get to hear all of those shows plus add free versions of everything. You wouldn't even hear this promo. So really there's no point in me thanking club to IT members cuz they're not hearing this. Nevertheless, we are very grateful is a huge portion of our budget to this point. And with 7,000 plus members, that's wonderful. And we're hoping to make it even more. I'd love to see 7,000 is about 1% of our total audience. Our monthly active listeners. Monthly listeners. I'd love to see it get to 5%. That would really help us kind of solidify our future. You wanna join Please twit tv slash club twit? There's family plans, there's corporate plans and individual plans as well. TWIT TV slash club twit. Thank you. Thank you. Alex, Lindsay, I don't usually start with you on the pick of the week cuz I'm always scared that I'm gonna be spending a lot of money.

Alex Lindsay (02:17:30):
<Laugh> Well, not too expensive this time. What do you got? I'm gonna try to save everybody a little time. I so I'm trying to build like a little camera system with these little cameras. These are the I've already talked about these. These are the, it's the 360 links, so cool. And yeah, these are little PTC cameras and I'm trying to build, I wanna be able to send a kit out so that someone can like, just plug them all into the Mac Mini. And I use a zoom room to just pull all the individual feeds back to me so that they can show how to use a pr, how they're using a product or do a cooking. We've been talking about doing cooking stuff. The hard part is how do you get long cables to these that actually work. They're, they're, they're a 4K camera. They require some power and man, have I gone through a lot of cables? Like I think I've bought six u s BBC cables right now and I finally found one that worked. <Laugh> someone else tell everyone. So you don't, if you ever decide you need long U S B cables, the longest I've been able to get to work is 10 feet and otherwise they just turn on and turn off. But in, in those cables, these, I don't even know how to say it. An ope aop the

Leo Laporte (02:18:28):
Key, it's a neologism from a Chinese company that doesn't speak English. So you, you pronounce it will tell you want to

Alex Lindsay (02:18:35):
<Laugh>, but I will tell you that I cannot find other ones that work reliably other good than these ones so far. Wow. And so if you're looking for trying to put cameras in, in a couple places, 10 feet is as far as I've gotten so far, I've gotten ones. The, the key is, is that they have to be minimum three point, you know, version 3.2 gen two, gen

Leo Laporte (02:18:53):
Two, gen Gen two s, the

Alex Lindsay (02:18:54):
Key. So these are 10 gig, you know, hun hundred wat. And but there's other ones that have listed that. They say that they do that and they don't. So and these, the other thing that's important about these is that they have a right turn on it. And, and that becomes important cause

Leo Laporte (02:19:08):
You plug that into the camera end.

Alex Lindsay (02:19:10):
When you put it in the camera end, you want it to go to the side. Otherwise it just didn't sound Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:19:13):
It'll pull

Alex Lindsay (02:19:14):
The camera. Something

Leo Laporte (02:19:14):
Else have to deal

Alex Lindsay (02:19:16):
With it. So, so anyway, I'll, I'll show more when we get it closer cause it's kind of, I think it'll be a fun little kit, but but it has been a lot of, I've, I've bought a lot of Cape

Leo Laporte (02:19:26):
Is that I'm gonna send taste the best webcam.

Alex Lindsay (02:19:30):
There's two that we're looking at. So the webcam, the obs bott makes a 4K version. We haven't gotten it yet cuz it's in pre-release. The only reason that we, that we potentially want to use it more than the Insta 360 is because it supports OSC open sound control, which means that we can control all the aspects of the camera through pro programs like Isadora and other things like that. So we're, we're interested in, in the obs bott, but we haven't used it as far as what I've used. This is the best webcam I've used. So this is, this is a the, the ins, yeah. This instant 360 link it's about 300 bucks. It is definitely the best webcam we've used that we use. Is it

Leo Laporte (02:20:06):
As good as using for a long time using your iPhone with camo or with the macko?

Alex Lindsay (02:20:11):
It's different. So I will tell you that the color looks better on the camera, on the, on the iPhone camera, but you can go out of the gate. But this has spool on color control. Oh, okay. And it's a ptz. You can, so you can hang it upside down also and have it, you know, be a product camera. You can put it, you, you know, it's got a, it's got a built into it, a quarter 20 on the bottom. It also will open up to go onto a monitor. So it's, it's a and it's really small and and so, and it doesn't, it's easy to say that you want to use a phone, but constantly connecting your phone to your computer. Not so fun. Like, so I

Leo Laporte (02:20:42):
Know, you know, like I know,

Alex Lindsay (02:20:43):
You know, it's in a pinch fine, but it's not what you build around, you know. And so it's also not a replacement for the camera that I'm using, which is Sony FX 30. But, but as a as a travel camera and also again, what we're looking at is how do you have a digital event where someone's showing you a product or showing you something on a desk. And these PT Zs become super powerful if you, you know, any kind of PT Z. But right now the SBOT is one we're looking at. If instant 360 added osc we'd stop

Leo Laporte (02:21:14):
Is the sbot the new tiny two? Is that what you wanna check?

Alex Lindsay (02:21:17):
I think it's the new tiny 4k. Yeah, it's 4k. It's,

Leo Laporte (02:21:21):
It's the tiny two. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Lindsay (02:21:22):
Yeah. Tiny two. Yeah. And it has OSC support. It's got a great, it looks like it has a really nice chip on it. And but we haven't, we haven't tested yet. Cuz it's in pre it was in pre-order. I haven't as of last week. Maybe it's SHIPP now. No, it's

Leo Laporte (02:21:34):
Still pre-order.

Alex Lindsay (02:21:34):
Yeah. Yeah. And so it's in pre-order. And so we haven't, and I haven't gotten an early release or anything else. And so I have like four of these guys and I've been really happy with them. We use 'em for a lot of stuff. I mean, you can, you know, one of the, what we're, you know, what we're doing is using a Mac Mini Pro and putting all four cameras into, into that Mac Mini, and then not trying to cut on the sh not trying to cut on the Mac Mini, just sending all feeds back into Zoom and then using Zoom ISO on the other end to grab all those feeds and put 'em into our back into STI <laugh>, you know, sending them back to us. So,

Leo Laporte (02:22:06):
Well, and the point is, of course, that the pick is not the camera. The pick is the cable.

Alex Lindsay (02:22:11):
The cable, which turns out to be harder to find than the, the camera was pretty easy. I was like, oh, I ordered one of them, but it has been like a week and a half of me ordering cables, you know, and, and, and downloading 'em and then going, Nope, nope, sorry. Hello. But my screensaver turned on on my other computers and it's keyed over it, and it's only Draw <laugh>. So anyway, forgot to turn that off.

Leo Laporte (02:22:32):
A I N O P E aop,

Alex Lindsay (02:22:35):
Which is a terrible, the

Leo Laporte (02:22:36):
Only one name.

Alex Lindsay (02:22:37):
It's a terrible name, but it's the only name I've,

Leo Laporte (02:22:39):
Or ai. Nope. Maybe it's ai. Nope. Maybe they're making a statement about ai, huh?

Alex Lindsay (02:22:43):
Yeah, exactly. I

Andy Ihnatko (02:22:44):
Think they're making a statement about me. It's

Leo Laporte (02:22:46):
About you,

Alex Lindsay (02:22:47):
<Laugh>, I feel, I

Andy Ihnatko (02:22:48):
I feel very, very

Leo Laporte (02:22:50):
Not go. No, no, no. Fine. Andy. And

Andy Ihnatko (02:22:57):
What you think of me proper

Leo Laporte (02:23:00):
Allocution, elephants, elephants,

Andy Ihnatko (02:23:04):
Egg yolks,

Leo Laporte (02:23:05):
<Laugh>. Well, if you forget the name now, <laugh>, you're really not trying too hard. <Laugh>, huh? It's on Amazon about 18 bucks, 19 bucks 1899. The aop usbc, they actually have a six foot as well, but sounds like

Alex Lindsay (02:23:23):
10 count every, all the six foot work. So if you're looking for a long one, like the six foot all work, that, that's not a problem. It's the long ones that the 10 feet and above. And, and it, and again, the only reason I made it a pick was because I've put so much work into it, and it was just like, well, I don't want everybody to have to put so much work

Leo Laporte (02:23:38):
Into it. Oh, this is this is an infrastructure pick. It's very important.

Alex Lindsay (02:23:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I'm giving everyone a break, I promise. Ne next week will be scary again, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:23:47):
Oh, thank you. This is why I started with you this week, Andy and ACO Pick of the Week.

Andy Ihnatko (02:23:53):
This is something really, really handy that's been around for five years that I only discovered three days ago. That's his how some, sometimes these things happen. Google Registry, they control a whole bunch of really bananas top level domains. And they're doing something really interesting with the new tld, N E w. They're using it as a bunch of shortcuts. That's like if you have a web app like like eBay or Google Docs or Microsoft or Microsoft Office Suite you can register a very simple, ooh, I

Leo Laporte (02:24:24):
Can type

Andy Ihnatko (02:24:25):
If, if I wanna create a new Google Doc, I can, I can go docs.google.com, click, click a button and say, create a new document. Or I can just type docs.new in the address of my web browser, and it immediately, it just opens. Google Docs creates a brand new document. If I type, this is cool.

Leo Laporte (02:24:42):
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (02:24:43):
If I type excel.new, I get a brand new Excel, Excel sheet. If I type post.new, I get a brand new post to my word plus word WordPress blog. There are like dozens and dozens of these. A lot of these are borderline useless, not totally useless, but you could see, you would put it in the useless category. You

Leo Laporte (02:25:01):
Mean like blockchain? Do new <laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (02:25:04):
Like like create a new gr there's some of these like sell create a I don't even wanna say what, what is, but like all these, these productivity apps where it's like this thing that you would probably take three days planning and you don't mind clicking three buttons to make this happen. Yeah. But let's say

Leo Laporte (02:25:22):
Sloan new with BankQuest. Yeah. Yeah. That's useful. Sure. Your, your,

Andy Ihnatko (02:25:25):
Your business might be in trouble. If you need a shortcut for getting new loans, that's you. You've got supply chain issues. You've got cash issues. Adobe's

Leo Laporte (02:25:32):
Using it though. Create new Spark, do new and stories do new.

Andy Ihnatko (02:25:36):
That's cool. And, and the thing is, if you find one thing that you do all the time, for me, the number of times where I create a brand new Google Doc, whether it is for a project, like for show notes for something that I'm for for my Google podcast or whatever, or it's just, I need a blank document that I can then dump notes into and be able to access everywhere the number of times that I've done that, like five step process to create a new Google Doc and just be able to talk type docs.new or, or even just create a sh create a, a bookmark in my bookmark bar and just be able to click this one button to make that happen. That's pretty darn cool. It's, again, this has been on for five years and the well that's

Leo Laporte (02:26:12):
Good cause so many people use it. In fact, our sponsor Miro uses it. So you could do miro.new to create a new, a new collaborative whiteboard. So that's cool.

Andy Ihnatko (02:26:20):
And, and, and it's free of course. And because of Google they might kill it at any moment. But for, for, for now, for now we have something cool. There is

Leo Laporte (02:26:27):
A little controversy cuz Google, you know, they have a lot of crazy TLDs is is now planning on zip

Andy Ihnatko (02:26:34):
And, and mp4 and like a lot of like file name extensions. That's good. That, that would make it really, really easy for a bad actor to Yeah, exactly. To create like a malicious website that people think are just, here is an actual file, let's plan it

Leo Laporte (02:26:47):
Before, or let's unzip a file. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (02:26:50):
That's,

Leo Laporte (02:26:50):
I don't, yeah, I I hope Google recants on that because that is security researchers are freaked out about zip. In fact, there is if you, if you're curious about it, there's a, somebody's put together a demo where you go to, lemme see if I can find it. Where you go to a you type in your browser dot something zip and it will download a file and open it. <Laugh>. Yeah. From, from a mo you know, it's not a malicious website, it's a proof of concept, but scary.

Andy Ihnatko (02:27:17):
But who could have foreseen such an abuse of such a simple thing? Certainly not a quaint little fudge company like Google <laugh>, they make fudge Carmel popcorn. They have pies that are seasonal. Really? Oh, they're already doing it. This get up to speed

Leo Laporte (02:27:32):
With.Zip starting at $15 a year. So if you are a, you know, mal factor, here's your opportunity <laugh> Mr. Jason Snell, pick of the week.

Jason Snell (02:27:44):
Last year sometime I talked about one of my favorite all-time iOS games, which is Alto's Adventure. Love it. Which is the, the beautiful soundtrack, beautiful art style left to right. It's essentially an endless runner where you're snowboarding or sand surfing, peaceful, calm, kind of zen, but also challenging if you want it to be. Well, I love that game so much. And yet if you had come to me and said, well, what if you did Alto's Adventure, but instead of flying around or surfing around a 2D space, essentially from left to right, you are in a giant 3D open world <laugh>, and that game is called Leia's Horizon.

Leo Laporte (02:28:20):
Oh, I thought you were gonna sell, say Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Well,

Jason Snell (02:28:24):
You could do that, but if you don't want it to go there, you can, you can fly around the island in Leia's Horizon from Snowman, the same people who brought us Alto's Adventure. It is available. What's the price you say Free for Netflix members? It's a Netflix game, so you gotta log in with your Netflix account. It's available on the app store and the Play store. I've been playing it for the last week. It's so good. <Laugh>. It is so good. It is the same art style, the same kind of vibe, the same kind of chill background music, but in, and, and there are a lot of little references that are in there, but instead of being in this two day 2D left to right, you are a character with these little flying capes and you have different missions that you get to do that involve flying around and discovering this enormous volcanic island with that's full of villages and people. And you can do races with other flyers and it's

Leo Laporte (02:29:16):
Kind of uncanny how much this looks like Zelda than

Jason Snell (02:29:19):
It is Zelda. It is, yeah. It is like a super chill iPad Zelda. So if you wanna do that, like, there's no fighting or anything. It's all about like, fly here or do this or fly over there. Yeah. But it is, it is. I could, I I honestly cannot believe that this game exists because I loved Alto so much, but the idea of it being this three-dimensional flying version but that's what it is. So if you're a Netflix subscriber, you just get this on your device, try, try it out. It the, the tutorial is really well done cuz you got, it's basically just two thumbs on your touchscreen to do all the flying behaviors. So they have a really nice tutorial that walks you through the various gestures in order to fly, and then you just start getting little simple missions and you've, and you learn to fly and you get to fly better and you get more missions. It's really a beautiful thing. Well done. So well done by Snowman. Why is it, why is Horizon,

Leo Laporte (02:30:09):
You know, we mocked it when Netflix said we're gonna get into gaming <laugh>.

Jason Snell (02:30:14):
Mm. They got some good games. There are, there are a few Good, yeah. Netflix games out there already.

Leo Laporte (02:30:19):
Very, very interesting. I mean, I, this is not a pick, but I have to give some credit to Micah Sergeant, we were talking about gaming and he recommended a game on Steam called Timber Born, in which you play a Beaver <laugh> build and you build a, you know, a little beaver community. It's kind of like a, you know, one of these top-down real-time strategy games, like Age of Empires without any combat. So if you <laugh>, so now this will be a whole theme. Combat free versions of games.

Jason Snell (02:30:54):
Oh, they look so cute.

Leo Laporte (02:30:55):
It's really cute. <Laugh>. Yeah. You get to be a beaver and you build dams get pretty angry.

Jason Snell (02:31:00):
You get pretty angry.

Leo Laporte (02:31:01):
You might have angry beavers, but there's no there's no foes

Jason Snell (02:31:04):
Except Snowmans previous game, which is not, does not look like Altos, but it's actually a also a very entertaining game. It's called Lucky Luna. And it is also a Netflix game, so Oh, nice. There's some good Netflix games

Leo Laporte (02:31:17):
And I'm gonna really have to check these out. That's fascinating. Check them out. Yeah. Meanwhile, I'll be building my Beaver Dam <laugh> indeed in Timber Born available for the Mac on. Is he

Jason Snell (02:31:27):
Busy? Busy.

Leo Laporte (02:31:28):
Steam. Busy. Busy, busy. That concludes this thrilling gripping edition of MacBreak Weekly. Thank you Jason. Now we missed you last week, so glad to have you back.

Jason Snell (02:31:39):
Good to be back. Thank you. Yay.

Leo Laporte (02:31:41):
Yay. Go to six colors.com/jason and you will see a remarkable assortment of things Jason does.

Jason Snell (02:31:49):
You can remark on it if you like. I got nine jobs. It's,

Leo Laporte (02:31:51):
I think they're great <laugh>.

Jason Snell (02:31:53):
I work in my garage. I don't honestly how much you

Leo Laporte (02:31:55):
Deserve credit because every podcast you're on is great. So and that's a, I can't, I can't even say that. There's the incomparable, there's six colors podcast, but then you just

Jason Snell (02:32:08):
Robot or not

Leo Laporte (02:32:09):
Total party Kill, did you see there's gonna be a d and d a cable channel coming. You might want to get on this.

Jason Snell (02:32:16):
Makes sense. Yeah, I know. Talk Wizards of the Coast call me.

Leo Laporte (02:32:19):
Yeah, yeah. We'll get on there. So many great shows, the Dr. Who Flash cast <laugh>. Sure. There's some doctor section

Jason Snell (02:32:27):
Of anniversary of Dr. Who

Leo Laporte (02:32:28):
Coming up. There's the Dr New, new Dr. Who News, Dr. Nu who coming up Sure. The power of the doctor. You haven't done anything on that in a while. Might want to, might want to bring that one back.

Jason Snell (02:32:38):
I, yeah, it's a recap show. Like, like the like the UL and Hello is our Star Trek recap show. It's just after the, after the episode is on, then we give our review of it. So Doctor Who is in a, like a little gap right now, but they're coming back for their So Gap Yeah. 60Th anniversary of that show. And so I won't shut up about it, but not until November

Leo Laporte (02:32:55):
<Laugh> go to Dr. Who.New to find out more. No, no. So no. And then this is we were talking about streaming earlier and you mentioned Julia, this is the show you do with Julia Alexander. No relation to Jason Alexander downstream breaking down the business of binge watching.

Jason Snell (02:33:11):
Yeah, that's a good one. Coming back this later this

Leo Laporte (02:33:14):
Week. And I love Tim Goodman. I have to listen. Yeah,

Jason Snell (02:33:17):
He was a, he was my little guest. Yeah, he, he used to do a podcast together and then he sort of moved on and left the, left the business and is now doing a sub, but but he was a, Julia was traveling, so we got Tim on as a guest and that was a lot of

Leo Laporte (02:33:29):
Fun too. He, he, I always would read his reviews. He was really good. Go to listen to his, read his CK That's cool. Yeah. Six colors.com/jason. Thank you Andy. And Ako WGBH is calling, when will you pick up?

Andy Ihnatko (02:33:45):
I am off this week, but I'm gonna be on next Wednesday at one 10 in the afternoon. I can go to WGBH news.org to listen to it live or later. Actually, I was, I was also up in the crack of 8:00 AM this morning to be <laugh> to talk to Bob SRO on WGN Radio in Chicago. So if you wanna listen to what I said there again I was, I was not, 8:00 AM is, oh my God, that's, that's farmer's hours for me. But, but still, I, I did get through the summary. Go to WGN radio.com/bobs or just go from the top, you'll find it. And my my segment is

Leo Laporte (02:34:16):
Just broken out right there. And you can listen to it right there. Thank you. Great to see you always. Thank you Mr. Wonderful. Al. Alex Lindsay, host of Office Hours. Do you call yourself the host of Office Hours?

Alex Lindsay (02:34:33):
I don't really call myself anything. I, he's the

Leo Laporte (02:34:35):
Creator of and a participant in a fantastic series. The, the Shadowy, the shadowy Svengali like figure <laugh> working in the background today. Live camera and lens tracking for virtual production. Wow.

Alex Lindsay (02:34:51):
Well, and yesterday was the business of theater. So we had these incredible folks that work in theater talking about what it takes to actually make theater work, you know, and, and the business of those processes. And what you have to think about. Today, you, today we had live tracking with Nick Jian from Drexel University. So we're Oh, nice. Coming in from the studio at Drexel walking through different technologies that they use to track Wow. Cameras tomorrow we have Kelo Hearts, which is a they make a program called Faceplant, which just kind of amazed me. It's a synthesizer that they it's a great

Leo Laporte (02:35:21):
Name <laugh>. It's,

Alex Lindsay (02:35:23):
And it is crazy. It it is. It's a synthesizer. What I saw is someone demoed a helicopter taking off and flying away with a synthesizer. And and, and I was, and it just sounded real. And I was like, okay, I have to have these, I have to figure out how this thing actually works. And then we've got guys, I don't think we can say exactly where they're from, but they're very, very, very high end H H D R guys coming on Thursday. <Laugh> Nice. You know, my Michael dra, DN and Drezek and Jim Toin, they work on big H D R projects. And so they're gonna be talking about glass to glass, what it takes to have HD r get to your screen. On Saturday, we've got the pedagogy wheel with so as we're doing some education before we move to, again, this, this the summer, we're going to, to all accessibility for a couple weeks. So can't, we're

Leo Laporte (02:36:10):
Excited. Wait, can't wait for that. Office hours.global. Doug Wood says the second hour is really good today, by the way. Now is really good. There was a deal. Not all hours. Go on YouTube. You can watch the YouTube videos, but if you wanna participate, you should go to Office hours.global and join so that you can go into the Zoom and and listen to all the hours as it were. Yes. If you wanna hire Alex, and I bet you there's a few people who could use your assistance <laugh>. I was watching a game the other day saying they didn't hire Alex <laugh>. It was Google io. Actually, they didn't hire Alex. I was thinking the exact same thing. They shoulda have hired Alex. 0 9 0 Media. That's his day job. Thank you, Alex. Thank you Andy. Thank you Jason. Thanks to all of you who joined us.

(02:37:01):
Both live and on demand. The live version of the show. We record it at 11:00 AM Pacific on Tuesdays. You can go to watch the stream at live TWI tv or listen, and there's streaming audio and video there. If you're watching or listening live chat, live at irc. Do twit do tv. That's our chat room. Open to all web browser works. Irc twi do tv. Of course. Club Twit members get special Velvet rope access in the club. Twit Discord. Be a member. Join the Fun after the show is over, there's on-demand versions on the website, Twitter tv slash mb w You can also, when you're there, click a link to go to the YouTube channel that's dedicated to MacBreak Weekly. Another way to watch or get the RSS feed and add it to your favorite podcast. Oh, look, what am I doing there? Am I, am I I'm holding something. Holding. Oh, a logo. A lights. A light's gently on your hand. Look. A Disney princesses. That's the new Daddy Care. Plus I'm offering to all my children. Yes, only children may apply. <Laugh> and DNA N test required <laugh>. Thank you everybody. Oh, look. Oh look. Golia is hanging out with Dr. Who That's pretty, you have a lot of Dr. Who pictures the disc. Dr. Dr. Who pictures. You poke the bear.

Mikah Sargent (02:38:20):
Leo, you poke the bear.

Leo Laporte (02:38:21):
Now you're the here're coming, the pictures. Big mistake in the discord. Thanks everybody. Have a great week. But now I'm sad to say it's time to get back to work cause break. Time is over. Bye-Bye.

Mikah Sargent (02:38:34):
Oh, hey, that's a really nice iPhone you have there. You totally picked the right color. Hey, since you do use an iPhone and maybe use an iPad or Apple Watch or an Apple tv, well you should check out iOS today. It's a show that I, Micah Sergeant and my co-host, Rosemary Orchard host every Tuesday right here on the Twit Network. It covers all things iOS, tv, os, home, pod, os, watch, os, iPad os. It's all the OSS that Apple has on offer and we love to give you tips and tricks about making the most of those devices, checking out great apps and services and answering your tech questions. I hope we check it out.