MacBreak Weekly 878, 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. Andy's here. Alex is here. Jason is here. We're gonna talk about some interesting stuff. There are rumors. We'll have the usual rumor report. We'll also talk about a reorg at Apple. How long will your new Mac be supported? The answer may surprise you and shocking news. Apple TV's messy introduction was hit with audio problems. But Jason calls it, it's a stupid story that you get stupider as you go <laugh>. We'll talk about that and a whole lot more. Coming up next on Mac Break Weekly. This show is brought to you by Cisco Meraki. Without a cloud managed network, businesses inevitably fall behind. Experience, the ease and efficiency of Meraki's single platform to elevate the place where your employees and customers come together. Cisco Meraki maximizes uptime and minimizes loss to digitally transform your organization, Meraki's intuitive interface, increased connectivity and multi-site management. Keep your organization operating seamlessly and securely wherever your team is. Let's Cisco Meraki's 24 7. Available support. Help your organization's remote, onsite, and hybrid teams always do their best work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit

Speaker 2 (00:01:23):
Podcasts You love From people you trust. This Is twit.

Leo Laporte (00:01:32):
This is Mac Break. Weekly episode 878. Recorded Tuesday, July 18th, 2023. Chided Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. If you're hiring, you're currently dealing with <laugh> Crazy Economy, which adds to your challenges. Thankfully, there's a hiring partner who's focused on you and your needs. Ziprecruiter, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day. Try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/mac Break and buy a c i Learning it. Skills are outdated in about 18 months. Launch or advance your career today with quality, affordable, entertaining training individuals. Use the code TWIT 30 for 30% off a standard or premium individual IT pro membership@go.acilearning.com slash twit. And buy HelloFresh 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/mac, break 50 and use the code Mac Break 50 for 50% off, plus free shipping. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Apple and on the news beat this week. It's the Usual suspects. Hello, Jason Snell from six colors.com. Good to see you.

Jason Snell (00:03:10):
I walk the beat every day checking in. Hey Mrs. Mcintosh, how are things going on The, how's Young Newton doing in school? And then I moved down the street and out in front of the bar. I'm like, oh, here's iPhone and iPad. What are you guys up to?

Leo Laporte (00:03:26):
When I was a kid, there was a,

Jason Snell (00:03:28):
It's part of the job, part of

Leo Laporte (00:03:29):
The job, a TV show called The Whistling Policeman. And he had a baton, which he twirl, which is actually in hindsight, little threatening. And it, and he'd whistle and he'd go around through that exact thing he'd beat. Cover his beat.

Jason Snell (00:03:41):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (00:03:42):
Why do they call it a beat? Is he beating his feet on the street? Maybe that's it. Andy Ihnatko probably knows he's a wordsmith and appears regularly on W G B H in Boston. Hello Wordsmith.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:54):
Thank you very much. I haven't keeping up my guilds dues. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:03:58):
Are you in the

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:59):
Wga? No, I'm not.

Leo Laporte (00:04:01):
I am SAG aftra and so I'm leaving right now. No, because I think because first of all, I'm in, I'm I'm on a bance because it was for the radio show. And as soon as I retired from the radio show, I said, I don't wanna pay dues anymore. It's like 300 bucks a year. And I said, can I just be on a band? And they said yes. So maybe I don't have to strike. And secondly, we're not as signatory. So I, I wouldn't be striking, I'd be striking myself.

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:28):
I mean, I mean, just to, just to be safe like Jeff, like you should probably just do this like as Jeff Myers, not as your Leo La Paul

Leo Laporte (00:04:36):
Character. Oh, hi.

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:37):
Like, like, like when Calvert Deforest like had to stop being Larry Bud Melman. When, when Letterman went to CBS <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:04:43):
That's hysterical. Cuz they owned Larry Bud Melman. Right. Holy cow. I didn't know that. That's interesting. Also with this Alex Lindsay, he's a video Smith. Hello. We do nine zero Media is his day job. Well, I shouldn't even say that. He spends some time there, but most of the time he's at office hours.club. It's still my day job. It's still my day job. It's his day job. It's

Andy Ihnatko (00:05:05):
Still a solid, a solid full-time job on top of the other

Leo Laporte (00:05:07):
Full-Time. Yes, exactly. He's got two. That's the key. Yeah. was this an error or just as we, we came on the air? I was told that Big Sir was updated in a <laugh> in a, in a release candidate. What? I don't understand.

Jason Snell (00:05:29):
Oh, would be a, a security update if it's, if it's anything. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:33):
Yeah. So public betas are out now. They came out, in fact, I think as we ended the show last week and I put it on my, I put I foolishly put it on my iPhone, iOS 17 <laugh>. It's a few things don't work, but it's not bad.

Jason Snell (00:05:48):
I don, I, I look, I have written many paragraphs over the years, warning people in various ways about not installing betas on their main systems because they might regret it later. And I'm kind of over it now. Apple certifies this as a public beta, right, right. So Apple is like, yep. Oh, go to it if you want. And so, you know, I, all I've reduced it to is check to see if the thing that you depend on for your livelihood, make sure that that still runs beyond that. If you want to get the stuff early and you're willing to deal with a few bl bugs, go for it. Have fun. Apple says it's okay. Basically <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:06:20):
A few of my widgets went blank and then I re-added them and they came back. And just a few little weird things like that. Yeah, yeah. It's good. It's a good thing. Also I iPad OS 17, I should do that. Cause I have a couple iPads and now Sonoma is out, is out in in its public beta as of July 12th. Same thing, same rule. I guess so. Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:06:45):
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:46):
All right. It's the develop, it's the developability you wanna stay the hell away from. Yeah, right. But yeah, apple, the fact that Apple of all companies is saying, this is a public beta, we want everybody to see this. It means that they really do want to get the value of as many people as possible trying it. But although, although what Jason says is absolutely true, like don't at least wait a few days to find out, like to read the news to find out, oh, well it turns out that it's works. The only apps don't work with it are the kinds that, that take keyboard input. Other than that, it's solid. And so if you've got projects that involve keyboard input, you might wanna stay away from

Leo Laporte (00:07:19):
This one. <Laugh>. That's by the way, just a a, that's a hypothetical, right? There is an actually I keyboard problem, just so you know. Yes, exactly. Exactly's a

Alex Lindsay (00:07:26):
Hypothetical. And, and what's what's great is ever Sinces app, it has definitely been much more stable since Apple has made these public betas. It's been now quite a few years, but it used to be not that way. And then everyone was a beta tester when they first got it <laugh>. So you're beta tester now, or you're a beta tester after release. I think from a production perspective, I've gone back to thinking that my, the, the production release, like where I'll put it on my computer is somewhere in January <laugh>. So

Leo Laporte (00:07:49):
Like Yeah. But you Yeah. You're actually doing work. I'm just sitting around looking at

Alex Lindsay (00:07:53):
My phone. Yeah. But I think that for my, my home computers I haven't, I haven't dived into the beta too much, but we, we have seen people, I guess there's a lot in the camera, like camera effects that are just built into Sonoma that have surprised a couple of folks. Yeah. In virtual meetings. Cuz you do a, you do a gesture and suddenly all this stuff happens and it's not based on like a Zoom camera. It is in the actual Apple camera, and it doesn't appear to be limited to the camera. That's like on your laptop. It's like, it, it's managing the web cameras. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:08:21):
So I'm using the Opal camera, so not a camera that is from Apple, but what Apple is doing in Sonoma, and by the way, there's Backrooms has a really nice post in their forums that is people, it's like a wiki post where people are putting in what's broken and what's not. Most things are not broken. But anyway, so it patches into your camera. So it says, oh yeah, this is, this is your camera. But what it actually is, is like your camera passed through Apple's software layer and then back out to the third party apps. Right. So it can modify it, including doing all of those reactions. So, you know Yeah. Theoretically if you're, if you do a third party reaction, yeah, there we go. You're gonna get it. And this is a third party camera doing it and it does it anyway. That also means your third party cameras will get the Studio Light Effect. Will get the portrait effect, like all that stuff, because Apple is taking it in through its video pipeline, analyzing your video, finding like subject detection and all of that, doing layered 3D effects behind. And they're a, they're able to do all of that stuff dynamically. So that's a thing that we can do now. It's pretty amazing.

Leo Laporte (00:09:23):
Here's the Mac rumors form. If you go to the forums, go to iOS 17, you'll see these W Wiki posts and you can go to, for instance, iOS 17, all the little things <laugh>. That's really a nice feature. I like that. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:09:36):
And if you find something that's broken, so they're, they're, yeah, they've got these supported unsupported apps post on Mac Rumors for macOS

Leo Laporte (00:09:42):
14. Oh, okay. That's a good one

Jason Snell (00:09:43):
Too. Yeah. And that's, that's the post that will tell you before you, you know, will the, the mission critical thing that I absolutely need to have or I will lose my job. Is it there or is it not there? And so it just, it's good. Like if you rely on Audio Hijack or you rely on crossover or something like that you know, you might have some issues, but most people won't.

Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
Yeah. Very nice. So this is the article and I thought it a little odd, but I had checked the date in, and it is July 18th, 2023. <Laugh> Apple Issues release candidates for iOS 15.7 0.8 Fi I iPad os Mac os Big Sir and Monterey. So you think these are like I why would they they're they're bigger than just like the, the rapid update security responses. Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:10:30):
But they they are. So Apple is committed. There's actually a really good article which Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:10:34):
We're gonna talk about that. That which remember

Jason Snell (00:10:35):
Yes. Oh yeah. About, about the idea of like how long is a Mac on the on, on the o os update train, how long does that last and when will the last Intel max fall off of it? Andrew Cunningham. Yeah. And Apple's policy is basically a Oh yeah, it's an R story, right? That's right. Yeah. So basically the idea here is that you're on the train for a while and then, and then you fall off of it. And what happens is you don't fall into the wheels and die. What happens is your Mac on, on its old os that it can't update from is still updated for a couple of years for not features, but for like security fixes and maybe compatibility fixes. So they, they keep a longer stretch. So if you're too back on So Big Sir is a good example where Big Sir is getting close to, closer to the end, but it's not at the end yet.

(00:11:21):
So they'll do ultimately, you know, you'll take Big Sur and Ventura and big Surs is one back now about to be two back. Right. And then so you get your moment. It's back now. I think it's is Monterey in between, so it's Yeah, it is. Right. All right. So Big Sir is basically, this is fixing the fixing to die pine him for the furor. It's release big Sir <laugh>. But it means that if you can't, if you're running a Mac, that can only run as far as Big Sur that's, that's kind of way back and you still are protected. But once once we ship you know, we get our Sonoma in the fall, big Sur then goes into the parked permanently category, but you'll still have Monterey and Ventura. So it, it, it's a nice feature that, I mean, as somebody who occasionally buys these Google pixel phones and then like the next year they're like, not for you <laugh>, and, but Google you made it. Apple tries to stretch it out. But it does vary as the Andrew Cunningham story pointed out that sometimes you can really luck out and you're supported and on the main OS for a very long time. And other times not so much

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Actually. Yeah, I was surprised that there isn't a set policy because Google has now done that with both Android and and encourages all Android developers to do some sort of commitment as to the number of years of well updates. And, and Chromebook are technically have I think eight years. So if you buy a new Chromebook today, you're guaranteed eight years from it. Well, and this is the thing, not from the day you buy it from the day of its release. So if you buy a three-year-old Chromebook, right, that's gonna give you five years windows is pretty cl Microsoft's pretty clear about each version of the operating system, you know, 10 years to end of life. And then, but Apple is, and this is an interesting article, I was very interested in Andrew Cunningham's maintaining a spreadsheet on how long each Mac is being supported.

(00:13:04):
And it really does vary. The average Mac gets 6.6 years of Mac OS updates that add new features, another two years of security only updates. Right? But that's not always the case, depending on the Mac, the shortest lived Mac is the 2008 version, the white MacBook, which only got 2.7 years of that macOS updates and another 3.3 years of security updates. So I guess you could say, well, we're pretty sure we're gonna have six years and we might have more. And then if you transition like from Power PC to Intel or Intel to M one, that changes things a little bit too. So this, I I would, I would recap this article if I could, but it's, it's, it's kind of hard to see a trend here.

Jason Snell (00:13:49):
Yeah, it's a, it's a great article. Andrew does really, really

Leo Laporte (00:13:52):
Good work. He over there article about this. He did stuff. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:13:54):
Yeah. And, and this is, this is a great example of him doing the math and following the updates. And I mean the, I think what the Apple does have that policy, but their policy is, you know, your, when your Mac finally is not able to run an update, you've got essentially a couple more years before the security updates don't happen. It's not like your Mac D stops working, but the security updates stop. And I just changed a server out that was running Mojave, right? So I was already off, I had fallen completely off at that point. It still worked. It was just increasingly difficult to work with it cuz all sorts of new features were launching that there are a bunch of features this fall that are coming to notes and reminders where if you've got a device that's not on the latest, it basically says it's not gonna see this note at all.

(00:14:37):
Right? It's like it's just, it's gone. You can't see it anymore. So there's a lot of pressure that Apple's putting there. But the bottom line is, you, you usually are gonna get, you know, a, a four or five years where you're on the main line of updates and then you'll get a couple of years Grace where you, you know, you won't be on the latest and greatest, but you'll be safe and protected. And it's, it's not bad. But I mean, the d the variance is if you buy a model that's been hanging out for a long time, the clock has been ticking while you haven't had that computer. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:15:06):
We also know because of things like open core legacy patcher, that you can often run older versions of the OS on a Mac even though Apple doesn't support it. Oh yeah. So it, I think this is the question, is it planned obsolescence or is it a, is there a real technical reason for this? Of course. We should say nobody expects a company to support anything indefinitely. There comes a time when you just don't wanna devote resources to it. But it is a legit question if Apple's doing this prematurely,

Jason Snell (00:15:37):
I don't know. I think their track record is that they've been doing this. I'm always surprised in the last couple of years they had some big changes with Apple silicon and with the 32 bit thing. But like, I'm usually very surprised at how many max Old Macs are still supported when they do an update. They, they, they seem, it looks to me like they only migrate them off when there's a real technical reason when they have to dump them off and not just because their clock expired. And you see that where when a raft of systems goes, you're like, oh, they're all like this. They all have this thing that they don't have and they've decided to drop it. So I think that they try really hard to keep things on and when they do dump something off and you can do a patch and get it running, generally it's because it's kind of janky. Or it, it is a, a missing feature and they've just decided they're gonna say no. But I think they try to be aggressive. At least that's my, my impression is that they try to keep Max on the current version as long as they can. Is there any

Leo Laporte (00:16:33):
Reason they don't make a commitment of some kind, like as Google has with the Chromebooks now, by the way, Google didn't for the longest time and had the same kind of weird update schedules. Can we get Apple to

Alex Lindsay (00:16:45):
Do that? I think it's, I think it's based because it's not based on time, it's based on what feature set that they're building into it. Right. And whether they can, so it's unpredictable support it. So it's just kinda like, well we can't, you know, that's, I think that that's the Yeah. And, and again, at some point I think that they just have to say enough, you know, like you can't keep on looking into the past. So I think that they, they do keep it going cuz the, the current os also works. So remember it's not like it's four year old computer. Something that can run Big Sur is something that goes generally further back from Big Sur by years. Right? So also, so it's

Jason Snell (00:17:19):
Don't the, the, I think they're changing how they approach this too, because it used to be much more like new features come and everybody gets new features and over the last few years they have changed to a model where you've got an older Mac, they, you get the new update, but these three features don't work for you. Right. And that's especially happened with Intel Max, but it's not just Intel Max. They do this thing where they're like, you know, you need, here's a new feature of Sonoma, but these Max can't use that feature. You can use Sonoma but not feature. And it makes me wonder if their, their long game is to try to extend the compatibility window as long as they can. But,

Alex Lindsay (00:17:57):
But keep reminding you that life could be better. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:18:00):
And rolling out new features that they're not gonna support on those old systems. So your, your system is supported, but the new feature's not supported.

Andy Ihnatko (00:18:06):
Also, this still a competitive market that I know that the app market for Max is separate from pretty much everything else, but every time that a computer is bricked, like every, every time a computer becomes useless to somebody and gets replaced, that is a window of opportunity for that customer to buy something else or for have for them to have someone to talk them into buying something else. So it ever very much behooves them to make sure these things have as long a life as possible. And if Apple doesn't make explicit promises about how long they're gonna be supporting their hardware, it's because they have a really great track record. I think all, I think all of us have that, that one like sort of mutant like off <laugh> like a really, really old Mac that's still like it's in the kitchen because it looks nice and it's good enough to run a browser and to play YouTube videos. Whereas Google on most of their products, particularly Chromebooks, they really have to promise school systems that Hey, if you're gonna be buying 500 of these Chromebooks, we promise that you, you, that the, the, you will be still getting security updates until this date and then we're, it's not gonna be ended any, any earlier than that. So that's, that's, that's pretty damn good.

Alex Lindsay (00:19:10):
Yeah. And, and I mean I'm still, I got a 2012 right here, Mac Mini <laugh> still Oh yeah. Cooking away, you know, providing some webpage for me. And, and you know, and that's the thing is that it doesn't really brick, it just means that it is not up, sorry,

Andy Ihnatko (00:19:22):
Anymore. Right. It means meaning that meaning like you can't, you can no longer, it's, it no longer does the thing that you need to get done on this because Right. Update updates to to APIs mean that you can't get the latest version of Ulysses or whatever word processor you're using. I mean, but yeah, I, I've got a 2011 like Intel Mac Mini on the other side of the office that as soon as I replace it with like an M two <laugh>, I, I thought I'm gonna not gonna get the M one, I'm gonna wait for the M two. And now I'm like, oh, the, them might be able to get a better one if I wait for the M three, but as soon as like I replace it, this 12 year old or 13 year old or 14 year old, this Rate Mac is going to still be like, it's, it's still gonna be a server. It might become a dedicated Plex server because it's still pretty good. It's pretty nimble at what it does. It just, it's I just can't use it for the thing that I do every single day.

Alex Lindsay (00:20:06):
Right. I think actually one of the big challenges Apple's gonna have is that the M one s and M two s have so few moving parts and they are so power so much more powerful than what most people buying them need. Like, I'm just amazed at how much an M one will do on its own that the upgrade path for that could be very, very, very long. Like

Andy Ihnatko (00:20:25):
Apple already

Leo Laporte (00:20:25):
Learned that with the iPad in a similar situation, didn't they? People don't upgrade

Andy Ihnatko (00:20:30):
Their

Alex Lindsay (00:20:30):
Ipads. I, I'm getting ready to finally get my kids some new iPads, but they've had the fir the Pro first Pro one, which was 2015 or 2016 and they've been happily using that since it was released. And, and it has to do with, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the, and this is where Apple I think could maybe improve things, is that the app developers are just not doing anything that pushes the hardware that, you know, like the, you know, that they're not getting to a point where they're reaching the hardware limit.

Jason Snell (00:20:56):
It makes me wonder if in the Apple silicon era we might see extended compatibility if one of the reasons they're shifting to this, like, you get it, but not all of it approach is that maybe Apple, Silicon Max will stay on the latest version for a really long time. Yeah. But with some features as they come in that they're like, mm, not this feature for you, but you get to stay on. And I would love that because what that means is that you're on the mainline security update flow and you're, you are on the APIs that everybody expects, which means your software is not gonna degrade and, and your iCloud stuff isn't gonna partially break. Cuz some systems are, you know, all that stuff stays the same and it's just that oh, that wizzy new video effect isn't there. Yeah. And that, I think that would be a much better approach, like keep people on the main line without some of the features that don't work as well or that require a bit of hardware that wasn't in the M one but is in the M two. Like I I, I hope that's where they go with this so that like even five, six years out, they're still on the main line even if they're missing some of the marquee features.

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:59):
Yeah. There, there is one area in which I think Apple could improve that again, they build, they build the hardware so damn well that they have these machines that are 10, sometimes 15 years old that are still like, I have an iMac that is 15 years old that I would love to find a use for. I'm running I'm running Chromos on it because it's the easiest thing to do with it. I wish that they take, took the extra effort to make it really, really easy to like locate old versions of operating systems and do clean installs on older Macs that that predate that really cool. Just, Hey, just hold on a button and we'll be able to get you going via, via network. It's not true for everything. It used to be there was at least like an FTP site that, you know, if you, if you do the secret handshake, you could download and make an installer media for pretty much anything that's, that has an Apple logo on it. I don't, apple doesn't have to do that no long, no more than like, GM has to support a 1950s car. But it would be nice given that they, they do have machines that they don't look like they were made out of animal skins and twigs. They're still very modern and still capable and so long as it runs a web browser pretty spritely. It could be super, super useful in the kids' room or whatever.

Leo Laporte (00:23:07):
Yeah. I mean Andrew makes a point that you could always put, you know, Chrome os on an old Mac or Linux, but he also says it would be kind of nice <laugh> if you could keep these things running Macco as for a little bit longer as you said, like as as a server and things like that. Linux is, I mean, look, I guess if you wanted Linux you should start with Linux. Yeah. And if you buy a Mac, you should assume, well, you know, I'm buying a kind of a premium product that is gonna be obsoleted in six to eight years.

Jason Snell (00:23:38):
Yeah. Except, I mean, I think we're overstating it. I really do. Like I I was running that ma that Mojave server, I think the security is an issue. So like running something and actively using it and doing your email on it and browsing the web and all of that. But there are lots of other uses for these things that are on your local network. You are not actively using them, you're running them as a server or you're just writing documents and all of that and they don't stop working. I mean, I could literally write articles. I couldn't browse the web. That's the point.

Leo Laporte (00:24:05):
Like the hard work I can write

Jason Snell (00:24:06):
Continues forever, forever, forever. Write iMac back there. Yeah, yeah. Right. But, but at the same time, I mean, what what broke most of these old computers back here is actually the introduction of mandatory SSL on every website because they don't support it. And so you need a proxy and it's too bad. But otherwise, like Word, word four runs great on that five 12 that I've got back there, <laugh> and, and Word five will run excellently and I guess Word six never ran excellently, but it ran on that iMac G three back there. Like they still work, but like you do give up the the security app, the internet,

Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
You give up, they're,

Jason Snell (00:24:41):
You give up. Well, in, in this case, it's like the exploits in your safety on, on little slightly more modern ones. It's your safety for a little while, but it's not like they aren't usable. And honestly, unless you're a target, it's probably not even an issue for your safety. And keep in mind, after you fall off the train, you've got a couple of years of security updates on top of that.

Leo Laporte (00:24:57):
And, but then also, and we've seen this, we've seen this with Windows too. And then the browsers start to say, oh well we're not gonna support this older version. Yeah. So really, yeah, they're still usable as long as you don't, as long as you air gap them from the internet.

Jason Snell (00:25:11):
That's kind of it. Which is why server is a great use. And also like server's

Leo Laporte (00:25:16):
Not great use or something. Oh, unless, oh you mean like in house only room remote access in-house Yeah. Server, something like that. Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:25:22):
Actually, actually server would be a good use cuz you could probably, you'll probably be able to do a home brew update to Apache forever. That's right's True. It's just you don't, you wouldn't want to use that to Yeah, that's to, you know, go out browse piracy websites or something like that. You'd probably be in trouble.

Andy Ihnatko (00:25:34):
Then actually side side note I'm, I, I keep reading up on trying to keep current on, on the hack OSH movement, and that's one of the greatest successes of Apple silicon is that it made hack aching a lot less necessary because hey, now we've got, we've got the really super hot fast wings. But one of the other things that it does oddly enough is you can hack OSH a Macintosh to run <laugh> like a later operation of the operating system than what Apple supports. And that's definitely not for the faint of heart, but it's an interesting application of of what shouldn't be an outdated technology.

Leo Laporte (00:26:06):
Well, and that's also the open core legacy Patcher Right. Which is do you can't I, I haven't played with it. I should probably. But I'm one of those guys who gets rid of the old stuff and just uses New Macs anyway, <laugh>, it's

Jason Snell (00:26:19):
Fun. Yeah. So, so Leo, I it

Leo Laporte (00:26:20):
Would be fun, but you can't patch it once you do that open court, can you, what, what does that, what does that mean now in terms of using that Mac? I can go online obviously, but I should probably not take updates from Apple or is that not the case? I don't know.

Andy Ihnatko (00:26:34):
I don't know.

Jason Snell (00:26:35):
Like some of them update as normal and others, if hack Atosh experiences any indication you would basically run the update and then repack it, you have it, you'd run the update and then, and then attach that drive to another system and run the patch on it and then, and then update It depends on how, how bad it is. But I, I mean here's a a thought experiment that I haven't even considered, but I'm just gonna throw it out there, which is when will an M one MacBook air fall off the update train completely. And you know, putting this in perspective, I wonder if it's like in the 2030s right? Or maybe late 2020s, but like, I don't know, like an M one Mac I could see it's, I I think could go into 2030s. I I,

Leo Laporte (00:27:15):
Okay, so this is though, that's the point, point is that Apple may say, well, yeah, but people aren't upgrading, we're gonna have to ob you know, obsolesce these, even though technically we don't have to. So

Jason Snell (00:27:26):
Counter argument would be the iPhone where Apple has shown great success in traded programs and in growing their install base by getting people to buy new systems, bringing old systems back, or handing them down and increasing the total number of iPhones in use. And you could make that same argument for Max and Apple. Silicon Max is the people who wanna buy a new Mac will do so, but if that M one Mac is still viable, it can go to someone else. And now the Mac market is that much larger. Right. And I think they do want to do that to a certain extent. Interesting. I I don't think Apple's at the point now where they feel like they have to obsolete their computers because there's no growth potential, right? Because remember Apple's market share for the Mac is still so small that I think Apple really does believe they can pick up a lot of new users. And maybe one way you do that is by getting a refurbed M one MacBook Air for 6 99 in the hands of people who were never gonna buy a Mac otherwise. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:28:20):
Jamer B do we we have old Intel Max lying around, right. We use those The thing running your stream deck is the thing running my stream deck is, and it's Eric, it's not on the internet, it's just sitting there. Yeah, no, it's Do we have some that you can't update? Like they're stuck on Snow Leopard or Oh yeah. Or big sir. Yeah. Yeah. And but we don't, and we don't put those on the internet. We just Well, they're internal to our system. They're internal. They might not connected. They're on our network. They're on the lamb, but they're not on the interweb. Right. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good use for it. I got a little mini stream deck here attached to, it's an old Mac laptop, right? Yeah. Because this is the problem in the company where we're a Mac, pretty much a Mac company there's a lot of old, you know, in Min Mac Minis and MacBooks lying around.

(00:29:09):
We had a bunch of 2015 MacBook. Boy, I really wanted to keep those running forever. What year is this one? 2013. 2013. I'm running myself right now. Unbeknownst to me a 2013 MacBook <laugh>. What Poor soul had to use that. Well, look, anybody want an old Mac mini? See, I, I am at the point now where I don't even wanna buy anything with Intel and it even in a Windows PC anymore. I got Yep, I got I got one of those. Yeah. And you got, you got three of them. If it's, if it's a, these are, by the way, you know how we use these set dressing <laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:46):
Actually, if I, if I had, if I had that many, and, or like if I, if I was at the m MIT flea market and someone had a box of them that I could make an offer for, I would use them as like shelving supports, like cinder blocks. Oh yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:29:56):
That's a good idea. And

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:57):
Use that to support like my servers. And that's

Leo Laporte (00:29:59):
A great idea. Would you have it, you'd have it poured out, right? Look at those ports. That's when a computer was a computer. Probably.

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:06):
I, I'd probably, I'd probably alternate levels.

Leo Laporte (00:30:09):
<Laugh> where? Oh yeah. Ports out ports in. Yeah. Yeah. Ports out. Ports in. Ports out ports in. Look at that. Yeah. I just need, all I need is a is a door and I've got a, I've got my work station <laugh> or, or a speaker stand. Look at that. There you go. It's like that. Yeah. Perfect. Oh God. You could

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:25):
Hollow it out and use as speaker enclosures.

Leo Laporte (00:30:27):
Oh my, my god. Some really good drivers. <Laugh>. It just, it hurts me a little bit. It, it, it's, it's not just Apple, it's everybody that we make these devices that, because they're solid state for the most part, they're just never gonna wear out and they're just gonna end up in landfill. And it's ki I mean, it's beautifully machined aluminum and it's beautiful thing.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:47):
I would say a lot of my machine, a lot of my stuff I still use a lot. <Laugh> good. Like, I mean old stuff. Good. You know, I don't, I don't Good on you. You know, like I have, I have an old Apple TV that I have updated that I travel with. It's just one of my older Apple TVs, but it has all my, it doesn't, it works just fine. And you know, when I went to the shore a couple weeks ago, I just literally plugged it into the, into the, into the system. And now I have my system. Yeah. <laugh>, like I don't have to Yeah. You know, like I don't have to deal with their, the Blu-rays or whatever that's at the shore, you know, at the, at the rental house. And, and so the thing is, is that,

Leo Laporte (00:31:17):
Are you going to Jersey? Where when you say I'm going to the shore, Cape Cod, we went a

Alex Lindsay (00:31:22):
Couple weeks ago. I went to Cape Cod. No, I went, my family goes to haters.

Leo Laporte (00:31:26):
Oh, it is the shore. You're going down the down the we

Alex Lindsay (00:31:29):
Went, no, we went, we got

Leo Laporte (00:31:30):
Back the Barrier Island barrier

Alex Lindsay (00:31:32):
Show.

Leo Laporte (00:31:33):
That's great. But that's cool. You all went to hat. Look how this is yellowed compared to this one.

Alex Lindsay (00:31:39):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:31:39):
Yeah. Yeah. That's not good.

Alex Lindsay (00:31:41):
White is hard. White is all, you know, white plastic is super hard to keep white <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:31:47):
It

Alex Lindsay (00:31:47):
Doesn't stay that way. White. You shouldn't buy

Leo Laporte (00:31:50):
Think. I think probably it's my face makeup that's getting on it, to be honest. How how old is that? <Laugh>? Oh, what's, I don't know. What is, what is it? This one's got like, is burned on the bottom. <Laugh>. I dunno where this was. Was it? Oh yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:32:02):
It's an in, let's call that an Intel birthmark. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:32:05):
Is that thet in from where the chip, the processor was. Holy cow. This one's so old. Has a VGA port on it. Ohs old. That's, that is really old. Dvi or Oh, is that, is that, or is that like dvi? No, it's dvi. You're right. And Andy said dvi. I you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even thunder.

Andy Ihnatko (00:32:25):
A dongle for, for v g

Leo Laporte (00:32:27):
Thunder Bowl.

Alex Lindsay (00:32:27):
It's still the same. Is it still the same vertical? I mean, not vertically, but is it still the same size?

Leo Laporte (00:32:33):
Yeah, it's identical. Which is his

Alex Lindsay (00:32:34):
Technical Yeah, it's still stack.

Leo Laporte (00:32:35):
Oh, not as the new new one, but as the o as many of them. No, the new one isn't this shape. No,

Jason Snell (00:32:42):
This foot, the footprint is

Leo Laporte (00:32:43):
Larger than the new ones. They're bigger. It's like

Jason Snell (00:32:45):
Little bit bigger and little bit

Leo Laporte (00:32:46):
Pancake thin pancake. They flattened it a little bit.

Jason Snell (00:32:48):
Yeah, they smooshed it. Now Is that the pro This is the, yeah, this is the high end of the last Intel. Min Mc. Many that I've gotten in my hand here, 2018. So still viable other than, you know, I was keeping up Mojave, but that's cuz I wanted to have a 32 bit compatible version. And I was stubborn <laugh>. I could've just updated it

Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
For your 32 bit

Jason Snell (00:33:07):
In 10 in 10 years. I'm gonna boot it and I'm gonna be like, Mojave, what? <Laugh> It'll be here. I

Leo Laporte (00:33:13):
Love it. <Laugh>. So this, we're gonna put this one aside with a little Intel birthmark. I think that's a, that's a vintage. That is this one. John has been very, you're good, John. He's got it's Mac os lion running on this one. He's, he's made a note of It's nice. Of the os and everything. We'll take a little break. Come back with more Andy and Naco. Alex Lindsay. Jason Snell a great panel. Talk about anything to do with Apple. That's what this show is all about. Our show today brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Now, if you're a small business, your small business is all about the people that make it up. You know that by now, anybody, anybody runs a business knows that the people are the whole thing, the whole McGill. A good employee can take you to the moon, a bad one can drag you down.

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We get one within the first few hours every single time. Hire the best with the help of a partner that's all about you. Ziprecruiter, our special web address will get you a chance to try it for free. Ziprecruiter.Com/Mac break. Make sure you use that so they know you saw it here. Ziprecruiter.Com/M A B E k, ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Thank you ZipRecruiter. Thank you. Thank you very much. There were four of these Mac Minis stream sources. Screw source. Oh, this was stream of sous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Slide. So there is a, so John has just posted a picture of, and did Colleen built this originally? Yes, it was in a little I remember it was in a little like rolling TV stand or something like that. That and you said it was in general? Random. Random. All right.

(00:36:51):
Lemme look at our slack here. Yes. We still use Slack. I'm sorry. Oh wow. Look at this. The this was, and this is probably the one that was burned. <Laugh>. We had, so we had, because we would feed a bunch of different sources, you know, you stream and YouTube and I can't even remember all the different places. Youtube was later. Bit gravity, bit gravity. I remember bit Gravity. Yeah. There were at least four Justin TV and Justin TV before it was Twitch. And so each one of these would have a dedicated Mac that would, we would feed the video into. Colleen built all that. And they were sitting in like a, it was like a tv, one of those rolling TV things. <Laugh>, <laugh>. Those were the days in the early days of of the show. Eight, what is that? 15 years ago? Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:37:42):
Did you find the four? When, when One nice thing about the really old ones though, they're not account locked. Like that's, it kind of stinks that like, oh yeah, you go on eBay trying to buy like secondhand equipment and say, oh wow. M one, M one with one terabyte for only like starting bid $25. Oh, it's a account locked. So it's for parts only. Like, god damn it

Leo Laporte (00:37:59):
<Laugh> and it and Burke says that wasn't a TV table, that was a server rack with wheels. Was it?

Andy Ihnatko (00:38:07):
That

John Slanina (00:38:08):
That Mac mini controls this.

Leo Laporte (00:38:10):
Oh, this Mac, this Mac Mini. The one in the picture. The one in the picture is still working number four. This is number four of the, of the three. I have three that are not working on my table. This is the one that's still in, in, in wor in use. It controls our black Magic video hub. That, that, that thing that has, what is it? 98 in and 189 out or, and we can look at this and it, and it feeds a an Oh, you just turned it off. No, no, it's not locked <laugh>. It's not, it's not locked. It feeds an ancient look at the bezels on this iPad. It's a 30 pin, right? I don't know. I can't, it doesn't, no slide to unlock. I don't even know how that works. Oh yeah, there it is. And that's the, that's the software that's running on that Mac Mini goes video hub and feeds the iPad.

(00:39:00):
So I can, so like if I, if I were right now to like Leo, Leo single, and if I were to tap that and make it point out like outside, it would change it. Oh, this is a lot better than that. That TV stand with the four accent <laugh>. Wow. This how old is this one that's running the video hub? They're all, they came, it was a set, it was a set, it was a set of four. How come one is so burnt up? It must have been on the, on the top shelf where all the heat was <laugh>. Okay. That's why there's three here and one still in service moving along. Got three, get one free. Yeah. Nice. What a deal. Got a coupon. We probably did get a quad pack Costco. That was back in the day. Alex Lindsay, cost Travis was cost cost, managing cost. The downtown apple store. And we would go in there. I remember standing out on the corner with Scott Bourne out on market and whatever that street was. And he had, he had like seven com. He had a a, a dolly with like seven computer boxes stacked up. And I remember standing there, people would drive by and go, Hey <laugh>, hey, what would you just, just buy out the store? Yeah.

(00:40:20):
Apple has done something interesting according to Mark Grumman. I don't know. It does. I don't know enough about Appleton. No, it's a shift away from Steve Jobs approach. Steve had reorganized the company along functional lines, which is kind of an interesting thing to do. You had software engineering, you had hardware, you had machine learning design services. And then according to Germin, contributions from each group would then funnel into new features and products. So in other words, there wasn't a Mac group, there wasn't an iPod group. Steve did that in the late nineties, but Apple apparently is going back to the old bad old days. Is it, are they the bad old days? The Vision Pro headset for instance, has its own now group, the vision group. And and they're kind of responsible for the whole hardware thing. I is this meaningful? I don't know. Mike Rockwell who's a longtime Apple guy is was was running the technology development group since 2015, but it is now called the Vision Products Group.

Jason Snell (00:41:34):
Yeah. It's literally, they just renamed it cuz it's the group that was built building the headset all along. So I'm not sure how newsy this is also the watch was done this way. Yeah. And even now, part of the watch development, the watch software development is still under the group that developed the watch and not directly under Craig Rigi. I think it's overstating it to say, oh, they're going back to the old way, right? Because that's not really what's happening here. It seems like they, they create a group to build a new product and then over time it seems to slowly kind of diffuse back out into the world. But they, they didn't send up an iPhone group or an iPad group or a Mac group. It's more like with a watch, like the software is still sort of in the watch group. The hardware has gone to their hardware group and I imagine the vision os stuff will probably similarly slowly kind of spread out until it makes sense to hand it off. But they do seem, this is like, is it

Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
For secrecy twist? Is it for secrecy that they they partition off the, I mean in their, they probably didn't want anybody to know what, what the vision group was doing back in 2015.

Jason Snell (00:42:35):
I'm sure, I'm sure it was partially for secrecy, but it's also just functionally you got, you gotta ship, you gotta, you can't not ship anything for five years, right? So you gotta ship your iOS updates and your macOS updates and all of that in the meantime. Plus have a bunch of people who are working with their heads down saying, you know, you're not, nobody's gonna see this until 2024. You're just gonna have to work on it. And, and so it, I think it, it serves both purposes, but it's almost like the Tim Cook era is sort of hacking like Jobs was like, we gotta simplify this. And so he did. Tim Cook is sort of like, well yeah, but now that we're launching this new platform, and I don't know how the iPhone was done. I imagine the iPhone was at least initially done very similarly in the iPad. For the watch, they're like, we we're gonna have a group working on the watch and then they will sort of like start to dissolve into the greatness of the big Apple soup. I guess in the middle there, apple soup sounds not very good.

Leo Laporte (00:43:24):
No, there's some delicious Apple

Jason Snell (00:43:25):
Sets and that's what's, that's what's going with Vision Os

Leo Laporte (00:43:28):
To, but it's made with Apples not, not Vision Pro headsets. <Laugh>.

Jason Snell (00:43:31):
No. That wouldn't make a very good Yuck. Yeah, yuck. Do not eat iPad. Do not, do not eat it.

Leo Laporte (00:43:38):
Gogerman writes, if the vision products were developed in standard Apple fashion, the software engineering for the headset would've been led by Craig Federighi and his software engineering organization. The hardware would've been developed alongside Apple's other devices under John Turn, the content arm would be with Eddie Q's services. So, but it makes you know, I think Tim Cook, you could, you could safely say is an operations genius and if he thinks it's gonna work better in a different way, do it that way. Steve, remember that Steve went, you know, came back to, or actually before he left, apple raised the pirate flag on a building down off in the corner of an Infinity, one Infinity and, and developed a Macintosh completely separate from the rest of the company. Yeah. And so that might be his heritage more than it is the right way to do things. Yeah. And, and of course that was his sticking the thumb in the eye of the Lisa

Andy Ihnatko (00:44:30):
Group, right? This was like, we're gonna steal everything from, from every other project. Right. And that, and that was, and that was like a, a model that kind of was sinking Apple just as a, it was weighing down Microsoft and other companies where you have the heads of divisions that basically consider themselves as independent fiefdoms, right. And scrambling to, to remove resources from other divisions because they feel like, hey, if this other division gets an extra 12 million, that 12 million could have been to me. I need to undermine their work as much as possible. And that's simply not the culture at Apple. So that's not, it's not alarming. It's interesting, one of the famous, most famous things about Apple's management structure is that every, you know, every week you have the weekly meeting of like all the division heads, basically doing a, a wrap, doing a, a state of the, a state of the company on all the different product developments.

(00:45:18):
And basically there is no one division holding onto all of their ideas that at least at the, at least at the very, very highest level there is con there is conversation between different parts of the company so that if one decision made by engineers or made by a manager is going to impact another product or another thing or another schedule that gets born out really quickly and settled. So yeah, I don't think it's a big deal. It's, it's, it'll be interesting if the, if upcoming projects products took on this mo this model. I don't think it will. Gerin says

Leo Laporte (00:45:50):
That the, the self-driving car team has run this way too. They're kind of a standal standoff.

Andy Ihnatko (00:45:55):
And that's, and that's another product. That's another product that has no schedule. It has no agenda. They don't know when it's gonna be let, just like the, the VR headset was, the Apple vision was going to be, we don't have a, we don't have a target for it. Even when we released it, it's not really the thing, it's the thing we're releasing because we need to release something. So maybe that's just the simplest way to get things iterate really, really quickly and get done the things you need to get done without feeling as though Yeah. We had a car conversation with Josh and he was saying he saw a really good sketch of a car with like an extra wheel on the back and we could make that a gps. Like Yeah, that has nothing to do with anything we're working on. Should sit down, shut up, go away. Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:46:30):
There's a fine, I mean it's almost like a, what's the sound of one hand clapping kind of thing, but like, what's the difference between going to Craig Federighi and saying, we're working on a thing. I need you to create a group of your best engineers to write the software for the thing. And they will work in secret, but technically they'll be, they'll report to you, but a dotted line to me. But they'll report to you and saying, we set up a group and got a bunch of engineers that are in the group and Craig will check in with them because it's all based on iOS anyway. So of course Craig is gonna be involved. Like, I I I feel like this is the way Apple is structured. It's kind of a distinction without a difference. You need a, a dedicated team to work on a future product. It's gonna be not distributed to everyone cuz they're gonna want to keep it a secret. They're wanna want to focus those people. But you can't, you also can't, like the way apple apple's assets are laid out, like it's all gonna be based on iOS. If they need a framework change, the framework engineer is gonna need to change it. Right? Like they, so they're all kind of working, but there's gonna be a subgroup that's working separately. Does it matter where they are on the org chart? I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:47:35):
I'm sure there are many management theories and books have been written about the best way to handle this. You, you nailed it, Andy, when you said it almost killed Microsoft, that they had these fiefdoms. That's definitely what you don't want. So it, so I'm sure there's some sort of, there's a lot of theory behind this and I'm sure this is the

Alex Lindsay (00:47:54):
State of the I'm, I don't think, I don't think apple's probably immune to internal disagreements about how to execute something <laugh>, you

Leo Laporte (00:48:00):
Know, so No, but good leadership resolves that rather than letting you know, the, the, you know, the story of Microsoft was the Windows team wouldn't let office come out on any other platform. I mean, there was, there was all sorts of this, right? You know, shooting at each other. That famous cartoon of, yeah, <laugh> every, every division of Microsoft pointing a gun at the other division.

Alex Lindsay (00:48:21):
Well, and I think that there's an advantage to having a team that is, let's say, 85% contained from a security perspective, from a lack of, you know, bureaucracy perspective. But that last little bit, you, the, the, the danger is again, that not only is it people competing with each other, but it's also just not knowing what the other ones are doing. When the, when the Cannon the Mark two came out, you know, it was 30 frames a second, not 29, 9, 7. And they, and someone asked like, why is it not 29 9? Why can't you do 29 7 on this camera? Well, the still camera division was not allowed to talk to the video camera division, right? They didn't know anything about 29 97. They just knew, well, 30 frames a second seems good. And and so those are the kind of things that you get when it gets too vertical. But I think that you can get into a ton of like, where is this engineer gonna work today? And who is he working for? And you know, and, and, and things get slowed down because someone's get, you know, you're pulling a hand shared resources in like six different directions sometimes.

Leo Laporte (00:49:18):
I have a man of the an autographed copy of Mano Cornets, a famous org chart cartoon on my wall in my home. And you could see Microsoft, all this, all these little groups pointing guns at each other. When he did this some years ago, apple had a center, which the Red Hot Center was Steve Jobs at the time and everything. You know, everybody reported to Steve Jobs <laugh>. That's not the case anymore either. No company can run that way either. So yeah. All right. So I'll continue on with, as long as we're doing the Mark Urman segment. I will continue on with the Power On Newsletter app. He says New Macs are gonna be coming a little more detail. Remember, he was the one who said they're working on an iMac 4 20 25 that is bigger than 30 inches.

(00:50:07):
But a little more detail on what Apple might be doing this year. He guessing, I think, I don't know if he has a source on this, that they'll be Mac launches in October. Featuring could feature, he says the first max with M three chips, don't expect high-end MacBook. Pros or desktops do expect, and I think this matches the cadence that they're on right now. Perhaps an iMac, but certainly a 13 inch MacBook Air and a 13 inch MacBook Pro with an M three chip. I made a note to myself the other day. You may not buy another Mac until it is an ol led MacBook Pro with an M three processor, but that won't be his fall, I don't

Alex Lindsay (00:50:51):
Think. I don't make myself those promises.

Leo Laporte (00:50:53):
<Laugh>, I have to do it, otherwise I'll go, oh, that's nice.

Andy Ihnatko (00:50:57):
And I, the heart wants what it,

Alex Lindsay (00:50:59):
The

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
Heart wants, what it wants

Alex Lindsay (00:51:01):
Another Mac.

Leo Laporte (00:51:03):
So it's really, the note is more like, Leo, don't buy another one. Cuz that's one of the big rumors. And I like that idea of I wanna, I think I, I had a 13 air and a 15 Air is my current, and I'm thinking the 14. I look at Lisa's 14 inch MacBook Pro with envy in my eyes. I just

Alex Lindsay (00:51:21):
Don't know how you live with one computer. See the problem when you get, when you get the laptops <laugh>. So when I do, when I do my presentation, I, I have this presentation I have to do a lot right now. And there's like four computer I got. I got one Mac Studio and three Mac, Mac Minis, and all of them are necessary.

Leo Laporte (00:51:35):
How do you keep 'em in sync? Do you have a, a tool that keeps them all doing, having the same documents? Or is everyone unique?

Alex Lindsay (00:51:42):
So what I jump on Zoom with right now is my Mac studio. So that's what I'm talking to someone in. But then I have one computer that's my telestrator. So that does this part, right? Oh yeah. That just does that, that, that

Leo Laporte (00:51:53):
Little fancier operation than I do.

Alex Lindsay (00:51:55):
And then I have another one that does the Power Does Key keynote. So it just does the, the presentation. So I can always cut to that, you know, so I can cut to the presentation. And then I have another one that runs any kind of app or webpage that I want. And I'm looking at buying one more. So I have another app app system. But what's nice about it now is if, when that all runs into like an Atam Extreme, you just sit there and just cutting between them, drawing over top of 'em, I can split screen between them. I can, you know, do all those other things that it makes good presentation <laugh>. But I, but I couldn't do it. I kept on getting them because I trying to get, like, cuz a lot of things wanna take over the whole screen. And so I was like, oh, I just, it's just better to just put 'em on a different computer. So I don't have any, any of those things. But it's, it, I I will say that the Mac, lots of Mac Minis makes especially now makes everything run really nice and smoothly.

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:42):
So what you're saying, Alex, is that in, in your digital world, your romantic relationship is a polyol?

Leo Laporte (00:52:49):
What's Apol? Okay, you better? I don't know, I'm now I'm feeling ignorant.

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:55):
Any polyamorous relationship? The people who are in that relationship? The, I only, it's a, it's, it's, it's a newer term are referred to as, as a poly, where there's, there could be different levels of of, of emotional

Leo Laporte (00:53:09):
Connection. You might have a throttle, you might have a quintuple, you might have a sex topple. Okay, I have

Alex Lindsay (00:53:15):
A, yeah, I'll

Leo Laporte (00:53:18):
Don't, yeah, just stop right now.

Alex Lindsay (00:53:20):
I'm gonna stop right now. I was gonna, I was going with that, with,

Leo Laporte (00:53:25):
It's creating a space of love and honesty. It's just, it's just a, it's a harem of max, you know, like harem. There you go. A max. I've got a harem. Maybe not that. It's not a polle, it's a harem. There you go. You're only gonna get yourself in deeper. That's all I can. I know. I'm gonna

Jason Snell (00:53:40):
Stop now. I'm,

Leo Laporte (00:53:43):
Huh? Okay. Okay. Moving right along. Let's see, with the germin segment. Should, we should get a little bumper or something. And now we,

Jason Snell (00:53:56):
Yeah. On upgrade we call this rumor roundup and we got some art and we named Mark Gurman the sheriff. And you know, you just gotta go

Leo Laporte (00:54:02):
With it. Oh, this is good. That's

Jason Snell (00:54:03):
Good. He's the best in the biz. Get your own idea and like, oh, you can't have a rumor roundup, but

Leo Laporte (00:54:07):
Yeah, same thing. Alright. Tune in the rumor Roundup. Yeah, because I have mixed feelings cuz rumors are not news. So I have mixed feelings, but I have to say, we're getting into August right now and it's, it's gonna get harder and harder to put shows together. So rumors.

Jason Snell (00:54:22):
So, and is it a, I mean, I always think it's, I call 'em reports instead of rumors. Honestly, I prefer that because Germin is so well sourced and he's, he's not wrong. Like he's always right. And when he's wrong, he's wrong because it was true at the time. And then they changed their mind, right? Like it's, he's, his accuracy is, it's as close to perfect as you can get. And so, you know, if you want to know what's happening next, I mean, yeah, we get, we all do the Mark Gurman segment. We all do it because he, his sources, he's a, that are that good. He's the one, yeah, him. And with a little sprinkling a Ming Chi quo in there. Yeah, there you go. Supply chain. That's what you got

Leo Laporte (00:54:55):
M quo for spice. He says Germin does. I wouldn't expect any major upgrades on the iPad until the M three iPad Pros with OLED screens Tasty. Arrive next year, do expect perhaps an iPad Air update is in development. He says. And I think that completes the <laugh> rumor roundup. Basically

Jason Snell (00:55:19):
M threes in the, I feel like the M three in the fall thing is the one that I took away from his whole report is like's

Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
What I, I'm excited about now. I, I,

Jason Snell (00:55:25):
We got a timeline

Leo Laporte (00:55:26):
Now. I'm really, I I think we, we've talked about this, the M two was really kind of a, a almost just a, a slight upgrade over the M one, kind of an incremental upgrade. But the M three, going to the three nanometer process, you could expect to see a bigger performance jump. We talked about this last week. Right? Or am I wrong or is that just,

Jason Snell (00:55:48):
It's a die shrink, so it should actually be a much more, it should, it should be better. Substantive improvement in power and power Efficiency, yeah. Yeah. Theory. It'll

Leo Laporte (00:55:55):
Also be in short supply cuz TSMC is cranking 'em out as fast as this little machines can. But they've already said that, you know, Apple's bought up the entire production. Yeah. Samsung unpacked, we should mention, given you know, there, there is no folding Apple phone yet. Google's got one. There's several companies making 'em, but the big one is a Samsung phone and the Samsung flip, they expect, we expect they will announce new ones on the 26th at 4:00 AM Pacific time. Now, if you now, Andy, Samsung just sent me an invite. You could, if you're close enough to New York, you could go at 6:00 AM in New York and they've got breakfast items. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:56:39):
That's the, I i, I might, I might be awake for that because I can take like the red eye train. Get get there. There's, there, there's like all kinds of 24 hour diners. Sleep. Sleep on

Leo Laporte (00:56:48):
The train. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:56:50):
Have, have a big breakfast. Be nice and mozy. By the time the, by the time the event starts, they

Leo Laporte (00:56:54):
Say you will get to play with whatever they announce, which is expected to be the Galaxy Z fold five and the Zed flip five. And Germin says fresh tablets, multiple smart watches, potentially a new version of the Galaxy buds. I will, I think I'm gonna buy a, a flip five. I really liked the flip. That's the little one that's like a pocket square, right? That unfolds. I just happen to have in my pocket a pocket square. That it's a pocket square that unfolds and <laugh> becomes a phone. Have you seen the apple anti-apple horror ad that Samsung put out? Did you see that?

Andy Ihnatko (00:57:38):
Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a little bit of a reach

Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
<Laugh>. It's like, if you see it, you gotta hide your eye. It's like the ring or something. Right. If once you see it, you won't, you will have to buy it. And so this is this is the short version. Well, lemme see if I can find the actual Yeah. This is somebody reporting on it. Let me see if I can actually find the it's a parody of like those movies where they're at Samsung Gala at the campground, YouTube

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:06):
Search for Samsung Galaxy. Join the flip side.

Leo Laporte (00:58:09):
Join the, join the flip side. And that was pretty cute. This is their it's cute.

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:17):
Sam, remember Samsung is the, is has been the company that has always been like the attack dog against Apple. Like they're the ones who said, oh, well they're, we have a, we have a headphone Jack, apple doesn't, that's by your losers. And we're winners <laugh>, just don't ask us about whether we're gonna have a headphone jack and our phones next year. <Laugh> just year after year after year. Like that.

Leo Laporte (00:58:34):
So, so she's telling you can turn on the sound way

Speaker 7 (00:58:37):
To stop it. Switch committed to their current device. I was like, this

Leo Laporte (00:58:42):
Dumb. Oh, I got some other audio going on. Huh? Hold on, let me find the other audio. I don't know. I don't wanna care. I don't really care. Forget. I don't care. I don't care. Oh, I'm running two different versions of the same commercial. Now You can, now you can do it. So she's now seen the flip phone and she says, get out. Get out. They're hiding their eyes. They're running away. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:07):
They're running across the beach. What's going on? Something wrong. It's a Lakeside camp. Lakeside Camp <laugh>. I just saw, I don't dunno.

Leo Laporte (00:59:16):
Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's definitely like a that's crazy. But I'm te you know what it <laugh> now I want one.

Jason Snell (00:59:25):
Did somebody run through and say, wait a second in this ad, are we the zombies

Leo Laporte (00:59:30):
<Laugh>? Hmm. Yeah. Really? That's a good point. Real, it's a very odd, it's like, you don't really want this thing is, but you're gonna be sucked into this. You know, you're gonna get zomba fine. Is that really what Samsung wants to say? I don't know. I dunno. Yeah, I think I I I think they, if they were gonna do a horror movie, they should have done Poltergeist <laugh> where like, it's, it's the extra say, come here. All are welcome. Walk toward the light, all are welcome. There is peace in the light. I kinda like this one. And then at the very end, her phone rings. She's got one in her pocket.

(01:00:14):
Does see, I'm terrified there's a Samsung product. Yeah, that's a good point. It may not, maybe not. You're, you're p you're ping your device is probably pinging my phone and we're getting my location and sending it to Samsung whom I don't trust. Maybe not what they, what they wanted to communicate. Yeah, I can It's Samsung's interesting. Well, well shot. Yeah. And at least, and at least it wasn't, at least it wasn't a, here was a story of a young young girl who fell down a ravine and hit her. That was a true harsh story. Yeah. Yeah. But thankfully she has an Apple phone. She has survived. You thinking about that poor girl <laugh>. You got the spooky fog music as you're trucking into the site of the accident. Apple, the worst thing about those was they brought the actual victims back to the scene of the crime. So it was like they were re-traumatizing them. Yeah. That bothered me more than the, I I hope that <laugh> I hope that they got more than like a, a year of Apple care. Yeah. For free out of this. Yeah. I hope that they, I hope that they got some money. Apple's TV plus mls paradise. A little bit rocked by the messy debut. It was a live stream. Did you watch You're you're a, you're,

Jason Snell (01:01:26):
I I didn't, not the debut, the the press conference where

Leo Laporte (01:01:30):
They him Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That he was going to this

Jason Snell (01:01:34):
Story is so dumb, Leo. Yeah. This story is so dumb. And, and if you read it, you get dumber as you read it because it's like, this is obviously a black eye for Apple. And it's like, you know, they did a, they did a press conference and a pounding rainstorm and it didn't sound, it sounded a little muffled shock for 20,

Leo Laporte (01:01:50):
For like 28

Jason Snell (01:01:51):
Seconds. Come on.

Leo Laporte (01:01:52):
The thing is, is that they like, so, but it's not a damper for the relationship between MLS and Apple. Oh my God. Yeah. They're gonna, they're gonna, it's not a blow to Apple's attempt. It's to demonstrate

Jason Snell (01:02:02):
It in the sense the rain is making a damper. That's damper.

Leo Laporte (01:02:08):
Okay. Well, the guy who wrote it, Malcolm Owen is Welsh. So I think maybe a little Welsh hyperbole snuck in.

Jason Snell (01:02:13):
It's a, it's a UK content farm kind of story. It's, look, this is the internet now you gotta, you got, you get, you got a nugget of fact and you gotta spin a whole story about it. Yeah. So you're like, oh, and this is obviously their relationship is now on the rocks and this, the, it questions the whole messy deal. And No it doesn't. No, just get over it. No, it doesn't. I mean,

Alex Lindsay (01:02:30):
The, the, there was, there was about, there's about 30 seconds, 28, 30 seconds of a lot of crowd. Obviously what they were trying to do was mix the crowd in so you'd feel the energy of the crowd. So they're trying to mix it in Didn't work cuz it's raining and there's a whole bunch of mics that probably work. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:02:44):
I see that happen all the time. Even I remember a Grammy Awards where the mix was so bad. I hated the music. I mean this,

Alex Lindsay (01:02:50):
Well, that's the, the issue, the issue also live

Leo Laporte (01:02:52):
Broadcast that

Alex Lindsay (01:02:53):
A lot. It's raining a lot. And it's like, that's like from a live perspective, while having a bunch of people walk out with a bunch of mics out in the, in the rain is not something that you want to see. And, and it is something that you're like, oh, this is gonna be ugly. And, and so there was a lot of a lot of, you know, it's a very difficult stream as someone who does a lot of this. What they were doing was very difficult to do Well. Most people just decide, Hey, let's go do do it inside. But they already had a stadium full of people to do this with. Right. it's, it's one of the reasons I try to avoid outdoor streams like the plague <laugh>. So, so the and so anyway, the, so I think that rain is, is a problem.

(01:03:34):
They were obviously trying to do something with the mix. They very quickly related to it. One of the things we do, a lot of times we do pre-show, the reason we do pre-show is so that we can do all this correction before the, the main person comes out. Right. And obviously they didn't have much of a pre-show. They wanted to do a big launch. Right. We didn't have all that energy at the beginning. And that's the danger of doing that, is that you have to make that first 30 seconds. But it sounded like the first 30 seconds or 45 seconds, they had it corrected to a reasonably good given that it was raining to a reasonably good level. But, but I think that that was, you know, it, it, it literally was seconds of, of stuff. So what Jason said, I, I looked at it and I was like, oh, I'm always curious what ha what happens, right? So I went and looked at it and I was like, okay, whatever.

Jason Snell (01:04:11):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:04:11):
Yeah. You get, you get dumber as you read it says Jason Snow. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Alex Lindsay (01:04:15):
His

Leo Laporte (01:04:15):
Poll quotes are, it's a blow to Apple's attempts to demonstrate it's a competent broadcaster. Oh,

Jason Snell (01:04:22):
Sure it is. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:23):
And numerous tweets. Numerous tweets. Twitter. Yeah. Right. There's the attempted. As soon as you see numerous tweets on

Jason Snell (01:04:30):
Anything, oh, someone on the internet is angry. Watch out. Someone on the internet is mad. Yeah. Look, I it's hard out. It's hard out there. Apple Insider did this. Like we've all seen it. Yeah. I mean, there was just a story the other day about how some Hollywood director was taking on a big piece of intellectual property from the past and that literally the people involved were like, that's not true. It's like, it's tough out there. You get a dollop of something. Right. Somebody forces you to spin it into a whole big story. It may, it leads you down the path where you're injecting analysis. Like this is a blow to Apple's attempts to demonstrate. Like, come on, it's not, but like, I get how hard it is out there writing things on the internet to get the picked up in a search, whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:05:07):
This is kinda what we were talking about last week with the in, you know, the perverse incentives for YouTube broadcasters.

Jason Snell (01:05:13):
Exactly. It rained,

Leo Laporte (01:05:15):
It rained, it was muffled.

Jason Snell (01:05:16):
Hey, in Miami, who could have foreseen it?

Leo Laporte (01:05:18):
I did get an email in Miami email from Black Magic complaining about our coverage of the Linus tech tips coverage of the Apple marketing misfire. They wanted us to issue a correction. <Laugh>, I'm not gonna correct Linus mistake <laugh>. I wanna point out,

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:38):
Ah

Jason Snell (01:05:39):
Linus said that Black Magic couldn't replicate their tests. Is that not true? It

Leo Laporte (01:05:43):
It, yes. It says during the original, this is from from a PR person at Black Magic. During the original Linus Tech tips video, they claimed that Black Magic designed and attempted its own testing and had replicated Linus results. This is not accurate. In fact, Linus has updated the video and provided a correction in their pinned comments. We understand you and your guests did not have the proper context when discussing the video, but it would be possible to edit those sections to remove these, the misinformation or add a disclaimer. I am going to do what we would normally do, which is correct it a week later and say, I guess black Magic did not ever do any benchmarking of Apple

Jason Snell (01:06:26):
Products. And that was, in fact, that was the most damning little bit of that entire story I thought, is that they got a third party who made the tools and they also couldn't replicate Apple's results. Right. Which made it seem super fishy. Yeah. And so for them not to, to say that that's not the case. Yikes.

Leo Laporte (01:06:41):
Yeah. So I stand by my initial comments, which is don't believe anything you see on YouTube <laugh> that was,

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:51):
Although, although it, it, it, there, there has to be at least like a little consideration for how many phone calls, emails, telexes and whatever went between Black Magic and Apple saying that what the, what the hell? Why? Oh yeah. You know, why, why did you know, why didn't you talk to exactly to to this com this, this tester and say you can replicate it. And there's probably, there might, there could been like something with a little bit fuzzy say, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't know if we had the right, the right data. Your, your own like footnotes were a little bit unclear and they, there was an agreement that there was enough, there was enough fuzziness on it. That Black Match could be convinced to tell WiseTech dicks that, that we did. We

Leo Laporte (01:07:28):
Are just out here in the far reaches of Sonoma County and I, but there was such an earthquake at Linus Tech Tips. I feel the ripples just gentle Ripples. And

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:38):
Again, out here when, when the, so when the source itself like Recants, then you absolutely

Leo Laporte (01:07:41):
Report on that. Yes. Kinda leaves you with, yeah. Anyway, so I just wanted to, to be fair to Black Magic. Apparently they never, they did, not only did they not not replicate the, the results, they didn't even do it the testing. So, or something, I don't know. I go, go watch Linus again. Give him some more hits. <Laugh>, he explains it, I guess. All right, little break here as we continue on Apple losing a big court case in Europe. We'll talk about that in just a bit. But first a word from our sponsor, the great folks, well, they really are our sponsors who sponsor the studio. They are the, the naming rights of the East Side Studios a c i Learning. And when we first started doing this, I had to explain, you already know these guys because IT Pro who's been doing ads with us for 10 years.

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He says, I've passed my two 20 dash 1101 on July 1st on the first try. Eager to start 2 20 11 0 2. He says, Wes manages to explain concepts in a way you understand it very well. That's really what's great about the training you get at ACI Learning and those practice labs harmlessly practice all what you've learned, but you can even use them to, to test your own setups and your own configurations. Msps love it for that reason before you go live with them. They have practice exam questions from Microsoft, CompTIA, EC counsel PMI many more, which is great because the best way to prepare for an exam is to take some practice exams. It gets you used to the format, the style, and gives you the confidence. Yeah, I noticed stuff. That's how Felipe passed that exam on the first try. Every vendor, every skill you need to advance your IT career or your IT team in one place.

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Andy Ihnatko (01:12:57):
Yeah, ba basically, this isn't the first time that this, that Apple's faced this in court. Not even the first time in the eu. Italy also instituted fine against Apple and Amazon for a little bit less than that a couple years ago. However, interestingly, they of course, of course both companies fought it and first it was reduced and then it was like passed. It was basically wiped off. But there is still a similar lawsuit happening in Washington State as a class action that I think was last month. Like it was, it was filed in like October or September or something like that. Again, colluding again, assuming making this the claim that Apple and Amazon basically colluded to keep Apple prices on Amazon at an artificial, at an, at an artificial artificially inflated level. I think they were saying that, Hey, this is 10. The prices of Apple stuff went up 10% immediately across the board on Amazon after this happened. The latest action, nothing's happened with it since the last month when basically a a, a judge basically said that, Hey, we're apple and Amazon both wanted to have this, this case thrown out. The judge said, Nope, we, this case is going forward. So now we you get into depositions, you get into disclosure and research. But

Leo Laporte (01:14:06):
Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:07):
New is, they're probably gonna get it elsewhere too.

Leo Laporte (01:14:09):
The Spanish antitrust watchdog said that this agreement eliminated sellers using Amazon's marketplace to sell Apple devices. 90% of the existing retailers were blocked as a result. Honestly, from a consumer point of view, that's a good thing. I want to buy it from Apple and I want to kind of know it's an Apple authorized reseller. So

Jason Snell (01:14:29):
Yeah, they ha they were having a lot of problems and they made this deal. But it is, I mean, on another level it is anti-competitive in the sense that it's crowding the third party sellers off of Amazon. And basically Amazon and Apple made this handshake deal where Amazon gets preferred, but the stuff gets cleared off the store that isn't from the preferred plan. And like I, as a consumer, I think we even said this on an episode recently, like I am more likely to buy a Mac or any other Apple hardware from Amazon now because there was a period that's right where it felt super sketchy.

Leo Laporte (01:15:00):
Now you're getting it from an authorized Apple reseller.

Jason Snell (01:15:03):
But I can see the argument that that was also too big companies sort of colluding to push other sellers off the store. I I can see that part too. But I do think that it's probably improved a lot of most buyers because they can buy from Amazon with more confidence than there was a dark period where you kind of couldn't

Leo Laporte (01:15:21):
Do that. Apple said the agreement was designed to limit the number of counterfeits sold online. You may remember back in October, a similar case in Italy was brought and the with a proposed 200 million Euro fine, it was eventually dropped. So Apple of course, and Amazon will appeal this and who knows what the outcome will be. It's a big fine 218 million in total. Yeah. but they'll they'll flick that

Andy Ihnatko (01:15:49):
Off the outside. It's like a, like

Jason Snell (01:15:51):
A how much they made

Leo Laporte (01:15:51):
I made yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:15:54):
But that's, that's like, that's like when you hear about like some, the, the nephew of an ambassador in New York who just simply, or, or a nephew of a billionaire who just parks wherever they want in New York and just pairs up the parking tickets because not only the, not only the a hundred dollar parking ticket means nothing to them, but like the $800 in fines for not, not paying it doesn't matter to them. So I don't, I don't know whether this is right or wrong. I'm, but as usual, I'm glad that at least they have to defend the actions in court. Cuz that means that if, that means that if, if they're gonna be dissuaded from doing sketchy things, just in general, if they said, well, we're gonna have to talk to a judge and say this was okay, how did we actually structure this deal so that it doesn't do the things that these people are claiming it does.

Leo Laporte (01:16:34):
Yeah. there, the Supreme Court is also in the news, speaking of court actions. Apple <laugh> Reuters says Apple has been chided <laugh> chided, not

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:52):
As bad as they weren't scolded <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:16:55):
Apple Chid by appeals judge as it heads to US Supreme Court in antitrust case says Reuters. This was yesterday US Appeals Court judge criticized Apple over legal arguments. It made as it prepares to ask the US Supreme Court to strike down the ruling that would require Apple to change how the app store payment practice works. Judge Milan Smith of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Apple had made statements in its bid for time to appeal to the Supreme Court. That quote may not be technically frivolous, but that ignore the factual record and the rulings in the case. Smith did GI and two other judges on the panel did give Apple 90 days to file a petition, paused the ruling on payments through apps. Apple plans to go all the way to the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit upheld a judgment that said Apple cannot ban links within apps that direct consumers to payment options outside of the App store.

(01:17:59):
So you know this because if you have the Kindle app for instance, or the Audible app there is no link to push you to the audible store on the web or the Amazon Kindle book store on the, on the web because Apple forbids that. And why would, why would companies do that? This 30% sales commission, if you buy the book on the web, they don't have to give Apple a third. Fortnite sued Fortnite maker Epic game sued of course over this. And this is the one area where Epic won. So Apple doesn't like the Ninth Circuit's ruling, but they did The ninth Circuit did give him 90 days to prepare an appeal before they're forced to actually do this. Anything to say about that? I know how you feel Alex Lindsay <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (01:18:52):
I think, I think it's

Leo Laporte (01:18:53):
You're chiding Apple as well, are you?

Alex Lindsay (01:18:56):
No, I know. I'm just saying that, that it's,

Leo Laporte (01:18:57):
You're chiding epic

Alex Lindsay (01:18:58):
Going through the courts. Yeah. If it, it going through the courts is, is the, is the direction I, I'm much more comfortable with it going through the courts than, than having Congress trying to write some law that will most likely miss the target and cause lots of collateral damage. So so having, you know, it worked its way through the court, I think is, is fine.

Leo Laporte (01:19:17):
The ninth Circuit really did, did like epic's points and not apples. They the judge wrote Apple's argument overlooks aspects of the panel's opinions analysis that are inconvenient to its position. Smith said the Epic's role as a games distributor justified a broad reaching injunction. Smith said competition law injunctions often have incidental benefits to non parties. That's because antitrust law protects competition, not individual market participants. So Apple seemed to make arguments that quote, challenge and imagined panel opinion on an imagined record. <Laugh> did not address the ninth circuit's opinion. In other words, judges, they don't,

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:06):
They have a great sense of humor. The farther up you go up the up the

Leo Laporte (01:20:09):
Ladder there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I wonder when the Ninth Circuit, the reason Smith writes that of course is that's gonna be on the record for the Supreme Court to see. And he and I think Smith is saying specifically you know, this appeal is not based on what we said Scotus, and you should see what we said first.

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:31):
Yeah. It's, I, I'm really interested to see how this one fights out. I think that app, it will, I think that Apple, I think that Apple can make our grants as we have all have about how we shouldn't allow people to decide load load apps. Cuz there are threats to security from there. It's harder when they say, okay, well, how, if you're for, if you're basically saying we either take 30% of your of your book sales, your comic book sales, your game sales, or you force people to download and buy it from from a website, it's hard for them to argue that, oh my God, the security problems of including a link within the app <laugh>. So you go directly to the store. Like it's, it's for the customers. We're worried about the customers. That's why we're doing it. I'm really keen to see how Apple defends that part of it. That's

Leo Laporte (01:21:10):
All. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:21:11):
I I I think that the, the, the defense will be mostly, it's, it's gonna wrap around antitrust and where antitrust, what, what a monopoly means. I mean that's, that's where a lot of this this comes up in, into it, which is that Apple is selling about 17% of the global market right now. And, and less than fif or very close to 50%. And so it's really whether you define the Apple ecosystem as a monopoly, or whether you define it as part of the smartphone ecosystem. So it's really not about, I think that what Apple's gonna argue is it's not really about whether they can't, should or should not do that. If they are not defined as a monopoly, they cannot be forced to open up their store. So the whole argument is gonna, that's what they're going to, I think they're gonna argue is that they're not a monopoly because they don't have a controlling interest of the market. And so I think that that's gonna be the, that's what Apple's gonna push on. And we'll see, we'll see if, and it'll tell us a lot. I mean, the current Supreme Court will tell us a lot about the Supreme Court. If it gets up there and they make a decision whichever direction they go, it can kind of give everybody a sense of where the Supreme Court stands on that, on that process.

Andy Ihnatko (01:22:16):
How much risk can you take with this, with this court in, in place? I think it will, you are right. I think it will swing the needle one way or another. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:22:23):
Saying that

Leo Laporte (01:22:23):
Tim, Tim Sweeney of Epic tweeted his displeasure. That's the place to tweet it. Sadly, Apple's Andy steering rules, that's the, the Andy steering rules are the things that prevented from putting a link putting a link into the, say the Epic store to buy stuff for Fortnite, which both the district court and the Ninth Circuit Court found to be illegal will remain in place as the Ninth Circuit Court stayed the injunction that puts an end to the practice Justice delayed again, says Tim Sweeney.

Alex Lindsay (01:22:56):
It'll be interesting to see if Epic wins. I mean, not by wins, but overall,

Leo Laporte (01:23:00):
This is the only point, right. That Epic won on. Well, they lost on every other point.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:05):
But, but what I mean by this is that in the overall path, did this, this will either be something that was genius by Epic because Right. They make billions because they finally break down the great apple. They make billions of dollars because they don't have to pay 30%. Or it's gonna be seen as Greek level epic failure. Right. Which, you know, Greek Greek tragedy epic failure because epic failure. Because the

Leo Laporte (01:23:32):
Or to put it, they had this really, in terms Lionel Messi would understand a self goal.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:37):
Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:23:38):
It's not the word own goal.

Leo Laporte (01:23:40):
Own goal. Own goal. Sorry. Okay. I'm not a Sager fan.

Jason Snell (01:23:43):
A whoa. To your attempts to demonstrate your uncompetent broadcaster, God,

Leo Laporte (01:23:50):
Numerous tweets complained. Okay, go ahead Alex. You've been chi for your actions. Now. I've

Alex Lindsay (01:23:55):
Been, they had a really cushy relationship with Apple that they, that they burned up. And, and it'll be interesting to see, you know, now that Apple is partnered with Unity Apple's building a lot of other bits and pieces. Now if the headset doesn't go anywhere, then it probably doesn't matter. But if the headset turns out to be the next platform that really is big on, on Apple's side, I don't think that Apple is giving unreal Orick any special treatment <laugh>, you know, and probably the least it's kind of minimum effort you know connection to, to Epic. And so that's, that may you know if again, if they, if they, they may have cut their, because the crazy thing is the vision platform is exactly what Unreal is built for. And so to be kind of essentially shunted out of it is is is, you know, may have turned out to be a really expensive mistake.

Leo Laporte (01:24:44):
Yep. The actors are out now along with the writers. And that means in about what, six to eight months TV's gonna suck <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (01:24:55):
You know, here's the problem. Here's the problem with it is, is that there's so much in the back catalog for the streamers. The real challenge with this whole strike is that TV will, will, the TV will stink, but in, but

Leo Laporte (01:25:09):
Netflix and Prime and all that stuff, Netflix

Alex Lindsay (01:25:11):
And Prime and Apple, we have so many, I'm, you know, we're watching so much back

Leo Laporte (01:25:15):
Catalog finally a chance to catch up on all those shows you missed. People

Alex Lindsay (01:25:18):
Will, I just don't think that people will feel it or change their subscription behavior for years before they know. That's interesting. So there's nothing there, because this

Leo Laporte (01:25:27):
Wasn't the case the last time the writers struck so, right. Because they is a big difference, isn't it? Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:25:33):
And the problem is, is that the, that the primary people that they're st that they're striking against are the ones that can last the longest. And the market that still pays them is the one that can last the least longest <laugh>. So, so, so the, so what they may end up be doing is basically shunting the business into, because what we may just, a lot of people may just stop watching TV and watch dreaming because there's nothing new. All there is is reality shows on TV. And, and, and, and what there is is still all these things that we haven't seen on, on all these networks. So that's the, that's the thing that I think is gonna be really you know, I think it's a complicated part of the strike. You know, I think that, I think that what they're striking about is a very valid and very important subject for them to cover because their business is changing dramatically. And I think that they have to reset that. So I'm not arguing with why they're striking. I'm simply saying that it's gonna be tough. It's really hard. It's, it could last, this could last through into next, well into next year. You

Leo Laporte (01:26:31):
Know, happens. It happens means we'll not know what happened in severance for years to come.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:35):
<Laugh>, potentially, potentially, but, you know, has a big race. My my, my, my brother was working on a film for a streamer and they got down to, they had to submit it before the strike for like, they had like two hours left.

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
Oh my God. You

Alex Lindsay (01:26:48):
Know, like Yeah. You know, to get it, to get it in. And, and so they were you know, it was a, it was a close call. Oppenheimer

Leo Laporte (01:26:53):
And Barbie opened today, but the stars of Oppenheimer walked out of the premiere in London a couple of days ago. Right. As soon as the strike was

Jason Snell (01:27:02):
Called at, at midnight eastern, or whenever they went on strike, went home. They just walked out one quick

Leo Laporte (01:27:06):
Class of c champagne and I'm outta here.

Jason Snell (01:27:09):
Yeah. It's a tough one because like Alex said, I mean the, the truth is you are trying to have two parties do a negotiation for the future of this business when they don't know what the future of the business is. True. That's the bottom line. True. Like, I, I get tired when I see these arguments that say, oh, they can't, the, the unions can't hold the streamers to task right now because the streamers are trying to figure out their business model. And it's like, that's true. But also they can't just mail it in because as the business model has already changed, the things that they, that the, the union members relied on for their livelihood has already been swept out from under them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they could come together and come up with a reasonable agreement here. I do kind of wonder if the end game of this is going to be a short agreement so that, because really nobody knows how this is gonna go.

(01:28:02):
And in the end, yeah, I think in the end, the net amount of money in this business is gonna be less. It's just gonna be less. And that makes everybody want to claw as much of it out as they possibly can. And I totally get that. But the challenge is like, we don't even know what the gotchas are right now, cuz we, we don't know what the final landing place of all of these changes in the streaming industry are going to be. So I do sometimes wonder if they're gonna do, this happens in sports, which I'm more familiar with. Sports negotiation is sometimes what you say is, look okay, we can't agree on a five year or a 10 year or a seven year deal here. Let's do three years and come back here. Then we'll keep working under you know, slight changes and then that's gonna expire and we'll both be able to fight over what we want to do. But it's, it's tough because then you're, you're guaranteeing almost another strike in three

Alex Lindsay (01:28:51):
Years. And, and the hard part is, is that for the actors and the writers, as technology moves forward, the the producers have less, have less reason to negotiate with them year. So that, I think that's why they had to do it when they, when they're doing it now, is cuz as AI picks up speed, as the global production picks up speed as these as, as all these other things that these these companies are working on picks up speed. They don't, they, they, they just may be able to last a lot longer. You know? And, and so I think that it's really, you know, it's a, it's a really problematic thing. Again, I'm not not arguing with the, the way why they're doing it. I'm just saying that it's a really hard battle for the sag AFTRA and wga that it'll be a, be a hard one to win. And a

Jason Snell (01:29:33):
Truth of a truth of labor negotiation is once you get something, you never give it up. Right. And that's the ch that's the challenge in trying to say, can we do something in the interim and figure this out later is, is the, the, the SAG and WGA are gonna say, we are dying here. We need to make changes now. We can't push this off for three years. But the other side is like, yeah, but if I give you something now you got it forever. Right. And so that's why we are at this. It's scary cuz this, this could be it's, it's exactly the wrong time for this to happen. Two years ago would've been great for the writers, right? And the actors, two years from now, at least the ground might be a little more settled. But right now it's the worst possible time for this to happen, I think for everybody.

(01:30:15):
Cuz nobody, like, there's nothing like negotiating with a company that is not sure even what it will be in a year. Right? Like Disney is a good example of that. Like, are they gonna sell off their linear, are they gonna get a strategic partner for espn? There's some rumors out there that ESPN might end up being like a joint venture with Apple or Amazon or Google, right? Like that that might actually, oh, Iger is open to that now, but nobody knows. And so like, it's changed so much in the last two years. Would you, if you were an entertainment company, make a deal contingent on what you think it might be? In two years you might, you know, you won't, you personally executive may not even have a job in two years. So who knows? There's

Leo Laporte (01:30:54):
An interesting side to note to this. I noticed this morning that there are some independent filmmakers that are going ahead because they're not members of A M P T P, they're not in the process. They have side agreements. Mark Ruffalo tweeted how about we all jump into indies now? Content creators, creative film and TV making system alongside the studio and streaming network. So there's act actual competition. So that's kind of interesting. You, there will be production, but it'll be from independent producers. Maybe this is an opportunity.

Jason Snell (01:31:30):
It's Right. And they could potentially sell those to streamers those works. Sure. To streamers or whatever because they would be building it on the outside and yeah. I mean it

Alex Lindsay (01:31:39):
Could happen. But the problem is, is the, the streamers wouldn't be, still wouldn't be giving their data data or money <laugh>. It's true. You know, like were, they could be, they could keep on working. So there, there's that out of, out outside of that. But they're not gonna get you know, and, and, and the hard part really is, is that we're getting, I think that the viewer, even my, I watch my kids' behavior, even their behavior is that on things that are commercially entities, they really expect a certain level of quality that's really hard to get as an indie, you know, we're, we're now watching lots of movies that have a hundred million, 200 million, 300 million budgets. And it's really hard to, for an indie to do something that feels like it's worth watching. What's really interesting is, is that kids will go the opposite direction and they want something with no production value in on TikTok or on Snap. Whereas they, so they want no production value there, but when they start watching TV shows, a lot of times they expect something different. Let's

Leo Laporte (01:32:32):
Hope that's all TV has left

Alex Lindsay (01:32:33):
It's production

Leo Laporte (01:32:33):
Value. Let's hope, let's hope that it's not just kids that decide what content gets produced. Cuz that's, that's not a good solution.

Alex Lindsay (01:32:42):
Well, I mean, oftentimes as they get older though, you, you pay a lot of attention to what kids are doing because they Right. They move a lot of markets. And so most people, and

Leo Laporte (01:32:49):
That's why at those markets, we have so many comic book movies in the theaters today.

Alex Lindsay (01:32:54):
Although those are, I mean, I think a lot of times people are really looking at those, that market is getting pretty soft good. You know, it gets

Leo Laporte (01:33:01):
Finally, so

Alex Lindsay (01:33:02):
They're, you know, they're that you

Leo Laporte (01:33:04):
Guys go back to reading your poorly printed four colored pulp fiction magazines and leave the movies to us grownups. The,

Alex Lindsay (01:33:11):
I mean the, the hard part is, is that they don't really know why people, like people aren't really going to anything other than tent pole movies at theater. Right. so, but it's what Tent pole movies, like a lot of people are probably gonna go to Oppenheimer Mission. Impossible missed. Its, it made a lot of money, but it didn't

Leo Laporte (01:33:27):
Do it. Oh, interesting. How about Dial of Destiny, which is gotta be the worst title a movie I've ever heard.

Alex Lindsay (01:33:33):
It also came in Soft. Soft. So, so it's Barbie

Leo Laporte (01:33:36):
Barbie. It's Barbie and Oppenheimer Open today. I I've already purchased IMAX 70 millimeter tickets for Oppenheimer, the best seats

Alex Lindsay (01:33:44):
Barbie

Leo Laporte (01:33:45):
Hammer, the Barbie Hammerer Barbie. The best seats are already gone like for weeks. Right. The, if the IMAX theater that center core where you wanna sit, there's 12 seats. There's 12 seats, there's only, there's only a few really good seats

Alex Lindsay (01:33:58):
If you're gonna pay, if you're gonna pay, if you're gonna pay for parking and popcorn and everything else, there's 12

Leo Laporte (01:34:02):
Seats. Well, you know, I got $2 off cuz I'm a senior, so there's that.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:06):
Oh, there you go. There you go.

Leo Laporte (01:34:07):
I don't like cuz shit too close. Anyway we are about, we're you wanna be center, right? Cuz the sound is, is but you also, which

Alex Lindsay (01:34:16):
Theater are you going to?

Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
This, the Metreon, the 70 millimeter? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we're about five rows from the top, which is not ideal, but it's center. Yep. That's better than nothing. I mean, that whole center, the heart of the theater is all bought out for like the whole run. You know, people, the good jumped on it.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:35):
The good news is, is that you, you it is a hundred a hundred day run, so you can wait for a little

Leo Laporte (01:34:40):
While. Oh. Oh. It wasn't the whole run. Okay. I looked only through August, so. Okay. But

Alex Lindsay (01:34:44):
It might be the, might be the whole run in, in imax. So that might be, that might be the case,

Leo Laporte (01:34:48):
Right? Oh yeah, there's a longer run in regular theaters, but the imax, but you can go

Alex Lindsay (01:34:51):
To, but you can go to Emeryville, which is like the worst parking experience,

Leo Laporte (01:34:54):
But I wanted 70 ever. Christopher Nolan said I should see it in 70 millimeter.

Alex Lindsay (01:35:00):
Oh, there you go. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:35:02):
<Laugh>. And I'm gonna do what Nolan says. I hope, I'm

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:06):
Sure my, I'm sure my phone screen is whiter than 70 millimeters

Leo Laporte (01:35:10):
<Laugh>, you know, honestly, and I suspect this is what the calculus is. I thought mission impossible. Yeah, I'd like to see that in the theater. Dial a destiny. I could see that at home. I'm sure people do make that calculus. Like I saw your, your, your tweets, Alex, you were disappointed. You went to the theater.

Alex Lindsay (01:35:28):
I, you know, I wasn't disappointed. I was just, it was one of those things that I, I wasn't I I have to admit the, what I didn't put in the tweet was that the parking the parking process at the Emeryville AMMC is so frustrating that I'll never go back. <Laugh>. So, so like, it's just, it's like they, they have an app that doesn't work and, and you're sitting there like, I don't care how much it costs, I just don't want to have to spend the next half an hour trying to figure out how to get out of the, out of the parking lot. So the so, so, but, so that was, that took a, that took a chunk out of my, my interest in, in being there. But, but at the same time, the, you know, I felt like it was really good. It was fun to watch on a big screen. I, I did feel like I spent a lot of money on it and I had just watched six,

Leo Laporte (01:36:12):
All six of them. Impossibles

Alex Lindsay (01:36:14):
<Laugh> at home you know, one at one at one, one a day. Not like all at one time. I didn't Were you

Leo Laporte (01:36:20):
Sick at Tom Cruise By Day five, but said, well, I started, I gotta keep going. No,

Alex Lindsay (01:36:24):
I was left with, he's pretty good at what he does. Okay. You know, like

Leo Laporte (01:36:26):
He's guy, there's nobody better running in the world. He's really,

Alex Lindsay (01:36:30):
He's got such great running form, you know, like it's, it's got this very, it's intentional. Yeah. It's very intentional. Like, you know, he's, I'm going to get

Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
There, know he's in a hurry and he's not gonna flag or fail.

Alex Lindsay (01:36:41):
He's really, he's really good at it. And, and he's not like, he's not like Steven Siegal, which you're like, wow, there's something wrong there. <Laugh>. So they like, have you ever watched, he, he, you watched Tom Gru and then watched Steven Steven Segal run and it's just, it's a completely different

Leo Laporte (01:36:55):
Experience.

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:55):
Oh, see, see Steven Segal run No, no, no, no. His, his action stuff is there, there will be, there will be like two scenes in the movie where he gets up from the chair he's in and gets into another chair in the same room. That's where he is right now.

Alex Lindsay (01:37:08):
<Laugh>. No, no, but I'm saying even you go back to the original, you know, above the law or whatever and, and its pretty,

Leo Laporte (01:37:14):
Oh, he runs weird, doesn't he? Look at, look

Alex Lindsay (01:37:16):
At, look at him.

Leo Laporte (01:37:16):
That's not good running. That's bad form. I think probably Tom Cruise looked at this and said, I'm not gonna run <laugh>. Not, not gonna run like Steven's because his arms are akimbo. Tom, he does the karate chop and then, but Siegal, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Arms a kimbo. That's bad. Yeah, it was good.

Alex Lindsay (01:37:40):
It was the arms. I just found that I was like, it was, it wasn't like I was disappointed with the, the film experience was better.

Leo Laporte (01:37:47):
Fairly, this is a super cut of Steven Saal running. I know. And now resting. I'm not the,

Alex Lindsay (01:37:53):
I'm not the only one that's noticed. The, the, the, the, that the running might be a little

Leo Laporte (01:37:57):
Here's Tom running. See, he's got his arm. It's the arms. It's all about the arms pumping. He's good. He's actually, he's working hard. I'm getting there and he has his face going. There's a big difference there. There's

Alex Lindsay (01:38:09):
There's a intentionality there. Yeah. That

Leo Laporte (01:38:11):
Look at him run down the side of a building.

Alex Lindsay (01:38:13):
Even running down the Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:15):
Exactly. He knows how cool Chris Qua will make anything. He does. Look, and he's not gonna waste that. He's not gonna say, oh, I, I have to, I, I can ease off cuz I'm gonna look good no matter what. It's, but if I still give my all, it's gonna look like I am freaking Superman. One of the good movies.

Leo Laporte (01:38:30):
I don't, I don't, yeah. I'm not a Tom Cruise fan, but what

Alex Lindsay (01:38:33):
I will say is that I think that, I think that the, the seven was really good. It's better than being at home. But I think that what I was left with is all in all, like, all the things added up of driving, parking, paying, doing all those things. It, it wasn't that the theater experience wasn't as it was be, was not as good as my home experience. It was better than my home experience. It's great experience. It's just that I'm not sure that, that they, it was worth <laugh>. It was worth the trouble to get there.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:56):
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm totally with you. I saw Indiana Jones was the first movie I'd seen in a theater since 2019. And it was, if I, I enjoyed it. I thought it was a really good movie. But I could imagine that if all I had to do, cause I saw it like in the city. So, but, so all I had to do was like, pay like maybe $4 in public transit fair to get there. I didn't have to park, didn't have to find a parking space. I, years and years ago, I had already broken the habit of buying snacks inside the theater, so it really just cost me whatever. But you're the

Leo Laporte (01:39:25):
Guy. A big overcoat that's loaded with <laugh>. Those Ike and mics and popcorn <laugh>. You know, I got the Juju Bees here. I got the Ikes and mics here.

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:35):
I'm gonna give you a tip. They never, they, they will, they never check for your hump. Like if you're wearing a hump, they're gonna, they're, they don't gonna, they're not gonna wanna prod it to find out.

Leo Laporte (01:39:44):
Good

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:45):
Point. If's actually like squishy or something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:39:47):
Excuse me. Is style of destiny and in theater for just like any of you. <Laugh>. Oh, Andy, Andy, Andy. Actually just put in your fedora. You gotta room me fedora. They're not gonna take your hat

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:04):
Sake. I know. These summer months it's pretty stinky. They're not gonna look under there either. That's a good tip. I'll try that.

Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
My first movie since 2019 will be Oppenheimer, actually the first theater experience. But I'd say, see IMAX is, there's, you can't duplicate that in your home. I have a very nice home theater

Alex Lindsay (01:40:19):
Set. I'm and, and I'm gonna go see Oppenheimer and, and at an imax I have to see

Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
There.

Alex Lindsay (01:40:23):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:24):
Yeah. You wanna join us? I just have to You could sit four rows from the back. <Laugh> <laugh>,

Alex Lindsay (01:40:30):
When are you going?

Leo Laporte (01:40:32):
August 12th.

Alex Lindsay (01:40:34):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:40:35):
That was the, the first time we could get a good Cedar August 11th. I don't, yeah, it was Afri it was a Friday at four 15. I looked at so many seating charts, <laugh>, trying find

Alex Lindsay (01:40:46):
Impossible. The mission Impossible I saw at 10 30 in the morning. Yeah, you have

Leo Laporte (01:40:50):
To, because otherwise

Alex Lindsay (01:40:51):
You get, you gotta find a good

Leo Laporte (01:40:52):
Seats, terrible seats

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:53):
Often wanna be seated away from other people. So that's, I'm still not, I'm still not here for like random crowds in movie theaters who are not masked. I'm, I'm, I'm not here for that.

Leo Laporte (01:41:05):
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(01:43:48):
Plus you made, it makes you feel good. I think you're gonna love HelloFresh. 40 different recipes to choose from every week. You'll never get bored. You'll always find something new to try and love. And then once you've made it, you also know how, which is another good side effect of HelloFresh. Hello Fresh America's number one meal kit. Go to hellofresh.com/mac, break 50 and you'll get 50% off plus free shipping. Use that code Mac break 50 at hellofresh.com/mac. Break 50. You need the code still though. Mac Break 50 for 50% off, plus free shipping. I'm ready. I should have brought something to work. Hello, fresh. I got an email time for the picks of the week. I got an email from Sebastian dewitt, who you all know is the, as the guy behind Hali. He says, it's been a while since we updated Specter, but this is a pretty significant update.

(01:44:49):
Two big changes. Specter, which I love by the way, and I do use, it's for long exposure. So it's one of the things the iPhone can't do without a little bit of help. It does stabilizing the shots. It does it over several seconds so you can handhold it. You can get long exposures up to nine seconds without a tripod, which is really fantastic. I just love the effects of of Specter. So they made the core Specter is free now. I've been paying for it for some time, but it's free now. For the free version, you can go up to three seconds, which probably for most of the time is, is sufficient. They're also introducing a one-time purchase, 4 99 Specter Pro. And that gets up to 32nd exposures, which is, I haven't had a chance to use specter.cam/download, but I'm gonna guess you guys also have used specter. It is a really nice app. And of course Haylight is a must have app as well, but this is, this adds a feature that the iPhone doesn't really have. So it's really nice to have Specter now free with a 4 99 Specter Pro. That's my pick of the week. Alex. Lindsay, what's yours?

(01:46:08):
Oh,

Alex Lindsay (01:46:09):
Microphone. There we go. So I've been doing some, you know, some production with my phone. The phone is really good. The video is really good. The audio is not good <laugh> so, so that, you know, so you're trying to figure out how do I get good audio into the phone. And so one of the things that I've been using is this serum, it's called a Smart Rig plus di. They have a bunch of different versions of this. So this is the one that, let's see, we can put in there. There you go. That, that's what it looks like. And it has two XLR inputs on it as well as a lightning connector. It looks like a

Leo Laporte (01:46:36):
Little, little zoom.

Alex Lindsay (01:46:38):
It is, it's a little like that. It doesn't record, but it does have a nine volt battery. So you can power your mic. So if you've got a powered mic that you want to, or something that needs 40

Leo Laporte (01:46:46):
Fan volt fan

Alex Lindsay (01:46:46):
Power, okay, phantom power, you can put it in. You can you can also set it to either be sending audio in or sending audio out. It's got some, and it also has some eighth inch jacks. So if you have like, the little mics that are there, so it's in, in addition to the X L R, you'll see that there's little, little eighth inch jacks up there as well. And so anyway, it's pretty simple. It's got a quarter 20 on the, on the bottom there. So that, what's useful about that, of course, you can rig it up so you, if you get a rig, I've talked about small rig things from my phone before you can, you can attach this right to your rig. And we've been using these on and off for years. The and so this one's been the most stable of the bunch that, that we've used.

(01:47:28):
And so what it does is it lets you take professional now we'll do everything from a professional handheld mic all the way up to like ultrasonic transmitters and receivers. So we can take electro. We, we, it seems like a lot, but if you're doing something to Instagram or you're doing something to some of the other platforms, they only let you use your phone. And so you can use your phone but still get great audio. And we've piped literally mixers worth of audio back into this to get that audio back in. But you can attach it to a rig and it works works really well. So, and

Leo Laporte (01:48:00):
For only $179 you can add a headphone jack to your iPhone <laugh>. There you go. There you go. That,

Alex Lindsay (01:48:09):
That, that's another, another

Leo Laporte (01:48:10):
Apple, another side. So the only thing I worry about is that it looks like the cable is hardwired into the device. And if Apple abandons lightning, then this is gonna have a short shelf life

Alex Lindsay (01:48:21):
For this one's lightning. There is a U S B C version of this as well. Ah, so you could wait until, if you decide you want to, you could wait with this until the fall Cool. And find out. Pretty cool. You've got a year worth of it. Yeah, but it's, it's great for getting, again, if you're looking for getting professional audio into your into your iPhone it's, it's a, it's a really useful device.

Leo Laporte (01:48:39):
This is the serum smart rig, $179. They do offer. Yeah, yeah. I see they have Lightning Two channel. They also have Lightning One channel. If you wanted to really, you know, just do a a, a Mikey phone or something,

Alex Lindsay (01:48:54):
I'd recommend the two

Leo Laporte (01:48:55):
Might as well splurge. Enjoy. And they also have a type C, so you could use it with your iPad or, or something like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Mr. Andy anco, what's your pick this week? You are muted, my friend.

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:14):
You, sorry. Yeah, mine is, mine is a mystery. I'm recommending something that I've installed but have not been outside yet to try. It is an X is XR slash augmented reality game by Google and TTO tto, T A I T O makes the Space Invaders. It is an augmented reality version of Space Invader for

Leo Laporte (01:49:32):
What? Oh, I gotta have this.

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:35):
You go, you go outside and the space invaders are in the sky. And like, if you're in this a city, they, they slide in and out between like buildings and they know like what the lines of the streets are. So basically follows like the lines of the street. I Does your

Leo Laporte (01:49:48):
Phone go?

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:51):
It has, it has, it's, it's licensed, so it has all this, all the music and everything. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:49:55):
Oh. I want this so bad. Look at

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:57):
That. That, that's just, that's just the trailer. But I've, I've, I've I've, I've only run it long enough to know, realize that you can't use it inside. You have to be outside to make it work. But it's, it's free. There are no in-app purchases. There is like data tracking, but you can opt out of it. Like if you go into settings like this, number three on the listing, opt out of data, of, of data tracking. So who knows? But it's a nice free thing to play with. This is the sort of like augmented reality that like in 20 23, 20 24, I'm most keen about because, you know, I've Yes, yes, you'll look like, you will look like a dork standing in the middle of

Leo Laporte (01:50:30):
Park. Who cares? You're playing space containers in the parking

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:33):
Lot. Yeah, exactly. But, but at least you'll be able to see you're not wearing goggles. You'll see people around you pointing and laughing and shooting like abusive TikTok videos about how stupid you look. So that's, that's a very, very good positive thing. So I'm I'm also not exactly sure. Again, I live in a 350 year old quaint New England seaside <laugh> boat colony <laugh>. I'm not sure if there are enough tall buildings to really sell the effect of these space invaders. I intend to find out in about half an hour. But hey, if you're living in Chicago, New York, San Francisco looks, I think that will be kind of fun, kind of cool. And you get get from just the, the app store, the Google Play Store, wherever it just dropped today. There, there aren't even, like, there aren't even people who who do like game channels on YouTube who have like, oh my God, I gotta have, first I gotta have the first review out there. They're not even like first reviews out there. So that's how, that's how early this is. This

Leo Laporte (01:51:22):
Is so cool. Ios or Android, space Invaders, world Defense. There's also an iPad version, which would be kind of fun to, if you really wanna look like a dork <laugh>, this to me, this is what ar this is a better use ar than slapping something on my forehead. I like this. This looks like fun for now. Yeah, yeah. For

Andy Ihnatko (01:51:42):
Now. Space, you have awareness of the world around you while still having augmented real.

Leo Laporte (01:51:45):
Yeah. Yeah. It's,

Andy Ihnatko (01:51:46):
It's nice. It's a nice demo. Last, I mean, lastly, it's a nice demo. They, they, they tease this at Google io in May because they have a new ar kit sort of thing that is like, if you want to build third party apps that integrate ar in the real world environment, not only taking advantage of the camera, but also taking advantage of Google Maps, street view 3D Tech 3D data. Here is a way that you can implement in into that. So this is clearly a way to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Space Invaders, but also to point out that, yeah, we don't have a headset, we have no plans to make one. And we probably would screw it up if we did make one. But it's not as though we're, we haven't been thinking about augment reality ourselves. Hey, look free game.

Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
This is so cool. I can't wait to play it. I I've installed it. I'm ready. <Laugh>. Yeah, I'm ready to save the world from pixelated eight bit <laugh> monsters. And yeah, it says play outside. All right. Yes. Thank you Andy and naco. Jason Snell, pick of the week.

Jason Snell (01:52:44):
Yeah, I'm pick something that shockingly hasn't been picked since 2010, which is amazing. We actually put this app in the hall of fame of our awards for iOS apps at Macworld back in the day. It's the MLB app, which sounds really generic, but I've got various reasons to recommend it. Again, first off, it is, if you subscribe to ML B tv, you can watch all the games except your local market. There's this footnote there that I'll get to in a second, but I'm a subscriber. I'm very happy I watch it on Apple tv, but you know what, sometimes I wanna watch it on my Mac and it is the rarest of apps. It's an iPad app that actually works on the Mac. So you actually have the ability to watch the video on your Mac. And I do that a lot, but there's also a pretty so also a bunch of things are going bankrupt. The broadcast broadcast MLB games,

Leo Laporte (01:53:34):
So I know, isn't that bizarre? Yeah. Oh, and

Jason Snell (01:53:36):
So the, a Arizona dime backs are the latest. So if you're in San Diego or in Arizona and in those territories, and you want and you're a cord cutter, you will now be able to just pay Major League baseball. I think it's like $50 for the rest of the year and use the MLB app and watch all your home games in your local market, because they're no longer, they will be on cable, but they're no longer exclusive to cable. You can now actually watch them as a cord cutter, which is pretty awesome. But the timely reason I wanted to mention the MLB app is that they launched a new feature that is now available. It is 3D Game Day. And what it does is it uses all those sensors that have the precise tracking of the pitch and of the players on the field.

(01:54:17):
And rather than just showing you like a little 2D representation of it, they've animated it on the fly. It looks like a video game, except it's actually what's happening in the game. It's pretty amazing. Mike Petrillo from MLB did a tweet about it that I think I'm putting in our show notes. The idea here that you can, basically, you're watching a game that looks like a video game, but it's based on all the in-game data and it's happening live. It's pretty cool. The only, my only caveat about it is that when the inning ends, rather than showing them all walk off the field, all the players sort of stand around like zombies and then descend in and then descend into the ground. <Laugh> that part I don't like, I don't like that so much. Not my favorite, it's like field of dreams, but way creepier. Wow. But other than that, it's actually a pretty cool idea. And you can see, speaking of AR and vr, the possibilities there as well. What if you could actually like put yourself out in the field of play while, or, or put yourself at first base when somebody throws a grounder from shortstop at a hundred miles an hour to you? It's pretty bananas. Unfortunately, I love that they're exploring

Leo Laporte (01:55:28):
With this. The Giants are in a rain delay right now, so I can't show you what it's, what what it looks like. They've just got a batter just standing there. He's not gonna, he's just waiting for the rain to go away, I guess. But that's,

Jason Snell (01:55:40):
Yeah, first time I, that's cool. First time I used it, I was just amazed, like, is because they've got all the data, but to somebody was like, we could build a 3D model, we can have generic play, but literally you see the pitcher wind up and they throw the ball and you see the batter swing. And if it's a ground roll, cool, you see the ball go. It's other than that point where they, where they're absorbed back into Mother Earth, that is terrifying. What

Andy Ihnatko (01:55:58):
If, stop that. What if, what if like the, the longer the losing streak, the game is on, the more zombified and decrepit they look. Like, if you look at, if the Pirates are a skeleton with tattered away uniforms would be draping off your bones. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:56:11):
That would be really funny. So this is where it would be happening in the live box, right?

Jason Snell (01:56:15):
Yeah. There's, there's the regular 2D game day, and then you get the option to do the 3D game day. And the 3D game day is the one that is like this bizarre augmented fantastic. There, it's, yeah, we've got on the video there's a Mike Petre showing an, and you can fly around and, and it's all like, again, it looks like a video game except it's actually what's happening in the game like I guess 10 seconds ago or something. But it's, it's so cool. It's the whole thing. So this is where we are, is there, they've got so much data on that field now that they can basically make a virtual version of the game. And and it turns out they haven't sold the rights to that. So you can, you can, like, if you're a a MLB audio subscriber, you can like listen to the radio while you're watching the Oh, computer game version of the game. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:56:56):
Neat. We've come a long way from Ronald Reagan hitting a cup with a pencil and going, it's a long drive to center field. I, I think I got MLB from T-Mobile <laugh>, like at the beginning of the season. Yeah. I forgot that I had it. So good. I'll be, I'll be trying that 3d.

Jason Snell (01:57:16):
Yeah, it's, it's a great app. It's always been one of the best apps on iOS and they, they really put a lot of effort into it. Nice. And it's a, a really well-built app and Yeah. It's

Alex Lindsay (01:57:24):
Such, it's so state of the art. Like, it's just, it's just this incredible app, really.

Leo Laporte (01:57:28):
And the boy, you don't hear Alex say that very often. Bet.

Alex Lindsay (01:57:30):
No, it's, and the infrastructure that they use to stream all those games, man, it is amazing.

Jason Snell (01:57:37):
Yeah. Have you been, you've been to the, I I went to the Bam which then Disney bought, cuz they're like, we need to stream things in the future. And they literally just bought Major League baseball streaming engine Yeah. For Disney Plus and Hulu. And it's, it's a, yeah, it's amazing.

Alex Lindsay (01:57:50):
Yeah. It's, it's, it's an amazing infrastructure and, and just It is,

Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
Is it Seattle? It's, I think it's, it's where is it? New York. York City. I've New York City. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:57:59):
Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:57:59):
But it's Chelsea Market.

Leo Laporte (01:58:01):
Oh, cool.

Alex Lindsay (01:58:01):
When you think about Del, it delivers it better than any other app as far as like delivering video to, to an app. It's, it's really the, the top

Leo Laporte (01:58:09):
Number. It's good. One of these leagues is resolved this unlike Apple, which really you wonder what their relationship with MLS is gonna be. I know. Going forward 20 seconds of muddy audio. Audio,

Alex Lindsay (01:58:19):
We have Muddy Audio.

Leo Laporte (01:58:22):
Alex Lindsay is@officehours.global. If you go there, you could see what they're up to these days. You can even join in. It's free. It's amazing. You did Photoshop generative imagery today. That looked pretty cool.

Alex Lindsay (01:58:36):
Yeah, we were talking about that. I, I gotta say, if you go back to Thur last Thursday we had the, the N B C Universal team that works on the Thursday night football that goes to Amazon. Oh, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:58:46):
Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:58:46):
Yeah. Talking about H D R and there's probably 50 people that know what they were talking.

Leo Laporte (01:58:54):
Wow. It's like

Alex Lindsay (01:58:54):
They have ever seen what they were talking about. Wow. I mean, I don't think they may have talked about it, but it was, it was really it was super deep. So anyway, it was pretty pretty amazing. And we, you know, everything from business to animation to you know, we had a lot of great stuff there. But that one, you want to check out the objective color metrics. I mean, these are the, the folks that are figuring this out for, for football. Very cool. And really talk about what they're going through. And they're developing new software and new pipelines and new, you know, bits and pieces. It was a pretty incredible hour.

Leo Laporte (01:59:27):
Office hours.global. And if you wanna hire the smartest guy in streaming today for your next event, 0 9 0 Media. Thank you Alex. Andy anco, when are you gonna be on GBH Next

Andy Ihnatko (01:59:42):
Next Thursday at 1245 Eastern Time. Go to WGBH news.org to stream it live or

Leo Laporte (01:59:48):
Later. Thank you so much. And someday there will be a website@anco.com. There.

Jason Snell (01:59:54):
It'll be website

Leo Laporte (01:59:55):
<Laugh>, I only mentioned this. Look upon my work C Mighty and Despair. You

Alex Lindsay (02:00:02):
Can, you can now Andy, you can now just get chat, chat bd. Just, just ha just tell it what you want and then it'll just make your website.

Leo Laporte (02:00:09):
I just, I you made me think, think about this. Yeah, no, there is no zaius.com. It's not too late. Maybe you could sign up right now. <Laugh> Jason Snell is@sixcolors.com. If you go to six colors.com/jason, you'll see all the multitudeness things he does. I love this idea. You were talking before the show and he, it club trip members will see it on our Twitter plus feed, about 360 video of a table. Would that be for your like tabletop gaming or Yeah, we played,

Jason Snell (02:00:41):
We played a d and d session with an Insta 360 x three on the table in the center. And theoretically you'll be able to see when I do this video all the, all of the players and also like the, the map that's on the table. Oh, that's so cool. With one without doing, cuz I didn't, you know, I didn't have a film crew there. It was literally just me. So I set an Insta 360 on the table and pressed record. Nice. And it actually looks pretty good. So it's, it's, we do some fun experiments with stuff like that. And the incomparable is a place it, this story of my career, Leo, which is one of the ways that I enjoy being a tech person and a media person is I, I, I find New Tech and I'm like, how could I apply this to what I do? And so I bought an instant 360 and it's it's kind of fun to do for in-person stuff. So yeah, I'm just experimenting. I

Leo Laporte (02:01:28):
Think that's the case with, it's all good. All all the people we work with. It's, it's just, we love this stuff so we buy it and play with it. Yeah. And then, and

Jason Snell (02:01:35):
We tend to be the techier among the crowd of people in whatever media we're in, right? So we're the ones who are like, say, did you know about this 360 camera? And they're like, no, I've never heard of it. Right. Like, aha, well this is it. Right? And then you

Leo Laporte (02:01:48):
Go, that's the one I I brought to Rome and have some amazing video of Rome. It's really incredible. Yeah. Thank you Jason. Thank you Andy. Thank you Alex. Thanks to all our Club TWIT members who of course are so important to us. If you're not yet a member of Club Twit, seven bucks a month gets you ad free versions of this show and everything we do. And when I say everything we do, you even get shows that are not available in the regular public feeds. Things like Hands On Macintosh with Micah Sargent Sergeant we, we just lau relaunched Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks. There's hands on Windows with Paul Theat. There's the Untitled Lennox Show. Stacy's book Club, the GIZ Fiz Ray Maxwell is kind of champing at the bit to bring back Maxwell's house. I think we might do that as well.

(02:02:34):
A great place to hang with other geeks doing exactly what you just talked about, Jason, you know, playing with stuff and using it and it's so great. We have a Discord as well. It's very active. Always fun to be in our discord. The Trip Plus Feed also has before and after the show stuff. Things like our inside twit that we did, the drunken inside Twit, we did Friday night with ribs from Ant Brown Liquor from Ant and Champagne from Lisa, and we were all arranged together. It was fun, wasn't it, John Ashley? We had a good time doing that. Yep. And John, John Celena wasn't happy, but we did clean up. I think we cleaned it very nicely. You found no empty bottles, no no skeletons, no rib bones, nothing after the fact. All of that on the trip plus feed seven bucks a month.

(02:03:21):
I think it's worth it. I, and it helped. And you know what, even if we didn't have all those benefits, you would have the, the good feeling of knowing you're helping keeping Twit alive on the air and producing new content for you all the time. TWIT TV slash Club twit. If you're not yet a member, please do us a favor. If you can afford it, of course, only if you can afford it. Don't wanna take mon money that you don't have or lunch outta your mouth. But if you can afford seven bucks a month, we would sure appreciate it. Twit TV slash club twit, we do this show every Tuesday. We stream it live. If you wanna watch us do it live audio or video at twit tv slash live. If you are watching Live Chat with us live, our IRC is open to all you can use your browser.

(02:04:03):
Just point it to IRC dot t tv. Of course, club twit members also have that discord. They can join. We have after the fact shows available at the website, twit TV slash MW for Mac Break Weekly. There's also a Mac Break weekly YouTube channel. Best way to get this show, any of the shows we do is subscribe in your favorite podcast player that way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Just search for TWIT or Mac Break Weekly and press the subscribe button. It won't cost you a thing. And you'll have the show. Thank you everybody for being here. Now it's time to get back to work because break time is over. Bye-Bye.

Jonathan Bennett (02:04:41):
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet about your game consoles, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk. But you already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twit now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Linux Show. Whether you're a Linux Pro, a burgeoning cis man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the Club Twit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club twit Exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a Club Twit member yet. Well go to twit tv slash club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.