MacBreak Weekly 879, 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 Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Alex, and Jason, they're all here. We'll talk about the updates to all of the oss and why Apple's Vision Pro developer Kit ships. You won't believe the restrictions and trouble in France. <Laugh>, it's all coming up next on Mac Break Weekly. The 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 organizations remote, onsite, and hybrid teams always do their best work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit podcasts you love from people you trust. This t

(00:01:16):
This is Mac Break Weekly episode 879, recorded Tuesday, July 25th, 2023 above the hip hop Dance Studio. Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by discourse. The online home for your community discourse makes it easy to have meaningful conversations and collaborate anytime anywhere. Visit discourse.org/twit to get one month free on all self-serve plans and buy ag one. Take ownership of your health with a simpler, effective investment with AG one. Try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free Ag one travel packs with your first purchase of a subscription. Go to drink ag one.com/mac break and buy fast mail. Reclaim your privacy, boost productivity and make email yours with fast mail. Try it now free for 30 days at fastmail.com/twit. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover. The latest Apple News of which there is a paucity, however we shall soldier on with Jason Snell of six colors.com.

Jason Snell (00:02:29):
I was very excited. I was thinking well boy. Leo, what's the news? Tell

Leo Laporte (00:02:32):
Me <laugh>. I know, I I can't wait. Hear it. Got stuff. I got stuff. Let's,

Jason Snell (00:02:36):
Let's find

Leo Laporte (00:02:37):
Out. I got stuff Andy Ihnatko also hear it from WGBH Boston. Hello, Andrew. Hey there. Heather there. Nice to see you. Hope all's well and beautiful New England land.

Alex Lindsay (00:02:59):
Yeah, we're, we're we're mud staying inside <laugh>, rubbing ice all over ourselves. My poor mom. Oh my gosh. Burning up. Welcome to the United States.

Leo Laporte (00:03:00):
She's buing up. Yeah, everybody's this way. Alex, Lindsay, where it is in beautiful Marin County, California where it is nothing but beautiful and sunny and rich and wealthy. Hello. Hello. Alex <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:03:13):
I I'm on the, I'm on the, the, the, the least rich part of, of, of Marin. Yeah. Like it's, you just keep driving. I I you, you have to explain to someone that you go you know you, you asked, you know, someone ask how we ended up where living where we lived. I said, you just ask your wife what you want and you drive north until you can afford it. That's

Leo Laporte (00:03:31):
What exactly what we did back in 1992 or 93. And of course we, we drove right through Marin <laugh> and ended up at Petaluma just on the other side.

Alex Lindsay (00:03:42):
We have turkeys though, so it's different. Like we have Yeah. Turkeys and deer.

Leo Laporte (00:03:46):
Yeah. You're in the country. Yes,

Alex Lindsay (00:03:48):
We're in the

Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
Country. Yeah. So are we. Yeah, we have yeah. You

Alex Lindsay (00:03:51):
You're pretty out there. You're pretty far. You're pretty

Leo Laporte (00:03:53):
Isolated. Lisa screws, <laugh>. Lisa bought a hundred pounds of walnuts, <laugh>, because what bird food isn't good enough for the birds. So she bought a hundred pounds. The

Alex Lindsay (00:04:04):
Birds eat the walnuts.

Leo Laporte (00:04:06):
Oh yeah. And sunflowers. And, and she screws it on the ground. But it's not just the birds. It turns out it is also the turkeys. We have four Turkey families. Four mothers and their, and their babies. 'cause It's that your time of year and turns out it tracks skunks. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:04:25):
Oh boy. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:04:28):
It was a little,

Alex Lindsay (00:04:29):
You gotta be careful though. Sunk. If you were really reflective. One thing that we learned is that if, if you give a really reflective car, the turkeys will attack it. They'll, they'll be like, you looking at me? You look at you like literally they're like angry at the car. And they put dent dents in one of my car. Oh, that's,

Leo Laporte (00:04:45):
We have a peacock. I

Alex Lindsay (00:04:45):
Could hear this. Don't, don't, don't. And I was like, what is going on? I came around and there's a Turkey attacking my car. Stupid.

Leo Laporte (00:04:51):
Stupid. They think it's another Turkey. We have peacocks who come up to the glass sliding glass window and, and look at themselves. But they don't seem unhappy. They seem, they start preening. <Laugh>. Exactly. It's quite the white, the wildlife scene out there. Hey, thanks to the anonymous Apple fan who sent Alex who, and by the way, he's giving you the Title C Commander Rebel Mac unit.

Alex Lindsay (00:05:17):
There

Leo Laporte (00:05:17):
Go five of these. Fabulous.

Alex Lindsay (00:05:20):
I'm definitely not close to the commander of the rebel Mac

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
Apple reusable face masks.

Alex Lindsay (00:05:23):
<Laugh>, more of a private, a private of the Rebel M Mac unit. Maybe not even. I was like, maybe a Yeah, that's, that's all I did there.

Leo Laporte (00:05:28):
Look at that. And I, and, and they're not sealed. So it's, I'm not, they're sealed in the pouches. They're not the bat boxes.

Alex Lindsay (00:05:34):
I'm super excited. They're really nice masks. Got

Leo Laporte (00:05:36):
Clip. Those are best

Alex Lindsay (00:05:37):
Clips if we get Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:40):
Nice.

Alex Lindsay (00:05:40):
If we ever get another time, we need to wear masks. I now have the best.

Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
Well, there are those who Jeff Jarvis is just on an airplane flying out. He's doing a an event tonight at by the way, last chance, if you wanna go to the Commonwealth Club and see Jeff Jarvis talk about the history of printing in the internet Commonwealth Club tonight. And he, what are you talking about? Printing

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:02):
And the internet or,

Leo Laporte (00:06:03):
Or Well, his new book, the Gutenberg parenthesis is the premise of which is we've seen it all before. Right. And and so what we have to learn from the advent of the printing press in today's internet age, let me just see what the name of his t title of his lecture is. The Age of Print and the Internet. Where is Jeff's based? He's he's in New Jersey. Just outside. Okay. That's what I thought. But he's out here. Well, that's, and the reason it came up in my mind is 'cause he wore a mask. He says, I was the only one on the plane on the, with a mask on. But you could be sure Jeff will be healthy as he speaks. It says tomorrow at 1:00 AM at the Commonwealth Club. I think it's just confused. <Laugh> <laugh>. I do believe that's a 7:00 PM appearance.

(00:06:51):
But if you go to the Commonwealth's website today it's today. Yes, it is definitely today. The beautiful Commonwealth Club. Thank you Google for saying it's at 1:00 AM Jeff will be happy. <Laugh> happy to, to do a second speech. 6:00 PM 6:00 PM Okay. Yeah. Lisa's going. There it is. Thank you for getting that. So I did find some news <laugh>, I looked hard. First of all, we should say there are updates going out. Ios 16 six came out yesterday, Ventura 13 five. These are updates to Patch. Apple says actively exploited vulnerabilities. So these are not things to wait upon. Also, if you're on an older version of iOS 15 7 8, iPad OSS 15 7 0 8, Monterey 12 6 8, big sir. 1179 for older devices. Basically check your system updates. This is, this is the, it feels like the third fix. Didn't we have? How many rapid security responses do we have for this web kit Vulnerability? There was, you know, several of them I think. But now this is a full version, which will, in fact, Apple's security support website lists a lodge lodges number of security things that are being patched today. Yeah. Or

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:25):
Yes. What do you think the protocol is inside Apple to decide whether or not something merits one of these push outs? Because I know I myself, like, I'm getting a little bit confused. 'cause I'll, I, I, I saw the last one and then I thought, did I forget to install the one that came last week? Or is this a new one?

Leo Laporte (00:08:42):
So there was a, you can't pull the cord too long. This, this month there's been security response. A, there was B, but they pulled that back and C and then that came out July 12th. And now here we are on the 25th, 24th, 12 days later. And they're doing the big updates, which apparently includes some of those fixes too. So I don't, I'm not sure. Jason, do do you have any insight?

Jason Snell (00:09:05):
The Yeah, no, I don't. <Laugh>. I mean, I, I'm with Andy. I, Andy I tried to, I tried to get the words out and no is about the best I can do <laugh>. There are, there are lots of them.

Leo Laporte (00:09:15):
I'd say

Jason Snell (00:09:15):
Also, don't forget. Alright. Am I on a beta? What's on the beta? Oh yeah. The beta getting these. No, it isn't, is it? No. Like, there's a lot going on. I think the answer is if Apple tells you to install something, you should install it and just go ahead and install.

Leo Laporte (00:09:27):
And this is the alert that there is something for many of us and you should check. Yeah. Because it doesn't, you know, it, I have to say it does not happen automatically. Right away. Eventually, I think they'll, they'll force you to do it. Right. I've never gotten to that point. I always see a, a little reminder when I do it. Well,

Jason Snell (00:09:42):
They'll never force you to do it, but they send you, you know, they'll, they alert you that there's an update and what they want you to do is put in your password and update it overnight, which then doesn't work. And it yells at you again the next day to put in your password and update it overnight, which, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:09:57):
Have you, have you guys experienced this thing where like you defer it, you defer it, you defer it, and then like your Mac just starts acting real screwy as if it did a partial install waiting for you to pull the ripcord on the full install and it broke something. Because that's happened to me many, many times where I, I can't afford to do a restart. That's, that's required. So I'm putting it off, putting off, putting off saying, okay, do it tonight. No, do it tomorrow. No, do it tomorrow. And then at some point I'll get a massive problem that will kind of force me to do it. I'm not, I'm not saying that that's part of Apple's update strategy, which is to basically make sure that hey, he can't use the uppercase e or punctuation until he actually restarts. That's more

Leo Laporte (00:10:36):
Of a Microsoft deal. <Laugh>, frankly. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:10:40):
True. It

Leo Laporte (00:10:40):
Only half works. I dunno, I've never experienced that. Anybody else. But see, I'm pretty aggressive about just going, oh, there's an update. You know, that's why, you know, as you can tell, here we are day after the updates came out and I'm telling everybody update. So, yeah. And I think that's reasonable when there's a, there's a zero day when there's a, something actively being exploited, that's probably a good time. Although, as you've pointed out before, Andy, we're not the target for these zero days.

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:07):
Right. I mean, it's, it's, yeah. I mean, it's, it's the, the, usually when the zero day hits, it's be, it's, it's a very specific set of circumstances for a very specific set of targeted users. And if they've seen it in the wild, it's not that they've seen everybody be taken down. 'cause We would've learned that through, through C N N not through software update. Right. But still, as a, as a matter of principle, it's these little things that will get, get you in the, the butt if you keep if you keep sitting on them.

Alex Lindsay (00:11:36):
And it gets back to, you know, the, if as if everybody kind of keeps up with this, it, it makes it not a target either <laugh>, because it's not, you know, the, it, it, it, it dulls off the effect. I mean, if you look hacking deals

Leo Laporte (00:11:48):
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:11:48):
The, the, the community. Yeah. It's, it's community immunity <laugh> you

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:53):
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:11:53):
So you know, a herd, herd immunity, because it just doesn't gonna, it's just not gonna go anywhere. And so it's not worth developing for. You see these huge hacks that are happening generally, these are large, you know, corporate networks that, that are very old and no one's updated for a long time. And that provides it's worth spending the time to figure out how to hack 'em.

Leo Laporte (00:12:14):
And, and then as a result, they're very expensive. And you know, you go to places like Pegasus, you know, the the Israeli company, which is no, has a different name <laugh>, but it's the same company. Right. And and you buy those for a million dollars. 'cause You're a nation state and you want really want to get James Bond into your evil layer. Okay. Enough of that. Just do it. Update <laugh> unity, apple Vision Pro and Apple. Apple Vision fro developer kits have arrived. I saw James Thompson's post about the Apple Vision Pro developer kit.

Jason Snell (00:12:54):
Yeah. Everybody I know who's a developer has filled out that form. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:12:58):
Please. It's free, right? You have to be a 90, you have to be a developer, which is what, 99 bucks. But the kit itself is free, but you have to return, it needs to be returned upon request. But that's not all <laugh>. No, no. There's, there are quite a, quite a few security and secrecy arrangements. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:13:16):
You must, you must keep it, it must only be kept in the place where we ship it. You must keep it in a place that is not a transparent cube that people can look into. It must be lockable <laugh>. If you're gonna leave it for more than 10 days, you need to contact Apple and say, do you have any tips for me to lock, keep this thing in. Its locked Pelican case, which is what you're going to be provided you do not show it to your friends or family. And most importantly, do not taunt happy, fun Ball. Those are the rules. <Laugh>, I don't make the rules. I just report 'em. Basically, they're serious. They don't want this thing getting out. And and oh, and the other one is on request. You will return it to Apple immediately. Yeah. That's part of the deal too. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:51):
You agree that all access to usage of and storage use of the DK development will be in a private, secure workspace accessible only by you and your authorized developers. Unaccountably capitalized. What, what is that? Some sort of, is that a lawyer thing? You and your authorized developers, eg fully enclosed with solid doors, floors, walls and ceiling <laugh> and locks that can be engaged when the DK is in use, nobody walking in on you. You must ensure that unauthorized persons, including any family, friends, roommates, or household employees, no evil maids allowed, do not access view, handle or use the dk and definitely don't let Leo LaPorte see it when in use. The DK should be in your positive control on your make.

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:39):
Make sure that there, there are no air ducts in the building that Tom Cruise could possibly weasel himself through

Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
<Laugh> on your person,

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:46):
Especially Tom Cruise, or

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
Within your direct line of sight at all times. What? Mm. You must ensure the d I'm looking at you. I see you dk You must positive control

(00:14:57):
<laugh>. You must ensure the DK is passcode protected. Never leave the DK unattended when not in used. Turn off the DK and store it in its locked Pelican case. That's a, isn't that spelled with a K? Or maybe I'm wrong. In a locked space that only you capital Y have access to eeg, a locked room or closet, a safe or a locked drawer. The DK may not be moved from or taken away from. Its shipped to address by you or your authorized developers without apple's prior written consent. If you will be away from your workspace for more than 10 days, consult with your Apple point of contact about how to keep the DK safe while you are away. You must agree to restrict access to DK to you and your authorized developers and take all reasonable precautions to safeguard the DK from loss. Yep. Or theft. But that's normal, right? That's if you got an iPhone 15, you'd be signing that too,

Andy Ihnatko (00:15:48):
Pretty much.

Jason Snell (00:15:48):
Sure. Also we don't know. It's, it could be Donkey Kong, it could, we don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:15:52):
DK could be Donkey Kong <laugh>.

Jason Snell (00:15:54):
Yeah, it could be. That'd be a, that'd be quite a surprise, right? You gotta keep that a

Andy Ihnatko (00:15:57):
Secret. Or the Dead Kennedys, this is supposed to be entertainment based <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:01):
Well, it could be test it, it could be a test. They send you Donkey Kong first and then you, you tweet out, I I filled out all his forms and all I got was a Donkey Kong game. And then <crosstalk> send him the headset. Please

Jason Snell (00:16:11):
Return Donkey Kong to us immediately. <Laugh>, yes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:16:13):
Why did, why did you make me dodge flaming barrels for like, for 10 minutes? We just wanna make sure you were very, very serious about wanting to develop VR wraps.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:20):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
And then of course, you ha you, so I saw Matthew Calin ca Castelli say, does, do shortcut developers count? Are they developers? <Laugh>, you have to be a developer, right?

Jason Snell (00:16:35):
Yeah. And how many of them, I mean, how, like even even somebody like David Smith or James Thompson as an indie developer who's just a single developer, are they, how many of these do they have, right? Yeah. Do you really need to be at a very high, kind of like, level of, of revenue in order to get this? Then again, I mean this is, I know we're gonna talk about in a little bit Mark Berman's story about, you know, what's the developer market for Vision Pro apps and who's gonna be interested in developing for it? But the fact is Apple does benefit from people like any developers like James and and David Smith to do showcase apps. Even if they are just these indie apps, they, they make the platform cooler. So I just, I'm, I'm gonna be, it'll be interesting. Can they even admit that they have it? It'll be interesting to find out in the end when they write their memoirs who actually got one.

Alex Lindsay (00:17:21):
Well, and, and also I, you know, this, this is why some developers are pretty careful about what they say in public, because of course this is all subjective as well. Like, I don't think that sending a bunch in a hundred

Jason Snell (00:17:30):
Percent

Alex Lindsay (00:17:31):
A headset is probably not going to Epic.

Jason Snell (00:17:33):
It's amazing that James Thompson gets any promotion from Apple at all, given that <laugh>, he talks about this stuff and complains and gets rejected and stuff like that. But he does, he also does good work and, and embraces Apple's new technologies. And that's, that's, he just has some balance. That's of the secret, secret sauce with any, any of those indie developers is you may say, oh, indie developers are, are small and they don't matter. But they do, they bring a cachet to the platform that Apple really likes. So they're definitely a part of the, of the gestalt of any new platform.

Leo Laporte (00:18:06):
They're just kind of as a side thing. Unity has also shipped its beta version of its development

Alex Lindsay (00:18:13):
Tools. Super smart by Unity. I I think that they, so that development, I believe that they've built, they've put out a sample, you know, a sample app that you can kind of tear apart as a developer. And unity should be doubling down on this. This is their moment. Oh, yeah. You know, to, to, to take advantage of this. And so I, you know, if they're smart, there's gonna be tons of education. There's gonna be tons of, of outreach. There's gonna be tons of example files. They're gonna build all these things out because, you know, apple right now, I think is kind of filling a gap with Unity. And the key is, is to take advantage of that gap and really make sure that a lot of developers are considering their platform to use it. 'cause That you can't do everything you need to do in the core Apple Development tools just yet. And so I think that that's a, it's, it'd be, it, it really behooves Unity to jump on this. We'll see how hard they, how hard they push. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:19:04):
It sounds like they've been working on this for I Yeah. Years, right? Yeah. Like, but they're, oh yeah, they're out there now and they're, they're the, they're the one If you wanna make these kind of kind of apps for Vision Pro Unity is the way you're gonna do it.

Alex Lindsay (00:19:15):
Well, you can build, I mean, there's definitely apps that you can build using you know, the tools and the, and and reality Composer Pro and you know, there's definitely things you can build out there, but as soon as you start getting into real games are really complex apps, apps, you're a hundred percent

Jason Snell (00:19:27):
This class of app, right? Because this is the one that's there and the other one is in a series of lawsuits with Apple and is not gonna be there.

Alex Lindsay (00:19:33):
Yeah. My guess is they've been working with Apple on this for since about six months after that lawsuit. <Laugh>, yeah. Is Apple because, 'cause Unreal was in all those, all those meetings before that. I mean, unreal was in all the emails before, before they did the lawsuit.

Leo Laporte (00:19:47):
Unity announced at the, at wwdc, apple announced Polys Spatial, which is Unity's new technology and Vision oss kit it, here's the get started with spatial creation. Your apps will get access to benefits such as pass through and Dynamic Foviated rendering in addition to popular Unity features like AR foundation and AR Interaction Toolkit by combining Unity's authoring and simulation capabilities with Reality Kit, which is Apple's technologies managed app rendering, content created with Unity will look and feel at home. So it sounds like your existing content created with Unity will look and feel at home on the Vision Pro. Yes. That's part of the pitch is it's a, it's for porting as well, right? And some, yeah. But in fact, are the choices. What are your goals during the beta? Create a new fully immersive gamer app. Create a new immersive gamer app port, an existing immersive gamer app port, a mobile gamer app to be immersive on this platform. So that's, that's obviously of it.

Alex Lindsay (00:20:48):
You know, I think that Apple will probably mix the marketing as they move forward with when they start rolling out the headset of, between big companies that are porting an iPad app or porting something over. But a lot of the focus is gonna be on stuff that's really built for the headset, you know, so I think that porting over, if you're, if you're doing something really important, you might be able to get away with it. But if you're not, you probably wanna build something for it.

Leo Laporte (00:21:11):
So as you said, Jason, we should probably mention Mark B Bloom, mark Bloomberg <laugh>. He might as well. He might as well be Mark Bloomberg. I, I call him that too. Yep. Mark, mark

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:22):
Berman's reporting once again on Tim Apple <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:21:26):
His power on newsletter title. Apple's headset hinges on apps, but don't expect developers to flock to it. His contention is what that a it's an expensive device. B Apple's already said we're not, or as implied, we're not gonna be able to make a million of them. In fact, the supply chain says it may just be in the few hundred thousands yeah. You know, compared to 130 million iPhone iPads and and Max. So that poses the question says, Mr. Tim Bloomberg, will the Vision Pro App Store be a success, like the one on the iPhone on the iPad, or will it flop like the Apple Watch and tv? Oh, I forgot. There are app stores for the watch and TV aren't there, but

Andy Ihnatko (00:22:17):
Imessage don't forget

Leo Laporte (00:22:18):
The, IM an iMessage stickers everybody get your vision Pro stickers sticker pack, they'll float in

Andy Ihnatko (00:22:24):
Space Safari plugins too. Yeah. Yeah.

(00:22:26):
It's, it's, it's hard to say. I mean, I don't, I don't think that any developer is gonna be wisely deciding that, Hey, we're gonna divert a whole bunch of our budget and our personnel into developing an app for this platform that, as you said, might only have about 200,000 seats in the entire audience. And is probably does prob probably doesn't represent the full spectrum of users that you would normally target an app launch at. You're talking about a really small wedge of the pie, no matter how you slice it. And I, I do think that nonetheless, the smaller developers either 'cause they're gonna be excited to develop this stuff, b because this is their side hustle, this is their side gig, believe it or not. They're, they're very, very successful consultants on the side. And they do actually maintain one or two very successful apps in the time that they want to use their brain for other things. I think those people are gonna be the people who do the weird stuff that will at least give Apple something interesting to sell off and might make them, I don't know, 10, 20,000 bucks a year. Maybe it's, I I just, I I I agree with you idea that I, that you're not gonna see, you're, you're not gonna see large developers investing huge amounts of money in this platform. Microsoft is already on board, but they kind of have to be 'cause they wanna put, they wanna put office everywhere.

Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
This is,

Alex Lindsay (00:23:46):
Yeah, I think that, go

Leo Laporte (00:23:47):
Ahead.

Alex Lindsay (00:23:48):
I felt like reading, reading the article, I felt like it came from an analyst, but not from someone who actually Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:23:53):
Feels like an analyst. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (00:23:54):
Because, because the thing is, is that there are so many opportunities when the, when some, when a new platform comes out, there's an enormous number of opportunities because you have a bunch of people with no, nothing else to put on the device, you know, and they just spent $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 on this device. They spending another thousand dollars over the next couple months. Buying apps for it is not probably gonna be a big deal to most of the ones that are buying the, buying the headset in the first place. So they're gonna be buying 'cause they're gonna be excited about it. They're gonna wanna show their friends, they're gonna wanna figure out what works, what doesn't work for the people who are buying these. If they're $10, they're gonna buy a lot of $10 apps. You know, if they're more than that, I mean, he talks about them becoming more expensive because it's smaller market that gets away from the just, oh, I'll just buy it to see how it turns out.

(00:24:39):
That's a couple, couple coffees worth of costs if it got up. I know for me, at $20 I'd be like, well, we'll see. At $10 I'd probably buy anything that looks remotely interesting. You know, for the, for it to just see how it works. I think people are gonna wanna explore. And a lot of companies, I mean, a lot of developers in the past have put out things that are okay, but interesting and made a lot of money. So I think that people will do fat, they'll do a lot of work to try to have something on the day it starts to ship so that when people download it, they go to the app store and they see, oh, this is a really cool tour of something or other app, you know, and there and there will be some of those out there because of all these developer kits that are going out. So there's going to be 50 or a hundred or 200 apps to play with day one. And I think that a lot of people are gonna buy 'em. <Laugh> did,

Leo Laporte (00:25:25):
Did we see that with the iPhone? 'cause When, remember when the app store launched on the iPhone here you have a, a relatively expensive device and suddenly you can buy apps. Did we see a, an influx of people? I mean there certainly were a lot of fart apps. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:25:40):
Fart apps. Flashlight apps. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:25:42):
Sorry, go, go ahead. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, that's the point. No, that

Jason Snell (00:25:45):
Was a pri that was a Prime product, right? Yeah. The iPad might be the better match because that was a brand new product nobody had had, and it opened with an app store and we saw, I mean, there were a lot of products that made a lot of apps that made a lot of money on day one. Prices actually started a little higher too, and then they kind of like got, came back down to Earth over

Leo Laporte (00:26:04):
Time. Yeah. Here's a graph of Apple App Store quarterly apps and games from 2009 to 2022. And you could see it builds, of course it probably builds with a number of units sold as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I think your, your point, Alex, is well taken that, that there is gonna be, even if it's only 250,000 people in the first year with these Vision Pro headsets, there's gonna be a mar if if each of them spells a thousand dollars, that's a quarter of a billion dollars out there.

Alex Lindsay (00:26:31):
Yeah. And Gerin,

Leo Laporte (00:26:32):
What, here's what Kerman writes specifically. He says the addressable market for the Vision Pro is one 500th that of other Apple devices. That's potentially a major roadblock to developers investing in the product. I've spoken to a slew, I don't know what that technically is is that a thousand of high profile developers in the virtual reality space. And that reason alone, the lack of units has them wary of building an app for the Vision Pro. They also say, and this is interesting, and this, this, this may be relevant too. The lack of a VR controller means that content and games on other VR platforms like the MedQuest won't easily be able to make the jump. One well-known developer told Power on, if you're making something for it, either Apple has to pay you to develop it or you're building the app just to create some buzz.

Alex Lindsay (00:27:27):
I don't think Apple's gonna pay anybody to develop it. Yeah, me neither. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:27:30):
That's,

Alex Lindsay (00:27:30):
That's kind of religious there. But, but I do think that there is a I, I think that the one place you could see Apple Bot, you know, paying for is like Apple Arcade. They haven't talked about games at all, but Apple Arcade hires people to build apps for them all the time. So having a solid stable of apps coming out, you know, of games coming out is something that they'll probably, they will design and they're probably gonna look for games that really stretch the envelope of what the app, what the headset can do. I do think that there are it's a real opportunity for the, the folks that do take that chance. There's a real, there's the chance of drinking a lot of people's milkshakes, <laugh>, you know, pretty pretty early on. But by getting, by getting in and getting, you know, getting ahead of some of these things,

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
Here's the other data point that Mark throws in the track record of Meta does not bode well. Since Meta's VR App Store launched eight years ago, developers own only generated about one and a half billion dollars, despite meta having sold 20 million quests. So he's saying,

Alex Lindsay (00:28:28):
I, it's very hard to ever compare somebody else's track record to Apple's track record. Like,

Leo Laporte (00:28:32):
It just doesn't,

Alex Lindsay (00:28:33):
Usually doesn't, it doesn't line up. You know, I think that that's you know, meta is I mean I've developed stuff for the, for the Quest, or not for the Quest, but Ulus, and it's hard, it's

Leo Laporte (00:28:45):
Hard, it's Unity as well. Is it not?

Alex Lindsay (00:28:49):
We used Unity to do it. Yeah. yeah. But it's just, it, it was just a, it was quirky, you know, and, and so it was, it, it it wasn't as nearly as simple as putting stuff out there that, that this will be so or that I think it'll be so

Leo Laporte (00:29:02):
<Crosstalk>. He also says he wouldn't be surprised, and I think he's right on this. It's kind of what you were saying, Alex, if $20 is the new $1 for most Vision Pro apps, we could see many of them costing between $50 at $250. Especially, I just don't, in the graphic designer productivity categories, games may be priced closer to their console equivalents somewhere in the range of 40 to $60.

Alex Lindsay (00:29:23):
I'll, I'd love to see if he's right on that, because I just don't think coming outta the gate that's what's gonna happen, what you're gonna do. 'cause The thing is, is that at 10 bucks or 15 bucks, a lot of people who bought this headset will just knee jerk by the app to see how it works. And if you start making it higher than that, people are gonna start thinking about it. And I think that that's you know, I I, you know, at the beginning, like I, I could definitely see more expensive apps coming out, but I have a hard time seeing a much higher price point than that.

Leo Laporte (00:29:49):
Disney Plus is already slated to come to Vision Pro. Of course, apple made a big deal about that at the keynote. Apple's wide ranging deal with Amazon writes, mark probably means Prime Video will have a similar arrangement. Microsoft and Zoom have committed to the platform. So that'd be Teams and Zoom. But the biggest streamer of all writes Tim Bloomberg, no, I'm sorry, mark Kerman Netflix will take a pass. I'm told the company has no current plans to develop a native app for the Vision Pro. Not that a native app as he points out for Netflix would be anything different than, oh, I'm in a theater now looking at a screen. You could still run the Netflix app on it and be looking at video. Right? I don't know how this works. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:30:35):
And, and they don't have a lot of three D content. I, I think that like Disney's wanting to be there. Disney's got a lot of movies with three D content. I think that Apple's probably gonna put all that three D content in their, in their store as well. So you can buy or rent three D video. Netflix may just not prioritize it, and that's fair. They'll, I'm sure you'll be able to watch it on your iPad, but I, I just don't, I yeah, I, I I think it comes down to do you have a lot of three D content? Because I think this thing will actually be a, a pretty great three D content viewing device. And so there's an opportunity there, but it may just be that Netflix looks at it and goes, eh not, not, not enough for us to gear up our line and maybe change our contracts to get access to three D content.

Andy Ihnatko (00:31:18):
Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the low hanging fruit. I think that a lot of what we're gonna see in the first year that's commercially released is the low hanging fruit like video player. Great. Wonderful. We've have that already, but now we have it on this. Great, we'll, we'll see a lot of simple apps that probably will occur to most developers, and one or two of those developers will be out there fast enough or with enough marketing to have a success with it. I think that a lot of makers of really good and successful and well-known iPad apps will want to be able to say that we've, oh, we've updated this for, for vision. It's not just simply the iPad app. You're using the new vision version of Omni Outliner or whatever. But it's just, hey, the same interface, but we've added some charms to make it a little bit easier to use.

(00:32:03):
This is, this is, I think the, this is why I say that I think the first year you're gonna see a lot of low-hanging fruit. It's gonna take a long time before we see the sort of apps that justify, I'm not talking about the expense, but justify the existence of a platform like this to say, here's, here's an app and here's an experience that could not have been done possibly on any non-immersive platform whatsoever. This is why there was a gaping hole <laugh>, there was a gaping hole in the landscape of what computing needed to be, and this fills that. Exactly. I don't think we're gonna see that in the first year. And that's what I mean when I say that. I'm not sure that a lot of developers are going to be putting like a, a million dollars, half a million dollars, $150,000 into developing a brand new productivity app that they can then charge that kind of money for and make a success out of it. I just don't see it.

Leo Laporte (00:32:49):
What is the fart app for the Vision Pro? What is the low hanging fruit?

Alex Lindsay (00:32:57):
Well, viewers, I mean, you know, I don't want

Leo Laporte (00:32:59):
To far that, I'll tell you that taking, taking, taking or a flashlight app, so <laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:33:03):
And, and an augmented reality camera app where you would, you could look inside the room and put place props there, place avatars there, and basically take pictures and, and, and direct your own scenes, at least in static form. Okay. I think that's what I

Leo Laporte (00:33:16):
Think that Space Invaders game you talked about last week where we're actually, I played that the other Yeah, that's cool. Although day you're going around with buildings and Space Invaders are coming down, although

Alex Lindsay (00:33:25):
They definitely tell you not to take it outside and not to walk around like it's

Leo Laporte (00:33:28):
Designed, it's can't,

Alex Lindsay (00:33:29):
Not designed for that. So it's, it's not, it's probably

Leo Laporte (00:33:31):
Space Invaders in my bedroom is what it is. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:33:35):
I mean, I think Exploring Spaces is something that'll be interesting. You know, if they can get the, right now, the, the the, the new H E B C streaming platform is not really, you know, that it's not fully cooked yet. So how we deliver that is gonna be something people are interested in to be able to deliver three D content to it. Just basic video viewers is, you probably see a lot of those you know, for, for that kind of thing. And, but I think that games will be something games and some base educational stuff about how to take something to look at it like a molecule or a, something like that. They're gonna wanna show those kinds of things. I think the cool thing is that it can respond to, I mean, it is really magical the way that when the phone works it just responds to your space and you don't think about it very much.

(00:34:22):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I, I, I just used it. I was getting a fan for my house and am every fan I ran into at Amazon says, would you like to see this fan in your space? And I definitely clicked on it, looked at something, looked at it, sitting there going, oh, that fan's a lot smaller than I expected, and then went to another one. And that fan's a lot bigger than I expected. And, and I finally figured out which ones I wanted. But what was amazing was it just, it just did what it needed to do and sat down on top of what I needed to, to figure out. And I think that there's gonna be some interesting opportunities there as far as it just responding to those things.

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:54):
Yeah. See, this, this is the difficulty that I still have with the, with the Vision Pro. I understand that it is an upscale version and it's a very Apple version, meaning that we're gonna do the best we can. We're not gonna, we're not gonna make a cheap version of this. We're, especially if we're going, if we can only do limited quantities, we're gonna make sure that the 203,000 people who see this, see that this is the best we can do in 2024. However, I'm still not seeing, well, why do you need a a $3,500 Vision Pro versus it's, it's a a three D molecule in front of you. That's fine. How is that not better than three or four or five of those kids in that classroom with phones or iPads, and they are physically in a space together and they can turn to each other and make comments on, Hey, did you see that?

(00:35:37):
Hey, look over here at this. Again, three D movies, that's something that we've had for quite a while. Three d shopping. This has been I, when I hear that, I'm, I'm sure that there's gonna be money behind that, but I keep thinking of every single ad for every single like home computer in like a, in the early eighties saying, and Dad can balance the checkbook while mom looks up the recipes for tonight's, it's like, okay, you're, you're, you're, you're imagining as a, as a marketing person, what you could use this thing for. And you're imagining that that's what people are gonna use it for, but that's not gonna be what people actually use it for. This is, apple hasn't pushed, I, I wish that some company, I'm not just throwing Apple in here for Wish some company would say something more than three d gaming augmented reality. And it won't be that much better than looking at this on an iPad. And it will be affordable for lots and

Leo Laporte (00:36:29):
Lots of, I think I have one of those. I'm just eighties or nineties com computer ads.

Speaker 5 (00:36:34):
Hey, it's me, Martin, the kid from Next Door. Sorry about the Rhododendrons. Any who Patrick here needs some help with his computer. I'm now Mr. Norton Corn, here's the deal. You can get our friend Patrick, the help he needs at Tech tv. All you have to do is watch ta-da tell them what they get. Patrick. They get Leo and Martin and Patrick and Jessica and Megan. Very good. Patrick and Mrs. Norton Bean. That's, that's Norton Corn. Actually, whatever the screensavers are on every weeknight, perhaps that's why it's America's favorite computer help show. Perhaps

Speaker 6 (00:37:05):
Get the screensavers every weeknight at seven six Central on Tech tv, all the computer help you need free, no special deals, no CD burner, no legal blahdi, blah.

Speaker 5 (00:37:15):
Ready? Dude, Mr. And Mrs. Laporte, it's me, Martin

Leo Laporte (00:37:18):
<Laugh>. Okay, dude, you, Leo, I know those of you who are in the club bought ad free versions, but that one you're gonna get Yeah. Do not cut that one outta the show for the club members

Jason Snell (00:37:33):
<Laugh>. Oh, no,

Leo Laporte (00:37:34):
No. That's a real, that's not a real ad. I'm sorry. It just reminded me of that was a parody of the old Dell ads. Remember with the, the stoner kid selling the Dell computer to his dude Clinton. Dude, you're getting a Dell.

Jason Snell (00:37:48):
Dude. The what Andy said about the, about like what's the, what's the killer app? Why do we want this? Why do people want this? Honestly, like not only is Apple's like not Apple doesn't get enough credit. One of its greatest assets and one that it's sometimes takes advantage of and exploits is the fact that it has an enormous developer community. And they're familiar with Apple's developer tools and their frameworks and building apps on Apple's platforms. And it's a huge, huge benefit that Apple has. And when we remember we started talking about this, it's the dk, right? The developer kit and Apple wanting to get developers into this platform and Mark Kerman saying, you know, well, are they gonna be there? But like, this is why it's so important for Apple to get those developer kits out there and to get them in the hands of developers that are, to Andy's point, not just any random developer, but developers who do interesting things and know Apple's platforms.

(00:38:42):
Because it's entirely possible that the best reason to get a Vision Pro is gonna be an app that Apple hasn't thought of, but that one of its developers is going to have a, you know, they're gonna have a little moment and the, the, the light bulb's gonna go off. And on day one, they're gonna have an app that Apple heavily promotes and says, look at this amazing app that a third party developer wrote. And you know, they don't, 'cause Apple doesn't know the whole picture here. And the developers can be a huge resource for, for the company if they, if they let them be. And that's why I think that having that developer kit out there is what is super important for the future of that platform, potentially.

Leo Laporte (00:39:19):
And I'm sure that's why Andy mentioned the Omni group. 'cause That's one of those kinds of Apple specific developers. You need a delicious library, right? That was that was the one that shared, yeah,

Jason Snell (00:39:30):
Those in developers, the Andie developers don't always ship lots of units. I mean, the good news is they can often make a living without that because it's one or two people, but they often are the trailblazers, right? Like, there's, there's a dichotomy in the App store today too, right? Which is like Apple makes most of its money on in-app purchases and games, right? Like, it's not very exciting. It's kind of cruddy at times, right? But it's, it's where they make their money, but what they're proud of, and sometimes it's like the thing that makes them feel good about their platform is often these things that are coming from the indie developers and the very clever and they embrace Apple's technologies with their new OS versions in a way that the money makers don't. And like both of those are important to Apple. And when you're trying to figure out what a platform is for, they're, I think, especially important.

Alex Lindsay (00:40:13):
Well, and I, and I think that one of the things that I, the, the irony of course is that when Elements three D came out, which is comes back to science, it made me think this is what the next, the next generation of books are gonna be like. But the irony of course is that it wasn't built with iBooks <laugh>, it was built, it was built with Rock Ode because the iBooks couldn't do what it was, what it was out there to do. But it was something that you really felt like, oh, this could, we could step forward. One and unfortunate thing there was that Apple partnered with Pearson and got a bunch of junk, you know, like that was, that was not inspiring at all. So I do think it's important to find things that get people excited. You know, I think about you know, building tours of really interesting places that you can roam around and see things that you probably won't travel to anytime soon.

(00:40:57):
And I think that that, that, those kinds of things, I think you're gonna see, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, there's already stereo cameras on the space station. There are apples putting stereo cameras in their film productions. I don't think they're shooting the film, the sh the shots with those stereo cameras. I think what they're doing is shooting behind the scenes with them, you know, so imagine being able to sit at a certain, you know, go to certain parts and feel like you were there when it was getting shot, or m l s I think is gonna be a big piece of that as well. So I, I think there's gonna be a couple interesting things that are, that are there. And I think to, I think there's gonna be a lot of developers that think of things that we're not thinking of right now and that are gonna be pretty interesting.

Andy Ihnatko (00:41:36):
Yeah, absolutely. And just, but just to quickly tie a bow on it that this is the sort of stuff that kind of worries me, that again, three D experiences are gonna be wonderful, but you can do that already on much cheaper hardware, that act that actually exists for everybody. I'm sure the experience will be much, much, I mean, better well on, wait, I'm, I, I'm sure experience is gonna be much, much better on apple's, apple's hardware, but we're still talking in terms of here is a view port through which you observe things in three D. And so we're the, the, the only thing that was really missing from Apple's presentation was, here's something we figured out that no other developer of three D hardware has figured out yet, and this is how we've cracked it. The, I the iPhone had, look, we we're, we're doing away with all, almost all tactile interface give you a full glass interface that can reconfigure itself so that when you don't need that keyboard, it's a huge widescreen IPO iPod.

(00:42:30):
This is, this is, and I, I realize that this isn't a failing of Vision Pro. This is something that has just simply been deferred until again, developers, cool developers get their hands on it and find the awesome inside it. But this is, this is the part, this is the largest thing that concerns me that that Apple and nobody else really has yet to basically say, here is something that is, you need a very, very specific, very, very involved platform in order to deliver this sort of content. It could be, and, and these are just problems that haven't been solved yet. It might be a display problem. Might, can you still, can you, can you develop this sort of hardware so you can wear it for three or four hours and not want to just simply scratch at your eyes and <laugh> throw this like, like a bat has landed in your hair and throw it across the room. We don't know that yet.

Leo Laporte (00:43:15):
So yeah, we've got Disney plus they've got three D stuff, but here's what I'm waiting for. Turner Classic movies on the Vision Pro <laugh>, do you think you could, do you think you could take on with the wind, Alex and make it three D Kev Brewer, I hope says maybe Casa Blanca and three D, I'd like to go through the Atlanta burning and, and have the flames all around me. Can you do that?

Jason Snell (00:43:37):
Good news. Leo machine learning technology, <laugh> automatically analyze all films and generate three D colorized versions that you can just sit there, go and watch forever

Alex Lindsay (00:43:49):
At, at 120 frames a second. Uhhuh <affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You, you know, I by

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:55):
The way,

Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
That problem with the wind is not a fart app. Somebody says in the Discord that that's, that's not, it's not, okay, go ahead. Sorry, <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:44:02):
Sorry. That's, that's gonna get hard for you to get outta my head now. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:44:06):
Thank you. Mashed potato for that image. Yes. <laugh> <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:44:11):
Sorry, but we have a title anyway, so the you know, I I think that while it does many of the same things, it's kind of like saying, well, I don't, I don't need to buy a sports car because my, my car will get there. Right. Get to the grocery store. It's

Leo Laporte (00:44:29):
Easy. You're right. That's a good analogy. It's a a different, yeah,

Alex Lindsay (00:44:31):
It's a different experience. You know, and, and I, and I'm not, I like, again, I'm not a car guy. I don't have a sports car. I don't have a car that goes very fast. I have a car that I hope works every, every day because I spend all my money on hardware. I don't spend my money on cars, you know? And so so, so to me, probably like, I wouldn't spend, if I had, if I had another, you know, $80,000, I would not go out and go, oh, now I'm gonna buy a nice car. I'd be like, I'm gonna buy a nice camera <laugh>. You know, like, you know, like, that wouldn't, that would be easy for me. So, so I think for some people it's not gonna make any difference. But I do think that when you put it on, I mean, it's hard to say when you, when you, if, if you've ever gotten into a really nice car and you drive it, you suddenly realize there's a whole different level of all the things that are made and how they work.

(00:45:11):
And then you go back to your car and you're like, okay, <laugh>. You know, like, and so it's, so I think that that is the level of, of interactivity. So the, the see-through experience where you're actually seeing what's going on, the interactivity with the, with the scenes around you, it's not just the fact that it can do vr, but that, that it does this ar process and the ability to pick up your hands you know, from everybody that, I mean, j I think Jason is the only one here that's actually used it, but it seems like it's a pretty seamless experience when you, when you have that on that's not what's being produced by the other ones right now. Like, it's not, like, that's not the experience that you get with the Quest. It's a, it's a pretty immersive experience and it's not really like, you're not really seeing through it and not really having those experiences. So I think it's gonna be, it'll be interesting to see how it, you know, how it moves forward. But I, you know, I would anyway, we'll see.

Leo Laporte (00:46:01):
Yeah, I'm the guy with the Porsche 9 1 1 in the driveway, a k a the me Quest Pro. And the question is, will I wanna buy a Ferrari? I would say the <laugh>, I

Alex Lindsay (00:46:11):
Would say the, the Medi Quest Pro is more like a MR two. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:46:14):
Okay. I think you're right.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:15):
Not really. Yeah, you're right. You know, so it's, it's nice, you know, so it's a

Leo Laporte (00:46:18):
Nice, how about that? Yeah. Yeah. Alright, I wanna take a little break. We'll come back and talk more about this and all the other five topics of the day in just a bit. <Laugh>, I though, I have to say Vision Pro. Sure. But I understand the word Twitter is now available. Maybe they could call it the, the Twitter pro or the Twitter God nerd helmet. If there

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:40):
Is one c e o, who would, who would sheep out or not pay attention and let that trademark lapse and get bought out by some porn company? It

Leo Laporte (00:46:47):
Would be Elon Musk. You know how many people have the X trademark, including Microsoft? Yes.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:52):
A lot of porn companies and a

Leo Laporte (00:46:54):
Lot of porn companies. It's just a, it's amazing to watch, but it's just a good reminder that the rich are not like you and me. They're stupider. Alright. I, I have

Alex Lindsay (00:47:06):
To, but I know you're about to go to the thing thing. But I have to say that everything else that, that has happened to Twitter, I've been like, well, it's my largest following. I'm just gonna keep just going on. Going on. Yesterday I went to, I, I registered Blue Sky. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:47:21):
<Laugh> blue, blue Sky is at this point very Twitter like,

Alex Lindsay (00:47:24):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:47:24):
Yeah, yeah. It's even still blue. And you know what? I think the bird's available <laugh>. Yeah. No, just check the dumpster behind. Take right back behind the building. Yeah. our show today brought to you by a, a company I'm actually a, a customer of and love and have for some time when we wanted to create our own twit forums at TWIT community. I looked at all the different things and and actually it was John o Bacon, who's an expert on community. He's written the book on community. He said, don't even think about it. Just get discourse. Discourse is awesome. The online home for your community, for our community for over a decade discourse. Now don't confuse it with discord. I often do. 'cause We also have a Discord discourse is the forums like software. They've made it their mission to make the internet a better place for online communities.

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(00:51:11):
Woo-Hoo. alright, let's as long as we're talking mark Bloomberg, let's go to part two of his Power on newsletter Apple Races to enter the generative AI wars. He he's been talking about Apple G p t, that's what some inside the company called. It's a large language model they call the framework Ajax. The he Mark writes, the l l M project is a cross company efforts spanning software engineering, machine learning, and crowd cloud engineering. They use it internally for employees. It helps 'em prototype future features, summarize text, and they answer questions based on data it's been trained with. What he does say also is that Apple has not decided what they're gonna do with it in public. He has some speculation including Siri. Although, you know, neither Google nor Amazon have updated their voice clients with their LLMs. And I think it's because they would be too chatty and boring. <Laugh> and,

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:22):
And wrong and wrong. And disturbing.

Leo Laporte (00:52:24):
Yeah, and disturbing. So, you know, they did hire John Gire, who is a former Google expert in this area in the ai. Gogerman says he aims to be conservative with the technology, although Tim Cook is pushing Oh, no. He is pushing for broader AI regulation. Okay. So yeah, I think Apple's probably smart not to have this in public. What do you think?

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:54):
Yeah, absolutely. The, the, there's, there's too much for a PR hit when things get wrong, go wrong, and they definitely go wrong not meanwhile, internally these AI tools are really, really useful to a large company like Apple. And they certainly they, they certainly are smart enough to know that they, security-wise, they can't trust chat G P T or any other, any any large language model solution that they didn't develop in-house themselves. And thirdly, they have to keep, they have to, they have to keep hold of their really, really AI employees. They can't just simply if, if this is where all the action is, if this is where all the really interesting research is happening and Apple says, Hey, we think it would be really, really great if you could figure out these, the eyelashes on this picture are not coming out the way that you'd like.

(00:53:40):
We need a new AI model to get eyelashes better on pictures. Say, yeah, but I want to be able to summarize prot and rewrite it and analyze large values of information and help people assimilate a, a crushing inbox of, of mail that they can't really get their hands on. They're, those people are gonna walk to any of the many, many companies that are paying 10 times top dollar for talent like them. So, I I, I would be surprised if they actually had like a chat product. But I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of years suddenly recommendations get a lot smarter suddenly online if, if the option to to go to Apple support and explicitly be offered the opportunity to talk to a chat bott that might be able to solve your problem that's been trained only on Apple support questions and Apple support data. I think we'll see. I think we'll see. Like, it'll be like the M S G that gets sprinkled all over everything that acts as a flavor enhancer for a lot of an Apple things.

Jason Snell (00:54:37):
Yeah, a lot of that. It's already there, right? I mean, apple has been, the narrative, right, is, oh, apple isn't doing ai. And the fact is Apple, you know, they built the, they built the neural engine into their chip. They have been doing 60 million scans of every photo in your photo library for like seven years now. Like, they have machine learning, AI technology, the thing is the chat bot thing. What, what, and they, and they didn't have that. What bothers me about Gelman's report is he says they were, they started working on this chatbot last late last year, which reads to me very much like somebody went, Hey, do we have a chatbot? They're really hot right now, <laugh> and somebody, everybody looked at each other and they're like, no, no, no, and maybe John G And Andrea was like, no, they're stupid. I told them not to do it.

(00:55:21):
<Laugh>. And then Tim Cook was like, maybe try, maybe try a little bit <laugh>. And, and so you end up in this situation where that feels really late to the party and makes me wonder like, one, what are they doing about Siri? Like, was that not, was a language model? Like you use a language model for autocorrect in iOS 17, but where's Siri and what is Siri doing? And then the other troubling thing, the most troubling thing in this entire report is the fact that <laugh>, mark Erman says, okay, they don't have a strategy. They don't have a consumer angle, they don't have a concrete plan, but you know, what they ha apparently have is a ship date. 'cause They want to ship something next year. It's like, what, what are you shipping? What are you shipping next year at all? And, and that's where bad things happen, right?

(00:56:02):
Where they're like, they don't really know what the product is, they just know they need to ship something because peer pressure, I guess they don't want to be, feel like they've been left behind. And like, I think Apple being restrained about some of this stuff and saying, you know, the current large language models are really embarrassing and don't really serve the user's purpose yet. And we're gonna wait and we're gonna do our typical Apple thing where everybody thinks we're late, but it turns out we're just waiting for the right moment. Like, okay, but when I hear that they don't have a plan, but they have a ship date <laugh>, it's scary. 'cause Like that's not, that's how disasters happen. <Laugh> in, in this industry is, is you ship something 'cause you have to, and not because you have an idea.

Leo Laporte (00:56:41):
Very good point. Yeah. Is that a ship date to the public or a ship date internally?

Jason Snell (00:56:46):
Well, I mean, they haven't said anything publicly, right? Gorman's report says they plan to announce something next year, but they don't have a plan. Okay. It's like, it's gotta be is to announce something

Leo Laporte (00:56:55):
I was reading, it's gotta be hard if you're sitting on this technology, you know, you've got it that people inside, I think quite rightly, including experts like John Rena, Drea, say, no, no, no guys, this is not something we ever wanna, that's not good. Put our name on, but there's gotta be a lot of pressure. Well, but, but Google's doing it. Facebook's doing it Apple and Microsoft's doing it. We what we're, we're, we're, we're missing the bus, you know? Right. you don't wanna miss the bus, even if the bus is headed to hell.

Jason Snell (00:57:24):
And the danger is is is he being a naysayer or is he being really smart? Yeah. And I think the danger is that the, it's possible that he's absolutely right. Assuming John Gin Andreas is the guy who's saying no. If it's possible, he's exactly right. It's also possible that he just looks down on that technology and says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, we don't like that. We could do better. And you risk missing something important, which get brings us back to Siri, which is like, okay, apple, I maybe this isn't the right thing, except everybody's looking over at Siri saying, it seems like maybe Siri could be better and it isn't. So what you're gonna do, and I, I get the being enough of an adult to say, we we're not ready, so let's not talk about it. And that's a very Apple thing to do. But, but it does when they, when they, the chat bot came up late last year, I wonder, or were they just saying, we're just not gonna bother with that, and are they gonna regret that later?

Leo Laporte (00:58:19):
Not above it. It's, it's likely it's Gina Andrea because he's senior vice president of machine learning and ai, I mean, he's AI strategy, right? So I mean, his job is designed what their AI strategy is. Go ahead. Alex,

Alex Lindsay (00:58:33):
I was gonna say is, you know, an Apple missed the boat on subscriptions for a very long time. <Laugh> like, you know, like, they just were like, they're gonna keep on having us buy music. And you know, the good news for them is they don't have a controlling interest in that market because of that. Because if they had switched over very quick, you know, 10 years earlier than they did, they probably, you know, would have 80% of the market, you know, that that's out there and, and so

Leo Laporte (00:58:55):
So you're lobbying for them to release something?

Alex Lindsay (00:58:59):
No, I, I don't think that they should rush at it. I think a lot of, but I think that there's something, I mean, I use chat chip PT every day, <laugh>, so, so I'm, I'm, I'm kind of,

Leo Laporte (00:59:05):
Yeah. And mid Journey, you're a big fan of these. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:59:07):
Yeah. I use both of them extensively. And and so I, I, I feel like it's kind of hard for me to imagine how I did do what I do before I had those two things in my, you know, like I use 'em so much every day that I'm, that it's hard for me to, you know, 'cause I'm constantly going back and forth. Like, if I'm trying to figure something out, I'll ask Chat, g p t that question, and then I, then I start Googling. But what it does is it gets me through that conversation. Like, I can't think of the words to use to search for what I'm looking for or even how to think about it. So I just ask chat, g p t, like I'm asking some person, like, and then I'll say, you are this and I am this. Explain this to me, you know? And, and then it just goes and I go, oh, I got it. And then I start searching and then I crosscheck it. And I often find that, again, the Internet's not much more accurate than chat G P T because that's what it was based on. So you have to kind of read and re recalibrate between each page to figure out what's actually accurate, but it gives you a good sense of it.

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:07):
But, but, but Apple could be missing the boat as, 'cause this is just like, just like vr this, this is still infancy. So most of this, most of the moves made are stepping on rakes. It, it's not, there's a lot of stumbling features. Slowly. I think that a lot of the industry and a lot of the users are starting to realize that although just asking a generalized chat bot that's been trained on all the racism of the internet and all the idiocy of the internet is not quite so useful. Once you have a tool that says, I'm gonna ask you a question, I only want you to answer it based on information you get from this trusted source or these three trusted sources. Or here is a, the corpus of all of the technical documentation that we have written in this company over the past 11 years, only give me inform answers and, and, and text that's based on this source and this trusted source only.

(01:00:56):
That is a real power move just to, just the ability to say, learn my inbox, learn nothing but my inbox, and then answer, let me ask you questions based on it. So, I I, I don't think, I don't think they necessarily have to, I also think that Apple's in a little bit of difficulty because philosophically they're gonna want to do that all on device for privacy and security reasons. And that's kind of a challenge. You really have to be selective in the features that you're gonna be creating if you're only gonna be doing it locally on a computer, let alone a phone. But it's, again, people, people don't know the Mssg is in there. But once you give them a choice of two different dishes, one of them, one of them has a flavor enhancer, the other one does not, they're gonna lean towards the one with a flavor enhancer, maybe.

Alex Lindsay (01:01:37):
Well, and, and the hard part is, is that, I guess I would say that the mid journey in Photoshop are the Photoshop beta are a good example of a limited library versus an unlimited library, right? We'll see where all the law lawsuits go, but like the Photoshop fill, you know paint in and the what it'll create and everything else is really cool, and it's really fun to use. And it's one 10th the quality of Mid Journey <laugh>, you know, like it's, you know, it's not, it's not anywhere near what Mid Journey's doing. And so, but it, 'cause it's limited to what Adobe owns or what it's licensed. And so I think that that's always the problem with limiting the library that it's based on, is that you're limiting the, the output. And so I think that that's gonna be the, the challenge for Apple is they definitely don't wanna just give you this unlimited thing, but is it really going to work?

(01:02:22):
But I, you know, and I think that they could, through licensing, through a lot of things, if it just went through all the encyclopedias and all of the things that Apple could pay, can afford to pay for, to Andy's point, apple could build, build all trusted sources. And then I'm asking questions, but I do, you know, I, I do it now with my phone, you know, I'm on chat G B T on my phone, and I'll ask at things and while I'm somewhere and I do wanna just be able to say, Hey, you know, whatever you know, what is this? Or what am I looking at? Or what is the, you know, like if I point a plant, what is that and where does it grow and what does it do? And have it just answer the questions would be really powerful. You know, like, it, you'll learn a lot faster

Andy Ihnatko (01:03:01):
Just to, when I, I was cooking a, a couple days ago and I, I thought that, ooh, I think some, I think some, some some paprika would work really, really well in this dish. And I would've given anything for at that point to simply ask the smart speaker in my kitchen, you know, Hey, s hey, hey Shlomo. Like if I, if I'm using paprika, should I add it at the beginning of a 30 minute simmer or just, or spice it at the end? And for it to find that information and get it back to me, that would be quite wonderful. I

Leo Laporte (01:03:28):
Would just like to ask where the hell my paprika is? <Laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:03:32):
<Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (01:03:33):
Is still open. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (01:03:35):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:03:37):
This is an interesting challenge for Apple. 'cause The Apple playbook, of course, as it was with the iPod, the iPhone everything they've done even the Vision Pro is to let the markets simmer with early products until it becomes clear what directions to take and where Apple can add value and then release a product later in the lifecycle. The problem with ai, though, it's not any one thing. I really like your idea of taking you know, encyclopedia Britannica in the World Book and a bunch of vetted quality sources, sources just ingesting them. Apple could make the next Wikipedia couldn't it? It could, but reliable, right? And not prone to the, you know, the political fights and so forth that Wikipedia is prone to. It could be very

Alex Lindsay (01:04:24):
Interesting, although I, I would say in, in a real time data sort of way, Wikipedia oftentimes is more accurate than most of the other things that we

Leo Laporte (01:04:29):
Have back. That's the challenge. Right? So how would you, you know, you could take in all the existing vetted material, but how do you keep it up to date? Is it really interesting?

Alex Lindsay (01:04:38):
I would say I, I wouldn't say that I wouldn't, I wouldn't si I would give w the Wikimedia or whether the foundation a ton more money. Yeah. Which Apple could afford to <laugh>, you know, like just give a billion dollar year.

Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
I give them as much as I can afford every month. But

Jason Snell (01:04:51):
<Laugh> Apple doesn't need to create a fact source of its own. Right? Like Apple needs to pay for some sources Yeah. And use those as data sources. Yeah. It's interesting. And I think that that is the future for Wikipedia. Actually. I don't think it's the future for other, other data sources like encyclopedia and news organizations, right? You pay the AP or Reuters or whoever for access, not to republish. I mean, they do some of that, what's the corpus, the NewsCorp. But to, to use it as their corpus of current events for their search engine. Even link out and say, if you wanna read more, go here. And, and that, that's a pretty good model, right? A as a, a trust database for for this kind of certain,

Leo Laporte (01:05:28):
Andy, how much, how much would you pay for a a, a cookbook l l m that had ingested the top 5,000 cookbooks in the world? And so, you know, knew everything there is to know about paprika, <laugh>, you would, I would pay a lot for that, you know, especially if it was a nice recipe pro, you know, take paprika, add three. I

Alex Lindsay (01:05:46):
Mean, I would be happy with just the l l m pointed at the modern modernist cookbook. That's like, yeah, I have, I have, I think I have all of those. And there's like 12, you know, there you go. Volumes of it. Just point all of that. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:05:58):
Those are the opportunities. They're niche opportunities. They're not like, you know, Siri, they're niche opportunities. Although, boy, I'd love to see Siri have these additional skills added in. That would be very interesting. So in other words, there are places Apple could use this without the risks of the internet tra trained LLMs like chat G P T. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:19):
That, that's why I, I wouldn't be shocked if, if they did release this as a consumer facing thing. I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like like Siri where it's

Leo Laporte (01:06:29):
Not Yeah, they're gonna focus on safety, aren't they? Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:31):
No, no, no, no. I'm, I, I meant in the sense that it is a sticker that they put on a whole bunch of different things and that indicate, Hey, this is a active voice agent. So they basically say, Hey, now now <laugh> now apple male is now enhanced with Schmee brain, I don't know, whatever <laugh>. And now, hey, and if, and now when you have your if you, if you are having, if you have an outline for your presentation, but you don't have like a, you need a slide deck immediately, Hey, MGI Brain, go to the Sengi brain feature inside a keynote, and it will create a slide deck based on this outline. It will generate artwork that's appropriate to each, it will fill out the text

Jason Snell (01:07:07):
And it'll be called Siri.

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:08):
I would love

Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
Called. Now I'm starting to think of apps. Siri

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:11):
2.0.

Leo Laporte (01:07:11):
I would love to see what if Apple ingested I M D B and every movie ever made, and then gave you a Vision Pro app that you could say, Hey, I remember Humphrey Bogart in front of a plane saying goodbye to Ingrid Bergman. Do you, what was that scene? And then it pulled it up.

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:29):
We, we have that on technology already, and it calls it's watch, it's called, it's called Watching Any Movie With Your Mom. Yeah, I

Jason Snell (01:07:34):
Was gonna say. And then, and then it, and then it calls the 9 1 1 and says, I think Leo hit his head. 'cause He doesn't remember Cast A Blanket anymore. Was

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:42):
That, was that guy in that movie with that lady? She was used to be on that TV show. She used to drink coffee.

Leo Laporte (01:07:48):
You can do that with music now, by the way. You can go, what's the song? Da da da. And sometimes they'll, they'll get it, right. So,

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:56):
Oh, did you know, did Google, Google Search will even do I forget which app it is. I think, I think it's a Google like search thing where you can say the album where Yeah, it's, it's a pool and there's the baby, and Yeah, I don't, and it's underwater. And they'll say Playing, nevermind. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:08:12):
Nevermind. Exactly. It's, I think that's so cool. There's, there's the real uses. They're in constrained datas sources. So you don't have the hall hallucination, you don't have the in misinformation and useful intelligent

Jason Snell (01:08:25):
Assistant is what we want, right? Yes. Which is what Siri was always supposed to be intelligent assistant. I don't know how to get this thing, but, you know, you are an expert in that. And then, and then you use the large language model just to talk back and forth. So it's like I'm talking to somebody who understands me, but it's not confabulating like an invented album that didn't ever exist. It's going to the source. It knows how to search that. It knows how to summarize that. Like, that's, that's the dream. And I hope they are working on that at Apple. And it may just be that, you know, what they've said is like, chatbot is the wrong way to think about that. Yes. L l m chatbot is, that's ay not the right way to think about. That's it's a toy. And, and Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I, I also understand why they would be feeling the pressure to announce something because, you know, they, they, they don't wanna feel like they're behind, but it's also not, well,

Leo Laporte (01:09:08):
They could do, do a goog. Google does announce it and never release it. You know, that's always that lets off that's

Jason Snell (01:09:13):
Example. They don't do that.

Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
Yeah. Kugel has announced, remember they had glasses that would translate as you're talking to somebody in another language. Yeah. And they they never did that <laugh>. They just talked about it. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:09:27):
They, yeah, they were, they bought it. They, they bought a very promising augmented reality eyeglass company that made a very nice pair of eyeglasses. Yeah. You could buy actually at a, at an eyeglass store. That would be just a simple one-way communication between your phone and this thing getting notification stuff. And it was lovely. But Google bought it and made use, use the company to make this demo and then said, enjoy your hope you enjoyed your free <laugh> Cats during orientation team members. Bye. Cutting you loose.

Leo Laporte (01:09:55):
Keep that beanie. You may need it again. All right, let's take a little break. We got, I think we have some more Apple News. I'll find some. I really will. I promise. But first a word from our sponsor. Our, our my Daily Raj. That is such a great way to start the day. A G one, the daily foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole body health. Like you, I'm sure I wanted to support my health. I already had a fist full of pills, didn't wanna drink. Some of those things that I've tried are just god awful. Through a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients, AG one delivers comprehensive support in one drink for the brain, the gut, and the immune system. It's like my favorite beverage. I look forward to it. Every morning since 2010, AG one has improved their formula 52 times.

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Start your day every day with AG one. Try ag one. You can get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free ag one travel packs. You're gonna love them with your first purchase of subscription. Go to drink ag one.com/mac break, drink ag one.com/mac break. Check it out. AG one drink ag one.com/mec Break. There is some negative, I guess negative news. Apple is being targeted. It's so funny because Apple can't win on the one hand. <Laugh> Apple is constantly, you know, beat up for privacy. On the other hand, now the EU is investigating a t t application what is it? Application transparency. Add tracking transparency, add tracking transparency because it hurt <laugh>, it, it hurts, it hurts <laugh> small businesses. It's like we're just trying to protect your privacy. This does seem like conflicting news from from the eu, the French antitrust watchdog, which is <inaudible> issues. The statement of objection over Apple app tracking yesterday, or actually this was today citing concerns. Apple could have breached regulations linked to the use of iPhone user data for advertising purposes. Wait a minute, what? This is the switch you flip that says they can't track you. The watchdog is concerned that Apple quote might abuse his dominant position by implementing discriminatory non-objective and non-transparent conditions for the use of use of data for advertising purposes. <Laugh>, nice.

(01:13:49):
Well, I guess, I guess what you could say, they don't say this, but what you could say is well notice there's no at t t for Apple that there is for third party apps. So you could, you could say that Apple says it denied the allegation saying the mechanism gives users more control by requiring all apps to ask permission before tracking them. And we are gonna engage constructively with a French regulator, <laugh>, Hey buddy <laugh>, where did this come from? Four French online advertising groups filed an antitrust complaint in 2020 over a t t. And I guess, you know, it's inevitable. I A b France, M M A F Ss r i and Tcom said the changes brought by Apple did not meet European Union privacy rules, because while the opt-in mechanism applied for third party developers, Apple's own apps did not include it. So they

Alex Lindsay (01:14:44):
Got, it's not third party,

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:46):
Right,

Leo Laporte (01:14:46):
Because it's not third party. Right? Right. It's Apple. And Apple has first party data regardless, right?

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:53):
Yeah. G D P R is becoming such a problem for so many people. 'cause It's, it, it, it's basically, if you, if you don't think you have a weapon to hit a big company with, pull out G D P R, you'll have some success because it's vague enough that it'll probably go to trial. It'll probably cause some sort of a problem. I, I do support the, the principle of it. I do support the idea of it, but in practice over the past few years, we've seen that the balance of holding large companies to account for violating user privacy is happening at a slightly smaller pace than a lot of companies that are doing their best being really, really harassed and, and almost put outta business by the impossibility of complying with certain terms of this thing. I hope that, I hope that gets updated a little bit just to make it a more finely focused

Leo Laporte (01:15:45):
Tool. On the other hand, apple is being targeted in App store antitrust damages suit UK developers seeking a billion dollars plus. It's a class action lawsuit which seeks compensation accusing the tech giant of abusing a dominant position by charging an anti-competitive, we've heard this all before, 30% fee on in-app sales. This is, this is the one thing you know, that Epic kind of won in this, in their, in their battle. Actually, epic didn't even, even didn't even win this battle. They only won the one, the one thing in, in Apple's got a, a stay a 90 day stay on it. That Apple doesn't allow you to put a link to your third party payment system on the web for, for apps like Kindle or Audible.

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:33):
It, it does show that this is, this is how Apple gets ped to death by ducks. Not, not not to death, of course, but this is the one thing where, okay, you know, you kind, you kind of got us here. We're at least gonna have to spend a lot of money to make this go away one way or another. And it's this class action suit would not have been brought, if not for the fact that it's been identified as a, as a successful point of entry to get at Apple's, Apple's wallet.

Leo Laporte (01:16:56):
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:16:56):
And it, I mean, it, it's still gonna come down to the same thing that's come down to every other, in every other case, which is, are other phones like the Apple phone <laugh>? You know, like, are they, you know, and if they, and if a court decides that they are the same, that most of these phones work the same way, then it's hard to calculate a monopoly. You know, if they decide that, that it is distinct then it's easy to calculate a monopoly. So it's just a matter of, so far no one's been successful at making that turn yet.

Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
I wonder if in this class action suit, the courts might say, well, the EU regulator's already looking at this, so we're just gonna, you know, we're gonna, you, let's wait and see what they do first. Otherwise, right. The ducks can really get you,

Jason Snell (01:17:38):
It's nibbled to annoyance by ducks, I guess is what Andy really meant. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:17:42):
Yeah. Not death. It's just annoyance. Yeah, annoyance.

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:45):
Yeah. If it, if it puts pressure on Apple to consider what I always term as not evil motivations, but dogmatic things that they put into place at the very, very start of the app store that have long since outlived their usefulness and their, their sanity in an app store. That's a good thing. I hope, I hope that that's what happens. I don't hope that Apple keeps having to write billion dollar checks. I don't think they're gonna write a billion dollar check here. But just as that kind of pressure is the reason why a lot of the, a lot of the developers who aren't making, actually 85% of developers, as Apple says, don't pay any fees whatsoever because they're not making enough money to actually start being charged the, the tariffs, so to speak. And that didn't happen on its own that had happened because of pressure from outside

Leo Laporte (01:18:27):
You. You're saying eventually that's a really hard king qua will look out of the tower and see all the pitchforks and torches and say, you know, I don't think they like this policy.

Jason Snell (01:18:36):
They not some, yeah. It's also very hard to find a bank that will cash a billion check <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:18:42):
Well, you gotta make it one of those. You don't wanna ca careful those big prize checks the demo, it's the

Jason Snell (01:18:46):
Oversized novelty check. Novelty is the only kind of check, novel check. And then you gotta to endorse it, you need like a one of those wide sharpies. So you can write your name really big.

Leo Laporte (01:18:54):
Just say, I, I did you see there was a woman claim to have won the power, whatever it was, the billion dollar Powerball payoff, and they gave her the big novelty check, and then it turned out no, she hadn't, you know, you could have just checked her ticket and see, but no, they, she's,

Alex Lindsay (01:19:11):
She got her 15 minutes of fame. They

Leo Laporte (01:19:12):
Got the, they wanted, she wanted the big novelty check, I think <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:19:16):
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:19:17):
Put on the

Alex Lindsay (01:19:17):
Wall

Andy Ihnatko (01:19:17):
That cost that lottery company $187 at Kinko's <laugh>. I hope that, I hope they get some of that money back from her.

Alex Lindsay (01:19:24):
I just love, I love the Tom did reading that article, or like a TechCrunch article on this, on the UK thing. It said, another element that is critical and is that even if the fee was zero, they would still have the same app store because Apple could not sell, apple could not sell a single device without valuable apps such as Tinder, Spotify, Netflix, news apps, game apps. And like, that was like, yeah, like Fortnite, like we,

Leo Laporte (01:19:45):
Like users

Alex Lindsay (01:19:46):
Were just kinda like, oh, Fortnite is not here anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
Okay. <laugh>. Right. Like, like,

Alex Lindsay (01:19:50):
I I just think there, it was like the thought that people aren't gonna buy their, their iPhones because of those apps specifically. I was kind of like, well, I think most, most, most Apple users would just move on. Like, they'd just be like, oh, I guess it's not here anymore. So you'd have to take 'em all out to, to make that possible. But Fortnite, I, I thought was an amazingly illustrative thing of the leverage that an individual app have has, because it, it was like I had a whole bunch of friends that were playing Fortnite and then they just

Leo Laporte (01:20:14):
Weren't, then they stopped

Alex Lindsay (01:20:15):
<Laugh> and they were like, oh, it's gone now, so I'm gonna now do something else. You know, it wasn't like, I'm now gonna go to an Android. Like, that wasn't one of the, that wasn't one of the options.

Leo Laporte (01:20:23):
So Apple is a little upset about a proposed UK surveillance bill. The government in the UK seeking to update the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. It wants messaging services to make, to go go to the home office <laugh> and make sure the security features meet our, their needs. In other words, the home office could say, turn off those security features without telling anybody. Yeah. apple says, yeah, over our dead bodies, <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:21:02):
And everybody else, I mean, like, everybody else's connected to messages are just like, well, we're gonna have to turn it off. Like, you know, we're just not gonna have to turn it off. Yeah. They're,

Andy Ihnatko (01:21:07):
They're under this, under this proposed rule that apple and others would be required to do what Apple was proposing to do a couple years ago, which is to scan content on the phone for css. A child sexual abuse, child sexual abuse material on the device before it gets, goes into a messaging service, which means that it would, they would have to break all encryption, which is no. Yeah, not, that's not gonna

Leo Laporte (01:21:29):
Happen. And as you say, WhatsApp and Signal, both have also said, you know, this not, we're just gonna leave the uk If you make us do that,

Andy Ihnatko (01:21:37):
Hope your citizens enjoy email, that's all you're gonna be using to talk to each other with.

Jason Snell (01:21:41):
Well, and, and I mean, come on, the, the politicians here, right? They wanna look tough. Let's, let's, I mean, yes, you wanna, first off, they bring the most egregious examples to the table. So they say, this is about saving the kids and it's about stopping terrorism, but like, it's also about providing the government with access to whatever they wanna see. Right? And that's where it always goes. 'cause That's ultimately what governments want. At the same time, the politicians who make the laws that let the government operate don't want to be the ones who make their constituents angry because they broke their phone and they broke their messaging app and all of those things. So it feels like the most likely scenario here is that there will be, there's already carve-outs in there for like Zoom. And my favorite is for government people. The government doesn't, the government stuff can still be encrypted if you work at the government, that stuff still be encrypted.

(01:22:30):
It's fine. It's the people regular people who, who don't get encrypted. So there'll be carve-outs. I would imagine they don't want Apple and WhatsApp and anybody else to like, storm outta the UK and like, and, and stay out, right? <Laugh>, like, they're gonna, more likely they'll have like a, a little like, eh, you know, oh, they agreed to this minor thing that doesn't break anything. And that's how we got them to stay because it would be quite a, a scene and, and it would be interesting to see it if it happened. But like that, not only would that make the UK politicians, I think maybe look bad and be a little afraid, but like, they also have to realize that Apple and WhatsApp and the rest of these guys aren't gonna say yes because they know the moment they say yes. Like, okay, in the UK we'll do that. Well, the jig is up everywhere else, like literally everywhere else. We'll pass similar laws at that point. So they're not gonna say yes, they're gonna say no. So if you're a UK politician, do you want them to storm out of your country? Probably not. Yeah. So we'll see. But it's, it's real interesting 'cause they're right on the verge here. It,

Alex Lindsay (01:23:29):
It's just, it, it just undermines our, our belief in the competency of our leaders <laugh>, you know, like it's just the dumbest law. Like, it, it, and you just, this is why a lot of times when politicians say they wanna make a law about something, you go, well, like <laugh>. Like, are you really, are you, do you, you know, they're just, you know, these are technological infants, you know, that are, that are that are trying to make laws about things that they just don't know anything about. And they're being told that they're being given a pile of things to think about from the intelligence community. So the intelligence community is pushing this, and they're talking to people who barely know how to use email about why, how, why it's important that they have access to this data. And so they're like, oh, okay. You know, like, you know, like I, this seems like, seems reasonable to me. And it's just, you know, and we're, we see this in all the countries, especially the Five Eyes, <laugh>, like those are the five, the five countries that you see most, the most action outside of Russia and China, which kind of have their own little world, is the, is the Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States, and uk.

Leo Laporte (01:24:30):
The Apple says, one, we're not gonna make changes to security features specifically for one country that would weaken the product for all users. Two, some changes would require issuing a software update. So we can't even do it secretly. Three, these proposals constitute a serious and direct threat to data security and information privacy that would affect people outside the uk to which the home office said, well, well, you know, well, well, well, well, we keep all legislation under review to ensure it is as strong as it can be. And this consultation is part of that process. No decisions have been made yet. Not at all. <Laugh>. So I think once once people sat up and took notice to these Snoopers charter as it's called in the modifications to the Snoopers charter, that maybe the home office will walk that back, whoops. Didn't mean to offend you Governor.

(01:25:25):
Actually a little threat to Apple in in Apple pay a threat to Venmo and it's Cash app and so forth. The Federal Reserve Bank has launched its own instant payments service. It's called Fed Now, and it's free, although the banks that implement it may end up charging you some money. Fed now is launching with 41 banks and 15 service providers. You know, Venmo at least doesn't charge you anything unless you want the money deposited directly into your account because they make a little money holding your cash for you. Let me hold that for you. I presume Apple does the same thing. Fed now is apparently just a, a, a, the us example of a service that's widely available everywhere else in the world. Canada's Got it. Something similar. France has it something similar. Just as, because here in the United States, we have the, the Federal Clearinghouse that you write a check, you buy a stamp, put it on an envelope, you mail it, the check goes to the federal, clear the bank, which then passes it on the Federal Clearinghouse, where some guy with, you know, a green shade and Garters goes, well, that looks okay, <laugh> alright, <laugh>.

(01:26:42):
And three days later, the money's deposited in your plumber's account. That is kind of an old fashioned way of doing things, I guess.

Andy Ihnatko (01:26:49):
Yeah. And countries like Japan have had this since like the early seventies <laugh>. It's, it's, I mean, it's truly, I mean, it's, and and it is infra, it is bank infrastructure. It's not as though this goes live in a, in a week or so, that suddenly you'll be able to essentially PayPal your PayPal between any two entities in the entire world without using PayPal and without using any any fees. It's basically, so banks can talk to other banks, including international banks that have something similar to this, but it's a long time coming and it's a good base upon which a lot of future services can be created. I was reading about this last week, and apparently this is part of like, when crypto started to become a thing. A long time ago, the Feds started having conversations about how well should we have a federal cryptocurrency is this is digital currency where things are going.

(01:27:34):
And this was one of the outcomes of those discussions saying that it's not necessarily that we need a form of digital currency, we just need to, the, the, the process of making the numbers in one person's account affect the numbers in other people's accounts simultaneously. We need to make that easier and simpler and make that into something and faster, faster into a network that we can create. Right? Yeah, exactly. Just, just today, just say, I paid, I paid somebody a fee with the simplest and most technologically advanced method that was available to me. I picked, I picked up my phone, launched my banking app, and told my banking app to please print out a paper check and mail it to this person in this amount. Yes. Yes. And it told, and it, and it tells me that, okay, this will be mailed out on this date. Yes. We'll hold the funds on this date. It's like, I'm, I'm glad, I'm glad I no longer have to like do the 10 steps of where's the checkbook? Okay, let's write it out.

Leo Laporte (01:28:26):
Okay. But the point is, have they still mailing a check, even though? Exactly.

Andy Ihnatko (01:28:30):
Exactly. So

Leo Laporte (01:28:31):
These, the ability

Andy Ihnatko (01:28:32):
To simply say, yeah. Whereas the conversation started with, do you have PayPal, Venmo, or do you need to check now with the system in place, it would simply be whatever token you need to show to say, here is how to put money into my account securely so that I can't steal from you and you can't steal from

Leo Laporte (01:28:47):
Me. I, I have noticed that a number more and more places are using Venmo. I can on they'll show a QR code. I hold up my Venmo app and the payment goes through that way. So I think more people wanna do this. You have to say though, let me, this is, this is the Fed joining the 21st century. Look at this banner that they got designed somewhere that really looks like 1945 Fed Now. It's a big billboard over a, a building that says Fed Now is live. And then there's another building with Showcase. This is like, this is, and there's, and they got Spot, it's like a movie opening in 1943. It's,

Andy Ihnatko (01:29:24):
That's a, it's pretty, it's a pretty savvy site. That's HTML 1.4, the four, they're using tables.

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
<Laugh>. This is hysterical. You gotta, this is the, this is what they're gonna have. The guys with the Green Shades,

Andy Ihnatko (01:29:37):
Very, very

Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
Slave gardeners do is design their own graphics from now on, I guess <laugh> anyway, fed Now service is live. Ask your bank. A lot of big banks are already signatories. I see Wells Fargo, for instance, is is on, is in the network. A lot of community banks Mellon JP Morgan Chase. And the question is, well, what are they gonna charge you for this? And they remember a lot of these banks also have Zelle as which they created to, to do this. Yeah. So we'll see.

Andy Ihnatko (01:30:09):
There's, there, there, I mean there are a lot of questions about this. A like, like you said, they, they've already created their own services. Do they want to switch users over to a competing service that they don't have their their thumb into? And also things like how much are they gonna lose once when I make a transfer from one person and during, during the week that that paper check or electronic to paper check is in transit, that money is frozen inside my account and they can still use it for banking purposes. How is it gonna affect their bottom line when all those, all those transactions happening a million times a day are instantaneous from party to party? They are no people are, people are no longer parking money inside a bank account for as long as they used to. What, what's gonna happen when, if I get the slightest twitch that something's up at my bank, or if I just get nervous about the economy, I can take $500,000 out of an account and move it instantly as opposed to <laugh>, this is gonna take a day or two in order for the bank to actually maneuver it.

(01:31:07):
There's, there's a lot. I'm, I'm, I'm sure they anticipated a lot of this, but we're gonna see a lot of interesting things happening in the next few

Leo Laporte (01:31:12):
Years, I think. Well, and, and I mean, apple could actually become a, a Fed Now provider. I mean, they could actually, in fact, I would imagine they'd want to use this. I don't, I don't know.

Andy Ihnatko (01:31:21):
I don't know, know, I just know if they could, if it's just what kind of an institution qualifies for access to this network,

Leo Laporte (01:31:27):
These certified service providers include, you know, people like Jack Henry and Finley Open Payment Network. So there, yeah, I mean, I feel like that, that there would be a place for Apple to, to play in this. I don't know what it gets you that, I guess in order to use Apple Pay, you have to have, the other person has to have Apple in Yeah. And,

Andy Ihnatko (01:31:47):
And there's, there's just this idea of a middleman that that's a, that's a pain point for security, right? It's a pain point for privacy. And again, that conversation. Do you have PayPal? Do you have Zelle? Do you have Yeah, it's a pain. Do you have Venmo? Yeah. Oh, no. And that's the reason why I'm sending them a check because they understand a a, a check is not like cash, but it's like cash in that I put it in your hand and you have the money. And again, after another three or four days of deposits,

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
I haven't written a check in so long. Yeah. Ages and ages. I,

Alex Lindsay (01:32:14):
I had to write one, I had to write one last year and it was like, how do I do this again? It was, it was literally like, I was like, what am I, and, and my

Leo Laporte (01:32:20):
Hand is a claw. I don't even know how to write anymore. <Laugh>. Yes. My hand is like,

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:24):
The

Alex Lindsay (01:32:24):
Day I filled out, I filled out one form for the doctor and I like, felt like I could barely move my hand. Yeah. Like all those muscles don't do that anymore. I'm just like, what am I, like what is going on here? Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:35):
The the whole concept has totally ruined. Like my, when I go to comic Cons and stuff, I used to, I used to be able to say, oh gosh, I'm outta money. You know, if I, I really love that sketchbook. I certainly would buy it for $80, but as soon as I go, as soon as I see an at, I'm gonna go find an at t m and then come right back. I'll be right back. And now they say, oh, I do take PayPal and Zelle and, and oh, damnit <laugh>. Now, now I have to say, actually I have, I think that, I think that your, your artwork is still on the uphill side of the fence. I don't think that I really want to see your naked women doing improbable things with no anatomy that I've ever heard of before <laugh>. But I wish you the best in your future endeavors. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:33:15):
Trouble in Paradise according to Wayne Mott the information, he's well connected. Apple is struggling with manufacturing larger screens for the iPhone 15 Pros, two people with direct knowledge of the issue say this could lead to a shortage of units that launch in September. We're starting to hear a little bit about this now because here we are in July and it's just a couple of months off. How big are these be apple's be?

Alex Lindsay (01:33:44):
I it may not be that they're that much bigger. I think it's they're reducing the, the bezel size again. They really want to get rid of the bezel. Ah, and I think that they're making it smaller and trying to have it not change the form factor, but have a bigger screen. And apple does a lot of things that are hard <laugh>, you know? Yeah. And so that's part of what makes the phone, the phone is that it, they do con they do assembly processes that are very difficult. I remember hearing a story that the, that they, you know, that they had to basically, they lo when they first made the track pads that were, that had you know, pushback on them, that those track pads, like 40% of them didn't make it <laugh> like, you know, like didn't, didn't make qc. Right. You know, and, and that was like for millions of them as they went out until they got it sorted out. So oftentimes at the very beginning, they, because they're doing things that are hard it, it oftentimes is, is difficult. And we've seen these delays before because of that f these

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
12 had a similar delay. Yeah. probably 'cause of covid. Also sounds

Jason Snell (01:34:37):
Like the, it's a, there's an LG screen that they're trying to use here and there's a process there and they're failing more, but that the, the information report says that, that they've made it so that if they have to, they can use a Samsung display instead. Right? Yeah. So there's the aspect of this, which is just like, look, they would rather not pay Samsung. Of course they wouldn't <laugh>, but which would they prefer shipping iPhones with Samsung displays or not shipping iPhones. And the answer is shipping iPhones with Samsung displays. So it's interesting. This seems like a growing pains kind of thing where they really want to use this LG display, but which uses this new process, low

Leo Laporte (01:35:14):
Injection pressure over molding or

Jason Snell (01:35:16):
Lipo lipo. They're lipo in your iPhone. Yeah. Yeah. But if your iPhone doesn't want to be lipo, you know, they'll put a Samsung display and they, they just 'cause in the end priorities, right? They wanna move on. But if they, if they can't ship iPhones, the jig is up. So they'll ship iPhones

Leo Laporte (01:35:31):
Kind of in this interesting insight into the, the, the process. Iphones are now in a manufacturing stage. Wayne Maw writes known as Risk Ramp in which Foxconn makes hundreds of thousands of units of the device to test how reliably they can build it without defects. Apple traditionally moves to mass production in August, of course shipping to customers late September. So we're in risk ramp mode right now. And that's where this news comes

Jason Snell (01:35:59):
From. Although our friend Scooter X and the Discord points out a nine to five max story that says it sounds like there's a story like the next step after the information story, which was like they're working on it. <Laugh> is like the, this other report is, they worked on it and <laugh>, they're

Leo Laporte (01:36:15):
Back on track. This is from Zach call at nine to five Mac iPhone 15 Pro production

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:19):
Concerns over thinner bezels may be exaggerated.

Jason Snell (01:36:22):
Well, it's this, it's this update from display supply chain consultants, right. Saying that they, that they solved the problem that this was an issue, but maybe they've resolved it. Interesting. You know, obviously there is no higher priority at Apple than making sure the iPhone ships in volume on time. Right. That's number one. Job, number one and two and three is make the iPhone be fine, right. That that's it. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:44):
And the, there's another, there was another report last week about how Apple's basically talking to Samsung and LG to say, we need you to develop a truly bezels display for us. We don't want the display to curve around the size like we see in other, in other phones. And we wanna maybe be able to do that in 2017. Yes. I, is there a Tiffany band warming up behind you that, that, that's just bikers with my, with my Tuesday afternoon meth delivery? That was a, a Tyco

Leo Laporte (01:37:10):
Tycho drummers getting ready for the big parade. I

Andy Ihnatko (01:37:13):
<Laugh> I only, I only start worrying once there's gunshots that I know that I really have to answer. The door are, so

Leo Laporte (01:37:18):
If you hear that, are you in a biker area? Is that

Andy Ihnatko (01:37:21):
No, I am in a very, very picturesque touristy new England seaside of quaint village where a lot of people try to go take a diversion through our quaint village because that way they will avoid a red light on, on North Main Street. Wouldn't wanna see it. It's often wouldn't want a red light. So people, so people are out on their, on their, on their, on their entertainment vehicles. People, people are on the, the, the vehicular version of their vision Pro displays because it's such a nice, and they, they don't realize that there are. Yes, we have, yes, we have we have boutique eyewear, we have antique shops, we have chocolate shops, but one floor above those things are actual hardworking Americans who are just trying to make a living in a very C Oh. What kind

Leo Laporte (01:38:02):
Of shop do you live above? Or is that a secret?

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:06):
I'll tell you that where I, I used to live <laugh> across the street, used to be a hip hop dance studio, <laugh>. And so like, and for a week, two nights a week from like six to nine, there'd just be

Leo Laporte (01:38:21):
<Laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:22):
And I, and I used to use that kind of like, to, oh, as, as soon as the music would come on, I'd know that Oh good. It's time for dinner. Time

Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
For dinner and exercise. So what do we care, what do we know about the iPhone 15? Will it have a U S B C port? Oof. Yes.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:38):
This

Leo Laporte (01:38:38):
You're next. Yes. That's the rumor. You think so, Jason? Yes. Yes. It's a yes. Yeah. Now it's time. Now's the time. It's time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I guess that means you have to update the AirPods. 'cause There's a last thing. The AirPods in my apple TV remote are the last thing. They use lightning <laugh>. And we'll have to get updates on those. I've heard we're, it's gonna look pretty much the same. Right? Maybe a little more rounded, but not a significant difference. And then there's rumors that the camera will be even better.

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:11):
Our customers love the the phone camera, the iPhone camera's, the most popular phone in the world, and we're happy to announce we've made it even better. Yeah. It's, it's the, it's, it's the, one of the most interesting things to look at for the next couple of years is what they do to the physical form and design of the phone. Because one of the things they're still working on is they want to put the cameras and all that kind of stuff under display. And to do that, they're gonna have to maintain like square edges. That's one of the reasons why they want that Edge, edge display, because they want to lose all the bezels and just basically make this a total glass surface. So we might see if, if we see like a, what seems like a trivial redesign to what the case looks like, it could be in advance of a larger redesign that, again, is adapting for a, a display technology that they anticipate they're gonna be switching to in the iPhone 16 or 17. And the ability to put the face ID underneath the, the actual display itself instead of having to have a forehead. Or

Leo Laporte (01:40:11):
Would there be an iPhone 14? Pro Ultra? The Pro, pro Max. Pro Ultra? I'd buy it. You'd buy it? Yeah. Andy wouldn't, but you know, everybody else would. Right? Yeah. You

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:25):
Know, well, well, well, with the, the phone, it's different because you can put the phone in a really cool looking tough, rugged case, and you'll have, you'll, you'll have ultra, you'll have ultra Vised <laugh> your, your, your phone very, very nicely. And no one will know the rest.

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:41):
Well, and, and, and, and for us, the, the, the Ultra, the Ultra Watch was a, a solution that you couldn't get without having de really designing it as an ultra watch from the beginning, but also it was a way to have a different style watch, right. On a, to expand that watch was kind of looking kind of boring. Yeah. And I, I really like

Leo Laporte (01:40:58):
Those things. Love it. What do you think, Jason? That's a rumor that there'll be a third iPhone Pro model. The ultra,

Jason Snell (01:41:04):
You know? Yeah. Good old Mark. Mark G Bloomberg said I'm not sure it's this year.

Andy Ihnatko (01:41:10):
He, he was one of our, our best mayors.

Jason Snell (01:41:12):
I've, there's the question, there's the question of whether you go up to you know, an iPhone Ultra. What is the year, what is the feature that makes that, does it really replace the Pro Max and just be kinda like the super big, like the, like the Apple Watch? You could argue that's just a marketing question, what they call the big pro phone, right? Right. And so they could do that at any point if they feel like they could. The rumor is that they're, they're the largest pro phone is gonna have a camera that's like super awesome with a Periscope lens and all of that. And if that's the case, and it's really strongly differentiated from the other pro model, calling it Ultra instead of Promax, I mean, Promax for those who don't remember before there was Promax it, Promax is a dumb name. It sounds like a medication for older gentlemen. And so I would, I would go with Ultra on, you know, you know, your Flomax is of the world Furrows going there. So let's you think they'd drop, let's call Ultra. They'd drop

Leo Laporte (01:42:06):
Max and call it Ultra. 'cause Don't they have M two? I mean, they have M two PRO and M two Pro Max and M two Pro Ultra. Well,

Jason Snell (01:42:13):
Those are just chimps, but like, they don't have M two Pro Max. They have M two PRO and M two Max. Pro Max Two Pro Max is only available on the high end iPhone. So like, if they took that name, you get rid of Prom Max two name away. Yeah. I, it just called it Ultra, like the Apple Watch feels like a better name to me. But the thing is, it needs to be differentiated. Right. But the reason they say it's just the bigger pro, why Bob?

Leo Laporte (01:42:31):
They, they have pro and non-Pro models, and then within the pro model, they have regular and Max <laugh> and Max

Jason Snell (01:42:39):
And within both models, right? We have, we have Pro regular and Max in both models now. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:42:43):
We do? Okay. Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:42:44):
So, you know, but, but iPhone 17, max, iPhone 17, pro Max, you could do it, but you could also say, well, it's ultra this time. It's ultra. It just, again, if it was identical specs to the pro, just a bigger screen, it's not an ultra. Right. So you would, you really want to make it a big deal. But if it's got the best by far, the best camera ever on an iPhone before, and it's only in that model, why not call it Ultra? Like Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Because you've got some way to differentiate.

Andy Ihnatko (01:43:14):
Also, they know that Apple consumers, there's a, there's a tier of Apple consumers that will spend whatever they, whatever they gimme the best to get, to get the, the best. Particularly if it's like, Hey, I'm a, I do a lot of photography, or I'm a creator and I shoot a lot of video. I've been happy with what I've got, what I've got on the, on last year's best model. But oh my God, this one takes it into an entirely s separate tier. Or even people who just want, just like with the, the Watch Ultra, I want a phone that absolutely does not look like the cheap version of the phone from two years ago. I want the version of the phone that everybody knows costs $1,500 and just came out a month or two ago. And that's not in the Apple market. That's not particularly crass. There are people who have that kind of money and they want that kind of new styling

Alex Lindsay (01:43:58):
Thing. I think the loaded phone is $2,000 now. Like it's, you know, like the, with

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:01):
The terabyte two.

Alex Lindsay (01:44:02):
Yeah. The whole thing. The the, you know, with the headset coming out, the three D capability, you know, even with, without changing the lens configurations, you could probably do a three D version in an ultra. Mm-Hmm. And that would be for anybody who wants to generate content that they'd wanna watch on the headset. I think that's gonna happen either this year or next year. It might not be until next year, but I think having, you know, arming 70 million phones with the ability to generate three D content for the headsets is not a bad idea.

Leo Laporte (01:44:31):
It kind of makes sense. It's, you know, for a long time when you went as, as we first went over a thousand bucks in a, in a phone, people went, oh my God. But this has become our primary computer for almost, I was just

Alex Lindsay (01:44:43):
Gonna say that it's, it's the primary computer for me. I mean, that's what I spend, I spend more time on my phone than any other computing device. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:49):
Also,

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:49):
Also it's, it's like a cigarette case back when everybody smoked. Like there is something about, Hey, I have, I've this is, this is, this is part of the, this is one of the things I put in my pocket, or I put my purse every single morning after I shower and get dressed. Yeah. And when I, it's a personal item. Yeah. And when I put it on the desk or the, the, the, the table where I'm going out to eat or the bar next to me, this the choice that I made and the fact that I wanted something expensive and flashy looking versus something that was simple and practical also says something so that it really is a personal item. It's not, that's why I, I wanna repeat, it's not necessarily crass to think that there are people who will want like a titanium body. Yeah. Something that has like an interesting new design Yeah. That telegraphs that this is something that you need to bring. Johnny, ive back <laugh> as a consultant just to do the voiceover to explain exactly. The bevels on the bezels have been ground to a tolerance. It's, it's like jewelry a hitter two, you're right. Was not possible. It's,

Leo Laporte (01:45:43):
It's personal. This is a per, this is an object that we handle all the time, every day. Yeah. and

Andy Ihnatko (01:45:50):
It, it kind and it does circle back to something that Alex said earlier, that there, there are enthusiasts, there are genuine enthusiasts. Just like there are people who, like, if I, I do have friends who have sports cars and they can't, I can, they, they then, when they can easily explain why this car was worth $140,000, even though to me it's a car that will take you to the train station and back again, and you can get some groceries in the backseat. There are people who want to know, here is how the, here's how the, the engine aspirates. Here's the displacement. Here is the overdrive here, is here is basically how the suspension was put together. Here's how it raises and lowers itself, depending on the road conditions. Whereas I don't care about that. But for those, for these people, they are enough of an enthusiast about this vehicle, about cars in general. That this is a, a value added benefit that not a lot of people are gonna get. But those people are gonna wanna have to, are gonna wanna pay for it. 'cause That's their bread and butter.

Leo Laporte (01:46:45):
By the way, the, the one terabyte iPhone Pro Max is only hundred dollars. So don't get all worried about your 2000 liar <laugh>. Although there are rumors, there are rumors that, look, you may have spent more 'cause you got it bedazzled. I don't know. But there are rumors that it will be more that the top of the top prices are gonna go up a little bit. So we'll watch. I think there's some room there. I really do. There are many great Gatsby's in this world of ours. Yes. Yes. Alright, let's, let's, without, without a lot of the problems of Gatsby <laugh>, hopefully one, one hopes let's take a break. And if you will prepare your pics of the week. Our show today, brought to you by my email service Fast Mail. I love Fast Mail. I've been saying this for a long time.

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It's true. IMAP implemented using the Open Source Cyrus server. And by the way, they're very good open source contributors that constantly contribute back upstream to the servers. But it also has an incredible app on the iPhone, on the Android or the web app, which has a lot of great features. For instance, they just added quick settings, which lets you quickly choose a new theme. You can switch light and dark mode, change your text size without even leaving the fast mail screen. I like that because I can get the size just what I want, looking at it. Quick Settings also offers options related to the fast mail screen you're viewing. Like that masked email address, you could show or hide your reading paint switch between folders and labels and more. By the way, Gmail, which is not a true IMAP implementation, uses labels.

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IMAP uses folders, but Fast Mail has done it so that you can use either, which is fantastic. You can auto save contacts. Whenever I reply to somebody, they automatically get added to my contact list, which then goes back to my filter rules. Very sophisticated filter rules. One of which is, if you're not my contact list, I'm gonna downgrade your email. And if you are in my contact, my Address book, if I have conversed you the before I upgrade your email. So I see the important emails you can choose to show public images of senders from external services like Gravita. I really love that you can set default reminders for events, change how invitations are handled. That's really important if you get a lot of invitations. In fact, I've moved all my calendar and address book services off of Google onto FastMail. So FastMail does notes, calendar contacts and email for me, it's the best.

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For over 20 years, mail has been a leader in email privacy. This is one of the reasons I moved there. They, they don't sell advertising. They don't, they keep my data private. They don't sell it to marketers. The Fast Mail team believes in working for customers as people to be cared for, not products to be exploited. No advertising, no advertisers, no marketers. You pay for free email with your privacy. I gotta tell you, at FastMail, your data stays yours with better productivity features, incredible support for as little as $3 a month. Fastmail has better spam filters, no ads, incredible productivity tools. You obviously, I can go on and on. I'm a huge fast Mail advocate and I have been for all the years I've been using them. It's very easy to move to Fast Mail import your old email server into your InMail box in, and you can also, by the way continually get mail from an old address, which makes it very easy to switch over fast mail's moving email forward.

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They propose new internet standards and open source innovations that power many other email services. But don't get stuck with a substandard email provider. This is the One Fast Mail Reclaim your Privacy Boost productivity. You'll actually love your email. Again, fast mail. Try it now. 30 days free fastmail.com/twi. You know, I've been recommending this for years. It's just the way to go. Fastmail.Com/Twit. If you care about email, don't use the free services. Use an email that cares about you. Fastmail.Com/Twit. we have some. I wanna just quickly mention some big events coming up in on our club club Twit this Thursday. Rod Pyle, the host of this week in Space, a show that launched in the club and is now out in public. We'll be doing a fireside chat with Aunt Pruitt, our community manager. We've got Home Theater geeks now, Scott Wilkinson's Classic is back.

(01:53:02):
We're looking at bringing back other shows and introducing other shows all in the club because the club members pay for it at seven bucks a month. They get ad free versions of all of our shows. They get these special events, they get access to the Club Twit Discord. Anne's gonna be doing a live photo critique session August 4th. We have a photo walk planned end of next month. By the way, I want you to put this in your calendar. Save the date. August 26th, Saturday, 6:00 PM If you're in the Northern California area, ant and I and Elisa and a bunch of us are gonna go down and take some pictures in Petaluma. Stacey's book Club is also coming up in August and then in September. Very excited about this. A fireside chat. You may remember, Hugh Howie did an interview with Ant. He's the guy who wrote the Wool Book series on which the Silo TV series was based.

(01:53:50):
Really great books. He and Daniel Suarez, his friend and buddy, are gonna be joining Ant. And I think I might, I might wedge my way into this conversation as well. 'cause I love <laugh>. I love Daniel. On September 7th at 2:00 PM Pacific, a members only event. So these are all, we're trying to make the Club something you wanna be part of. We got the Discord, we have ad free versions of all the shows. We have special shows that we don't put out anywhere else. 'cause The club members support it. And I think with all of that, you might say, well, how much is that gonna cost? It's seven bucks a month. That's it. Because we wanna make it affordable for everybody. So if you're not yet a member of Club Twit and you wanna support what we do and keep it going it really helps.

(01:54:34):
I know we have ads for the non-club members. That's how we pay for those shows. But I, you know, ads are a hit and miss business to say the least. We really like the idea of having a consistent revenue from our listeners so that we can make the best possible stuff for you. Twit TV slash Club twit. There's seven bucks a month. There's $84 a year. There's a family plan, and there's corporate memberships as well. Twit TV slash Club twit. Thank you for your support in advance. That's kind of my pick of the week, but let's find out what Jason Snell has for his pick of the week this week. I'm,

Jason Snell (01:55:12):
I'm for a blast. <Laugh> a blast for the past. So this is a classic iPhone game. Ridiculous phishing. It was a big hit a long time ago. It's sort of gone by the wayside as they do. The, the developer of it basically went out of business. They shut down the studio. But Apple Arcade in part of its attempts to get classic iPhone games back on the platform. And up to date went to the original people who developed the game and got them to build a new modern version of ridiculous phishing for Apple Arcade called Ridiculous Fishing Ex. If you don't remember Ridiculous Fishing. You cast a line, you're a guy in a boat, and then you try to dodge the fish and get your line as low. Once it hits a fish, you gotta grab all the fish and bring them back up, and then it throws them in the air, and then you shoot them out of the air with a gun.

(01:55:59):
It's ludicrous, but it's fun and really well done. And also, just from a game preservation standpoint, the fact that Apple Arcade is going back to some of these old classic iPhone games that are basically haven't been updated because there has been no business model to make sense of it. And, and essentially I think give money to the developers to update them and bring them back in Apple Arcade. Even from a company that basically shut down. But the developers are all still out there. Like Zach Gage, the great iPhone app game developer is one of the people involved in this game. And they've added some new features. The graphics look better. There's a weird TikTok like thing. We chose people fishing. There's all sorts of strange stuff in there, but it, the core of the game is the mechanic that made it such a great game back in the day on the iPhone. So if you're an Apple Arcade person, this is one of many classic iPhone games that is now back in the store in the arcade section. So ridiculous fishing. Check it out.

Leo Laporte (01:56:59):
Oh, I think that's so cool that they're bringing those back. These are games that resonate because we played them when we were younger and

Jason Snell (01:57:06):
And slightly younger, but yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:57:08):
Slightly. Yeah. No, it's just back it to bring,

Jason Snell (01:57:11):
Remember the 2010s? Oh, yes. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:57:13):
Oh. Those were, were the days. I love those. All right. I'm downloading it right now. Ridiculous Phishing from Apple Arcade

Jason Snell (01:57:21):
Does what it says on the box. It's

Leo Laporte (01:57:23):
Ridiculous. <Laugh> and it's phishing. I hope so. There are others that, do they have a section where they say like, back to,

Jason Snell (01:57:30):
Yeah, there's, there's, there's a revived classics section where they brought back, like Flight Control I think is in there now. Nice. Right. Which is a game that everybody loved, but it also just kind of died on the vine because you do a bunch of OS updates and then it doesn't really work Right. Anymore. And so they're paying to, to bring a bunch of that stuff back. Plus, you know, new titles and stuff that is unlocked and doesn't have any that purchases. It's, I think Apple Arcade. They did a kind of course correction about a year ago, and it's been a really interesting new selection of games that they put in there. Good. And new old games. Old new games, you know.

Leo Laporte (01:58:02):
Yeah. I guess it's under the Timeless Classics.

Jason Snell (01:58:05):
That's

Leo Laporte (01:58:05):
It. Section. ridiculous Phishing, Andy Ihnatko. Your pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:12):
My pick of the week is Time to Well, sad Event from last week 2009 in January. Apple did their very, very last keynote at Mac World Expo in San Francisco. Oh. yeah. And it was the, that was for their very last one. And there was some announcements. Not a whole lot of really cool stuff. I refreshed my memory by reading live coverage written on the fly by No, no less luminaries than Jason Snell and Dan Morin <laugh>, in which I learned that cut. They were really, really happy. That Cut Copy and Paste was finally coming to the iPhone. Yay. <laugh> again. Wow. It, it was, there was, we, we were, we were relying on, there was some sort of, there was smaller stuff that made us really happy. 'cause There was still a rebuilding here. But at the very, very, and it was also unique for another sad reason.

(01:58:58):
This was the first one that was not Keynote that wasn't delivered by Steve Jobs. Just a couple of weeks earlier before this keynote, in January of 2009, he had announced he was taking medical leave from his c e o positions and all of his duties at Apple. So this was kicked off by Phil Schiller. Must have been a very, very hard time for everybody on stage and backstage. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to put this together, knowing that the, the, the big guy was not gonna be there. But they did close it off in, in style because as they often did back then, they had, they got, because of iTunes being a big thing they had access to really good talent to close out the keynote by doing a set. And who did they get in 2009? But Mr. Tony Bennett himself who did three or four incredible numbers, I think that he led off with The Best is yet to come.

(01:59:44):
I think possibly at Apple's suggestion. It is one of his classics. <Laugh>. and so this is it was of course, live streamed on QuickTime. So go on to either YouTube or go on to the, the internet archive@archive.org. You can find copies of it. Scroll all the way down to about five minutes before the end, and you'll hear Tony Bennett, God, all but for the last three years of his life, he was in his prime. And even when he was not in his prime, he was still nothing less than great as a singer to, you'll understand why people were so excited to go to Mac World Keynotes back then, even without Steve Jobs. Although Steve Jobs was a very, very big sorely missed part of it. It was an exciting time and exciting time to be there.

(02:00:26):
I'm also going to recommend don't just go, you know, I'm sure that you've heard I left my heart in San Francisco like a thousand times since Mr. Bennett died a few days. On Friday, however, go to Apple Music, go to Spotify, whatever, get the complete Tony Bennett, bill Evans recordings. This was when, this is the, he created his own label, and he got to do absolutely whatever he wanted to do. And he decided Bill Evans, the, the magnificent jazz jazz pianist. I want to basically do two albums with him, and we're just gonna sing songs together. It's just him playing the, it's just one of the greatest singers of the 20th century singing, being backed up by one of the greatest jazz musicians of the 20th century, just on piano. They're simple, they're bare, and they're devastating. Okay, I'm serious.

(02:01:18):
Whatever, whatever emotion you're having, you'll find tracks there that will intensify it and magnify it. This isn't, this isn't <laugh>, this isn't put on a happy face. This is, you must be, you must believe in spring, that spring will come just as the flower dies underneath the snow and believes that spring will come and it will bloom A new it was, it's just magnificent. Start to finish. So two, two recommendations. One, free one, you're gonna have to hand over personal data to a mono mon, a monopoly to let them know what you, Tony Bennett, I suggest that you buy it because it's gonna be,

Leo Laporte (02:01:50):
Bill Evans is incredible. Tony Bennett's incredible. I remember running into him at K G O, he was doing an interview at the radio station, and I remember him saying, and this, it was probably right around this time, he's in his late eighties, that he still took music lessons, singing lessons every week. Yeah. He says, I'm a guy. Women can sing easily, but we have to <laugh>, we have to work a little harder at it. And I thought, this is one of the one of the greats

Andy Ihnatko (02:02:19):
Of all time. I was, I was, I've been, I've been doing nothing, but I'm a huge fan. I, I bought I don't know how I bought The Art of Excellence in the, in the early eighties. This was before his M T V Renaissance. But something about that cassette spoke to me when I was a teenager, and I bought it, and I became a huge, huge huge fan from that on. And I was so impressed. I was, I was breeding all the, all the inter all the dug up interviews and all the quotes, especially from his, like the eight, the seventies, his seventies, eighties, and nineties, where he is talking about, he's like 90, 90 years old, 91 years old at this point. And we, they're talk, they're talking about like future, what he's gonna do in the future. So, oh yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm studying I'm, I'm studying a whole, a whole book of like, Ellington pieces. I'm like, you have to, you're like studying this. Like, there's still some standards that you don't just walk up to the mic, knock it out, and then go home and, and play video games. Like, no, you, you, he's still learning. He's still studying. And boy did that show off. I'll stop now, but oh my goodness. What a, what a talent.

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
We went to on Friday, we went to see a concert in Napa, a band called Train, which is also a very well known San Francisco band. And at the very end they they put up a big picture, the Golden Gate Bridge started playing Tony Bennett, and the whole band turned around and bowed to Tony Bennett. It was really kind of a beautiful thing. That's great. I did not, I, I must have been there, but I don't remem maybe I wasn't there. I forgot about that. To see Tony Bennett.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:41):
I, I, I've, I've seen, I I, I won't, I won't read the whole list, but I've seen so many of my favorite acts just by virtue of the fact that I was at like an Apple Press event. Yep. And seeing, seeing you two do like a, a five song set in front of 150 people, seeing, seeing Foo Fighters do an entire set in front of 800 people in a small theater, and then like, realizing, oh, I'm <laugh>, I, I'm, I just jostled Mr. Pat smear <laugh>. I don't know. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? And I, and I want to, I want to tell him how, how incredible he was. He, he's been like pre Foo Fighters and post Foo Fighters, but I don't know whether I call him Mr. Smear or Pat or whatever. I don't wanna put on airs for Mr. Smear

Leo Laporte (02:04:18):
Mr. Alex Lindsay pick of the week.

Alex Lindsay (02:04:22):
Wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be excellent if I, I just call Pat and say, it's me, <laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:28):
Pat around, just tell him it's

Alex Lindsay (02:04:29):
Me. <Laugh> put it in. Like he has a thousand friends. Anyway,

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:34):
Thank you for getting that reference. Thank you. That's a true

Alex Lindsay (02:04:36):
Friend <laugh>. Anyway I ran into this accidentally over the weekend and was just kind of blown away. There's this I, I don't know about the magazine, but there is a YouTube channel called Mother Grid. And if you're into doing what I do, it's really cool. So, mother Grid Magazine it is a breakdown. And specifically the video I would watch is they break down the Metallica the, the Metallica tour that's going on right now, and just the tech that it takes to get it done. So it's not the tour itself, it is the guys in the back talking about they've got a, you know, he was like, well, we've got 192 audio track, audio channels, <laugh>, you know, the, the 192 audio channels for the concert. And he goes, that may seem like a lot, but you have to remember there's four drum sets and each one has 30 channels, like 30 mics, <laugh>, you know, and so you just get the scale at which these things run.

(02:05:24):
And so I would, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it will if you do what I do, if you do production and, you know, like event production it's, I started going through the channel and I was like, oh, this is, it's pretty nifty <laugh>. Like, like there's a lot of, a lot of data, some stuff that I would know, some stuff, like, they were using an, an audio pipeline that I'm not familiar with. So, so I was like, now I have to study. And so it's pretty, pretty slick. So I would, I would would highly recommend it. The other thing that, I know we just talked about music, but I was gonna throw it in there. I just saw, I, I don't go to concerts much anymore. But I actually went to see a band that I hadn't seen in probably 20 years, and towed the Wet Sprocket. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:06:06):
My God. There's a name

Alex Lindsay (02:06:08):
Played at Hot Monk. Oh, good

Leo Laporte (02:06:10):
Place to see him. Yeah. Hey, Alex, I

Jason Snell (02:06:11):
Went to that concert.

Alex Lindsay (02:06:13):
Did you really?

Leo Laporte (02:06:13):
Jason was there too. So

Jason Snell (02:06:14):
We were both there. Well, they were, I think they played two nights, but I went to one of them. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (02:06:18):
Absolutely. Did you go to one last week? I'm from the nineties or two weeks, or, or two weeks

Jason Snell (02:06:21):
Ago. Two weeks ago. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (02:06:22):
Oh yeah. So the, so the one last Thursday, or last Wednesday was the last, did did they give you one of these? Did you get one? Oh, yeah,

Jason Snell (02:06:30):
I've got, it's right over there. Yeah. The

Alex Lindsay (02:06:32):
Poster and the Jam Bar. The Jam Bar is actually pretty good. The they play, it was the last show of the con of the, of the tour. I'm sure it was. I'm sure both shows are really great. Just such a great band, you know. And Glenn is such a great guy, you know, just, just the, the, the lead singer. And did they play, did he play Mercy Street on your concert? No.

Jason Snell (02:06:53):
Wow.

Alex Lindsay (02:06:53):
He has sprinkled it. He has sprinkled it. You can find one version of it on YouTube if you search. He played it, I think in January. He played it. I saw him play it by himself a couple years ago and or a year ago. And anyway, I'm big toe wood. You

Leo Laporte (02:07:07):
Gotta tell us about this. Before the event, not after the event. <Laugh>, I would've gone.

Alex Lindsay (02:07:12):
I should have, I should've. I, you know, the, it was, it was sold out. I, oh, I bet it

Leo Laporte (02:07:16):
Was, it Huck's a tiny little venue. You could stand tiny right there on the, practically on the stage. You can get right up there.

Alex Lindsay (02:07:23):
Yeah, it was, it was, it was a really, really, really great show. And yeah, he, he's played this, you know, and, and anyway, they're, they, they have a great there's a company that's doing like a lot of pr. So that Hot Mon has become this, like the outdoor theater all summer, playing a lot of great stuff. But anyway, total West Brock's great. They, they played when I was 30 years ago when I worked at a radio station, they played outside. We didn't have any permits. We just built a stage and put some speakers up, and they played. And I remember it got really cold. It was 70 degrees, it was on June in Pittsburgh, which should be very hot. It was 70 degrees on Monday, and on Tuesday it was 40 degrees and on eight, and then it was 70 degrees again on Wednesday. And of course they played on Tuesday. And it was funny, I, I had, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Glen on, on last week. And I said, you know, the first time we met, I, you know, you were playing at this radio station, it got really cold. And he goes, yeah, my mandolin broke. He immediate,

Leo Laporte (02:08:14):
He remembers it,

Alex Lindsay (02:08:15):
Man

Leo Laporte (02:08:16):
Was so cold.

Alex Lindsay (02:08:16):
You know, my

Leo Laporte (02:08:17):
Mandolin

Alex Lindsay (02:08:18):
Wow. Front popped off, you know, it was so cold. And so if

Leo Laporte (02:08:21):
You know what I mean, <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (02:08:22):
Yeah. So I, so anyway, so that, yeah, the really, really great band I would highly recommend you know, checking him out. I just forgot how much I I love that band. Until I saw him again. I mean, I listened to him relatively often, but I just hadn't seen him live. And they're just a really great live band. So if you see him, they're all

Leo Laporte (02:08:40):
But don't what name, what's the name come from?

Alex Lindsay (02:08:42):
I think it comes from Monty Python. Yeah,

Jason Snell (02:08:44):
It's Monty Python. It's a reference in a Monty Python sketch. And there's a story about how Eric Idle was in a taxi cab in New York City, and a song finished playing. And the DJ said that was tow the wet sprocket. And he went, wait, wait, what? <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:08:58):
What? He didn't know there was a band. Now it's a

Jason Snell (02:09:00):
Band. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:09:02):
<Laugh>, that's fantastic.

Alex Lindsay (02:09:05):
So,

Leo Laporte (02:09:05):
Well there you go. But the pick is Mother Grid's and their YouTube channel u youtube.com at Mother grid Mag dash magazine. If you want to, I guess you could just search for Mother Grid event, technology, news and documentations.

Alex Lindsay (02:09:21):
It's, it's really, it's really goods

Leo Laporte (02:09:24):
Trumans. That's why it's easy. It's a little strange there.

Alex Lindsay (02:09:27):
Some of it is in German. Yeah. So, so it is, yeah. So, so not all of it though. And that's probably why I hadn't seen it before, but you could, if you're into events and especially big concerts you can learn a lot, you know, watching how these things get built up.

Leo Laporte (02:09:42):
I think. I always think that's fascinating. The behind the scenes stuff. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. Thank you Mr. Alex Lindsay, go to Office hours.global. If you find all of this stuff interesting, that's a place you can talk about production to your heart's content. <Laugh> today's show, just a general q and a, but you can join the Zoom. There's an invitation form there, so you can join the Zoom or just watch him on YouTube or at Office hours. Global AI Productivity yesterday Game Sound tomorrow. Wow. You guys just talked

Alex Lindsay (02:10:17):
About, yeah, we, Rob Bridget is coming on. Rob Bridget is like, when it comes to Game Sound, he's a big

Leo Laporte (02:10:23):
Deal. Nice. And he

Alex Lindsay (02:10:24):
Just finished a book on it. And he is he's worked closely with Dolby and, and so he's done an incr, he's a really, really one of the world experts in game game audio. So he's gonna

Leo Laporte (02:10:32):
Come And what are Boomerang Carns when they're at home? What is that?

Alex Lindsay (02:10:36):
So <laugh> when that's coming up, Friday, I asked him to come on. It sounds

Leo Laporte (02:10:40):
Like towed the wet sprocket actually, <laugh>. It's, it's,

Alex Lindsay (02:10:43):
So when you take a lot of gear, so if you're taking a couple hundred thousand dollars of gear out of the country, what you don't want do is pay for the import duties when you bring it to France or Germany or England or, or Japan or whatever. So you have Carnes, and these Carnes are, you know, you have to fill out these carnes that say, I'm only bringing this in temporarily. And it's a process. And we've used it. We obviously, PCOR used them extensively. We used them. We probably worked with Boomerang maybe once a week. 'cause We were moving so much gear in and outta the country all the time. And so and I just thought it'd be fun. I, I, you know, I think that it's important for build. Every time we brought somebody in, we were like, okay, now we're gonna have, we're gonna do a carne, and this is how a carne works. And you have to keep all the serial numbers. And this is why this is, we send it over. So a lot of times we you know, we, like, we can talk about things in office hours for a very long time. <Laugh> like We Friday, I mean, we had one where we did a whole hour on Gaff tape and on Friday we just

Leo Laporte (02:11:39):
Had a, oh my God, a whole hour.

Alex Lindsay (02:11:42):
Well, not on Friday, but we did, we did a year ago. And a whole hour on different kinds of gaff tape and how we gaff tape and what do we, how we use it and everything else. On Friday, we just did load in, load out, like literally as an hour of how we load in and how we load out of venues. In this case, this is, I just feel like for people who haven't done a CARNA yet, this is something that they underst understand everything

Leo Laporte (02:12:02):
Thing you ever need to know. And I love it that you just put it there. You don't explain it. You just put the title is Boomerang carne. You'll know if you need it, <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (02:12:12):
If you need it. Yeah. There's a little slightly more description in the emails that people get. So, so we send out emails every day, go to our

Leo Laporte (02:12:19):
That's a good

Alex Lindsay (02:12:20):
Idea. The emails. And you get, you get to, you get a little more description of what it is. 'cause I think they, I think in the email you get like all these links to all the different webs, links, resources on Boomerang and everything else, but Nice. Yeah. But the, the it's a really, like, what happens is, is people start doing things with their cameras and then they start getting slightly bigger jobs and they can't figure out how to get all this gear. Yeah. Right. So what we did is we would smuggle it in and out. We put it into regular, you know, like you do all this weird stuff, and then you, and then someone said, why don't you get a carne? And you're like, what's a carne? And, and they're like, oh, it's the way that you get gear in and out of countries. And you're like, oh. So I'm, I'm trying to get past that. Get everyone past that today on Fridays. So that's, that's what Boomerang is.

Leo Laporte (02:12:59):
Ladies ju Oh, Andy and Ko, where are you gonna be? Next on W G B H

Alex Lindsay (02:13:06):
I'm on, on Thursday at 1230 in the afternoon Easter time. Go to WGBH news.org to listen it live. Let's stream it live or later.

Leo Laporte (02:13:13):
Anything else you'd like to plug? Of course, the host of the material podcast on Relay fm, of course,

Alex Lindsay (02:13:18):
Float and Florence Ion is coming back after her medical leave. So today, this week, so finally we're at Double again. Yay. I've, I've been doing solos for like, the past like two and a half months which has been fun. But it's a lot more fun when you're writing <laugh> when, when you're having a conversation between two people as opposed to, you know, here I am, last, last survivor at Ice Station, zebra <laugh>, 30 years

Jason Snell (02:13:43):
<Laugh>

Alex Lindsay (02:13:43):
With a microphone and some ideas in my head that I'm now going to share.

Leo Laporte (02:13:48):
Yeah. I I hate doing a show by myself. I really do. I understand <laugh> Jason. It

Alex Lindsay (02:13:53):
Was, it was fun. Last, last week. Last week for the bonus episode, I've read an audio, I made an audio book of a PG Woodhouse story.

Leo Laporte (02:13:59):
Oh, how fun. Did you do the Jevs accent and all that?

Andy Ihnatko (02:14:04):
I did. I, it was a Jevs story. I, as I explained to listeners, like, I will not do British accents for all the other characters, but you have to, you gotta do Jesus. You must. It's, it's only proper to

Leo Laporte (02:14:13):
Excuse Accents, sir, but it seems the media have arrived at the front door. Jason Snell is the founder and editor of Six Colors, a website about Apple and related technologies. He's also the founder of the incomparable, a weekly columnist ATM world. The author Take Control of Photos and the host of thank numerous podcasts.

Jason Snell (02:14:33):
Speaking of reading things aloud, thank you for reading my page aloud. If I had to plug something today, I am gonna, I realize I never plugged this six colors. Dan Warren and I do a weekly podcast for members of six Colors that I get more compliments about than any other podcast I do, which I find weird because it's a members only kind of thing anyway, for $6 a month or 60 bucks a year, you can listen to the six colors used to be Secret podcast. But then we realize we should probably tell people that we do it so that they'll pay for it <laugh>. Anyway. It is one of many benefits you get by being a member. But we do it every week and it is a very, I think, very good podcast. We try to keep it loose. We're just checking in on what happened during the week. And sometimes there's, you know, I'm doing laundry in the background or my cat is meowing or my dog is barking. And those, all those all go in the podcast too. Nice. So people should check that out if they would like more. I guess

Leo Laporte (02:15:24):
It makes

Jason Snell (02:15:25):
Sense. If it's possible to get

Leo Laporte (02:15:27):
More of me, that six colors membership should be $6. That makes sense. You're kind of stuck, aren't you? You can't, you

Jason Snell (02:15:31):
Know, I honestly, I was gonna, I was gonna raise the price and I realized I just can't. So I added a couple higher levels and actually the higher tiers, the podcast, you can listen live and there's a longer version of it that we do. An extra segment. Yes. But like, it's very hard to say goodbye to the $6 or 60 a year. You're given the branding. You're really

Leo Laporte (02:15:49):
In there.

Jason Snell (02:15:49):
Stupid, stupid number six, being so

Leo Laporte (02:15:51):
Low, <laugh>, you should have made it a hundred colors and you could be making some money at this. By the way, Michael, a sergeant had a great time at the incomparable cookout or whatever you call that.

Jason Snell (02:16:03):
Yeah. We did a, we did a, we had a meetup of all the hosts 'cause we're all scattered all over the world. And like 24 of us got together in Portland, Oregon a couple of weekends ago. And yes, we recorded some podcasts. 'cause You know, podcasters, they do that.

Leo Laporte (02:16:17):
<Laugh>. I think that's so cool. Yeah, we should do that. Probably. We have a good time. We, yeah. Anyway, thank you Jason. Thank you Andy. Thank you Alex. Thank you Leo. Great to see all of you. Thank you for joining us. We do this show every Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 utc, which means you can watch us do it live at live Twit tv watch or listen, there's a live audio stream as well. People watch live often. Chat live with us at irc twit tv where you'll meet such luminaries as Scooter X, the world famous Scooter X and mashed potato <laugh> and Gumby <laugh> and OzNet and co-ops and PC guy 80 88, who I don't know why he listens to security now, but he does. I mean Mac Brick Weekly. Oh, that's why he's here for security now. Now I understand.

(02:17:10):
You can also chat with us if you're a club member in The Discord. We have a chat dedicated to the show there after the fact on demand versions of the show audio or video available at TWI tv slash m bw. When you're there, you can also click a link. It'll take you to our YouTube channel dedicated to Mac Break Weekly. And you can even subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get it automatically the minute it is available. Thank you all for being here. Now I have to tell you, it's time to get back to work, because break time is over. Bye, byebye.

Rod Pyle (02:17:44):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor in Chief VAT Astor magazine. And each week I joined with my co-host to bring you this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the Final Frontier. We talk to NASA chiefs, space scientists, engineers, educators and artists, and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not in space books and tv, and we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars Rocket, join us on this week in space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.