MacBreak Weekly 882 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. We celebrate a very big anniversary today. 25 years ago, the iMac started went on sale in Bondi Blue, we have our reminiscences. We asked the question, why is it that people never throw away apple boxes? And we'll take a look at the semi-official date for the iPhone 15 and the new Apple. Watch all that more. Coming up next on Mac Break Weekly podcasts you love

(00:00:39):
This is MacBreak Weekly episode 882. Recorded Tuesday, August 15th, 2023. Hello again. This episode of Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by Delete Me, reclaim your privacy by removing personal data from online sources. Protect yourself and reduce the risk of fraud and spam cybersecurity threats and more by going to join delete me.com/twit and using the code TWIT for 20% off. And by ACI Learning IT skills get outdated in about 18 months. But you can keep up with quality, affordable, entertaining training from a c i learning individuals. Use the code TWIT 30 for 30% off a standard or premium individual IT pro membership@go.acilearning.com slash twit. And buy Brooklinen shop in store or online@brooklinen.com today. And give yourself the cooling sleep you deserve this summer. Use the promo code Mac Break for $20 off your online purchase of $100 or more, plus free shipping@brooklinen.com. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We get together with the fun people of the Mac Break weekly crew and talk about whatever's going on with Apple. Jason Snell is here. Six colors.com.

Jason Snell (00:02:02):
Hi, Leo. I decided to turn on my Bondi. Sorry, Bondi. It is pronounced Bondi, not Bondi. Bondi. I'm Mac G three Today in honor of the 25th anniversary of the iMac, which is today August, all days

Leo Laporte (00:02:16):
August 15th, 1998. Yeah. Mm. Also Andy Ihnatko, WGBH Boston. Hello, Andrew. Hello. I I also have turned on my Bondi Mac, as you can see here. I do

Jason Snell (00:02:30):
Not, audio podcasters will not understand that reference, which is No, no, no. I, I mean, oh my God. I can't, Andy, I can't believe you have five. Yeah. Where did you get five Bondai imax. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Leo Laporte (00:02:41):
All connected to the internet. I'm st I'm, I'm still a little bit salty about the, about the SB ports and so the a d B, but hey, you know, you can't fight City Hall. I got a floppy and I'm not afraid to use it. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Alex Lindsay from Office Hours Global. Hello. Hello.

Jason Snell (00:02:56):
And, and while we're talking about pronunciation, we know one

Alex Lindsay (00:02:58):
Of the biggest news news breaks from from Sea Graph last, last week was Oh, yeah, we talked to, we talked to Waka and it's Waka Walk. It's not Wack Waka. Waka Waka. It's not wa it's water. Waka Waka, walk, walk, walk, walk. What do you do with dogs? Bear Waka. Walk. Walk. You walk, you walk, you walk em.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:18):
Bear left his own

Alex Lindsay (00:03:19):
Jokes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, but that's

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:21):
That. Thank you. Thank you. That I wondered that for 20 years. I,

Alex Lindsay (00:03:24):
I walked up to him and I said, I just gotta ask you one, one question, like I already know about, about your, about what you do. I've got a bunch of these, I just dunno what to call them. And, and then he said, walk 'em.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:32):
I'm surprised he didn't hand you like a beautifully like embossed printed card <laugh> that just simply says it's pronounced walk. W w like, okay,

Alex Lindsay (00:03:40):
You get this a lot, don't you? <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:03:43):
I bet you there's some people who used to work at that place who call it Wacom. I'm just saying. But I I'm sure if they want to call it Wacom more power to 'em. Hello everybody. August 15th, 1998. It was really, it was really the, the, the, the kind of the, the bow on Steve Jobs return, wasn't it? This was the product that he came back to Apple to make in some ways.

Jason Snell (00:04:11):
Yeah. It was the, I think the pivot point in Apple's survival. Obviously lots of steps after that. But if you think about it, jobs was really only officially back for a very short time, officially for like less than a year when they called that event. And think about how little time there was to put that whole thing together.

Leo Laporte (00:04:37):
Johnny i's design, obviously

Jason Snell (00:04:39):
Johnny i's design. He had been experimenting, right? Like the, the beige G three had a little tiny plastic translucent button on it. So he was trying out, and then there was the, the like all in one molar Mac that had some translucent plastic, but he's there jobs gets there. He looks at the projects that they're working on. They have this project called Columbus, which is originally gonna be like a net computer. It was like a Larry Ellison. The Future is Disc List computers that are on a network. And they were working on that with the Columbus project. And I think Jobs came in and basically like looked at Johnny. Ive looked at the Columbus project. It was I wrote a piece for The Verge this week about it went up today. And I said, it's like literally, it's like that scene in the Princess Bride where Wesley is like, what are our assets?

(00:05:25):
And it's like, if we only had a wheelbarrow and a Holocaust cloak, and literally it was like, we got this dis war station thing, <laugh>, we got Johnny Ives plastic. And, and Steve Jobs is like, and I always wanted to make an all in one. That's what the Mac was supposed to be. What can we do here? And the iMac in very short order was the result. And it changed everything because it was successful enough to give them cash to stay alive, to make o s 10, and then open Apple stores and ship the iPod and go on to all the success that they've had.

Leo Laporte (00:05:54):
Bondi Blue, there's a very nice, if you're interested kind of survey of the original imax on the Verge today to celebrate came in. A lot of people remember all the colors, but really came in that one color at first in 1998. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:06:11):
Original model,

Leo Laporte (00:06:13):
Andy.

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:15):
Oh, just kinda say that. And the influence of this machine could not be understated for industrial design. I'm not just talking about like other PCs. You could walk into like a home good store and Oh, look, it's a waffle maker and it's available with like three different colored translucent tops, and one of which is Bondi Blue. Another one is Tangerine. Like you could see. And you could see it pretty much everywhere. And that's, that is the pinnacle of success for Johnny I or any other industrial designer, when even people who aren't competing with you, who are just simply industrial designers are saying, that's a great look. Let's use it ourselves.

Leo Laporte (00:06:50):
We, we were happy because check TV just started in May of that year. And we found, 'cause at the time Apple implied that this whole color is, you know, unique and we, we really searched everywhere. And we went to the <laugh>, the Bondi Beach, and beautiful you know, Sydney, Australia, and found this color. And we found like 20 different appliances that all had translucent ponti Blue that predated the apple. I mean, there was a vacuum cleaner. There was all sorts of stuff.

Jason Snell (00:07:18):
George Foreman Grill is the classic. Yeah. Why does it need to be plastic, translucent blue? I don't know. But it'll, it'll, it'll, you know, what, what did he say? It'll like it it, it drains the fat away <laugh>, whatever George Foreman means. Say

Andy Ihnatko (00:07:32):
Knocks out the

Jason Snell (00:07:32):
Fat. Knocks out the fat. That's right.

Andy Ihnatko (00:07:33):
Why do you think they, they, they hired him for God's sake. And

Jason Snell (00:07:36):
Yeah, that's right. He's punching out, punching it, you know? Yeah. Knock out that fat.

Alex Lindsay (00:07:39):
And from the, and from a and from a, just a, we have to remember that Apple was on fire when Steve Jobs. I mean, like, we forget that now. Biggest

Andy Ihnatko (00:07:46):
Company, not the good way. I'm the burn of

Jason Snell (00:07:47):
The ground guy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:48):
Like,

Andy Ihnatko (00:07:49):
Bad

Alex Lindsay (00:07:49):
Time. My name was Byer. Yeah. Like, like, you know, Steve Jobs had to get in and he had to find cash, he had to keep partners, he had to do all these things and do all these horse trades and all this crazy stuff that Apple doesn't do. And then the, the thought that they'd be able to come out with something creative was really amazing, because usually when you're trying to fix something, you're just trying to make the things that you have work, you know, and and for them to just go, we're gonna, you know, it took someone like Steve Jobs to say, well, we're gonna throw everything. We're gonna basically throw everything else away and we're gonna, you know, go into this one thing and make this one thing really work. Was was a pretty gutsy move. Like there, you know, there was a lot of ways that this didn't turn out. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:08:27):
It was said that Apple was 150 million or maybe less away from literally going bankrupt. And that was that 150 million that the Microsoft, he got Bill Gates to show up Yeah. And give him,

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:40):
It was, yeah. I mean, that, that was, there's so many little moves there. And it wasn't just, it, I don't think it was necessarily that it was the check that Microsoft wrote so much as Bill Gates coming on and saying, oh, by the way, we are committed to supporting Microsoft Office on the Mac for the foreseeable future. Whereas if he said, if he basically decided to say in an offhanded comment, but well placed with PR people. Yeah. You know what? We're kind of scaling it back a little bit because we have more assets to go anywhere. He could have eff I don't think he could've alone killed off the, the Mac, but that would've caused a, a further die that I don't think they would've pulled up from. Yeah. It, it was, it was just such a, it was such a beautiful play. It because the iMac w was exactly what Apple needed at that moment.

(00:09:26):
They didn't, they didn't need, they, they didn't necessarily need to say, oh, by the way, you know how like all of your data is on floppy disks? Yeah. You're gonna have to buy one of those. 'cause We're not giving you one of those. And you know that all your peripherals umac people are on this thing we called Apple Desktop Bus. Yeah. You're gonna have to buy all new ones of those. 'cause We're doing U S B. It was. But basically the idea that they're saying, here's something that's absolutely brand new in a, in an environment in which their Apple's business strategy was, let's make things more beige. Let's make things more like the way the PCs work. Let's literally start licensing the Mac operating system so people could put Macs running on boring beige com, beige, commodity, square angled things. This was as much a statement piece as anything else that said that, look, if you have, if you thought that we were just gonna be making incremental moves, it's like we are either going to <laugh>, we are either going to like, pull up from this dive and go from a aerospace into, into space flight, or we are gonna be rioting this missile waving, waving our cowboy hat and cheering all the way into the ground.

Jason Snell (00:10:33):
You know, Steve Jobs famously not a particularly sentimental guy. Right. And you see it here in a, I mean, this iMac is like a transgressive computer. Like, like you said, Andy a D B Mac cereal, scuzzy gone floppy disc, which literally every computer in the world had a floppy disc, right? How else would you boot in an emergency or install software? And they're like, nah, we'll just le put a CD ROM in there. No writeable storage at all. Built, built into it. And most wild, they picked up this technology that while it was hanging around and the PC world was like, maybe this is the future, maybe, but it's certainly not the present. And they're like, we're just gonna put that on there, and that's gonna be how you connect all peripherals and <laugh>. And that folks was the universal serial bus <laugh>, your computer still has one today. You might need an adapter if it's U SS B C, but like, you could literally, literally take that stupid round hockey puck mouse that came out 25 years ago. I could still plug it in on my, I have a Mac studio. I could plug it in without an adapter and it would work today. And that was, but that was a huge bet because U S B was not a thing until Apple made it a thing. And then they wrote it for a long time.

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:45):
Yeah. I I, I was just laughing at the word work. I mean, it was, it was one of the, it's both really, really cool. It matched the iMac, but also in a company that's famous for bad mouses. That was probably the worst mouse of all time.

Jason Snell (00:11:58):
I, I had, so James Thompson again, who worked on the Columbus project, which became the iMac, one of the things that he told me on the podcast I did about Old Max in 2020 he said that before every OSS 10 meeting, as they were developing OSS 10, and those were all done on imax before Steve came into the room, somebody would take the mouse and rotate it <laugh> so that the first time Steve engaged with it, oh, it would go, the cursor would go in the wrong direction. Oh. So they could make the case that that mouse was terrible, which it was. And I apparent, I mean, I was there in 2000, right where they had in New York, Mac World Expo, where they said you got one under your chairs. We're sorry. This mouse is actually good now. And that was it. It was a long wow year. It was like two years where that bad mouse was there.

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:46):
Familiar fit that si round thing either. That's part of it. It was, well, not, not only that, not only that, but, and Jason's about to show us. It was just perfectly circular. So that we're asked any other mouse before or since. Yeah. It has an orientation that your hand just normally finds. But that one, you grab it and then it's, your mouse is going in absolutely the wrong direction because it's not facing the way you think it is. Yeah. It's, you have to look down. Yeah. That was bad

Alex Lindsay (00:13:09):
In the R S I that, that generated, if you did any kind of major work on it, your hand just started. You didn't even have to get to the point where you were getting carpal tunnel. You just, your hand just hurt.

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:18):
It was just, it was just like too wide and you were splayed out and clicking and yeah, they they actually used to, they used to actually sell like little docs that you could snap onto it. Yeah. Just to give it like a lower, a lower half. So it would change it from a disc until like a, into like a beetle shape. That that's how big a failure this thing was.

Jason Snell (00:13:37):
Yeah. It was, it was a stinker. But, but the U S B thing, I mean, like, yeah, I think that is apple at its best, which is you take a technology that is, you're not the first to adopt it, but like, it feels like now's a good time. And again, jobs, one of his great abilities, I think was just to not be sentimental and him to say, I, I don't care about breaking compatibility. This thing's gonna be so compelling. People will buy U S B devices to work with it. There will be adapters, whatever. And U S B, like U SS B probably would've happened, but it would've been really slow and begrudging on the PC side. And once Apple made this cool computer with U S B, basically the world embraced U S B. And 25 years later, it's still how we connect all our peripherals.

(00:14:21):
I know all through all these iterations, I think it's a huge thing. The fact that they got rid of scuzzy and they said, no, it's all gonna go through U S B. And the fact that, you know, the world, there were zip drives and jazz drives and stuff. And basically what they said is, look writeable storage is not necessary for most people. And you know why? Because this thing's got built. Builtin networking and a builtin modem. And most of your file transfers if buy a floppy U s B floppy drive if you want. But most of the file transfer stuff you're gonna be doing electronically on a network or via a modem. And, and they were right, more or less, although I will say at working at Macworld, back then, when they made this, this announcement, it was hilarious to see every company, every accessory company in the world announced not just translucent plastic, but also announced these U S B devices. And none of them were ready. Like they announced. There were, we, there were hundreds of brand new U S B peripherals, all of which had a little as asterisk next to them that was this fall because they, everybody was like caught flat-footed by the idea that U S B was suddenly gonna be a thing. But the iMac was enough to push them all into making U S B products.

Leo Laporte (00:15:28):
So many great stories around this first iMac. I'm looking at Walter Isaacson's book about Steve Jobs, which has a chapter devoted to the iMac. He says, ive and his top Johnny, ive obviously, and his top de deputy Danny Costner, began to sketch out futuristic designs, jobs brusquely rejected the dozen foam models they initially produced. But I've knew how to guide him gently. I've agreed that none of them was quite right. But he pointed out one that had promise. It was curved, playful looking, and did not seem like an unmovable slab mounted to the table. It has a sense, it's just arrived on your desktop, or it's just about to hop off and go somewhere. He told jobs, but jobs, who was with his binary view of the world loved it. <Laugh>. In fact, he took the fur, the foam prototype me and carrying it around the headquarters with him, showing it in confidence to trusted lieutenants and board members. You remember that? There was no handle on the original one. He insisted on a handle. Even though, let's be real, nobody was gonna carry that. It's like 40 pounds, 40 pounds machine around by the handle. That was kind of a sentimental thing, don't you think? Yeah. Because that's, it echoes back to the original Mac.

Jason Snell (00:16:46):
Yeah. and it was Luggable. I mean, I think Jobs was thinking, 'cause they all remember, then they added the handles to the Power Max too. I think there was the idea, like in a school or some environment like that, the teacher might pull it off a cart and drop it somewhere. And he's, Johnny, you wanna be able to grab it?

Leo Laporte (00:16:57):
He's Johnny's explanation. Back then, people weren't comfortable with technology. If you're scared of something, then you won't touch it. I could see my mom being very scared to touch it. So I thought, if there's this handle on it, it makes a relationship possible. It's approachable, it's intuitive. It gives you permission to touch, it gives <laugh>, it, it gives a sense of deference to you. Unfortunately, manufacturing a recessed handle costs a lot of money. And in fact they spent the money because Johnny was convincing as, as he always was. There's also the problem of the CD rom. Steve wanted a slot. And we now, I don't know if it's apocryphal, but in the, it was part of the the movie jobs at introduction of the iMac, he says, what's this? Well, Steve, we couldn't source the slot. So it's got a drawer. And according to the movie, he almost walked away. True story. Is it a true story? Said, I will not release this with a drawer. And had to be talked down, I think by his assistant who essentially said, next year it'll have a Dr. <Laugh>, it'll have a slot. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:18:10):
Yeah. They couldn't source, they couldn't source the slot. Load drives for it. And they were already on the razor's edge. My understanding too is that like Motorola wanted a lot of money for the G three that was gonna kill the project because it was gonna be way too expensive. And they, they sent a team to Sweet talk Motorola into a deal that Motorola should never have agreed to <laugh>, where they gave them the G three. My understanding is Greg Joss Wak, who's still around and is their head of communications, was one of the people there who basically talked Motorola. And they're like, oh, but it's a consumer con and we're gonna ship 'em in volume and you can get 'em a And they were like, no, no, it's gonna cost this. And they got, I believe the story is they got them to base it on the price of the model instead of a base price of the chip.

(00:18:51):
And then it was a cheaper computer. And so they, they got to buy those chips for less. And the G three was a big part of it. 'cause The G three was at, it was at a moment where the G three was ahead of Intel in terms of pure processing power. And so putting that in a consumer computer allowed them to sort of say, look, you're not giving up anything in order to use a Mac. And then the other key moment that Jeff Goldblum commercial, that's so great. Then there's no step three <laugh>. This is the moment where the internet and online services were really taking off to the point where people wanted, instead of it being like, in the early days of PCs, it was like, well, I need it for my work. I'm gonna have the same computer as my work, or something like that.

(00:19:29):
And this era, it was like internet appliance. You know, what is this internet? What is a o l? And it didn't matter if you were using a Mac 'cause it was just email and the web or a o l. And that was huge for Apple because so many markets were just like, it was Windows or nothing, but the Mac could be a good internet appliance. And by having that modem built in and the ethernet built in, they sort of like made it a lot easier to choose a Mac instead of a Windows PC in 98. Here you go. G

Speaker 5 (00:19:56):
Three was a lot, was a lot more powerful. Easy steps to the internet. Step one, plug in, step two, get connected. Notice is the modem, Jack. There's no step three. There's no

Jason Snell (00:20:16):
Step three

Leo Laporte (00:20:19):
Only Jeff Goldlum will can sell a line lineman, <laugh>. There's no step three <laugh>. Step three, there's, there is no step three. Thank you. Next, next let me so the, the name is interesting too. This again from Walter Isaacson jobs asked Lee Klau and Ken Segal, who were at Chaat Day, the ad team to fly up and see what they had in the works. He brought them into the guarded design studio, dramatically unveiled i's translucent, tiered shaped design, which looked like something from the Jetsons for a moment. Klau and Egal were taken aback. We were pretty shocked. <Laugh>, but we couldn't be Frank Segal recalled. We were really thinking, Jesus, do they know what they're doing? <Laugh>, it was so radical. Jobs asked them to suggest names. Egal came back with five options. He doesn't list the five. I wish he did one of them. Imac jobs didn't like any of them at first, of course. So Segal came up with another list a week later. But the said, the agency still preferred iMac jobs replied, eh, I don't hate it this week, but I still don't like it. <Laugh> <laugh>. He tried, he tried silk screening it on some of the prototypes, and the name grew on him, and thus it became the iMac.

Jason Snell (00:21:36):
It's not bad. I, I was thinking about OSS 10, if you remember the early, the first interface for OSS 10 was called aqua. And it, it, its whole design was sort of this aqua color. And then these like vertical lines, sort of like ribbing. And if you think about it, it is literally, it's the design of the hardware, of the iMac. They designed their entire operating system to look like a computer. That's how important the iMac

Andy Ihnatko (00:22:01):
Was. Not, not, not only that, but remember the early, I, I don't think this, no, this didn't make it to release, but the, one of the earliest like public released versions of it mean the early, early access versions. They had moved the apple, the apple menu to the center of the menu bar, just like it was on the iMac. That now that they lost that, that battle pretty quickly. But oh my goodness, you are absolutely right. That that's how big the mentality was. That, I mean, there's,

Alex Lindsay (00:22:28):
And, and what's amazing is that those, we still, there's still a handful of web websites that still have those little gel buttons. <Laugh>, you know, like, it's just because it became the thing, like everybody knew how to build. Like we, I built tutorials on how to build the gel button on Photoshop. You know, there was like a series of of things to do with that. And, and it was but those gel buttons became the thing, you know, everything had to be gel for a couple years. So it was, but it, again, it was just not, and there's so many things that came together, you know, because like the G three, the reason it was so much more powerful is it had a really large L two cache. And so it was actually faster than the G four <laugh>. So, so the it was just by, you know, and it was, 'cause those teams were working independently.

(00:23:08):
And I, I was talking to someone at Motorola at the time, and they were like, well, the G three folks keep on doing this presentation. And said, well, this is right after it happened. They were doing presentations that said, well, we we're putting this L two, this larger L two cache in, we think it'll improve performance. And the G four folks weren't really paying attention <laugh>. And then suddenly the G three was faster than the G four. And that's part of what created this huge heart attack at Apple, because the G three was supposed to be the low cost version. And the thing that they, they, they were giving out to everyone, and the, the the g fours would be the pro line, but the G threes were faster than the G fours. And, and that really caused it. And they had to plow under, when Steve Jobs got there, they had to plow under all of those power pc boxes to make sure that they didn't get, you know, they didn't go anywhere.

(00:23:50):
But, but the you know, I think that what it really also did is it's the pivot where Apple stopped trying to be like Microsoft, like Steve Jobs. I mean this, the, the Bondi blew is Apple saying, we're not gonna be try, we're gonna take advantage of what we do well, which is an integrated solution. It just works. You know, it's tight, tightly wound, and we're not gonna try to build 20 versions of it. And I think that any, I think in general, it's a good safety. Like never try to copy Microsoft. Yeah. They, they, they have a, they have a model that works. They trying to go after that model is not you. And Apple has proven that they have a model that works as well, but it's a really hard model to, to make work. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:25):
That, that's when they really started to embrace probably by necessity, the idea of abandoning market share and favoring revenue per customer that, because I think they, at that point, somebody must have had that, that revelation that, look, we are never going to be as competitive in terms of market share as anything that Microsoft makes. It's just not gonna happen. But we have noticed that there are people that are <laugh>, despite the fact that we've been failing our own customers for the past 5, 6, 7 years with an operating system that doesn't multitask, that crashes and takes down the entire platform. Boring boxes that are underpowered compared with Windows machines, where even our faithful, even even commentators that have been very, very loyal and faithful and cheerleaders for us are saying, it's time to, for me to switch to Windows because Mac just ain't it anymore.

(00:25:14):
<Laugh>, it, it, they've, I'm sorry, they've, I got off track. They, we know that we have people who are faithful to us, who will reward us if we, if we start making machines that cater to them as opposed to the entirety of the market, then that's gonna turn things around for us. And that's what's paid off for them. Handsomely. They don't, they don't have the number one phone operating system in the world, not by any close stretch. They don't have the, the, the largest desktop operating system in the world. Not by any close stretch, but there's one company that's worth nearly $3 trillion. And there's one other companies that have to have shifty explanations to their shareholders every quarter.

Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
You, you, you're right about windows users. Microsoft didn't get it at all in their long tradition of not understanding <laugh> where the market was going. This is also from the Isaacson book. Bill Gates assured a gathering, a financial analyst visiting Microsoft, that the iMac would be a passing fad. The one thing Apple's providing now is leadership in colors. He said <laugh>,

(00:26:14):
As he pointed out a Windows PC that he had jokingly painted red. It won't take long for us to catch up with that. I don't think Jobs was furious. And he told a reporter that Gates, the man he had publicly ri for being completely devoid of taste <laugh> was clueless about what made the IMAX so much more appealing. The thing that competitors are missing says jobs, is that they're thinking, they think it's about fashion, and they think it's about surface appearance. They say, we'll slap a little on this piece of junk computer and we'll have one too. Yeah. Obviously not. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:26:49):
I mean, it was great that the only disadvantages of the iMac were simply that it was too forward thinking. And again, I can't, this is, this is why, like, I kind of have a, a semi allergic reaction when Apple does something that really inconveniences everybody and they say, oh no, it's, there's, you know, they're getting ahead of the ball. They're skating to where the puck's going to be in five years. Every computer's gonna be like this. And other people like me are saying that, yeah, but today this is a major pain in the butt and there's a major pain point. But it was, again, looking back in history, it seems as though consciously or subconsciously with all these ch all these changes they made, despite the inconvenience to people, what they were saying to themselves is that we are gonna put everything into this iMac that represents future technologies, where the future is going to be, where you don't need a floppy derive. The future is gonna be where you need to have built-in networking. The future's gonna be where you have U S B to connect all devices, not separate connectors for everything. It's almost, they're telling themselves that the fu in the future, the Mac will continue to exist so that it's okay for us to build a machine that anticipates that in 3, 4, 5 years, there will still be an Apple to give you a software and updates for this device.

Leo Laporte (00:27:58):
There were mistakes made. Jobs was really adamant on the slot. CD ramen Got it. And subsequent imax, John Rubinstein tried to argue him out of it, saying, new drives are gonna come along, that'll let you burn CDs. Our customers are gonna want that, and they're gonna come out as slot not as slot, but as a tray CD ROMs first. He was right when Sony released those burners, they were in tray form, or actually it was Panasonic. I remember that. And, and as a result, the iMac was a little behind on CD burners. Although Isaacson in his book says it forced Apple to be imaginative and <laugh> and helped jobs get into the music market with iTunes. So maybe <laugh>, yeah, maybe it was a, a blessing in disguise. First time that came out on this day in 1998 for 1299 base price, which, you know, in real, in us in modern US dollars, in, in modern dollars is actually not inexpensive. 1,299, it's probably almost 3000 today. He sold 278,000 units in in the first six weeks, 800,000 by the end of the year, making it the fastest selling computer in Apple history. It is no longer the number one computer though at Apple. In fact, I just saw a stat that said the, but the mini and the iMac combined desktop computing is only 2% of Mac sales. That laptops really are the dominant form factor. But for its time, the iMac was pretty something. Yeah. RT amazing. Have you, did you own all

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:34):
Of 'em? Yeah, everybody.

Jason Snell (00:29:34):
I mean, what is a, what is a laptop, but an all in one, right? Yeah. I mean, you could argue that they, and they use a lot of laptop tech in the iMac over the years and, and the, and most of it, their desktops now are using the same tactics in

Leo Laporte (00:29:46):
Theirs, I think could argue the modern iMac is a laptop.

Jason Snell (00:29:49):
It's a MacBook Air. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:52):
The iMac look at take apart a a Mac mini, or not the, not the Mac mini studio, but the Mac Studio, but take apart a Mac Mini and you see components that could Yeah. Boy, if you, if you stripped down a, a laptop that's about the size of the board, you would see. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:30:04):
Everything, I have to say, the aluminum 27 is probably my favorite form factor. Although I also like the lamp arm iMac that

Jason Snell (00:30:14):
Was Yeah. The G four, that's still, I think the G four iMac is the most beautiful consider Apple has ever made me. But the problem was that it was coming in an era where they went 15 and then 17, and then and then they're like, oh, we need bigger screens. And the whole like arm thing, they

Alex Lindsay (00:30:29):
Had a lot of trouble with that arm. I think

Jason Snell (00:30:30):
It was not gonna work. It was not gonna work on larger screens, and they needed to be bigger screen.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:34):
Yeah. I think they went to IDEO to get that arm to work. They was

Leo Laporte (00:30:37):
Big deal. Yeah. It was very expensive.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:39):
It was like a major issue

Leo Laporte (00:30:40):
To, because he wanted it, so it was easy to move, but that it wouldn't sag. And anybody who's ever worked in a radio station knows that spring loaded arms over time sag. That's just, you know, I mean,

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:52):
Honestly, I would, I would say that that was the history of Apple. That was the best design computer Apple has

Leo Laporte (00:30:58):
Ever made. Yours over, over your shoulder. The one you have, Jason has a, yeah. Six color apple on it. Is that,

Jason Snell (00:31:06):
Oh, it's got a decal. All, all of my, I was gonna say all of my computers, there's six

Leo Laporte (00:31:11):
Got six colored there.

Jason Snell (00:31:12):
There's a, there's an M two air with a six color, all of them. Yes. I, it's branding, Leo, I, I have to lean into it

Leo Laporte (00:31:19):
Because it was, might be the first Mac that had the shiny apple mm-hmm. <Affirmative> on it, right? The aluminum apple that is now in all of this.

Alex Lindsay (00:31:26):
Yeah. The, the, the other thing that was interesting is right after this, this one that came, the first iMac came out, the iMac DV came out, and of course it had, it had fire wire and Apple, right. Spent a lot of energy getting all those camera manufacturers to, to adopt ah fire wire. Sony

Leo Laporte (00:31:41):
Called i e e 1394, I guess. 'cause They didn't,

Alex Lindsay (00:31:43):
Well they didn't wanna call it that, but

Jason Snell (00:31:46):
Called I link. Right. But it was also 1394. Yeah. Well,

Alex Lindsay (00:31:50):
The funny thing is, is that Apple, you know, apple was one of the patent holders on that, on that that build. And what Apple did about they let it, they let the hook sink in for a couple years, and then they applied for, they, they then they wanted to get royalties and they asked for the, they, they demanded royalties for the, for fire wire. And what it did is that all the PC manufacturers pulled fire wire from their thing, because it was, even though it was only a $2 cost, by the time it went from the manufacturing to retail, it would increase the cost of a PC by $50. And so you know, as it, as it rolled up, as you keep doubling up on, on the way through. And and so so what happened was all the PC manufacturers pulled fire wire from their chassis, which meant that the only way to get video from your video camera was on a Mac.

(00:32:36):
And then, so it, it's part of what pushed, and Apple had no intention of making any money on that royalty. They weren't being greedy. They literally just wanted the PC manufacturers to pull fire wire from the chassis. And so they, you know, it was a trap <laugh>, you know, so, so that they could, so that they could corner that, that DV market. And it was a really it was a kind of a, an amazing <laugh> marketing thing from a little company. You know, that at the time there was, you know, we gotta remember that Apple was a very small company in 2002 and 2003 compared to where they are now, it's, it's, it would be obvious now to do whatever they're gonna do. And I think they just kind of ignore everybody else now. But, but the, at the time, they had to play all this little jiujitsu to, to figure out, you know, how they were going to, to survive.

(00:33:18):
And I think until the iPod came out, I think that it was cool, but we, we weren't sure if it was gonna make it, you know, like I, I think, I think until the iPod took off, I don't think that most of us knew. And, and I think Apple, I mean, again, we've talked about this before, but Apple's, d n a is the d n a of the executives that are, that were there when that happened, when all of that happened. It's deep, you know, like how, how concerned they are about cashflow <laugh>, you know, like, you know, and what, you know, it's, it's deep that those are deep scars.

Leo Laporte (00:33:47):
By the way, 1299 in 1998 is, is almost $2,500 today. So that's about Right. The computer you wanted at that time always was $2,500.

Jason Snell (00:33:56):
Yep, that's exactly it.

Leo Laporte (00:33:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So that was reasonable.

Alex Lindsay (00:33:59):
Yeah. Yeah. My, I guess my, my, my Apple two E was 2000. Well, $2,200. Yeah. See,

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Yeah, that's changed though. I think I don't, well, maybe not. Little one that breaks heart is the $5,000 iMac Pro that I bought. Yeah. Which is no longer so pro <laugh>,

Jason Snell (00:34:18):
I think. But I would say, I, I would say that 13, I, I know it's $3,000 in today's money. I would say though that iMac Price was aggressive. It was not the cheapest computer you could buy. It would say the perfect Apple price. Right. It, it's the price where you're like, oh, I want it. Right. It costs what? Just at the

Leo Laporte (00:34:34):
Edge of affordability. Wow, that

Jason Snell (00:34:36):
Hurts. That hurts. But I can do it. And that's the price that Apple likes is the price that hurts, but you'll pay it. Yeah. And that's what it was. And, and there were a bunch of people who were like, well, yeah, but I, I can buy this PC for cheaper. But it's, it doesn't, it's not this thing that seems so simple and is more appliance like. And it was, in many ways, I would say that computer for the rest of us thing, like jobs had this vision of a computer as an appliance, and the original Mac was that. But like the iMac, I think in a lot of ways was like the ultimate fulfillment of that original Mac Dream that Jobs had, which is, it's an appliance, you put it on a table, it's super easy to use people. There's no step three. And that's what he wanted a, a computer to be. And the iMac really did do that to a certain degree.

Leo Laporte (00:35:19):
Trying to figure out who has my iMac, pro <laugh>, probably, probably Charity

Jason Snell (00:35:26):
Mine's up here in the corner. Yeah. You

Leo Laporte (00:35:28):
Gotta drive it up. Get collection up there. Yeah. Will there be another iMac beyond the 24 inch? I mean, is this the end of the line for that pro of that computer?

Jason Snell (00:35:38):
Yeah, I mean, I talked to them when they came out with one of their last Intel ones, and they said that they were really, it, it fills a niche. They're very happy to have it. It's a, it's a much, I don't know what the percentage of sales really is, but what they said is it's a very large business for Apple, believe it or not, imax, it's just not compared to the rest of the stuff they sell. But it's a lot of money goes into imax. You see them in all sorts of high profile places. People buy 'em for a family. They're in hotel rooms. Your hotel lobbies and you know, they're all over the place. I, I think you can see in their priority level that there was no M two iMac that it, it, it's not important enough. It was important enough for them to redesign it for the Apple, silicon generation, but not important enough for them to do an M two possibly, because Derman says that M three will come

Leo Laporte (00:36:23):
Possibly because the people who would buy that 24 inch M one iMac are not gonna be heavy duty users. Right. It's, it's, right. Yeah. It's on Dennis's office desks and, and exactly. High school kids. And we,

Alex Lindsay (00:36:38):
We, we got one from, for my, my parents-in-law. It's perfect. Yeah. Like, it

Leo Laporte (00:36:42):
Just, and they're not saying, oh golly, I wish I had the M two

Jason Snell (00:36:45):
<Laugh>. Exactly. Exactly. The M one is perfectly fine, and they will update it with the M three and it been eight that might do a bigger one.

Leo Laporte (00:36:52):
So that's a long time. Yeah. I mean,

Jason Snell (00:36:55):
But again, all these, like the M one air, I feel the same way about it. They still sell the M one MacBook Air and it's still great. Right, right. Like, it's still for, for so many use cases. Does it really matter that it's an M one and not an M two? I don't think it does.

Alex Lindsay (00:37:06):
You know, I, I have, you know, I I, the one computer, because I talked about this on the last show, but I always, or maybe I was talking about office hours, but I always buy Apple products within two weeks after they come out. Like, you know, like I, if I'm gonna buy one, unless it's a brand new model, and I'm might let sit for a minute, but, but generally I buy them. If I'm gonna buy a laptop, I'm gonna buy it right after they announce it. If I'm gonna buy a desktop, big desktop or an iMac, I'm usually gonna buy it right after it was released. The only one that's independent of that for me is a Mac Mini. I just buy them whenever I need 'em because they're like, they're way more powerful than what I need. <Laugh>. Like, they, they, you know, they, and I think the iMac for the people who use them are the same thing. That they're just way more powerful than what the average person buying an iMac needs. And so they can buy them anytime they want. And I think that's, I think that even 800 days doesn't matter.

Leo Laporte (00:37:52):
No, they're happy. Came in colors. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:37:55):
Yeah. Plays video. I mean the, the, these M ones, these M ones, the M series is so powerful. Like, it's just, you know, most of what we see as limitations is really the programmers not taking full advantage of the hardware. You know, when I look at an M one, A Mac mini with eight gigs of RAM that can output eight, you know 8, 10 80 p signals from Zoom <laugh> from Zoom io, I'm like, okay, there's a lot of harsh horsepower in there. It's just a matter of harnessing it, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:38:20):
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:38:21):
I think the, the iMac is intended to sell like as a 12 pack. If you, if you, if you, if they sold 'em at Costco, because it's, because it's not, it's, it's as close as Apple comes to selling the sort of computer that an employee or somebody gets issued opposed to something that people choose. And they get to, they get a very powerful M one based modern processor, very nice looking in the color of their choice well, or at least the color of their, their boss's choice. Yeah. So I, I, I see a better case for the iMac than for a lot of the top level Mac pros at this point.

Leo Laporte (00:38:54):
Okay. Hello again. That was the tagline for the new iMac, no relation to the 1987 Neil Diamond song of the same <laugh> name.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:04):
It was, it sure is nice to get out of that grave <laugh> we have that little bit too close to the mark for the, for the, for the, for the demo.

Leo Laporte (00:39:15):
Some have, some have speculated I saw somewhere and a guy said, maybe they're waiting. They're gonna do a special 25th anniversary iMac.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:24):
Nah, that was like Jason said. Like Jason says, they're, they're, historically they're not very nostalgic. They did a 20th anniversary Mac and it was never even, it's kind of, even, even Mac lovers are like, okay, that's nice, but that's not, not something I am in remotely willing to buy. But hey, we'll take pictures of it at Mac World. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:39:44):
We now have a date for the next Apple event. We'll talk about that and more when we come back. That was our trip down memory lane. Now we go to the future. Back to the future in just a bit with Jason Snell, Andy Anco. Alex Lindsay, our show today brought to you by Delete Me. You need to know about this. This is a very modern, private problem in the world, which is, if you've ever searched for your name, you know that a lot of your personal information is exposed. Your home address, your cell phone number since 2010, and it's even more urgent now. Delete Me has been on a mission to empower individuals and organizations by letting 'em reclaim their privacy and help 'em remove personal data from online sources. You know, I was talking to Micah about this on Sunday, and I asked the tech guys, and he's, he's been using this and we compared, when I search for my name and he searches for his name, it's a very different experience.

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(00:44:24):
That was a, a breach. I b m was storing the health data from the Colorado Department of Healthcare and Financing. And they were using the move it, we've been talking about it in security now. I'm sure Steve will talk about it in a little bit. And that they got hacked. 4 million. It's unbelievable. There's another one. Every day there's join delete me.com/twitter. We thank 'em so much for their support of Mac Break Weekly. We have a date, well, I don't know if we have a date. <Laugh> Mark. We need a, we need a nickname for Mark Major. Markman. <laugh>. I don't know, something says that now there's zeroing in on September 12th, he said last week. And we said it would be September 12th or 13th. But he says it's currently scheduled for September 12th. It will be prerecorded, even though they will invite you, Jason, to sit there and watch the video in

Jason Snell (00:45:20):
This what a theater. The Steve Jobs Theater. A great place to watch a prerecorded video about

Leo Laporte (00:45:24):
The movie. Yeah. I doubt U two's gonna be coming out and performing for you or anything. <Laugh>.

Jason Snell (00:45:31):
But get, unless it's you touch on scream.

Andy Ihnatko (00:45:33):
No, Tony Bust wasn't busting,

Jason Snell (00:45:35):
But after afterward you go back and the reason they do it is 'cause afterward you go back up out of the theater and they've got the little special stations with the new iPhones and the new Apple watches and all those things, right? And, and you get to try them out and look at them and all

Alex Lindsay (00:45:47):
That. It is the coolest space like to do that because you have, you know, the theater opens in the back there where you can walk in and it's, and, but they can close it. You know, there's a big curf area that closes up. And so you don't get to see, they get to set everything up, but you don't get to see it. But you don't have to go to some other building or some other room. It's the same place you came in. So the, the theater opens in the back. You can go right, go right in. It flows in really nicely. Then it closes up and then when, when you come back out, it's all, it's all just magically there.

Jason Snell (00:46:14):
<Laugh>. Yeah, it's, I mean it's literally built for this, which is pretty sweet, right? When you, when you have a building that was purpose built for the event that you are with someone participating in right's. So rare that it's like that, it's very good. Other people, other

Alex Lindsay (00:46:25):
People do purpose build, but the level of purpose-built. Yeah, yeah,

Jason Snell (00:46:29):
Yeah. It's, yeah. This is Apple. It's like a magic trick too. 'cause When you go down, it doesn't feel like there's a missing space. It just feels like a narrow space. And then you come out and it's like it was always there and you just didn't see it. It's quite a, quite a thing. And a Tuesday, right? Because it's not Labor Day Week. They can do it on a Tuesday, which I think I said last week, I didn't think it would be Wednesday because Monday is not a holiday. So they'll do it on a Tuesday. They love Tuesdays. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:53):
Tuesdays. Oh,

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:55):
Go ahead. Wouldn't you love to see like what what only people who work at Apple get to see about that design? 'cause I imagine that there are, it's like Disney World where there are all kinds of underground tunnels that if, if some, if, if Tim or somebody needs to get from A to B without ever interacting with the surface world, there's a golf cart or something that will take 'em through these nice little underground tunnels. Oh yeah. Or that there's these other labs for, okay, we quickly, we need <laugh>, we need a, so be before, before they knew that they're gonna be doing everything on on video. Like we need the ability to get a board out of a, of a demo unit. <Laugh>, take off a surface mounted ic, replace it with something else, <laugh>, while somebody stalls one, one floor above. There must be amazing infrastructure hidden from the public or even from like the press from there.

Jason Snell (00:47:47):
Yeah. Having just parked, if you park at the vi visitor center, which anybody can do. 'cause There's an Apple store there. That, that parking structure goes we deep into the earth, right? Yeah. Like on the lo on the lowest level, you should keep an eye out for Moleman. 'cause You never know <laugh>, there might be a Moleman in a corner somewhere. Lava men might be in there. So and, and, and some of those low down places have like doors to stuff, right? And they're like, no, no, no. Take the elevator, go up. And it's like there's doors to stuff. And some of that is just like down below the Apple store. There is a level where there's the bathroom and all of that, but there's also stuff down there. I would not be surprised if a, an entire system of tubes. Yeah. Connecting all of the underneath of Apple Park. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:48:30):
To say nothing about an evacuation plan for every contingency, like that must be even more ambitious than simple. Oh, look, there are exits to the front, exits to the back. And if neither of those work, good luck, <laugh>.

Jason Snell (00:48:41):
Yeah, I'm sure that they did a lot. They, they're never gonna talk about it, nor should they. Right. But like a lot of disaster planning of various levels. We live in an era where there are active shooters and there are bombers, and there are things like that. Like I'm sure that they've got many, many layers of security beyond the, we don't want the public looking, but like way beyond that. So yeah. Maybe Tim Cook has like a little shoot that he can go down that's just, and he's outta there. I don't know

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:06):
Anybody, Tim, to the panic room as anybody who has ever had meetings anywhere on the Apple campus, either just meeting a friend or an official meeting can attest security on the Apple campus is absolutely non-existent and invisible until suddenly it is not. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:49:20):
It exactly, it's immaculate.

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:21):
You take, you take you, you, everyone gets, gets their wants, their selfie taken in front of the one infinite loop sign. Once you, there's a shot clock. And once you exceed that by two seconds, a a nice beefy man in a, in a, in a polo shirt, it's gonna say, ask you if there's anything that he could do to help you dot, dot, dot, leave the campus right now. <Laugh>, ask me. Why not? Well, I you're trying

Alex Lindsay (00:49:47):
To put cows on the one infinite loop, weren't you? I,

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:50):
I did, I did get my picture. And as soon as he saw, like when I was up to it was like, okay. Oh, you, oh, you, it was curiously specific. So you had met the the beefy guy and the Polish a a again, because when when I take my cow pictures, I'm trying to get a, I'm not just like, Hey, look, the cows are in the picture. I'm trying to make it look like the cows are standing there. And sometimes there needs to be some manipulation of angles. And I, I was clearly not someone who was just simply, Hey, selfie. Okay, let's move on to the Baptist store and get a t-shirt. Girl, we got a guy with cows out on the sign. Can you by the way,

Alex Lindsay (00:50:19):
You know, the, if you go to either one Infinite Loop or the Apple Store that's right next to the campus or to the, to to the, to the spaceship, there are shirts there that are really expensive. They're like $42 each or something like that. And I can tell you, I got some of those for my kids. They look that kids wear them all the time. It's like a, it looks like a x-ray of a Mac or whatever. They wear them all the time. And I kid you not, they look like the same day I bought them. Like they have not worn at all. Like it is, they're unnatural shirts. They're super comfortable and they are, they just last forever.

Jason Snell (00:50:50):
Look, it's, I have, I have some of those shirts too, and they are the apple of t-shirts in that they're very expensive, but they're very good quality. Like, you get something,

Alex Lindsay (00:51:01):
You decide like, what shirts we want to get 'em always like, what? When we got 'em for Pixel Core a while ago, I was like, just go to the Apple Store, buy the shirt, look at the tag, buy that <laugh>. Exactly. I don't have, think about this. I

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:10):
Still, I still have like the, the t-shirt, the free t-shirt I got from the opening of like, the very first like European Apple store. And it's still good. I, I've bought, I've bought t-shirts from podcasts like a year ago that are like, I've worn it once and saying, okay, I'm gonna have to decide when is the next time I'm going to wear this, because that's gonna be absolutely the, the last time this is gonna be a wearable shirt. That's

Leo Laporte (00:51:30):
Amazing. I can send you another one, Andy. You don't have to hoard them. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:34):
Not the TWIT T-shirt. I still use and love my TTT t-shirts.

Leo Laporte (00:51:37):
I have somewhere in a box. Somebody gave me an Apple, a campus T-shirt and I just left it in the box. You're saying I can, I can use it.

Alex Lindsay (00:51:45):
Oh, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:46):
You, you can. I, I, and, and I really love the fact that this is the one like exception that Apple makes that they, they they famously used to have, like in the pre jobs there, or like a catalog of, Hey, I want to buy a windsurfing board that has the Apple logo on it. Sure. We got one for you. I'm glad that they still have the, okay, if you are clearly enough of an Apple fan that you came to, you came to the campus just to be on the campus and just to be at the Apple store on at One Infinite Lube, we will have special merch that is just for you. Because it's, you know, there's something nice about having a, having a, a really nice pen with the Apple logo on it that you know that at some point somebody's checked off and saying, yes, this is, this brand meets the quality and the assurance and the sophistication that our customers deserve. Yes. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:52:31):
Germond, we've talked about the iPhone 15 in the various models. He does warn that the Apple watch they announced on September 12th will be not much upgraded from the previous Apple Watch. And it's been that way for a couple of years. He says, hold on to 2024 maybe 2025 for the Apple Watch X, which will celebrate the anniversary, I guess, of the Apple Watch. But that's not gonna be for a while to watch x to celebrate the 10th

Alex Lindsay (00:53:00):
Anniversary. I have to admit, I mean, I, I, I I actually am using a lot of the features in the Ultra and, and but I can't imagine myself upgrading unless it got really not at

Leo Laporte (00:53:08):
800

Alex Lindsay (00:53:09):
Bucks, baby. Be a massive Yeah. Well, and, and it just like, it's, I'm back to like, okay, two or three years is fine. Like I don't Yeah. At least, you know, like, I don't think that

Leo Laporte (00:53:18):
Well, they're smart though, though. They always add one

Alex Lindsay (00:53:19):
Until the Ultra I bought the cheapest one. They had one

Leo Laporte (00:53:21):
Little feature, right? Like the, the temperature sensing last year. They're like, okay, one little fma. Do I need that one? And I suppose a percentage of people, the

Alex Lindsay (00:53:30):
Best part of my ultra is I, I, I go, I am I going, I try to decide when I'm gonna jump into the pool, and I put my hand into the pool with a watch on, and I pull it out and I go,

Leo Laporte (00:53:37):
Oh my God, 81 degrees. You're crazy.

Alex Lindsay (00:53:39):
No, it's 81 degrees.

Leo Laporte (00:53:40):
You don't trust your toe, I take it.

Alex Lindsay (00:53:43):
No, I did. I want the temperature. Exactly. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:53:48):
Yeah. I love my ultra. I like the bigger screen. The battery Life's good. I could tap, I have the face that you tap it,

Alex Lindsay (00:53:55):
But I made the choice when I bought it because I bought the cheapest one every year. Not every year, every year

Leo Laporte (00:53:59):
I bought the cheap. Yeah, we talked about

Alex Lindsay (00:54:00):
This last, I didn't even buy every year because they're just like, there's not that making that much of a difference. And, but when I bought the Ultra, I was like, okay, this is gonna be like a three year.

Leo Laporte (00:54:07):
Yeah. I think at that price. Yeah. Yeah. There is a rumor. I don't like that. They may, and this'll probably be with the watch, is it 10 or X? I'm gonna say X with the watch X, that they will possibly switch bands to a new magnetic band. Because these bands, the ones we have take up a lot of, I, I didn't know there's a lot of extra space. Yeah. And they could use that space for a bigger battery or other things,

Andy Ihnatko (00:54:32):
Or j or just a or just a redesign. I mean, the it's, it's a beautiful classic square pillow design, but how many watch lines in 10 years are still going on the same frame in the same case, I bet that Apple's designers would be really excited to create something that's new, particularly something that I don't know, is slimmer or at least basically telegraphs that this is not the standard Apple watch you. I don't, I don't think it's a, the only thing that I don't like about the Apple Watch, besides the fact that you can't really use it if you have an Android phone, is that you, you put on your wrist and suddenly you're just another person who has an Apple watch. And that's fine, but it's like, oh, if they're only like a different design, if only they made the smaller case slightly different to just show a different kind of design aesthetic, that would be really, really cool. So there's some sort of a variance. So it's not just all like the same, all a tribe of people that have the exact same sigil on their wrist. So that would be, that would be really, really interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:55:29):
There is a new, just parenthetically Apple Watch OSS released 9.6 0.1, which includes a fix for the movement disorder, a p i. So if you see an update, that's what's going on. All right. September 12th, put that in your calendar, Jason, you might wanna order tickets if if as the chatroom's calling him now on the Mark Kerman says S oh oh, September 12th. Nice. You know, you, yeah. I'm gonna clear my schedule for the 12th. Sorry, you everybody clear your, clear your schedule. <Laugh>. I will be taking no meetings on September 12th, just in case you're asking. Germin also says, we have seen some processor reports from the M three, the M three pro, the M three max, and the M three Ultra chips on developer logs. Lot of cores. I think we, we sort of talked about this last week, but he is just kind of doubling down on this. The the max, the ultra would be 32 CPUs, 24 performance, and eight efficiency, and as many as 80 GPUs <laugh>. Now it's just silly time. Now we're just silly talk. I dare you to max this out, Alex, I dare you. That's what they're saying.

Alex Lindsay (00:56:50):
I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, the, the, the CPUs, I mean, this cores make a big difference. I mean, a M D is I think getting close to a 96 core Yikes chip, you know, that's CPU U And so, you know, having a lot of that parallel processing does make a big difference. And, and the, the big advantage that Apple has right now is that they're doing the G P U and the C P U with the ram. So being able to have the memory accessible to those is still a big jump. You know, one of the only companies that could compete with Apple with that kind of merged C P U G P is a M D, but they, you know, but they, right now, they haven't started packaging the RAM with it.

Leo Laporte (00:57:24):
Don't get your hopes up for the M three ultra. That's probably end of next year at the earliest, according to Mr. On the Mark Gerin. Thank you. Chicken Head 21 for that. So brik e black Hat and Defcon, where this past week we talked a lot about various hacks that were announced, and I'm sure we'll do more to this afternoon with Steve Gibson. There is one that affects, apple comes from Patrick Wardle of Objective C SS e e. He's a great security researcher. He makes a program called Block Block that kind of does the same thing as app, Apple's own background task management tool. It lets, you know, block, block does and gives you a chance to block it when an app is installing a background process at Black Hat Patrick revealed, or I'm sorry, DEFCON Patrick revealed that Apple's background task management mechanism is trivially bypassed. And, and he, and the reason he revealed this without warning Apple ahead of time was he said he found this problem some months ago, told Apple about it, they put out a patch, which he said was merely a bandaid, and it's still vulnerable. And so as a result, he says, I think everybody needs to know about it. Yeah.

(00:58:45):
Yeah. That's, that's fair.

(00:58:48):
It's nothing I think that you need to worry about. Your machine has to be rooted, so that means probably either somebody has access to your machine and the root password, or more likely some malware, other malware is used now to get people into it. But that's a good point. If you had malware that could root a Macintosh, you can now turn off that thing that says, Hey, a background task has just been installed. Presumably block, block doesn't have this vulnerability, so maybe maybe you should get block block from Wordle. He's been offering that for some time. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:21):
The, and, and the other big deal is that every time there's a problem like this, it's not just the it's not just the effect that's being mentioned here. It's because there is a bug. It's not, it's not behaving as it's supposed to. There's a problem in underlying code that needs to be fixed. And this is just one expression of what can be done to exploit that bug in the code. And so Apple certainly wants to not just simply, well, every time this bug happens, we're gonna stop this bad thing from happening. No his complaint is that no, you didn't fix the underlying bug.

Leo Laporte (00:59:48):
Yeah. And, and he, as he points out, you're really no worse off than you were before Mac oss. What, what is, when did they put this on Monterey? Or you're, you know, it's, it's only this, this background notification tools is, is relatively recent, so it's not like, you know, it's a massive hole. But if you were counting on it, notifying you of something installing in the background, maybe it's not,

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:09):
It's, its purpose is to say that, Hey, by the way, there's something running in the background you might not know about. And this have the ability to simply, if you, if a bad person could make that so that those bug those alerts go away, then that's, that's no good.

Leo Laporte (01:00:21):
No, it's not. Five new features coming to AirPod Pro. Two probably in the next few weeks. Right. Because let's assume September 12th is accurate. Apple will release a new version of iOS, iOS 17 by the 22nd, 10 days later. At the same time, there should probably be firmware updates for the AirPods Pro. They have been, I think there have been developer updates. Have, have you turned those on? Jason, I know you're a fan of those. Oh, yeah, I have.

Jason Snell (01:00:53):
Yeah, I have. I've tried 'em out. So

Leo Laporte (01:00:55):
We talked about people not using it last week, <laugh>.

Jason Snell (01:00:58):
Right. And I think what I said was like, some of them have issues, right? Like, I had the conversational awareness feature and I had to turn it off because I'm giving verbal feedback to my dog on walks. Yes. Like, wait and, and go. Yes. And it's like, oh, oh, oh, no, you're talking, I'm gonna make everything really quiet. And I'm like, I'm just talking to my dog man. And so I had to turn that feature off. But the you know, there are some other features in there that, that are really clever. And I think Apple is, they did that survey, right? They're trying to find out like how people are using them and how they can tweak them to be different. Creating that, that, what's really interesting is creating something in between noise canceling and transparency. That's this adaptive mode that is trying to sort of like, make judgements about not cutting you off completely from the world, but suppressing kind of background noise stuff.

(01:01:45):
So like the, like if there's a car coming up behind you, you'd hear that, but you wouldn't necessarily hear the hum of the freeway from a couple blocks away, right? Like that, that it would try to balance all that stuff out. I think that's really clever stuff. And, and you know, pause, you're gonna be able to mute your phone audio by just clicking when you're on a call. You'll be able to squeeze to click and instead of it hanging up the call, it will just mute your audio and then you click again to unmute, like just smart stuff. And it shows you what they're capable of doing. Reprogramming those things. Like whatever little tiny computer is in those AirPods, they can update that firmware and add features like this. It's pretty cool.

Leo Laporte (01:02:24):
Personalized volume, also a new feature that relies on a mach on machine learning to let the AirPods quote, understand environmental conditions and listening preferences over time. Yeah. To automatically fine tune the media experience. Have you experienced

Jason Snell (01:02:38):
This? I have experienced that, and it's weird. Like I put my AirPods in to go take my dog for a walk, and it takes the volume that it's playing at, and it lowers it. And I'm like, why is it getting quieter? And then I go outside and it raises it up. And I think this must be the personal volume thing. I may turn that feature off. I, I, I know I, I'm a big boy. I know how to adjust the volume on my headphones. Maybe I can just do that myself. But I can see in some scenarios, you know, the, I think the idea is it's like in a car where like if the car's going really fast and it's really loud, it raises the volume, and then when you're stopped at a stop sign, it lowers the volume a little bit. Like, I can see it having some value, but for me, I felt like, I don't know, I'm enough of a control freak. I could probably just set my own, my own volume and be okay with

Leo Laporte (01:03:20):
It. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, one of the quote features is really kind of a fix. One of the problems people always tell me about with AirPods, and I've had it too, is it's switching <laugh> in the middle of a call from one device to the other. If you like me, have a lot of Apple devices, that's a pain in the butt. Automatic switching will now see the quote, the connection time between a user's Apple devices is significantly faster and more reliable. Okay. Well, we'll see. Fix on that would be very nice. Anyway, those new features should be coming. And, and you don't have to do anything for a firmware update. I think it just happens. Right?

Jason Snell (01:04:00):
Right. I, there's a, there's certain ways you need to do it, like in the beta to make sure that it does it, but basically that's the idea. If they are, if they are connected and in the case, and there, there will be a moment when it decides to send the update and up update the the headphones.

Leo Laporte (01:04:19):
Jason, you are a marvelous multitasker. He has found your picture of the cows at one infinite loop.

Jason Snell (01:04:24):
Andy, send that to me. I Oh, okay.

Leo Laporte (01:04:25):
I

Jason Snell (01:04:25):
Just, I'm just passing it on. Andy. I, I'm a terrible multicast. He sent it to me 10 minutes ago when I only just now noticed. Where's the

Leo Laporte (01:04:32):
Guy in the polo shirt? I don't see him anywhere.

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:36):
He was, he's, well, he was behind me because he had me in the choke hold. So <laugh>, that was before the selfie camera was really, really a thing. Are

Leo Laporte (01:04:43):
You still doing the cow the cows?

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:45):
Yeah. I'm just, I'm just not traveling as much as I used to since, since Covid. But yeah, every time I'm someplace new, I <laugh>. Nice. I'll, if I'm there for more than a couple

Leo Laporte (01:04:53):
Days. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:54):
Exactly. And customs

Leo Laporte (01:04:55):
Never asked you why you have plastic cows in your pouch?

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:59):
I, I have, I have received the joke more than once by t s a saying that I don't know if I can let the, let the, the, the male cow is okay. The female cow might have more than two ounces of fluid in her <laugh>. And then I, and then, and then I, and then I joke, oh, that's okay. I milked the, she was, she got milked before we left flowers. And then we have a good laugh. Ha ha. And we, I don't wind up in a back room. So yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:05:19):
<Laugh>, speaking of AirPods, apple has one a on appeal in a patent case on Bluetooth pairing. One eWAY was the name of the company. They held two patents for a system of quote, generating a unique user code sent to a hair headphone to enable it to pair with the oth with other devices. Of course, that's, I think that's how Bluetooth works anyway. And but the com company had already lost in district court, appealed to federal circuit. The federal circuit judge has now said, ruled an apple's favor, saying, well, that doesn't even, that doesn't pass the common sense, the common sense test <laugh> the judge decided it was appropriate to look at the ordinary meaning of pairing. And on that basis, a unique user code is not the same as a unique device code. The language of the report is quite amusing. Says nine to five Mac. There's a legal term known as construction, which describes the process of interpreting words used in illegal document. In this case, there was no argument between the party parties about the literal definition of a unique user code. It's construction. But they did disagree about the effective meaning of the term. Oh my God, <laugh>, just hope you never get sued in a patent case. That's all I can say. Anyway, one eWAY has lost a district court. Now, does this mean they will appeal to the Supreme Court? God, I hope not.

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:54):
I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:06:56):
Federal court, I should say. Not this yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:01):
Yeah. I, I don't know. I I do know the Supreme Court filings cost a hell of a lot of money, so they have to be pretty sure that they have at least a small chance of Well,

Leo Laporte (01:07:08):
That's good to know. How, why does it cost a lot of money? 'cause Of the attorney, or there's actually a fee

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:13):
Time? Well, I, I don't know if there's a fee. I do know that there's like an immense preparing to, to hear a case before the Supreme Court costs an immense amount of time. And not just, it's not just, whereas the first level of the lawsuit, you can basically have one office doing this. If you're hearing a case in front of the Supreme Court, you have to get people on board that can advise you on how to try, how to, how to pitch a Supreme Court case and basically how to, it's, it's, it's, it's entirely new level of work as it was explained to me that you don't do it just for the fun of it, or just because you, you have, it's the, it's the only appeal that's left. You have to, pretty much, you have to feel as though you have to go for it. If you don't, you don't do it unless you really believe in this case you're

Alex Lindsay (01:07:50):
Doing and you're talking about, I mean, 'cause they kick back a lot of them, most of the vast majority get kicked, not get sick in most

Leo Laporte (01:07:55):
Cases. So you to,

Alex Lindsay (01:07:56):
To get into the Supreme Court. It's just the, as Andy said, you know, you're talking about people who are charging a thousand dollars an hour kind of thing. Yeah. Those are top

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:03):
People.

Alex Lindsay (01:08:03):
Yeah. Like, and, and they, because they're the only ones, they're the gatekeepers of getting writing these things in because they know how to phrase this stuff to get it in. And so, and how to build the case. And so, you know, you're talking probably, you know, minimum thousand probably, and probably more like a half a million to get, to get something all the way into, into the, in the Supreme Court. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:08:21):
Here's the good news. According to the Supreme Court office of the clerk it's only $300 to get on the, to pay the docket fee. And you can do that with personal check. Sure. But <laugh>, but there, you do have to submit your petition on six and a eight by nine and a quarter inch paper, not less than 60 pounds in weight. <Laugh>, I guess you'd have to go to the, so

Alex Lindsay (01:08:44):
The weight, the weight's important because of the, the, the, the scanner. Yeah. So the scan, the, the heavier, if you give it really thin paper, it'll, the scanner will Jan,

Leo Laporte (01:08:52):
And that's fine. You can, you can produce it electronically. However, you don't have to type it. Yeah. In fact, petitions produced on a typewriter are no longer acceptable. So there don't type it. Yeah. Okay. Presumably if you, if you hire an attorney who is admitted to the Supreme Court, he'll know all that stuff or she will. Yeah. And you, you don't have to worry about all this stuff. Plus gets like 300.

Andy Ihnatko (01:09:14):
You gotta get someone who knows, like, you know, where, where does Justice Thomas like to vacation? Yes. That, that's important. A firm mattress or soft mattress. Does

Leo Laporte (01:09:22):
He, like, what kind

Andy Ihnatko (01:09:22):
Of pillows does Broadway show? Or is he more of a West End guy? Mm-Hmm. You know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
<Affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. They have even examples of correct type and incorrect type. So I'm not sure that, oh, you see the size, there's the difference. The justices do not wanna put their reading glasses on. They're very vain.

Andy Ihnatko (01:09:42):
Yeah. And this, and a lot, a lot of this, you gotta figure that. Look, if you are not good at reading instructions and following them, probably not gonna win this case. <Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. So it's slight

Leo Laporte (01:09:52):
Barrier to entry M&m sort. Yeah. You gotta pass that test. At least

Alex Lindsay (01:09:55):
It's kind of the Brown Eminem test that Halen that. Exactly. It's like, it's like, you know, you gotta get through all of these things. First. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:10:02):
Wall Street Journal says that Amazon has launched a sneak attack on Apple and Google

Alex Lindsay (01:10:09):
Sneak attack.

Leo Laporte (01:10:10):
Ah, well that's the headline. Amazon, this is Christopher Mimms writing the journal. Amazon wants you to pay with your Palm, you know, now at the ghost stores, you can actually just,

Alex Lindsay (01:10:19):
Do they have that at Whole

Leo Laporte (01:10:20):
Foods? Yeah. Whole Foods does it now too. Yours. Yeah. Yours does that.

Alex Lindsay (01:10:23):
Yeah. They just installed it in Whole Foods in Novato. At least they have, they have. It's at Mill Valley too. Yep. They introduced it to me like, Hey, do you wanna use your hand? I'm like, no, no, no. Don't <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:10:33):
500 Whole Foods in the us. Yeah. Once enrolled your hand is all you'll need to pay. There Amazon Fresh and some Panera restaurants, a handful of retailers at airports, some stadiums and concert venues. Oh, I could just see Ticketmaster jumping on this one. And a handful of Starbucks locations. Those are all Amazon hand scanning sensors in the future says the journal. You may be doing it to verify your age at a bar to get into your company's offices. A parking garage, a gym, a hospital, a doctor's office. The idea is for Amazon to compete with Google, and especially Apple writes the journal in the realm of digital wallets. Now, I use my Apple pay all the time, not get over

Alex Lindsay (01:11:19):
The weird, the weird factor. Like it's, they're not taking your, they're not keeping your palm print. You know, they're building a hash, like, like everything else, but it's still weird, you know, and it's still like, and it's also like you're touching something that everybody's touching. Like anybody who just came outta Covid

Leo Laporte (01:11:33):
Would be like, do you have to touch it or can you float your hand above it? You have to actually touch it. She's floating her hand. But maybe she hasn't actually still done it yet. I would bet you could hold it over there. 'cause It's a camera. Right. How accurate is that though? I mean,

Alex Lindsay (01:11:48):
It's probably more accurate than your fingerprint. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:11:50):
Anthony Nielsen was apparently used, used it in our discord. Anthony says, you just float your hand above it. You don't actually have to touch it. So it's not, you don't have to worry about

Andy Ihnatko (01:11:57):
It. It's been a while. I, I was, yeah. I, I, I shopped at one of the like completely staff less convenience stores that Amazon had in, in New York City, like last year. And it is kind of creepy, like, if you have any knowledge of technology, 'cause you know that if they can, if they know how much stuff, what I, what I've picked up and what I've, and what I'm going out with, and they can charge me. They are learning so much about me. Every inch of st of step I, every inch of movement that I take is through this store. And there is, I think that Amazon is probably a more creepy company than Google. They're not, they're not up there with with Facebook yet. But they are gaining ground and the idea of of of the largest retail store in the world, getting more information about, oh, well actually he was at this store, this other store, this other brick and mortar store that we don't actually own or control. Hey, he went to this venue and with where these other people were. That's, I don't like

Leo Laporte (01:12:48):
That. I mean, we sold we, we talked a lot about Apple Pay and how much, how much better it was than getting a credit card outta your wallet like this much. But everybody was so excited about it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is even, even better than having to tap your phone or watch to the device. You just, you basically just wave to get in. Amazon says that it's been used more than 3 million times without ever, not even once confusing a person for someone else. Although occasionally Amazon admits it does. They wouldn't know, would they? How would they know? They do say, it occasionally fails to recognize somebody who has enrolled, but that's better than misidentifying them. Hmm. And you might be surprised the next time you go to the store or the market or the airport to see a big sign that says Attention customers, biometric information collected at this store.

(01:13:38):
And there's the Amazon one logo, and that's, that's the sign that they're using those. Yeah. That is something important though. It does not send the hand print information back to Amazon a according to Amazon. It scans. It creates a hash based on that, a unique number that is not reversible. And that hash is then matched in their database. So all they have is a hash that is not convertible back into a hand print. They don't have your hand print. In other words. And this works fine. That that's a, that's a good system of doing it. Is it a threat to Apple Pay? Maybe. I mean, I guess if I had the choice, red Rocks used it in 2021. Did you use it for Humphrey McGee when you visited them in Red Rocks? No.

Jason Snell (01:14:25):
Feels like this is more of a threat to, I mean, it's like a loyalty program. I don't feel like it's a threat to, to Apple Pay or anything like that. As much as it is, this is a more convenient question mark loyalty program kind of thing, right? Like, I go to Whole Foods and I have to scan my phone app in order to get the discount. I have to put really my phone number, it's Safeway to get the discount. Right? Like, so this would be more convenient than that. I wouldn't have to open up that the Whole Foods app and scan it. I could just put my hand down. But like, I don't know, I I, it feels to me like it, it is an additional thing and it's a gimmick, but really what it's doing is it's about tying your identity so that once again, they can sort of look at everything you've bought and learn something from what you've bought.

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
So, so then that's key. That's what it's is. That is something the Apple Pay does not do, right? There is no link back to you when you use Apple Pay,

Jason Snell (01:15:21):
Right? Well, I mean, there's a rotating thing and all that, but they're, they're not building a profile. That's why most of these loyalty programs exist, right? Is they wanna build a profile of they want you to be loyal. They do that, wait, but they also want to build a profile of everything you've bought.

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
When I go to my local bagel shop, I always pay with my watch and it says, oh good, you got another five points. And it knows how many points I have. So there must be some unique identifier that they're

Jason Snell (01:15:46):
Getting unique identifier based on your watch. Maybe so, maybe so based on your Apple Pay, I was under the impression that the Apple Pay data rotated and was not. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
So was I

Jason Snell (01:15:57):
A real thing? Yeah. So I a fingerprint or something there too.

Leo Laporte (01:16:00):
Hmm.

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:01):
Well just that, that doesn't, that doesn't mean that it's not also that that box isn't also trying to get a ping off of the, IM a on your, on your phone or trying to get an idea off your Bluetooth. There's some

Leo Laporte (01:16:11):
Points of attack they're using Square, so it's square up. So I now have 85 points, but in every single case, I've used it with my Apple Watch, so it shouldn't know that it's me, but somehow it does. Hmm.

Jason Snell (01:16:24):
Hmm. Because Square, oh yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know exactly how that works, but that's the idea is that there's a limited amount of data collection that they can do. Yeah. Versus what you can build with a loyalty program where, you know, my wife and I use different credit cards and I use different credit cards and whatever

Leo Laporte (01:16:41):
Number, that's why they use the phone number.

Jason Snell (01:16:42):
Safeway knows Yeah. Because of our phone number. Yeah. And they do that to give it us, give us discounts. I

Alex Lindsay (01:16:48):
Think Safeway knows that. I mean, it connects it to your credit card and then it connects it to your, your credit card's address. Then it connects it to everyone and your address', it connects it to, I mean it's, that's the web is so deep is, you know, that you know, and then they're, then they're buying and selling this with Facebook and everybody else. And that's all the third party data that people are going back and forth over is the third with third party data is, is packaging this all up so that people can build a better view of you. So they can send you ads that are you already bought <laugh>. So anyway, so, but, so the but yeah, well buy that

Leo Laporte (01:17:20):
Again. 'cause You,

Alex Lindsay (01:17:22):
I have to admit, I I do make, like, it's funny that the, the, when you start getting conscious to that, and I probably shouldn't have this value judgment, but like, I don't have a problem telling Amazon. I don't know why, but I don't have a problem at Whole Foods of scanning my little thing. No matter how hard it is. Their scanner for the QR code is like, I don't know, in Novato. It's like all over the place. You get,

Leo Laporte (01:17:41):
Do you get a big dis discount that way?

Alex Lindsay (01:17:44):
No, but I'll tell you what it is, is if I order anything online, it keeps track of everything I bought so I can find it easier. Like, I don't, like, I, I, you save, I mean I, for whatever reason, I never buy, I somehow have a talent for not buying anything on sale. 'cause I, I, I go there and I do it and I think I'm gonna get some, save some money and it's like you save 69 cents. And so the but but the thing is, is I, for some reason, I don't have a problem with it, with, with Whole Foods maybe 'cause I was going to Whole Foods before Amazon or whatever, but Safeway, I'm super, like, I don't want to give 'em my number and I don't wanna be part of it. And then I'm so frustrated by the fact that they charge Safeway, everything is on sale and they charge, they charge you a lot if you don't give them a number. Right. And, and so the, so Safeway marks everything way up. If you're not, you know, they really make it painful. 'cause They really want that data. And that makes me so frustrated that my wife will go to Safeway and I won't, like, I will not shop at Safeway. And it's not because of the ba you know, of, of value judgment of the food. I literally, it's over the phone number. I just won't. So

Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
Here's some insight, by the way, from a professor Panda Bear about how the bagel shop knows it's me. When using Apple Pay, a unique card number is generated per Apple Pay device. If you continue using the same device, it's the same number. But, and this is important, I want my big old mill points, but if you turn on advanced fraud protection, the C V V changes when using the card number in your wallet. And Jason, you said maybe you can regenerate them as well

Jason Snell (01:19:11):
If you I think, I think Apple Card has some more shiftiness about it. Yeah, but it's your regular credit card, you know, you're adding your regular credit card. So

Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
What I'm using Apple way to track pay with Square. It's not really Apple Pay, it's my ma it's the Apple Pay MasterCard probably. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So blame Goldman Sachs

Jason Snell (01:19:32):
<Laugh>. So there's some, I mean, the fact is, unless you're living an all cash lifestyle, this is gonna be, you're gonna be able to be tracked, tracked to a certain degree. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, again, I think, you know, I would be reluctant to give Amazon my hand print, but as Andy put it, like this is a hash right. Or, so it's probably okay. But, you know, is it worth the convenience? Obviously, like Alex is so repelled by same way that, that, I don't think Alex is gonna be putting his hand forward, but I, I don't know. I I could see doing it if I felt that it was like a super big burden to scan my Whole Foods app. But it's not. So I'm

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:08):
Not

Leo Laporte (01:20:09):
Gonna, oh, see

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:10):
That's, that's, and that's, that's how they always do it. It's always like, oh no, no, people have, people have the option of doing something else. Just like if, if you don't want to have a radio transponder on the dashboard of your car. So that, and so that in, in a pinch, the government could attract your cars. Every movement. That's fine. If we will keep one lane of the, of the toll booth open that's gonna have a, a line that's, that's just for tractor trailers and people who don't have that transparent. If you, if you're okay with waiting 10 minutes to go through every single toll booth. Exactly. You're perfectly fine Operat and no one's, it's, it's free. We all, that's called we our principles, but it's like, yeah. Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (01:20:43):
Like, that's freemium.

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:45):
I'm lucky that there's a, there's a, there's a local, there's a, there's a small local chain of grocery stores that not only do they not have like a rewards program, but they don't even have self-checkout <laugh>. And it's, and the prices are only slightly higher than Stop and Shop. And oftentimes they're lower than like the big chain stop and shop. And they only take,

Leo Laporte (01:21:03):
So your identity is, and you always wear a hoodie when you're going in there. They'll, so you're

Andy Ihnatko (01:21:07):
Good. They'll also trade for chickens and people who know how to do roof work, <laugh>, it's not as though, like, there's not flexible payment options. You know, the funny thing

Alex Lindsay (01:21:13):
Is, I don't mind, I don't mind the self-checkout except I, I, I buy a lot of raw vegetables and so like, the self-checkout with celery is not fun. Like, it's just like, yeah. You know, like, so I, I'm just like, if, if, if I, if I, as soon as I pick something up at Whole Foods that is not in a package, which is like 80% of what I pick up, but the first one I pick up, I go, well, I'm now gonna stand in line somewhere.

Leo Laporte (01:21:34):
It's the same for me. Every time I buy cigarettes and liquor, I can't I can't use it. So <laugh> Yeah, it's just inconvenient. Let's take a little break. We'll come back with more with our wonderful panel, Jason Snell six colors.com. Always nice to see you and your shining smiling face. If you get an invite for September 12th, it'll be in the next couple of weeks. Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:21:57):
They usually give you two weeks if you're gonna expect it to travel, plan your life. So yeah, I would think it would be in a couple weeks.

Leo Laporte (01:22:03):
Alright. We look forward to that. Andy. That goes also here. W G B H. You're gonna be on G B H when

Andy Ihnatko (01:22:12):
Now this is, this is where I start to think that my, my appearances on G B H are inextricably linked to Donald Trump being indicted. <Laugh>, it's supposed to be on two on Thursday now. I've been bumped to next Wednesday

Leo Laporte (01:22:22):
At 1230. Damn it, every time he gets indicted, you get bumped off W G P H. I really think people should consider that, that it's, it's, you may never

Jason Snell (01:22:31):
Be on again. You may never be on the radio ever again.

Andy Ihnatko (01:22:34):
If it's a conviction, I will, I'll even go farther than that. I will like leave terrestrial radio forever. <Laugh> Well, I'll have to sign something for that. That's, that's not just, that's not an open promise. As, as Patton

Leo Laporte (01:22:46):
Oswald said, I prefer the earlier funnier indictments. Also <laugh> also here

Andy Ihnatko (01:22:53):
It's

Leo Laporte (01:22:54):
<Laugh> Alex Lindsay, office Hours Global. What's that big yellow thing? Is that new? I don't remember that from,

Alex Lindsay (01:23:01):
Oh, it's a monitor I gotta put up. It's a, it's the old, it's a monitor I'm just using for reference and I just haven't gotten it put up yet. So <laugh>, so it's a, I needed a little h d r monitor 'cause we're doing a lot of H D R streaming to YouTube and Ooh. So I needed to have a monitor that I could look at that I kind of tuned for. Ooh. For that viewing. So it's gosh, yeah. Can't believe YouTube

Leo Laporte (01:23:19):
The way streaming in H D R. That's

Alex Lindsay (01:23:22):
Amazing. In five one. In five one. So we do it, yeah. So you can do it. It's five one to the tv. So if you have an over, if you have an Apple TV or Chromecast or whatever, you'll get 5.1. And if you it'll fold down to binaural for headphones. The one that doesn't isn't, it's kind of in the middle, is the, just a regular computer or whatever. But we we're doing, like the coverage that we did last week at Sea Graph we were shooting log on a, you know so we had, we were shooting Log and Ambisonic, so we had a four mic ambisonic rig and we passed that back to over a live view. We passed that back to d to our office, and then we convert it to H D H D R 10 and 5.1.

(01:24:06):
Wow. And it, it's pretty awesome. <Laugh> like, I have to say, like it, we were kind of experimenting with it. Now we're probably gonna standardize on it for event coverage because we can, because we're using two mics that are just handheld and they're SN 50 eights. We put those in the center and then we can make, we can attenuate, like we can go up and down on the, on how much of the environment that you hear in the surround speakers. And so you really feel more like you're there than what we've done in the past. But we still have total control over the center, center channel. So your having fun

Leo Laporte (01:24:36):
Is, is your SIGGRAPH coverage on the YouTube channel? People can watch it after the fact or

Alex Lindsay (01:24:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on, it's on our channel. Okay. You can see if you look at C graph coverage, we did two, like one hour, one and a half hour ones. And Nice. They're mostly me and me and Nick Esen, who is he is the head of the Immer head of immersive at Drexel University of that department. Wow. And so the two of us are wandering around talking to people, just grabbing onto people going, Hey, what about this? And, and it's very loose compared to some of our other stuff in the past. So it's, it's, we, we had a lot of fun with it.

Leo Laporte (01:25:09):
Our show today brought to you by the folks at a c i Learning, they sponsor our studio. We love these guys. And I think when they first started at the beginning of the year, you might have said, well, who are they? I think by now people know it. Pro and a c i Learning have merged, you know the name it Pro Longtime sponsored more than a decade since they, well, just about a decade since they opened up in 2013 as part of a c i learning IT Pro has elevated, they're already highly entertaining bingeable short form content that the <laugh> before the merger, I think it was 5,800 hours, is now 7,200 hours of on-demand content. And that's not 'cause it's old. No, that's fresh content. They've got seven studios running Monday through Friday constantly updating because the tests change, the certs change, the software changes, there's new versions, new threats.

(01:26:01):
All of that means new content. And that's what's great about it. A c i learning is always up to date. And I gotta tell you, if you're trying to get into it, there's no better place to do it. Your personal account manager manager will be with you every step of the way. You can, even if you're already in it, fortify your expertise with access to self-paced IT training videos, interactive Practice Labs certification practice test is so helpful to take the test before you take the real test. One user said quote, excellent resource, not just for theory, but Labs Incorporated within the subscription is fantastic. Highly recommend the resource and top class instructors. I know some of these guys, the and gals, the best instructors in the world. If you wanna learn it, don't miss these A c I Learning Practice labs. They're great. You can test and experiment.

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You can learn the technology without any risk to you. You don't even need to have a Windows machine to learn how to run Windows Server and Windows clients. You do it all in an HTML five browser. And if you're an M S P and you wanna test and experiment before deploying new apps or updates, you could do that too without compromising a real live system. Retake the Practice IT certification tests again and again until you get it right. That way you'll be confident when you sit for the actual exam. A c I Learning brings you IT practice exam questions from Microsoft, compt, EC Council, P M I and many more. And I'm telling you, every vendor, every skill so you can advance your IT career in one place or train your team so that and fill in the gaps in in their education so that you've got the best IT team out there.

(01:27:45):
A c I Learning is the only official video training for CompTIA. 'cause Those CompTIA searcher Prime for somebody getting into it. They also have Microsoft IT training, Cisco training, Linux, apple Security Cloud, and much more. Now we got an event coming up in September. A c i learning will be in London September 26th through the 27th at the International Cybersecurity and Cloud Expo to experience latest innovations in cutting edge technologies. Join a c i learning at the International Cybersecurity and Cloud Expo. Look for their booth September 26th and 27th. Learn it passenger certs. Get that dream job. Or if you're ready to bring your group along, head over to our special link and fill out the form for your team and you're gonna get great discounts. Our TWIT listeners get at least 20% off an enterprise solution in IT Pro and as much as 65% for volume discounts.

(01:28:39):
Just depends on the number of seats you need. Get that quote@go.acilearning.com slash twit. Learn more about ACI learning's premium training options across audit IT and cybersecurity readiness. Go dot aci learning.com/twit. Individuals. We get a great discount for you too. Use the code TWIT 30, TWIT three zero for 30% off a standard or premium individual IT pro membership. Go dot aci learning.com/twit. Thank you for the job you do ACI learning and thank you for supporting Mac Break Weekly. You know, we've got a big event slate coming up. I just wanna run through this for Club Twit. Just around the corner we have the Untitled AI Show. Jason Howell, Jeff Jarvis are working on that. That'll next broadcast will be August 17th, 1:00 PM It's still in Beta. Home Theater Geeks is back with Scott Wilkinson. That's Thursdays. We're doing a photo walk at the end of the month, aunt Pruitt.

(01:29:45):
And I'll be walking around downtown Petaluma if you're in Northern California, we'd love to see you. I also wanna mention, and this isn't just for club members, that I'm gonna be in Green Bay, Wisconsin meeting with the advertised cast. And yes, I'm going to a Packers game. And we are looking at having an event, I think on the, the, the Friday the 28th. 29Th of September. We haven't planned it yet. 'cause I don't know if there's interest, if there is interest say something in the chat or the discord or you could even email me leo@leoville.com and say, yes, I'll be there. 'cause We wanna make sure there's a, there's enough people to not be embarrassed when we go like, Hey, we, I'm here. Hello. So <laugh> email me if you're gonna be in in Green Bay September 28th, I think it's Stacy's book Club's coming up at the end of August.

(01:30:38):
Got Daniel Suarez and Hugh Howie for a fireside chat. Lou Meeska, we got so much going on. And Anthony Nielsen, our AI guy, we'll be doing a fireside chat in October. If you are not yet a member of Club Tweet, you not only get access to the Discord, you not only get ad free versions of all the shows we do, including this one ad and Tracker free, you also get those special shows we don't put out in public and all of that. And by the way, I'm just scratching the surface. I can go on and on for seven bucks a month. How do we keep the price so low <laugh> by not paying Leo. That's how go to <laugh>. You think I'm joking? We pet you in love and respect. In love and respect. Love, yes. In love and respect. No, I I say that only this so that you know, your $7 goes to keeping everybody else employed.

(01:31:27):
Keeping the lights on generating new shows does not go into my pocket. TWIT TV slash club twit TWIT TV slash club twit. September 29th, Friday night in Green Bay. If you're gonna be in Wisconsin, let us know. Let us know. And thanks to all of our Club TWIT members let's get back to the excitement <laugh> of the three weeks ahead of an Apple announcement. It's so exciting in here. So exciting that I have a story from UX Design. Cc, why do people save their empty apple boxes? Alright, show of hands. How many of you do you have boxes for all of those Macs behind you? Jason Snell, I

Jason Snell (01:32:13):
I I don't have

Leo Laporte (01:32:14):
Boxes for all of them. I mean, Jason <laugh>. Look, Jason's got 'em. You know why? And look, Andy's got 'em.

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:22):
I got not, not just

Leo Laporte (01:32:23):
Hold on, hold on. This

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:24):
Is like, ugh. See, this is so well made. This is, this is for my, my Pixel book and it's so well made. I don't even know. There it is. Like this is, this is what like dueling pistols, like our, our,

Leo Laporte (01:32:35):
I know it's, it's cardboard, but it's quality cardboard. It's like heavy. Yeah, it's like heavy, heavy,

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:41):
Heavy, like stock. It's nicely. Like if I, if I cover, if I cover this in leather it again, you would think that this is just a beautiful, and I do and I do also, somewhere around here I do have like a shipping, like a moving box filled with like apple boxes that are not even quite the standard, but still quite cool.

Leo Laporte (01:32:59):
Well, lots a Mac mini boxes laying around here. So <crosstalk>, I don't want you you to think I'm actually saving these boxes. I recycle them. I immediately <laugh>. But Anthony Nielsen came running in with his, you're right there works of art, but there's still cardboard and I don't want a lot of boxes around the house. So I do why I keep them either.

Jason Snell (01:33:15):
My explanation for storage is first off, I have a lot of these because they're review units and they go back to Apple in the box

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
That they Oh, you need them? Yes.

Jason Snell (01:33:23):
But also I have not so much with me, but I, I definitely have friends who are savers of Apple boxes. And the number one reason is if they want to sell it, if they wanna upgrade and sell a used, that's true Apple product. The fact is nothing fits

Leo Laporte (01:33:39):
Worth's more in the box.

Jason Snell (01:33:40):
Those computers like the box they came in. Yep. If you've got the room for that, which I often don't. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:33:48):
All right. That's it. That's the story. <Laugh> Ford has hired a form an ex, oh, I'm sorry Andy, you wanna talk more about boxes? Please be my

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:00):
Guess. No, no, I was, I was, I was just gonna say that like every time I do a house cleaning and I have this, like, I have like a really, really old iPad box, like I'm about to throw it away, but then, oh, well someone on eBay just bought one of these for $23 and it's not worth my, it's not worth $23 to me to keep storing this. But that's like, eh, let's put this in the decide later pile.

Leo Laporte (01:34:17):
I have to admit, you know, I get, you know Atal, for some reason Italian coffee comes in very nice cans and I hate throwing. We get ili ILI pods for the staff. And those illy cans are beautiful tin cans. They're very nice. I hate getting rid of them, but how many screw cans do you need? You're right. And when I say screw cans, don't let your mind wander. I mean, scans, cans to hold your screws.

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:42):
Yeah. And the, I I went through, I went through that recently where I was saving like really good. The, the, the jelly I buy gets in like these really nice jars.

Leo Laporte (01:34:50):
Oh yeah. Jelly jars.

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:51):
Yeah. And I, and I saved like four of them. And then again, doing kitchen, cleaning the kitchen, I'm like, Andy, let's, let's go onto Amazon right now and find out how much like a glass jar with a nice lid cost. Hey, they cost next to nothing. So if you ever have a need for these, you <laugh> you, you can buy these for next to nothing and you won't have like to have to scrape three week old like raspberry jam out of them. So it's, thank you to the cl thank you to Amazon for occasional bouts of clarity. In

Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
My day, I knew more than a few people who had jelly jars for the glasses in their house. So,

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:24):
Well that's re that's, that's hipster. That's

Leo Laporte (01:35:26):
Classic retro. That's retro. It is.

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:27):
It's classicism, survivalism kitchenware. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:35:30):
Ford has hired apple, the guy who helped create Apple TV plus Peter Stern. Stern was the former Apple Vice President of services accredited with Apple TV plus Apple News plus Apple Arcade Fitness plus m l s season pass and Apple one. After six years at Apple, he's gone to Ford to build a world class team <laugh> not to start a TV streaming TV network to create and market innovative customer experiences. Oh, Lord. By integrating hardware, software, and services across the Ford Blue Modeling and Ford Pro.

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:10):
Yeah. That means that he, he went, he went from like bringing Ted Lasso to the masses to trying to figure out how to charge a monthly fee for windshield wipers. Make sense? Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:36:19):
It's always nerve wracking when I see services people at at auto companies.

Jason Snell (01:36:24):
Well, with car play, unlike, ah, general Motors. So there's that.

Leo Laporte (01:36:29):
Good point. Good point. Yeah. Can't believe GM is doubling down on not No. Not putting CarPlay into any of their new stuff.

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:40):
Unbelievable CarPlay. No, no Android, no nothing. Just let's <laugh> though. Those are, you know, you know, you can't, you can't pluck the feathers from our pigeons. Those are our pigeons. Yes. We'll pluck the feathers. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:36:50):
Yeah, that's exactly it. We want that customer information. Great article in the, the next web about a little Irish company called Alchemy. They were, there were four people working at Alchemy. They had two and a half million dollars in pre-seed funding in, in three years ago when they pitched Apple on being the, the one and only company to resell, you know, the iPhones that Apple takes back in trade. And I guess they grew past those four employees. 'cause They now have 60 warehouses around the world. And when you bring an iPhone to Apple to trade in for a new phone, Alchemy's the one that that gets it. They get all the trade-in business. It's a really great piece. They talk about the software they use that will wipe helped. I'm sure Apple helped on this. Wipe everything from the device and reset it to factory settings quickly and securely. Then also talk about how most of 98% of the phones they get can be re refurbished and resold. 2% though, go to Daisy. They say Apple. Yeah. 1.2 million phones a year can go through Daisy's mall and get recycled. Remember that video? Which is great. Which means less in the landfill.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:14):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:38:15):
And they sell, this was the stat that I thought was interesting. 15,000 iPhone eights every day, every day. He's the guy who gave the interview to the next web, says, 'cause Apple phones keep their value. Hmm.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:33):
Yeah. So the, the only, the only problem I, I still have with this is that I, I like that Apple's making their hardware more secure and trying to reduce the, the, the market for theft by making sure that if some, if, if something is not, that something can only be wiped by the original owner, however, I still think that there needs to be a simpler route for one person to sell a, a, a phone or, or a Mac to another person and make sure that there's no slip ups and making sure that that thing is, is a hardware reset wiped and that the new owner can re re-register as a brand new machine. There. There's that, that, that's kind of a monopolistic attitude. If it's like, if Apple's saying that the only way that you can buy an Apple device secondhand or a modern Apple device secondhand, and make sure that when you get it, you won't be able to, you won't be just buy a, won't just be buying a pile of a junk that is perfectly functional but still locked. The original owner is to go through us or go through one of our license and approved resellers. That's kind of obnoxious.

Alex Lindsay (01:39:30):
I think as long as, as long as you can prove that it's, as long as you can absolutely prove that it can't be used for, for theft, I think that that's fine. But I, as a user, I'd far prefer it to be hard to transfer than to have, I like the fact that it's hard to buy the phone. So it's

Leo Laporte (01:39:45):
Not that hard to transfer. It's

Alex Lindsay (01:39:46):
Still my phone.

Leo Laporte (01:39:47):
You just have to remember to do. It's not,

Alex Lindsay (01:39:49):
That's the key. But, but the thing is, is that I think that I'm, I'm tied. I'm totally fine with it being ruthlessly hard so that as a user, I don't have to think about my, you know, it's just, there's no reason to steal someone's iPhone. People

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:00):
Still steal 'em.

Leo Laporte (01:40:01):
I dont know why, but they can't use 'em

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:04):
One one. But one of the problems is that oftentimes it's not someone going through Facebook marketplace and person to person. Oftentimes it's a company that's getting rid of two dozen Mac minis and maybe eight of them were processed properly, but the other 12 are now, will now become kind of e-waste. Even though, again, they're perfectly functional. They, they post, they do everything. But because there isn't a symbol, even though I could possibly show Apple, here's a purchase order, here's someone to contact and here is like a note that the person who who sold this to me is also going to be con contacting you. I wish that there were some way under those circumstances so that even if it is difficult, it's like, well, here's the process you have to follow, but there is a process you can

Leo Laporte (01:40:40):
Follow. Yeah. is it isn't it sufficient? Is it sufficient If I wanted to sell an Apple device to remove it from find my logout on my Apple account and wipe it. The, the, but you're right. With corporate because of M D M, I see this on Reddit all the time. There's a couple of things that happen. One is somebody buys a refurbished Mac Mini and it's still under M D M. And when he tries to install the operating system, it says, okay, do you, do you wanna enroll it with the forward M D M program? And that's problem number one. And I also see it's interesting, there's, so most of these stolen or lost iPhones end up in China, and I see this on Reddit all the time too. People get a message from a guy in China saying, unlock your phone or, and then some sort of meaningless threat, you know, there was

Alex Lindsay (01:41:33):
There I love that art. Did you see the article where the guy suddenly saw pictures showing up on his photos you know, from his phone that was stolen. And then he ended up going to China and <laugh> and meeting, meeting the guy. Not recommended. It turned out that they were really good.

Leo Laporte (01:41:47):
It was nice. They became friends. Right. It had a happy ending. Yeah. Really

Alex Lindsay (01:41:50):
Did. Yeah. He, I guess he was, there was a lot of news coverage, so he was like a superstar when he landed in China. Like everybody there knew who he was. Right. You know? Yeah. So there was like lot crowds at the airport and stuff like that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:00):
But I, I, I'm kind of more with on that flight that's <laugh>. I, I'm not sure, unless, unless I happen to live like two towns away, I don't know if I would do, do a, a 14 hour flight just to get your iPhone

Alex Lindsay (01:42:11):
Back. It was, it wasn't instant. They, they, there was a lot of back and forth. Like he was, they were trying to figure it all out and the whole thing. And then it wasn't, it wasn't like, I'm gonna go today. I saw

Leo Laporte (01:42:19):
It's cute. It met. That's right. I'm kind of with you, Alex. I think a little barrier to theft, even though it doesn't deter all theft, it certainly has shown a big deterrent effect. Yeah. Alchemy says that apple has since 2022, become the fastest growing brand in the used and refurb refurbished sectors worldwide. They make up almost half of these secondhand phones smartphone market in 2022. And and it's interesting, one of the reasons Apple's willing to do that, because of course that's, that's not a sale they're making, but one of the reasons they're willing to do that is 'cause of services that even if they don't get you buying the phone, they're gonna get you <laugh> with Apple Services

Alex Lindsay (01:43:00):
<Laugh>. Well, and, and also I think one of the big uses, one, the, one of the, the real benefactors of used iPhones, I think a lot of times are kids under 18. Right. So it's also getting get 'em in the ecosystem. Into the ecosystem. Ecosystem. Yep. And so they're eventually gonna buy a new one, but may may not be at the beginning, but, you know, a lot of times you wanna get you know, my kids have old, old iPhones <laugh> of mine. You know, and so, so I think that you don't want to necessarily spend that much money on, on their iPhones at the beginning 'cause they'll break 'em. So yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:32):
I think I have used up almost, lemme see if there's anything else. <Laugh> you must have put this in. Jason Snell, Lionel Messi's Inner Miami CF Journey subject of New Apple TV plus documentary. Are you excited? I

Jason Snell (01:43:46):
I did not put that in there, but I mean, why do one documentary about messy when you could do two?

Leo Laporte (01:43:52):
I I know how many

Andy Ihnatko (01:43:54):
I Yeah. It by the

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
Way, numbers soared for the m l s subscription when Messy came to Miami. So it worked.

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:01):
Yeah. And Tim Cook's been like, retweeting like information about this. Hey, thank <laugh> we love, we love soccer or football or whatever it is that people who are buying subscriptions will, will go for. Yeah. This is

Jason Snell (01:44:13):
The owner of Inter Miami said that the Apple TV numbers, the, the M L Ss League pass numbers have doubled. Yeah. since Messi. So,

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:21):
And that pretty good. And, and that that didn't, the fact that that didn't come from Apple, that came from this league owner. And then the fact that Tim basically endorsed it by, by retweeting tweeting it. So that's the <laugh> maybe the first admission of, of, of, of viewership numbers specific to one program that Apple has done. I think they certainly haven't said how many, how many subscriptions Ted Lasso gave us

Leo Laporte (01:44:41):
In if you had one of those iPhones that slowed down as it got old, you may be in luck, you may get as much as $65 in <laugh> in a class action lawsuit in 2020, apple agreed to pay up to half a billion dollars to resolve that lawsuit. However, <laugh> two iPhone owners who objected to the settlement were holding it up. They said, well, I want more than 65 bucks. They finally lost their appeal in the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals removing the final obstacle to paying people back. So now Apple can start paying out the $500 million. Unfortunately, the claims deadline was October 6th, 2020. So it's, it's too late to complain now. Yeah. They did get 3 million claims and that's how we get the 65.

Andy Ihnatko (01:45:42):
That's why I'm never cynical about these things. And if I can simply go to a form that I know ex that I know is legitimate, say, I know I'm probably gonna get a dollar eight, but if I find out two years later that this was worth $103, I translate that into burritos. And like that could have been a, like a dozen burritos I could have had for free. But I didn't, I didn't wanna fill out one form.

Leo Laporte (01:46:02):
It's kind of sad that those two people who didn't like the deal were able to hold it up for all that time.

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:09):
That's a, that's a real George Costanza sort of move.

Leo Laporte (01:46:11):
Really. I want more,

(01:46:14):
I want more of course horrific tragedy in Lahaina, in in Oahu, I'm sorry Maui article though about a family that used the iPhone emergency, s o s via satellite trapped in the Hawaii wildfires. They were able to get help and survive a tweet from Michael mlo said, my brother's girlfriend's cousin. Well, that's a little farfetched. My brother's girlfriend's cousin and his family were caught in their vehicle in Maui when the wildfire suddenly erupted around them. No cell service. Apple ss o s was the only way they could get contact with first responders. Literally saved their lives. They were in a bank at a strip mall. And he actually posted a screenshot, so I'm gonna believe this, between the family and first responders took about 35

Andy Ihnatko (01:47:08):
Minutes. I'm glad he Yeah. That, that's, that's really good. Yeah. I, I'm glad he posted the screenshots too. 'cause It really illustrated that it's not just, Hey, there's a beacon somewhere that indicates that someone somehow is in some kind of distress that no, they, it was able, they, they were able to have like a real conversation out lying. Here's where I am, here's my situation right now. And again, 35 minutes to being rescued. And that's <laugh> that, that's an Apple user for life.

Leo Laporte (01:47:32):
Yeah. oh, another Bluetooth story. Oh, somebody was, you've been, it was this you Andy, somebody who's very busy putting in stuff. Thank you. Researcher says they were behind the iPhone popups at Defcon. So what's the story here, Andy?

Andy Ihnatko (01:47:49):
This was, this was funny. So a lot of, I was, so I've been watching like a lot of the videos from people who at Defcon and a lot of them were saying, Hey, I, I keep getting these popups saying, Hey, do you use your Apple ID on this Apple TV <laugh>? And I don't know. And so it's def con so you know that someone's pulling, trying to, trying out something. And so somebody on on Mastodon, like basically fessed up saying that it was, he was testing out, he for two reasons. He said in his, in his, in his little report, he basically said that he wanted to make sure that people knew that if you want to turn off Bluetooth and secure your phone, don't go, don't go through control center, go to settings. Because if you go through control center, you're only kind of turning it off.

(01:48:28):
Only if you go through settings or if you put into lockdown mode, you are actually turning it off. But he was also trying to basically he was, he was working out weaknesses and apple's Bluetooth protocols about how it auto connects to random devices. And it does. There's, there's no, there's no indication that anyone was owned owned by this. But again, it was funny that there was a, for a long time, that was like every third video or every third comment, I said, Hey, I got, I was just walking through and I got this alert. And that, that is kind of a, that is like a common annoyance. We talked a little bit about that earlier, that the auto connect to dev to a nearby device. It's great when it is actually something that you wanted to happen. And it's a device that you actually want to connect to. It's annoying when you're on like Amtrak and your phone keeps, your iPad keeps asking if you want to pair with nearby AirPods. And I have to say, no, no, no, no. I don't have 40 pairs of ears. It's, I'm good. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:49:23):
And Joe Box who did this said it's, there's no data collected. It's just sending out a Bluetooth advertisement packets that don't require pairing. It's no big deal.

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:36):
Stop by the control.

Leo Laporte (01:49:38):
He says, hoping by next DEFCON to have it working with new Iowa 17 name drop feature. Oh, dear. And maybe do something similar for Android as well. He also says just for what it's worth, maybe something to think about next year. There are about 15 possible popups he used. One that's kind of not, you know, kind of odine, but you could also say, transfer your phone number. Or your OS is too old for the accessory. Click to update or adjust your color balance. <Laugh>, it won't do anything. If you if you click it, you're, you're, you're okay. But, wow. And I think anybody at DEFCON sees that's, I hope not gonna, not gonna do anything about it. It it, it

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:19):
Does, it does illustrate that it's how difficult it is to make things simple that, wow, let's go to, I don't want to, I, I don't want to I don't wanna use Bluetooth and I don't want the Bluetooth things to connect me. So I'm just gonna go into control center, this really nice easy little tab and click, click on the thing marked Bluetooth. I'm gonna watch that light go out, that I'm gonna think that, oh wow, my Bluetooth is, is off. And no, it's just turned off. Things that things that it hadn't, hasn't turned off. Things that Apple can do and therefore hasn't turned off things that could be exploited by know how, by knowing how Apple does things. Yeah.

Jason Snell (01:50:48):
Apple changed the way the control center for Bluetooth and wifi work where they used to be turn off the radio and now they mean disconnect from all devices. So if you're on wifi and you're like, you just landed, but you were on the airplane wifi, and now you want to actually use the internet. If you tap the wifi and control center, it drops you off of the airplane wifi and won't reconnect to a wifi device unless you do it manually for 24 hours. And Bluetooth, I believe is the same way where it will disconnect you from existing Bluetooth devices. But that doesn't mean that a Bluetooth low energy pairing request or something will be ignored. 'cause The radio's still on. And so it, it will still be available and you could still go to the Bluetooth menu in settings and pair a device. 'cause It's not off. It's just disconnected. And I think on one level, the control center stuff actually works more like how people want. But if you're somebody who wants complete control, you need to know that the control center one is not doing what it used to do. It doesn't turn the radios off. It's just disconnecting you from devices.

Andy Ihnatko (01:51:49):
Yeah. It, it, it's kinda like when we used to have that switch that we thought meant like, turn off the speaker because oh, I, I'm in someplace where I don't wanna be. I don't wanna make noise. I'll slip. I'll see, I'll flip this little switch that basically silences my phone. It's like, no, it doesn't silence the phone. It simply changes to a different mode in which you will still be, be the jerk at the concert. Who, who whose phone makes, whose phone is giving you alerts. 'cause Apple doesn't want Apple. Apple doesn't want to screw up and not give you that alert that you, you sent three, three days ago about don't, don't, don't be late for the concert or whatever. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
And I think this one's also from you <laugh> you Andy, and not go

Andy Ihnatko (01:52:29):
Some of 'em, some of I do have signatures too. I think. I think I know now. I think I know what you're talking about.

Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
Yes. so many of us have often wondered what peppermint Patty's pronouns would be, although there is a clue in the 52 year old Peanuts character with her friend. We don't know much about Marcy, but we know she calls Peppermint Patty. Sir. well, I guess we're gonna learn a little bit more about Marcy because as Andy and Ako points out, there's gonna be a Snoopy Presents special show. One of a kind, Marcy Mar. Finally the show you've been waiting for <laugh> everything you ever wanted to know about the kind introverted wallflower and companion to Peppermint Patty.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:18):
It's, it's kinda like, remember like the second season of, of <laugh> of of, of oh God. I just, I'm sorry. My, my mind is blanking. But the soccer show that I just mentioned 10 minutes ago, Ted

Leo Laporte (01:53:31):
Lasso. Ted Las

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:32):
Lasso Lasso. Thank you. I, I, I don't know why I blanked

Leo Laporte (01:53:33):
Out. Just say it again. We'll edit out the mind part <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:36):
Thank you very much. You know, like in the second, second season Ted Lasso, they did an entire episode of just Coach Beard, like being out and kind of drunk <laugh> in London with no

Leo Laporte (01:53:46):
Pieces whatsoever. I love that whatsoever. When they do stuff like that, doesn't

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:48):
Exactly. See, here's a back, here's a background character that maybe we've been taught to think of as just the person who is just the friend of the main character who just basically gives the main character things to bounce off of. Marcy is, Marcy is one of the nicest characters. Like in in penis tradition, she does call Peppermint Patty, sir. But that's because she was introduced as a summer camp. Someone who's gonna the same summer camp as Peppermint Patty or Peppermint Patty was like the resident advisor or something. And there was act that one, one background story that's really, really cool <laugh>. He she has sort of like an androgynous look, certainly androgynous for like 1972 or whenever she was introduced. And there was gonna be like a two, it was a two week story. And the payoff of, of the, there's gonna be a joke at the end where Perm and Patty has been assuming that this camper is a girl.

(01:54:38):
But, but he says, oh no, I, I'm a boy. I don't know why, why you thought that. But then he liked the way that those two characters were bouncing off each other that he thought would be nice to have like two, two girls be friends together. And she didn't wanna ruin that by having a crass joke. That would only go, that wouldn't go any further. Aw. So yes. I'm, I'm actually, I'm looking forward, is it premiers on Friday? I'm setting my v I've got a brand new v h s cassette. I'm setting the recording speed to sp I'm looking forward to it. So much

Leo Laporte (01:55:05):
<Laugh>. I I have two picks of the week, so we think we should take a break and then we will do our picks of the week in just a bit. Andy and aco, Jason Snell. Alex Lindsay, our show today brought to you by my sheets. Well, every other week my sheets, 'cause I gotta get a second set of Brooklin. I love these so much, but I change the sheets every week. And so I only get 'em one week, <laugh> two. And if I had a second pair, then I could just rotate 'em. That would be great. Brook Lenn who says you can't vacation in the comfort of your own home. Brook Lenn is here to keep you cozy all summer long with their award-winning sheets and home essentials. Brooklinen is the perfect way to build your own oasis to escape the heat. The options are endless.

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(01:57:47):
This hot summer use promo code Mac break. You'll get $20 off your online purchase of a hundred dollars or more. Plus free shipping brook linen.com. We love our brook linen. Oh, we love it. B r o o k l i n e n brook linen.com. Promo code is Mac Break for $20 off plus free shipping. It's not too late to enjoy a great night's sleep from brooklyn brooklyn.com. Offer code Mac break. Scooter X has been mentioning this again and again, and I did have it bookmarked as my pick of the week, but it's actually not gonna be my pick of the week. But I I will mention the full movie Love Notes to Newton is now out and free on YouTube. So if you, Harry McCraken handwriting recognition, if you like me, have a whole bunch of Newtons <laugh>. If you still love your Newton conversations with some of the people who created it you know, some of the people who still love it, some people who still have Newtons and use them every day. It's an hour and a half and it's great and it's free. So if you wanna know more about the history of the Newton Love Notes to Newton Newton, the full movies available it, the channel's called Love Notes to, to Newton. So I think you'll know where to find that on on YouTube. And now Jason Snell your pick of the week.

Jason Snell (01:59:19):
Yeah, I'm going to promote a, an app written by a friend of mine Casey lists from the Accidental Tech podcast. His app came out last week. It's really good though. That's the thing. You know, it kills me a little bit to say my friend wrote a great app. He did, it's called Call Sheet. And it's, it is literally a reaction to how bad the I M D B app and web experience have gotten. So he wrote an app that uses not I M D B because that data is not as readily available. It uses the movie database, which is almost as good, not quite as good, but he wanted to build a clean, easy to use app that accesses the, Hey, who's that guy moment in your life where you're like watching a show and you're like, whoa, what that actor, what has he been in?

(02:00:04):
And following it around like we do with I M D B, but doing it without ads and a lot of garbage. And it's really well done. And I think my favorite part of it is the way, oh yeah, it's got a quick access link that's really brilliant, that's got this idea of like, you can set it to go to just watch and see where is that movie or TV show available to Stream? Oh, that's nice. Or you can have beat IMDB trivia or whatever. It's got spoiler controls, which are really nice. So if you are worried about like being told Idra Elba isn't in all the episodes of this, you're like, oh no, what did they do to Idra Elba? It's like, well turn that off and you won't see that and you won't, you won't get spoiled about it if you know, you know.

(02:00:41):
So I, I, I, I really recommend it on that level. I also really love how thoughtful his subscription model is. So this is a subscription app. If anybody learned anything in the last year, it's that if you're writing a Twitter app or something like that and you rely on a subscription, you're at the mercy of the service. And it could be super dangerous. And there currently, I don't believe are any or very many a p i fees for him to pay the movie database. But what he's done is he's set up a very thoughtful subscription plan. It's a reasonable price. There's a monthly fee or an annual fee. But what I really like about it is when you open the app, you are not prompted to create an account. You are not prompted to buy a trial. You just use the app. And after about 10 searches, it will start to subtly say, you know, eventually you're gonna need to pay for it.

(02:01:31):
And I believe 20 searches is the moment where you need to decide. But the beauty of that is by the time you hit the paywall, you'll know if this app is worth it or not. And I think it's really, if you're somebody who's looking up, who is that guy in that movie all the time this is a so much better way to do it than something like IMDBs stuff. So you'll find out whether it's worth it or not, but there's no risk in trying it because it is free to try for those 20 searches call sheet app.com.

Leo Laporte (02:02:01):
There's not one TV or movie that I watch that I don't have to pull up I mtv, right? And say, who is that? I know that's

Jason Snell (02:02:09):
Somebody who is, that was watching the after party the other day. And I'm like, oh, it's that guy from, you

Leo Laporte (02:02:14):
Know, from

Jason Snell (02:02:15):
The thing. And I had to look it up. It was like, oh, he is from that mo that show where, where Carl Carl Urban is an Android. It's that guy <laugh>. But I, like, I had to, I had to go through that process. So you know, it's it's, yeah, and I just, I love how thoughtful it is. So many apps, when you open it for the first time, you're like, please create an account. Please buy it now and then get the free trial and all that. Like, you will get a seven day free trial when you sign up for Call Sheet. But you all, you'll do it even to get to that point. You will have used the app enough to know whether you want it or not. And I, I just, I really like that as a, a philosophy to be able to really use the app before you have to decide if it's worth paying for

Leo Laporte (02:02:52):
Two little notes. One great icon for call sheet hunt for red October. Except it just says hunt for, which is exactly what you're using it for. And Casey Liss is lucky 'cause he's got the perfect name for a company. Limitless. L l c <laugh>.

Jason Snell (02:03:08):
Yeah. Casey's got all the good list puns nailed down,

Leo Laporte (02:03:11):
So

Jason Snell (02:03:12):
I admire that.

Leo Laporte (02:03:13):
Very nice. A podcaster who programs Wow. He's thrown down the gauntlet. Very nice. Andy and Ako Pick of the Week.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:23):
Really great free pick this week, but you gotta get on, get on board. The NIB is a wonderful site that publishes comics by creators from all around the world, all kinds of backgrounds, not, and then we're not talking about like three panel comic strips. We're talking about political comics non-fiction memoir. Oh, it's

Leo Laporte (02:03:43):
Going outta business system, right? First person, right.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:45):
Actual journalism. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. And they're going outta business unfortunately after pay after 10 years and paying like $2 million to independent cartoons and comic screeners. That's so sad. But the good news is that through the month of August, if you go to the nib.com, you can actually download PDFs of every issue that they published. And so I suggest you get right on that. They're also asking for donations because they would like to keep this archive alive. Again, they can't keep publishing and they can't keep paying creators, so that's why they're shutting down. But they would like this stuff to still be available to people and you can help out by donating some money. But until then, grab every single one of these PDFs while you can, because every single issue is just there. There's, there's no top, there's no bottom, there's no high point. There's no low point. I can't think of any other publication where just every page is just rewarding and positive and wonderful.

Leo Laporte (02:04:34):
Yeah, there was so much sadness when they announced that they were in a shutter after 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, it's really a shame. But it's great that you can get them, because a lot of these are out of print. But do leave them some money so that we can keep these archives online. 'cause They really Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (02:04:50):
And other people can discover them when we, when Yeah, it's, it's, it's terrible when creative work just isn't allowed to die either, because it was, it was a movie that had its day 30 years ago, but is not valuable enough of to, to be repeated a live stage performance that was never recorded to begin with except for one when illegal copy and when that happens, it's like all this beautiful stuff. All these beautiful creatures of the earth were killed before they could they could flourish and they could establish their permanent foothold in our society and our consciousness. And so by keeping these things online, all these things can live in another year, five years, 10 years, hopefully 50 years, and they deserve it. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:05:33):
I agree a hundred percent. The nib at the nib.com office hours, global host and man about town. Alex, Lindsay, your pick of the week.

Alex Lindsay (02:05:46):
Yeah, so we, we went at sea. Raf there was a lot of cool things. I mean, people were talking about nerfs and we were talking about motion capture, but the thing that seemed to stop everyone was this application called Feather. So Feather is a free app right now. It won't be forever, but it's, it's a free app. And you can sketch in three D and it is just magical wow. To watch someone draw. So basically what happens is, is that you, you define your first stroke is to define the surface that you want to draw on. And your second stroke is to draw on that surface. That surface can be curved, that surface can be wavy, it can be straight. And you can build, you know, whole scenes and, and drawings and planes and animals and everything else in three D and you're really sketching in that three D area.

(02:06:32):
You can cut and paste in three D you can do a lot of other things there. And it is just mesmerizing, like looking at someone who's, I'm still learning how to use it <laugh>, but I downloaded it immediately on onto my iPad. But all the stuff you're seeing there is stuff that they're someone drew in that app and it can generate an O B J so you can eventually get it into, so you could literally draw this, save it out as an O B J. I haven't tested this yet, but I'm about, this is the next thing I wanna do is, is, but it should work, that you should be able to draw it, export an O B J, put it into O U S D Z and text it to somebody and they'll pop up on their desk, you know of a sketch, you know.

(02:07:06):
Wow. And it was just, they've been doing, I guess I talked to the C T O and, and the, the designer of it, and they've been working on this for three or four years. And so this is just, they're coming out of like, here's, here's the product that we've worked on. So it feels much more mature than a version one. And you know, they're gonna probably move into some kind of subscription model at some point, but right now it's free. And if you, if you do any kind of sketching, even if you just wanna see, I mean, I, there's very few times where I look at something and it's just kind of a magical tool on the iPad. And this is one of those times, you know, and it's just, it's just, and all of us were just kind of stunned watching it. And there's, there was all these people, they had a huge l e d wall there, you, you'll see there's some live coverage of it in our that were showing it. But all, there's all these people just staring at this giant wall of someone drawing in three D and it's just, it's unbelievable. It's like that little, that little pen that you drew with lines you could draw in, in, in real, in, except that it's digital. Yeah. It's just,

Andy Ihnatko (02:08:07):
I'm sorry. I'm, I'm totally with you. I'm, I'm watching the demo video on the screen and it's, you are, you're right. Just watching people, people draw free, it's not, it's not cad, it's not like squares and, and, and polygons. It is ink drawing in three D and watching them turn to add details to different views of this is just like, this is magic. This is like a movie prop. You know

Leo Laporte (02:08:27):
What else I don't, it tells you is how good the iPad is. I mean, in this is in smooth, flawless animation, you're able to rotate this object on this little inexpensive non-computer. Computer.

Alex Lindsay (02:08:42):
It's, and they were using like, old iPads. This is not like a, they were, I think, purposely not using a pro iPad. It, it's a, it was like a little min, it was iPad Mini was one of the ones they were using. And, and just, I think they were proving that you, it's not, you need a pen intensive need. You gotta

Leo Laporte (02:08:56):
Have a pen. So it's

Alex Lindsay (02:08:56):
Gotta be, it's whatever the minimum, the minimum that, that uses a pen. But, but it's, it's just magical. And, and it's free. It's free right now.

Andy Ihnatko (02:09:06):
It's not, it's not, it's not CAD for people who aren't watching. It's not like it's, it's CAD for people who are designing things they intend to three d print or, or put into like a modeling program later. It looks like something like if you draw any sketchbook now you can draw and, and just be creative and have things outta your mind. And I'm sorry, I'll stop blathering, but good heavens. I can't wait to try this. Yeah. Look

Leo Laporte (02:09:23):
At the tutorial. I mean, the things you can do.

Andy Ihnatko (02:09:25):
Yeah, I mean what the,

Alex Lindsay (02:09:27):
What? And it has a great tutorial where it kind of walks you through, this is how you do this, this is how you do this, and then it leaves you in the model that that stepped you through. So you can start to Oh, nice. Fiddle around with it. And just an i I, there's very few times when I just go, this is truly a new app. Like, it's not like I, I can't, you know, just, it's like something that's just truly amazing. And and this is one of those moments. And so, so I, I would highly recommend downloading it and play with it. Now again, there's gonna be some, I, they said there's gonna be some subscription service at some point. I don't know what that's going to be. But they said right now we just want people to play with it and get their feedback. So

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:04):
I can't wait for the Vision Pro version of this <laugh>. Yeah, that's gonna

Alex Lindsay (02:10:08):
Be intense. You know, man, there was, you know, there was, there was you know meta had a, had an app that that would, you know, there are a couple different companies have had apps that, and I think Adobe bought it, that let you draw in three D with a, with vr. And I actually, I, I've already started playing with this one. I actually found this one easier to draw on than, than the meta one. Just 'cause it was a pen and I could see it and everything else, right. But I think that yeah, I, I do think this inside of a vision you know, a vision headset is gonna be pretty amazing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:38):
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:40):
Wow. Professional sculptors. Go ahead.

Leo Laporte (02:10:42):
No,

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:43):
I'm, I mean, they're, they're professional. They were professional sculptors. Like the a a sculptor I follow on Instagram is the head sculptor, the US Mint. And like, he loves working with Clay, but almost everything he does is he does as a digital model. And, but I, the tools that he's demonstrating on his Instagram and other channels, they don't look as natural or as like freeform as this. Like, I, I can't wait to see what like a real sculptor would do with this in their hands.

Alex Lindsay (02:11:08):
I'm sending this out to all my friends that I, you know, used to work at, at Lucasfilm, like, <laugh>, check this out, check this out, check this out. I'm just waiting for one of them to, one of them to like, oh, now I understand this. You know? Yeah. And, and so, and, and then suddenly we're gonna see this explosion of stuff. So, we'll, we'll see how that goes.

Leo Laporte (02:11:23):
Feather.Art on the web or look forward on your iPad app store. I actually have a pick of the week that costs more than an Alex. And I don't expect anybody to buy it. 'cause It's the weirdest thing I ever heard of. It's a touchscreen, a 24 inch monitor in a suitcase. The LG is gonna sell this for a thousand bucks. The stand, stand by me. There's no day. Stand by me. Go. Portable smart touchscreen. And I guess it's for camping <laugh>. I, I'm not sure exactly what it's for, but it's, it's in an attach case that you can carry with you. It has speakers, four of 'em, so you could actually get some sort of surround sound. It's got a built-in battery, they say to the beach, we'll go for three hours. Although if you're in a car, I guess you could plug it in. It does have a touchscreen, which is great because you can use it to airplay from iOS or your Mac, <laugh> <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (02:12:25):
I,

Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
You know, I, I don't, I'm not gonna buy it. I just, but you can pre-order it now. I just thought this is, somebody will want this. It's crazy. And some of the applications they show like this record player app. Yes. <laugh>, I'm just hysterical. It is the lg Stand by me, stand by

Alex Lindsay (02:12:46):
Me. And it's 27 inches.

Leo Laporte (02:12:47):
Is it 27? I think. I think that's what they said it is. Lemme see how big it is here. Your screen, your way,

Alex Lindsay (02:12:55):
And I'm just getting that from their serial number. It has 27 in it. Usually that means that there's 27 inches, but I don't, I don't see, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:13:00):
Here's all specs. Let's see here, here

Andy Ihnatko (02:13:03):
We go. You couldn't find any. 19, 19, 20 by 10. 80, 60 hertz, hertz refresh rate.

Leo Laporte (02:13:09):
It is a yeah, I see this. The D p I, but I mean the, this, the resolution, but not, I think I remember reading that it was 27 inches. You got it. Maybe you should get this out. I

Alex Lindsay (02:13:21):
Mean, it looks, it, it, I don't know what I would do with it. <Laugh>. I, you know, the funny thing is that if I'm getting color correct, I mean when I say that, you know, you're in trouble when the, for me, I buy lots of cheap monitors and then we usually one really good one. Yeah. You sense, sure. You know, like, so that I can look at something, but, but I just, I, you know, because I'm, I just, you know, just leave them on all the time. Bad. But I, you know, it, it is kind of interesting for a three hour, you know, battery life and put it in the back

Leo Laporte (02:13:45):
Of your car and go to the beach.

Alex Lindsay (02:13:48):
You know, my whole thing is when I go to the beach, I really just wanna go to the beach. Like, I, I, I know that I sound like a really type person,

Leo Laporte (02:13:53):
But I'm just wonder, okay, one more nice thing, it rotates so you can have it in portrait mode. Yeah. You go and then now I can do my as I,

Alex Lindsay (02:14:01):
So I guess it, it mounts to its own. I

Leo Laporte (02:14:03):
Guess it's an

Alex Lindsay (02:14:04):
Arm in to its own arm inside of the,

Leo Laporte (02:14:06):
Inside the Shake

Alex Lindsay (02:14:07):
Case. You know, I could see, you know, here's the thing. I could see that as a relatively useful thing for power. I not, or presentations. Like you wanna show something. So you, you go to someone, you open up a briefcase, you open up things, it's ready to, you know, trying to Yeah. You know, that, that you're not gonna have, so I, I don't get the whole beach or back of the car thing, but I do get the idea that I could bring a monitor to some presentation. And I know that I'm not trying to use their projector or I don't know if there's gonna be a projector or, you know, that kind of thing. But yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (02:14:36):
20 20, 20 watt four channel speakers. So, you

Leo Laporte (02:14:40):
Know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it's 27 inches. 'cause They also have a Stand By Me that goes on a stand for nine bucks, eight, and it's 27 inches. So that's what, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say 27 inches.

Alex Lindsay (02:14:53):
Oh, he's always thinking crazy.

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
They're the ones who do the rollup screen. They do some interesting stuff.

Alex Lindsay (02:15:00):
Monitors

Andy Ihnatko (02:15:01):
That picture, like they're, and it's not like they're like a thousand pictures of the, of the, of the product. There's like maybe a dozen. And the one of them is you open the lid and here's the screen that looks like a, the top view record player Of a record player record. It's hysterical that, that says, I don't know, just one. Yeah. Well, yeah. Let's, let's say that too. I don't know <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:15:18):
Throw that in. There is no app that does that. But you, you did it. So let's do it. Yeah. <laugh>, it comes with Web os

Alex Lindsay (02:15:27):
The other LG tv. Like how long is a soccer game? Like how long is a soccer game? Once <laugh>, you know, do you

Andy Ihnatko (02:15:32):
Really, if you really wanna make it clear to your kid how little you want to be here right now, screw the phone, bring your entire, you can see it

Alex Lindsay (02:15:40):
27 inch for like a tailgate or something like that. They're, you're gonna watch it. You know, you don't have

Leo Laporte (02:15:45):
<Laugh> stand. Your tailgates

Alex Lindsay (02:15:46):
Are pretty intense in

Leo Laporte (02:15:47):
Stand. Mego is the name of it. Here's the people by the way, I gotta show you. Here's the people wa listen to the records. At at the pool. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (02:15:55):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:15:57):
Playing chess. You could play chess on it. Chess thing. I get

Alex Lindsay (02:15:59):
More. You go. Yeah. I get the chess thing a lot more than the record player.

Leo Laporte (02:16:02):
I'm, it could be a fireplace. Fireplace. It could be anything you want. It could be your band.

Alex Lindsay (02:16:06):
No, I dunno. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:16:10):
I'm so tempted to buy it, but I won't. But I'm so tempted to buy it just 'cause it sounds so crazy.

Andy Ihnatko (02:16:16):
This is, this is marketed towards people who have, if they don't spend the remaining exactly $1,100 in their budget by this quarter. Yep. <laugh>, they're trying to get their budget cut.

Leo Laporte (02:16:24):
It's burning a hole in my pocket. Yep. <laugh>. Well, that just about it for this smack break weekly, once again, we've stretched absolutely nothing in two hours and 14 minutes of prime content. So glad you tuned in. Jason Snell has many podcasts. He has to do this several times a week. True story <laugh> true story. Six colors.com/jason, if you wanna see all of them. Anything you wanna plug?

Jason Snell (02:16:51):
Hey, I'm on the front page of The Verge today, so read my article about why the iMac is important. And you should remember the iMac 25 years

Leo Laporte (02:16:59):
Later. Oh, oh, this was your, this was your article. I didn't even see the byline. Look at that. Yeah, it was good article. I read it. Oh, well, I should have known, I should've known. It was good surprise, Leo. I, I shoulda have known it was Straight Outta Bondi. Wow. I think I gave it a plug without even knowing it was your article. So There you go. <Laugh>. Thank you Jason. Yeah,

Jason Snell (02:17:21):
These articles on the Verge are getting better and better and

Leo Laporte (02:17:23):
Better. <Laugh>. I don't understand it. Is this your first for The Verge? I haven't seen you in the Verge before. I've

Jason Snell (02:17:29):
Written, I think this is my fourth for them. Okay. They come to me every now and then they say, Hey, you remember old things involving Apple? Cool. Why don't

Leo Laporte (02:17:36):
Write about You remember this Mac,

Jason Snell (02:17:38):
It's very nice Neelay. And the, and a bunch of the other people over there have been very nice to me over the years. And and I I, I appreciate the opportunity to be on that big stage. And this one was David Pierce and and Dan Seaford. But they both asked me to be involved. And it's fun. It's fun to do from time to time. I'm not, you know, starting a column over at the Verge or anything. But it's nice when they tap me on the shoulder and say, you know, we thought you might be the person. I literally saw them at WW d c and they're like, we think you might be the person to write this article about the iMac. And I'm like, let's do it. So it's nice two months later that it's finally out.

Leo Laporte (02:18:15):
<Laugh> Alex Lindsay, office Hours Global. You got a call in two minutes. I'm gonna let you plug Office hours. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (02:18:22):
Yeah. Yeah. The my brother's on on Thursday. Oh, nice. So there, there's a plug. So my brother is a, he's now a steady cam operator for some pretty, some pretty big films. He's Aaron Trinity

Leo Laporte (02:18:35):
With Joe Lindsay. Woo.

Alex Lindsay (02:18:37):
Yeah. So, so Joe's gonna be on, he's gonna be, I think you're gonna get to see my backyard. 'cause He is gonna do the, he's gonna move the steady camera on, you'll see how much I don't water my lawn <laugh>. And and so anyway, so but anyway, so that's gonna be Joe's on, on Thursday. It should be a lot of fun. We had Jason Delray, who's was on Twit when we, we met on Twit. We had him on off on the Gray Matter show last week. Nice. Talked about his book about Amazon.

Leo Laporte (02:19:02):
Yeah, you That was a good book. Yeah. Office Hours Global. You could join the Zoom call every morning and just, or watch it on YouTube or go to the website and see all of the great stuff. It is a wonderful place to be. Alex, get outta here. Thank you for being here.

Alex Lindsay (02:19:15):
I'm outta here.

Leo Laporte (02:19:16):
Mr. Andy Anco, W G B H in Boston. He's currently being held hostage by 91 Indictments. <Laugh> <laugh>. Yeah. Unless I like, and the thing is, I would joke that unless he gets indicted again, I'll be on Wednesday. Can't at 1230. Can't you can't. But there, but there's so many things he could still be indicted for. So let's just, let's just say that if you don't have any plans for Wednesday, go to w GBH news.org <laugh>. And if you miss it, that's fine. You can stream it later on at the same address. Nice. Very nice. Thank you Andy. Thank you Jason. Thank you Alex. And thanks to all of you for joining us to do Mac Break Weekly. Tuesdays 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 utc. That's so I tell you that so you can watch it live if you want. The live stream, which goes 24 7 is at twit tv slash live.

(02:20:04):
If you're watching live chat with us live, our open to all IRC chatroom is at IRC TWIT tv. You could use an IRC client, but if best thing to do is go there in a browser, at least you get the settings. Or you can even chat in the browser, IRC twit TV after the fact. The website has every episode of Mac Break Weekly. Going way back to 2005. TWIT TV slash MB w you can also see right there, there's a link to the YouTube channel dedicated to Mac Break Weekly. There's even links to various podcast clients, so you can subscribe. Subscribe is the best thing to do. That way you'll have it available to you the minute we post it in a couple of hours. And so you can listen at your leisure. Thank you everybody for joining us. We'll see you next time. It is now my unhappy duty to say, get back to work. 'cause Break time is over. Bye-Bye.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:59):
Hey, I know you're super busy, so I won't keep you long, but I wanted to tell you about a show here on the Twit Network called Tech News Weekly. You are a busy person and during your week, you may want to learn about all the tech news that's fit to, well say, not print here on twit, it's Tech News Weekly. Me, Mikah Sargent, my co-host Jason Howell. We talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. And we love the opportunity to get to share those stories with you and let the people who wrote them or broke them, share them as well. So I hope you check it out every Thursday right here on TWiT.