MacBreak Weekly 891 Transcript

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy's here, jason's here, alex is here and the new Apple Pencil is here. Is that it for 2023? We'll find out. We'll also talk about the new iPhone. Does it actually cost more to make, and why it's not doing as well in China, and what Tim Cook's doing about it. It's all coming up. Next, on Mac Break Weekly

00:00:40 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWiT.

00:00:50 - Leo Laporte
This is Mac Break Weekly, Episode 891, Recorded Tuesday, October 17th 2023. Room Tone Raters.

This episode of Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by Fastmail.

Reclaim your privacy, boost productivity and make email yours with Fastmail. Try it now free for 30 days at fastmail.com/twit. And by DeleteMe. Reclaim your privacy by removing personal data from online sources. Protect yourself and reduce the risk of fraud, spam, cybersecurity threats and more by going to joindeleteme.com/twit and using the code TWIT for 20% off. And by our friends at ITProTV, now called ACI Learning. Keep your IT team's skills up with the speed of technology. Visit go.acilearning.com/twit. Twit listeners can receive up to 65% off an IT Pro Enterprise solution plan after completing their form. Based on your team's size, you receive a properly quoted discount tailored to your needs. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news, and there's actually Apple news. Say hello to Jason Stel. So look at Jason and look at me. What do we have in common? Look at Jason and look at me so much we're both at mom's house.

Both at mom's house, don't leave everything you see behind you, jason is deceiving us. Yeah, yeah. I did I sent a green screen out here, but then I thought this is kind of nice. This is like mom's stuff.

0:02:17 - Jason Snell
It's a good background I mean mom's house so I'm going with my brand instead. Yeah.

0:02:22 - Leo Laporte
I like your brand. He's also using continuity camera. So, oh no, you're using a camo Camo, yeah, camo today. I don't I forgot what I mean. Oh, insta360 has its own app, so I'm just using that. Nice yeah, also with us, mr Andy Inako, just down the road, a piece of beautiful southern road island.

0:02:40 - Andy Ihnatko
Or or maybe I'm in the east from the White House. That's the great thing about having these screens behind me. I could be anywhere in the world and I don't even have to tell anybody about it.

0:02:49 - Leo Laporte
He's from the Roosevelt library and beautiful downtown Joe.

0:02:52 - Andy Ihnatko
Joe, start, start, start the game without me. I'll be there in a minute, I know.

0:02:57 - Leo Laporte
I know Joe is such a stickler.

0:02:59 - Andy Ihnatko
you know he really likes everybody he's not, he's a nut job, he's, he's a nut boy.

0:03:05 - Leo Laporte
He's a nut boy. But he he's not above.

0:03:09 - Andy Ihnatko
He's not above knocking the controller out of your hands when you're playing couch co-op from Super Mario Brothers. Let me tell you yeah, Come on, Joe, come on.

0:03:18 - Leo Laporte
And then here's somebody who actually could be in the East room of the White House Alex.

0:03:23 - Alex Lindsay
Lindsay, I was going to say I, I think I saw a picture of Andy's kit, so I was, we were, we were, we were there, and and I was. When I saw him behind the scenes, andy was doing a little behind the scenes there and I think it looked a lot like that. There it is, there's, there's, oh MG. See him building into the East room right there, oh MG.

0:03:40 - Leo Laporte
You actually have footage. Wow, sony, I'll office hoursglobal and he's a little under the weather, got a cold, so that's why he sounds like a foghorn leghorn. It's okay, it's okay. It's good to be here. Hey, there's news there's, a new Apple pencil is here. The new Apple pencil is here.

0:03:59 - Jason Snell
Yeah, did you have this on your bingo card with life. Let's see. Maybe new Macs, maybe new iPads.

0:04:04 - Andy Ihnatko
And everybody was so excited about oh we've, we've got inside information about a big, big release this week. We've we're pretty sure it's going to be new iPads. Let's let me give you a speculation about the new, the new changes in the 70 type and mini. Like oh, it's a pencil, and not even a pencil.

0:04:21 - Jason Snell
One news, one news source did have that it was going to be just an Apple pencil, but even then they were like, yeah, it's going to be a third generation Apple pencil with a magnetically changed tip and all that. And it's like folks, this is Apple pencil two minus point five. Oh, no, basically, Is it from Crayola.

0:04:40 - Leo Laporte
What's the deal?

0:04:41 - Jason Snell
So it? It's funny you mentioned that because the Logitech makes a product called the crayon and sold to education and it feels, like Apple, got the feedback that maybe that was a good product and they should make it make it themselves so they did. They made this thing. That is a USB C.

0:04:55 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's an improvement, that's good. Sure, we should make USB C, all the things.

0:05:02 - Jason Snell
It's not a magnetic tip, no, it's, it's. It's basically a decontented Apple pencil too. So they they. It doesn't charge wirelessly. You have to plug in a USB C cable to it.

0:05:14 - Alex Lindsay
So that's one of the nice features.

0:05:14 - Jason Snell
It doesn't work with every USB. I think basically every shipping iPad will work with it, including that 10th generation. They announced with that weird dongle the lightning to USB C dongle, thing that they had to make in order to work with the 10th generation base model iPad.

0:05:32 - Leo Laporte
This is deceptive because they are showing it. This is a picture of this press release, so docks to a screen but it's not charging.

0:05:38 - Jason Snell
It attaches magnetically and in fact there are magnets in that 10th generation iPad, but what they don't do is charge it. You charge it by plugging it in via the USB C cable. But so on one level it's better than what was there before. On another level, I mean, I got a bunch of questions. One is why? Now this is the product that should have shipped with that 10th generation iPad a year ago. So why now? That's sort of strange, and then you know.

Another question to have is you know why a D contented pencil? Because it's actually less functional than the first generation pencil in the sense that it doesn't do any pressure sensitivity it is. That's why I mentioned the Logitech crayon. Logitech made this product called the crayon. You had to plug it in separately to charge it but and it didn't have pressure sensitivity. But it did.

It was cheap and I think it was targeted at education and it sounds like Apple got a lot of feedback. Look, the low end of the iPad market is so much driven by what it, what Apple's education partners want. That's why the ninth generation iPad still exists, because the 10th generation one is too expensive for them and this sounds, this feels, very much like the same kind of thing where they were saying we need cheaper pencil and rather than having Logitech continue to sell that, that crayon they're like, no, no, we can make you a cheaper pencil and it solves the problem of lightning versus USB C. But make no mistake, this is not like next gen pencil. It's less functional than not just the second gen, but even the first gen.

0:07:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's also missing the the side tab for extra functionality. As Jason said, one of the neat if wireless charging was was one of the handiest parts about the real pencil that the the one that didn't do well is charging, at least as much as people made fun of it. You undo the cap and, hey look, it's actually got a male connector, so it actually plugged directly to the charge port. This has a female USB C, so you're going to have to have a cable in order to charge it. Yeah, and it's not even that much less expensive. I think the Logitech crayon was 49 or a little bit less than that. This is 79 bucks and so that's it's. That's.

It's 50 bucks less than I think, but I think we can legitimately call the real pencil, but it's not so much less that it's like oh, thank God the Apple pencil is now reachable to a whole class of people who couldn't afford it before. It's more like and, given that it's not that much better than a stylus, I mean you do like a dumb stylus. I mean you do have tilt sensitivity. So, and there are a lot of apps that will kind of leverage that to try to give you with acceleration, not pressure sensitivity, but at least variations in thickness, more a lively line, but real. All the really, all the fun things that make you want to have a pencil with the with an Apple logo on it are missing from this. So that's, it's odd.

0:08:22 - Alex Lindsay
And I think that. But proportionality, I think, matters to some degree, which is that if you're aiming at the ninth generation iPad, having something $129, the third of the cost of the iPad and so I think that there's a proportionality of lowering that. And I think the problem with the Logitech is for students it looks a little goofy, you know, like it's just, it's just a goofy looking.

0:08:41 - Leo Laporte
It looks like a kids pencil.

0:08:43 - Jason Snell
I think it looks like a Carpenter's pencil or something.

0:08:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, it does it's flat, it has some issues.

0:08:48 - Jason Snell
It's got a power on off feature that you have to do, which I think that this one, if you magnetically draw, it's got some smart power consumption things, so it turns itself off basically, and that's not what happens with the Logitech one. I think you have to turn it off so you can say it really easy to drain the battery. But yeah, this is, I think, the only way to view this. This is one of those weird things where you kind of have to view it in the market in which it's intended, although I would say it almost feels like we're. We're headed into Apple pencil and Apple pencil pro territory here.

Yeah a little bit where, like, the next pencil will be super cutting edge and then they'll also have this one that's like the cheap one. If you don't care because a lot of people don't care about pressure sensitivity, honestly, I use the Apple pencil to edit podcasts. I don't need pressure sensitivity at all. I could, I could probably use this, but you do forego I have an iPad Pro. You forego that really easy pairing and charging stuff if you go this route.

0:09:41 - Andy Ihnatko
But yeah, they do. I mean in the, in the features list, they do put in terms of functional functions, the number one is pixel perfect precision, which is not just a little bit, but that's probably the one thing that is that is a deal breaker for pretty much everybody who wants a device like this the ability to that the dots on the lines go exactly where I expected them to be and that it keeps up with my writing. That's probably the table stakes that this is designed to serve, and then anything beyond that is just gravy.

0:10:09 - Jason Snell
Yeah, because you know a lot of the people who you know. One of the use cases is no taking and things like that, or even my podcast setting or whatever, and packing a bunch of really detailed features for artists in a product that also has this other use case. I can see the argument that maybe in the long run this ends up being updated at some point with that magnetic charging, but basically what they're saying is look, we know a lot of you don't need this, so we're going to make a cheaper version of it too. It's just weird, because now we've got a first gen and a second gen and now here's a new pencil, but it's really not even. It's kind of a step behind the second, if not a step behind the first. So it's just they're broadening their product.

The iPad line is so confusing right now. They haven't keep in mind, they haven't announced any iPads this year at all, and the optimist in me wants to say maybe they're like getting it together for next year, where it'll actually make a little more sense. But some of the things I wrote a piece about this this morning at Six Colors, some things aren't going to change because, like Tim Cook's, apple is a company that will keep old products around to hit price points, and it's clear that that ninth generation iPad, which was supplanted by the 10th generation iPad a year ago, is still around because the school buyers said we're not paying an extra hundred dollars for that other iPad, we want this one that's cheaper. And so here we are, where you end up with some weird products in the product lineup, because that's Apple sometimes is just trying to meet some markets and if you're not in that market, you might say this doesn't make any sense.

0:11:35 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah it's also kind of weird to me that they, if you put these two side by side granted, I'm only going from the product page, but they seem to be they look identical, they seem to be the exact same size, or at least on the on the screen. If they're at this, if they're depicted at the same angle, they are the same pixel height on the web page, side by side.

0:11:56 - Jason Snell
Yeah, Apple pencil to this one.

0:11:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, I would have. I would have been surprised if they that they didn't decide to make this a little bit shorter, A just to make it really distinctive that hey, I'm picking up something that is the hundred twenty nine dollar one, not the lesser eighty dollar one, but also to make it maybe a little bit more totable. It's not that the original Apple pencil is hard to carry around, but it's just long enough to sort of foil your attempt to just throw it into a bag or throw it into like a pencil pouch that's attached to whatever it is that you got. Particularly if you're thinking about this as an accessory for the for the iPad mini, you would think that a smaller version of this would also appeal for that kind of thing. But just again, just to make sure that make these things as distinctive as possible. That's an interesting move as far as I'm concerned.

0:12:44 - Leo Laporte
You know it's funny that the name is the USBC pencil, as if that's the feature I mean to the comment to the casual consumer when you look at that product chart, it just I mean, yeah, it has hover but it doesn't have pressure. It's kind of a weird mix of features and non features. But when you look at that, look at the title, it's the USBC pencil. Yeah, and I feel like consumers are going to go in, and that's the distinction.

0:13:12 - Alex Lindsay
I wonder if it had anything to do with the EU or anything else. I'm just saying here's it. You know, it's an electronic device that has USBC, like it, where there was something there.

0:13:21 - Leo Laporte
Maybe it's the EU, maybe it's the girls that said look, if you're going to sell us stuff, it's all got a charge with the same connector because we got a cart.

0:13:28 - Jason Snell
The reason this is happening is because the they're moving all their products to USBC and that iPad 10th gen moved to USBC and they didn't have a pencil that worked with it. Right, because they didn't have.

0:13:39 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't have magnetic attachment with charging right, so it's really for that iPad 10. And the iPad 10?

0:13:47 - Jason Snell
they said you had to use the first Apple pencil, which was like, wait a second, that's still around with a weird dongle that was a lightning to USBC. So you plug it into lightning and then plug it in and it was all janky and wiggly and stuff and like this product is made for that, but it also does serve the market, of sort of like it works with all these other iPads. So it's like if you want a cheaper one, you can. You can do it, but like what are?

the three driving force, because the first generation pencil couldn't, can't, stick around. It's just got a lightning nub on the back and right.

0:14:16 - Leo Laporte
I feel like they're phasing that one out. But what are the price points?

0:14:20 - Andy Ihnatko
It's. This is the new ones 129. That's excuse me the Apple pencil pro for when I call it. That is 129. The new Apple pencil USBC is 79. The Apple pencil first generation is 99 bucks. Okay.

0:14:32 - Leo Laporte
So sounds cheaper. That's interesting. So it's the cheapest of the three. Hmm, I wonder. I mean, honestly, they've got to be phasing out the original Apple pencil, yeah.

0:14:42 - Jason Snell
The problem is is is the reason it's not gone yet is because they still sell the ninth generation iPad, which has lightning, which means it only works with the first generation. This is this is what I was writing about this morning. Specifically is like this is the price you pay for having the strategy where you hold you make some cheaper products by holding old products around a little too long is you end up when you're in a technology transition, like we are with lightning and USBC. You went up with this lightning iPad that the school still want and you're like oh, and then they want pencils for it. And if you're Apple, you're like, oh God, I don't want to make a pencil for it, although, that said, I think this pencil works with it, but you have to charge it by USBC. But I think they work.

0:15:25 - Alex Lindsay
You can correct me if I'm wrong. I think they work on. I think they work on all of them. I think it's just on all of them.

0:15:29 - Jason Snell
So this does get you out of the original pencil eventually, which is good, because that product is what? 10 years old now, it's like it's been around, it's time to go.

0:15:39 - Leo Laporte
It must be driving the engineers at Apple crazy because aesthetically, it must be making them. You know, you're the thing took a year to make.

0:15:46 - Alex Lindsay
I'm sure there was like a team that worked on this for a year and it's just got. You got to feel like you're kind of on a like okay well right?

0:15:53 - Leo Laporte
Well, no, because I think what happened is, you know whoever the engine I can't take track of Apple VPs anymore but whoever is responsible for this came in and say look guys, you're going to be making the new Apple pencil, it's the going to be the base model. Don't tell anybody that. But we can't get rid of that other one. But this is the new base model Apple pencil and that's what you're going to be making. And we got in the prayer.

0:16:17 - Jason Snell
You got to hit a low price point and I don't know why this didn't happen last year, like what may, because last year they could have come out and said, okay, old pencils gone, new pencils here works with USB-C, still works with the old ninth gen. If you want to, you just have to, you know, get a cable or whatever, like they could they. It would have been so much cleaner. And it's just like a whole year later. So something happened.

0:16:38 - Alex Lindsay
I it could have been feedback at that point where they come out with it and people go, hey, what, the, what, the what? You know we're missing this thing. And they're like, okay, and then it takes a year, Like it's it's. It takes like if they it's not, like when you talk about mass production of products with electronics, anything new from them, getting feedback to them, releasing a product as a year.

0:16:58 - Jason Snell
I, it could be the case. However, I'm going to this is this is going to sound weird, but, like I, give Apple enough credit and the people there to be smart enough that I don't think that's what happened, because I think it was apparently clear the moment that product came out last year. We were all like what? You've got a weird adapter for the original pencil for a brand new iPad. Why are you doing this? And there were this product? Is the answer to like, oh well, no, we're doing this other thing, and yet it didn't exist. I'm now maybe there was a fight and it got deep prioritized and then they heard the feedback from customers and they're like all right, we do have to do it, but I am positive that the people involved in the iPad going into that product announcement last year knew that this was a bad idea and that they needed to do something else. But for whatever reason, my guess is they just couldn't. You know, it was deep prioritized and there was other stuff that was more important, so it just got left behind.

0:17:47 - Alex Lindsay
I'm clear that they saw that it was a problem. I just think that they didn't know how deep the water was until they got feedback. Just wait and see. Right, Okay, Now we're going to have to do something about that and that, but from the time they make that decision to the time it comes out is a year, like you know for a piece of hardware.

0:18:02 - Leo Laporte
Well, anyway, there's a new Apple pencil.

0:18:07 - Alex Lindsay
I think we got as much meat out of that as we were talking for like 20 minutes about a pencil.

0:18:12 - Jason Snell
So people should know about the Logitech crayon, because that is a good product. How much is that it might? Full union six, 59.

0:18:18 - Leo Laporte
So it's even less 40. It's cheap. It's cheap, it's good, it doesn't do as much.

0:18:24 - Jason Snell
It doesn't do as much, but it's. It may serve you well and you might even like your economics a little bit better, because it is a little bit fatter.

0:18:31 - Leo Laporte
And Alex's point, Apple knows what people use these for and what features they use and don't use.

0:18:35 - Jason Snell
And also for I only discovered this this morning because somebody on my master on feed pointed out this new Apple pencil for $79 very similar in all specifications to knockoff Apple Apple pencil, compatible things you can get on eBay and Amazon for like 20 bucks or 30 bucks. It's literally like this is what the knockoff would look like, which is what we can't do pressure sensitivity, but we can stick a USB port on it and like. So those are out there too. I've never even tried one of them, but apparently you know they've been around for a while. The Apple version will run you 79. Yeah.

0:19:10 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm sorry, I was completely wrong. The crayon is $69.

0:19:16 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's interesting because that's the education price.

0:19:19 - Jason Snell
And the crayon works with, I believe, every iPad that supports Apple pencil, every single one.

0:19:24 - Leo Laporte
This would too right.

0:19:26 - Jason Snell
I'm not sure if it does. I'm not sure if it does.

0:19:30 - Andy Ihnatko
Maybe. Maybe the specs say all iPads with USB C, but I don't know if that means just for charging or whether it was oh.

0:19:37 - Leo Laporte
I might work with every iPad you have to pair it.

0:19:39 - Jason Snell
You have to pair it. Yeah, so that's right, you have to pair via the cable, right, Right, which you don't have to do with the crayon. So there's, you know, there's alternatives. I guess is what I'm saying If you're thinking about buying a thing for your iPad.

0:19:54 - Leo Laporte
Jason's piece is at sixcolorscom the price of Apple's old product strategy and I think it's actually a perfect explanation of what's going on, and I think this is the exact right way to respond to what Apple just did. Yeah, and it is a mess, but you got to understand.

0:20:14 - Jason Snell
It's the same reason why the 13 inch MacBook Pro exists. Right, it's like well, we need to. It doesn't make sense except if you're in a very particular market where they know that people want to buy MacBook Pros and don't want to buy a $2,000 MacBook Pro. So you say, all right, we'll call this one a MacBook Pro, even though it's nothing like the real MacBook Pros. And it's the same reason why it's complicated to buy an iPhone because there's a 15 and a 14 and a 13.

0:20:37 - Alex Lindsay
It's still for sale right. Like I still feel like we keep on going back into the Apple 90s. You know the dark, the dark time when we had, when I couldn't figure out, when I, as a person who uses Apple, just could not figure out what to buy. That's what Steve came in with, the one with the TV tuner or the one with the thing, and the LC LC center 29, 23B at Sears.

0:21:02 - Jason Snell
I think, the one I'd say.

For those of us who are, like always buying latest and greatest products, it's absolutely confusing to look at the website and see what they're doing.

Their motivation is to expand the number of people who can buy Apple products by because you know, the longer you make a product, the cheaper it is to make it, so your margins go up and that allows you after a year to lower the price and still make profit. And Apple has used that to expand their audience and their customer base because those products they're able to reach down to lower price points and I think I was thinking about this the other week I don't know if Apple has ever really been successful at making like a cheap product. It feels like they're more successful in making cutting edge product and letting it kind of age down the price list instead. But as a result, I'm sure there is a huge portion of Apple's audience that's here now. That wasn't here five years ago because they weren't going to buy that full price whatever Apple product and instead they were able to save up and buy the you know the one year old product that went down $100 or two.

0:22:08 - Alex Lindsay
I think it makes a huge impact as a parent. I think it makes a huge impact on, you know, kids having. Why so many kids have iPhones is because it was more affordable. If you only stayed with the top of the line iPhones, it would be a different market, but that's why there's 87% of kids you know in under 18 or are using iPhones is because there were affordable versions to use, and so it made a big difference.

0:22:31 - Leo Laporte
Yep Leaves us in the position of guessing. Apple has the information engineering information, consumer information, use information that we don't, and so we're just we have to guess at why they did a product like that. But I think you're reading the tea leaves pretty accurately. Now would you please explain the Mac studio display to me, because yeah, I, I just bought another one, so I could do that. You just explained it, I did.

0:22:56 - Jason Snell
Well, the truth is, apple made this sort of a Bretna decision about what a retina screen was and it's 5k at 27 inches and almost nobody else in the computer industry cares. I mean, basically nobody else cares. And so the studio display exists because it's nice, it does the job and there are very little competition. I reviewed I don't know if we talked about, I reviewed that Samsung competition where they ended up pricing it the same as the studio display. It does have an adjustable stand, which the base model studio display doesn't. It's got some smart TV features. It also puts a big blue box up every time you turn it on or you shut down your computer because it's no signal.

0:23:34 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to show you. I hate that.

0:23:35 - Jason Snell
It's super, it's basically a TV that is doubling, but like it's that and the LGV Ultra fine, like there. There are basically none, and so the studio display exists to give people a nice option for a lot of money that has all the features a Mac user expects. Now, if you want to get a 4k at 27, you can do that. It's just not going to be the same resolution as, like your laptop, because Apple's decided retina is higher resolution than that.

0:24:04 - Leo Laporte
And that makes a difference to you, obviously, or you wouldn't have bought another one.

0:24:08 - Jason Snell
I got so frustrated trying to find alternatives and I finally, finally, I looked at the refurb store one day in a moment of weakness and said we can, we can ship this to you on your birthday for $200 off, or whatever. I was like fine, do it. Fine, happy birthday to me, it's a birthday present, fine, cause I was just tired of looking and I didn't want to invest even you know, even $500 in a 27 inch 4k display where I was going to switch between that and my and my 5k display and be like, oh boy, this one, like I, I'm a little spoiled by it. And I decided that I wasn't going to go down that route. And it's Apple's fault. I blame Apple, that's what I'm saying. It's not my fault.

0:24:42 - Alex Lindsay
And I don't have a problem, it's Apple.

And I have to admit that, for me, I just get lots of 1080p display. I've got, you know, my Mac. My studio runs four of them, and then I've got a bunch of other displays over here. So I just keep on buying cheap 1080p Dell's and I just keep adding, adding those to it. For me, it also has to do with routing. So I have a, I have a eight by eight make it's a 4k router, but I don't, you know, I don't route it. And then I have a switcher that it goes into. So as because of this, it's really what drives me to 1080p is I have a.

The ATEM extreme, you know, is there and everything has to run into it. Because everything has to run into it, it all has to be 1080p, and then that just drove. Well, I just need all 1080p screens. So that, so that it's it's a kind of a backwards solution, but that's what's kept me from buying the Apple. One is that when I get used to lots of monitors, I get used to oh, I'm just going to move that over here, I'm going to put this out of the way and I get. I've gotten used to having lots of monitors. I usually have eight or eight or nine? Yeah, I'm with you.

0:25:38 - Andy Ihnatko
It's very easy for me to like segregate parts of the parts of my workflow to his actual tactile frames that this belongs in. Also, there are times like where, like when the Raspberry Pi five came in, like I can't take, if I had an $800 like larger screen, I couldn't just say I just snapped $220 of this screen off so I can put it next to this and just connect it just to the Raspberry Pi 5. So because there are times where, like just for like a couple of weeks is a project where I need a screen, like in the living room, to attach to this thing right here, right now, and so it's nice when to take one of the three screens off of my desktop and put it someplace else temporarily.

0:26:17 - Alex Lindsay
One and mine are all on arms so so I have all these they're all just attached my desk so I kind of move them around and twist them, and if I'm standing up and working on something I need to see what's going on. I can spin it, and so I'm just kind of used to them all kind of floating around.

0:26:29 - Andy Ihnatko
so I mean, I do need to ask you, though, actually, and Jason too, what is your position on portrait mode displays like I'm taking on the arm and twisting it, so that's portrait mode instead of landscape mode.

0:26:44 - Alex Lindsay
The last time I did that was the late 80s. Now I will tell you that I was with this radius radius it was a different time. Yeah, no, so I. So I, the last time I did it I was using page maker, you know, and we would. Yeah, that's right, and it was, and you'd spin it, you'd spin it up so that so that you work on the whole page who made those was a radius, radius, radius and yeah and so, and then the.

But I know editors who love to put their like, so they'll be like final cut editors and they'll put, they'll have it vertical and they'll put a whole bunch of their, of their dialogue boxes, and you know they're there, yeah.

0:27:22 - Leo Laporte
I use a lot of sweets with. People have a vertical display as well, as you know the Right vertical next to a landscape display.

0:27:28 - Jason Snell
yeah, yeah, so I have. I've tried it on, you know, the Samsung display did it. I tried it with the studio display and it's very, you know, because it's just that that top is so, so high up there that I can't see anything on it. It's ridiculous. However, when I'm writing on my iPad, I have a little stand for that and and I'll write like that, right sideways, a different desk or whatever, and I will rotate and have to be vertical on the iPad because it's not too big and it allows me to have I don't need that extra width, right like a page you want your paragraphs to be, so I can never have 11 page, so instead.

I can see more of my article as I'm writing, and that's great. But like today's big monitors, I don't like them vertical, because you know you're either. It's either you're looking down at your legs or you're looking up at the ceiling in order to see the edge because of those monitors that people still think Mac people are a little quirky and weird.

0:28:18 - Andy Ihnatko
I think I'm convinced To be you know we are the crazy ones.

0:28:22 - Jason Snell
Yes, play lifestyle. Multi display. Lifestyle in general has been a trait of Mac users from the beginning because, remember, windows didn't ever really support it very well for a long long time, terrible for a long time and the Mac always did. And so, yeah, the Mac user, back in the 90s especially, you'd end up with your like, what's a Mac user like?

0:28:40 - Alex Lindsay
and say, well, they're an artist and they probably work in the design department and they definitely have like three 90 degrees from one of the one, and I think for me it's because they all deliver to a switcher and I, you know all of them have to you're I face it, alex, you're not like anyone else. You're the one. You're a toad. There's a, I don't know it. Obviously my problem is that in office hours everybody on the show is like that so, like you know, very strange subset of friends.

That's my am. I try, but we all, but they, you know they, we all have multiple. Like anytime someone chose behind the scenes. I'm not even in the top 50%, actually, you know what.

0:29:21 - Leo Laporte
I like and I got it for my son. He saw it and he said I have to have this. I have a 55 inch OLED. It's not TV, it's a was expensive display. That's for 1080p displays, but there's no bezel, so you can you basically have just windows Instead of displays, all arranged weirdly, and I like she prefer that and it's got that same problem. Though you talked about, jason, which is the top of our way, is kind of it's a lot and I think I go ahead, go ahead, andy no, no, cuz I I don't know why I did this after after a lifetime of having like one, one, two, three displays.

0:29:56 - Andy Ihnatko
But two years ago I switched to one screen on top of the other, so one is down low and almost like desk height, the other one is right on top of it with like just a little gap in between the two, and so for things that so it, for some reason, my workflow changed so that it's like for stuff where I'm just writing, writing, writing, I want my eye level like low so I don't get neck strain, but that case I need to glance up to check on something, but then glance back down again, and it took me a while to realize that.

Oh, that's why, like, my neck is so I'm doing this instead of this. But, like when you have, I did every now, and then I get in like to test out like a super big, like display, and every time I try one of these things, I just keep coming back when it comes time to send it back. It's not like I get tempted to buy one of these things because for some reason that that's that Black, tiny little border of a 1440 display contains my focus and contains, like my, my attention in a way that having this big, wide cornfield in front of me where I can just put a, put a window wherever I want it just doesn't do it, and that's that's why. That's why one of the things I'm curious about with the Apple vision pro is that, like, if I can truly put a display wherever I want it in my field of view, which of those two different philosophies is going to win out?

the idea that lots of lots of tiny little displays in my range of tension or big displays that kind of occupy all my focus at once.

0:31:28 - Leo Laporte
I for this setup here at my mom's. I actually bought this crazy stand, which I could. I will recommend. It's really sturdy and they bring brought my laptop up to I line because I wanted to. I don't want to be looking down and then look it up, so I'm looking straight ahead and then the first thing I said before the show is gosh, I need another monitor, I need, I need several monitors.

0:31:51 - Alex Lindsay
I thought he's my iPad, for, like I want to go to the road.

0:31:53 - Leo Laporte
Well, I have a 14 inch USBC monitor that I could plug in Right. It's a USB monitor. It's not high quality, but it'd be perfect for because, for instance, I'm going to do an ad now and it'd be nice to have the copy there. Instead I have to switch windows around, stuff like that.

0:32:07 - Andy Ihnatko
I have to say that I get more excited about what happens when I add a new like monitor arm to my setup, then then buying a new screen, because this is truly, is truly like what Alex said like when you have these things on arms and you can move them exactly where you want them to go and suddenly the iPad isn't on this little isn't on this little like awkward little like cheap $20 table spin stand you got on Amazon, but it's on its own pivoting arm. So now it can be an extension of something else. It's like I know granted, I'm losing a lot of time and getting the positioning of these things exactly perfectly.

0:32:41 - Leo Laporte
See, that's what I wonder. Right, but is that better than a giant screen like a 55 inch screen? The screen fills my view. Yeah, but the problem is that I could have anything, wherever I want it, it's all the same computer, though.

0:32:52 - Andy Ihnatko
But the problem is that, like on the edges of that screen, I mean if, unless you, unless you're buying a curved screen, it's not facing you, you're basically see no angle. And so it doesn't really register to me, as I always registered to me, as peripheral vision as opposed to something I can really actually. Yeah, I'm looking directly at it.

0:33:12 - Alex Lindsay
Well, for, me it's not the final one computer, so I have a bunch of computers here.

0:33:15 - Leo Laporte
So there yeah, so no for me one cabinet on one computer is what I want, because I don't want to have multiple. You know I want to have and I can move them over the windows around. I guess it's just with different strokes. Yeah, we, we got another huge story just out Hannah Whitington's Christmas special coming up. We'll talk about that for all you Ted Lasso fans. But first a word from our sponsor. She, she, she is, isn't she the Joey Heatherton or Lola Fulana? You're you're conflating, I understand.

0:33:48 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm quoting the SCV version of Joey Heatherton as portrayed by the immaculate.

0:33:54 - Leo Laporte
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0:38:56 - Jason Snell
I don't usual Redditors saying hey, you know what?

0:38:58 - Leo Laporte
else.

0:39:00 - Jason Snell
I don't know I got a big shrug on this one. I don't know what's going on with this.

0:39:04 - Leo Laporte
I haven't seen anything, I just attempted a gate.

0:39:06 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's a gate.

0:39:09 - Andy Ihnatko
Actually, apple insider did report on this couple weeks ago. Basically, it's kind on one level. It's, as it's, typical of what happens the first few weeks after the brand new iPhone. That it's not that, it's not that there are people complaining, it's this that every person who experiences a problem that gets a lot of attention almost immediately and people start to get on guard because once you have once you have 10 people saying that hey, I've experienced a screen burning issue, then it starts to look like a calamity, even though at this point it's just 10 people on Reddit and Twitter and whatever. Apple insider actually looked into it and said that they did from.

From their own metrics, they haven't seen a larger incidence of this as far of the usual metrics that they monitor online than they have with the iPhone 14. However, apparently I just saw today that Apple report that 17.1 has some sort of a fix for screen screen burn issues. As usual, it's oftentimes it's not because when you see problems like this, it's not because there's a hardware problem, but because everything about the hardware primarily the battery in the screen they're tuned for certain reasons and sometimes Apple will adjust that tuning when it turns out that okay, we got. We're used to getting like 50 complaints about this. We got 80 complaints about this, so therefore, we're going to actually tune this, to tune this a little bit differently. So it doesn't seem to be an epidemic, but it's something that Apple at least said hey, here's something that we can fix in order to this, so the people who are having these problems will not see these problems.

0:40:40 - Leo Laporte
Well then, there's also Thumbs Up Gate, thanks to Matt Howey of XOXO, who I love. Matt's a great guy, he says. A friend of his was in an online therapy session. His therapist asked him how's the trauma going and his friend went to Thumbs Up and fireworks went off because he was using continuity camera.

0:40:59 - Alex Lindsay
It seems to be happening to a lot of people. It's not just continuity camera, it is if you're using a in the new OS, if you're using the web camera yeah, any web camera it's all video, all videos, all like a can you do it iPhone? This is every webcam. Anything's going through the pipeline is is now available to Apple to put those effects in, and if you don't turn them off, we're seeing it in meetings all the time, trying going hey and they're doing whatever. Oh there goes.

Andy, quick get Andy. So that stuff is happening and it's, it's been a little bit, you know, usually you know that's the trauma, andy oh now he's all frozen, yeah that's frozen my video hey nice, thank you. Yeah, I mean, you know, oftentimes Apple, I don't think.

0:41:43 - Leo Laporte
Camo's studio like that one tiny bit, oh dear what? And Jason, your confetti is coming from inside the house, from inside the house.

0:41:53 - Jason Snell
It's a per app setting and you can turn it off, but it's on by default, and I understand why. Because Apple does that thing where they're like, look, if we don't make it on by default, nobody will ever discover it, and I get that. But this is the case, and it's not just been how we like like Harley told me this week that he was actually having a a session with his therapist and suddenly balloons appeared everywhere and it's like no.

0:42:17 - Leo Laporte
This is why I go in person to myself. I don't want no balloons.

0:42:23 - Andy Ihnatko
If I want balloons, I'll bring, I'll bring them, you know. You know, you know something. I mean, dad's been diagnosed with cancer and doesn't look good, but you know what? I feel that we're gonna come together as a family so where do I turn that on?

0:42:39 - Leo Laporte
or, in this case, off.

0:42:40 - Alex Lindsay
So if you're using Sonoma when you're, when you have a video camera running, there's a green box in the menu bar yes, it's a picture of the camera and if you click on that you'll get reactions, and one of them is reactions and you can turn it off.

0:42:54 - Jason Snell
Also, if you'd like to trigger a reaction without actually making the gesture, you can turn it on and then click the little disclosure triangle and you can oh thank you, jason, to make them go there. So you go there. I love that tip or zoom in and out and pan around on some cameras or technical directors fall asleep.

0:43:14 - Leo Laporte
There we go. What huh, leo's doing hearts, oh quick.

0:43:19 - Jason Snell
Yep, that's cool and I can yep, yeah, so all that's in there, but these are all normally hand gestures. Yes, yes, yeah, it's like thumbs ups or, uh, thumbs downs, or are you ready to rock and?

0:43:32 - Leo Laporte
roll. This is fun, you got it.

0:43:36 - Jason Snell
I should stop clicking all of these, but I'm not but you can turn them off, but I I think it's an interesting question, right, like if you're at Apple, like you don't want to not show people the new feature.

But this is the downside is that, there it's going to be an inappropriate context and people are not going to necessarily know. You also don't want to do something like you could detect when they do a gesture and not do it, but then pop up a thing saying, hey, did you know there are new gestures would you like that?

I think that's the first time you activate that, they do a thing that says, look, there are new effects. But most people just click through that, and the last thing you want to if you interrupt somebody in the middle of a video conference in order to say, oh hey, we've got this thing, they're just going to click through it because they they don't want to be interrupted, so there's no good. I mean, this is the challenge of writing computer things right is like people don't don't use anything but the defaults, but sometimes the new defaults confuse them and they don't know how to turn it off and like when is the right time because people are busy and they're doing other stuff. It's a hard problem. So I know, I think these are fun features, but I also totally get that they seem inappropriate in certain circumstances and it might be the best I could come up with is maybe that Apple should have a more powerful API to let individual apps or websites that are using these features have some like more visible, like can we turn this off please?

0:44:55 - Leo Laporte
um kind of stuff. I think we've got the solution. Matunos, responding to Matt Howie, said if you flip off the camera, it should turn it off oh there you go, yeah there won't be anything, so just turn it off and yeah, why I gotta?

0:45:08 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, I, I haven't seen anybody um happily surprised. You know when, when, now, once people know that it's there, they have fun, then they do it. Yeah, but I will say that the first time it happens. Almost every time it's been in a meeting and people are like what, the what you know, like and it's embarrassing and they're a little like they don't. And and what's interesting is that, to Jason's point, they probably clicked through something, but most of the time they don't know why it did it like. They don't understand, like I didn't turn anything on, I didn't do anything, and now it's doing this, this crazy thing, and they don't know how to turn it off. They don't know where it came from. They don't know where it came from. Is the key that? I think that's really the key. Yeah, yeah, they don't even know like. They're like I don't know why that happened. And there was a I had a client that was like is this zoom, zoom, is zoom keeps doing it. Who's doing it? Not zoom?

0:45:52 - Andy Ihnatko
right like you know and also it's the kind of feature where if it's screwing up for you, it's screwing up in real time in public. It's not like. It's not like the times where, hey, how come, like I typed, how come I typed something and now there's a squiggly line that wasn't there before. Huh, I think I'll go investigate this. It's I'm having a, I'm having a student teacher conference and I don't know why, like I, there's a kitty, there's kitty cat whiskers on my face while I'm talking something, talking something very, very stern and important about my child's development. It's like how the hell do I get this off?

I still remember, like I was testing out, I was testing out something where some, some, some sort of video thing, and so I tested out like two nights, one night, and okay, well, okay, it's not really that great, but okay, I turned it off, I like quit the app and then it reactivated itself while I was in a conference with somebody and it's like I was so freaking furious with that app because, like it, just simply it started imposing itself on, like it wasn't like anything really super embarrassing, but it's like, okay, there is now a watermark and a whole bunch of text on the screen that I didn't ask to be there and it doesn't, and there isn't like a button that says hi, turn all of this off right now, immediately, and I had to basically dump out of the meeting. And then I put something on Twitter at the time that was wow, this, this app, is a total piece of crap, at least what I actually did for me. I granted I could have cooled off before. I said this app was a total piece of crap, but I I only use the total piece of crap designation when a piece of software service totally just steps on a rake and I'm the person who gets hit in the nose what did you?

0:47:28 - Leo Laporte
what did you? Was your, did you have like a little eye, kind of a boy peeing on a logo or something?

0:47:33 - Andy Ihnatko
no, it was just like it was. It was something similar. It wasn't camo studio, but something similar to camo studio, is that yeah?

there is like three or four, three or four years ago, where it was like you know, put a, put a lower, create a little with third, put a graphic there. That's not, that's not like I said, huh, and you not go. Uh, mass murderer, every, everyone who kills, like it was. Just like I don't. It's embarrassing, I don't want that there. I didn't ask you to put it there and suddenly it's there and I can't remove it.

0:48:00 - Jason Snell
I'm I'm glad that you've watermarked this with your, your, your software logo, so that I can say this piece of software is a complete piece of crap yeah it's, um, this is a case too where Apple is I mean, I don't want to say outclevered itself, because I don't think it has, but it what it's done is it's hijacking the video and not. The apps aren't involved and and you get a bunch of clever things out of that, right, you get compatibility with everything you get. The system, at a very base level, is doing object, you know, image detection, subject detection, background detection. They can use that for all of these cool effects, for the portrait lighting, for the blurring the background, uh, and then they've segmented the image so they can do the presentation stuff and they can do those animations that have multiple layers super clever, right. But it takes the app out of it.

The apps don't really have any involvement, which is why I think maybe there should be an api of some kinds of the apps can mirror those settings and it's a break in sort of on the Mac, it's a real break in kind of tradition where, right, even if you're a somewhat savvy user, you look, you're looking in zoom preferences and going what is happening it seems much more like zoom would be doing, but that's apple, last year, I think, decided they're going to roll a bunch of features that are global video and audio features and they're going to put them in control center and now also in the menu bar when they're active and like it's a choice and I get why it's there, but it's not a place where a lot of people have been trained to look and that makes the confusion even worse, because then those app developers hear it right like zoom is, like what are you doing? And they're like it's not us, it's apple. Here's where you go and like I get it it's frustrating.

0:49:33 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I think photoshop does a pretty good job with this. Like every time there's a new feature, either in photoshop or even in the mobile editing apps, it doesn't. It doesn't do things on its own, but it within. When there's a context for me to use a new feature, it puts a little like pointer or balloon, say oh, by the way, there are new selection tools with a new update and you can activate them by hitting here. And I know that if I just don't tap by tap anywhere else, it'll go away very quickly. It'll never come back again.

0:50:01 - Jason Snell
Apple has introduced in sonoma, in fact the thing and in ios, the latest ios tip kit, which allows developers and apple itself to do kind of contextual reminders. It's very clever, but I would say this is the challenge, because I was trying to think through is like when do you tell people that there are new video effects? What's the right moment? Probably not while they're on a call, so not. So then when do you? Do you not do it? And then, after they're off the call, then bring up a dialogue that says hey, did you know we have these new things? Like you could do that it's hard, right. And and if the answer is, well, no, just don't do it, just never show it and have it off by default, well, I don't know, nobody's going to use that feature, then even if they would like it, because they don't know it's there, it's a, it's a hard problem, but in this case apple seems to have kind of failed at it yeah, I.

0:50:51 - Alex Lindsay
I don't know how often I would want to use those just once it's like me moji like you, use it a lot at first and then it's you're done. I use the mode all the time, I admit, but but the um well, you're the only one. I don't think so. That's again. I think that there's a lot of kids, that there's lots of people who will love this feature.

Tick, talk about it tick talkification, yeah, yeah, but I but I think that I think that, like so for the mobile devices, having it on by default, I think, makes sense. I think for the desktop it is a little bit of a how many people on the desktop are jumping into meetings where they want to show fireworks, whereas I, so I felt like the right step app or apple could have made is the. The mac os version tells you about it and lets you opt in, and the iOS versions just go ahead and turn it on because it's a. It's a much. I think that the type of person that's going to want to use this a lot is probably going to do it from their mobile device more often than from their desktop device, and they don't even have a desktop yeah, you know who learned this lesson is Microsoft with Bob right.

0:51:55 - Leo Laporte
It was so intrusive and so annoying and so cutesy they actually had to take it out and it's still to this day. You know, it's to their chagrin, frankly yeah, that's that.

0:52:07 - Andy Ihnatko
It is such an interesting user interface problem, like companies are trying to roll out really good chatbots and assistant assistant AI in office type apps are trying to figure out. Do I put a sidebar in next to the work area that says, by the way, this is where the assistant lives. From time to time it might make suggestions that, hey, here are things I can do for you right now. Ignore me if you want to ignore me, or even close down this panel if you want, but by default it's going to be there and which has got and which has got to be a better idea than, like clippy coming up and basically taking your attention away from you.

That was one of the big problems with it, because, terrible again, and I mean then we know a lot more about ADHD than we did, like back in the 90s, but like the back then, that would have been almost a war crime to say, hi, I really need to focus on getting through these 90 emails like, well, hi, look at me, I'm the cartoon eyeball guy. Here's 18 other things you could do instead of every reply to this email that your boss says he needs an answer to in the next six minutes, like thank you, clippy. Clippy, can you help me find a cardboard box to put everything in my desk in, as HR has just said that I need?

0:53:15 - Leo Laporte
to do. And then, of course, as Paul threw up points out, if you turned it off, it had a sad little dog. Yeah, walked off and looked over his shoulder at you and reproachfully, as if, you know how many meetings it took to decide that too.

0:53:28 - Alex Lindsay
Like what is it going to do? There was like months of meetings and there was animation tests and there was it's a really hard problem their product managers refer to that.

0:53:37 - Andy Ihnatko
That was my baby. I had the vision for it. You know they didn't. Well, they didn't want to give them like lifelike eyeballs that follow the cursor, but I'm the one to put my foot down and say, well, if we're not doing the magic eyeballs, why are we even in this business?

0:53:49 - Leo Laporte
let's not forget that the woman who created Microsoft Bob was the product manager for it ended up marrying Bill Gates, so she she got her. I almost said reward, but now I'm thinking, maybe she got it.

0:54:03 - Alex Lindsay
I think that the thing that that I think it stands out for Apple, because, in general, when thinking about this, are we going to push a product forward or we're going to have it be something that the user chooses Apple usually picks the user like, like you know, like we're going, you know, I think that it feels like it stands out a little bit, you know a little step forward, because you know, I know, a lot of times when we think about interfaces, when I'm building interfaces, we think about, like when do we show the user something? And usually it's yeah, when they after they've already gotten what they needed, and then after that I'm gonna show you something that you could get. That's a little bit more, but I don't I don't force it on you ahead of time. I it's hard.

0:54:39 - Leo Laporte
Hey, this is there's. You know, there's no good time, I think. And and I am sure Apple, you know who reads that. Hey, you just got I a Mac OS Sonoma. You want to hear? Look at all the new features. Who reads that? Nobody, but I bet it was in there.

0:54:52 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I think the first time you do a video connection in Sonoma, yeah, but thing that says, here are a bunch of things you can do. You can do. And it's not just these reactions, right, it's also the blurred background and the port they did you in the foreground, Everything right.

0:55:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, let me try studio light. Well, I mean, yeah.

0:55:10 - Jason Snell
I think the catch is yeah, maybe what, alex, is it like when you first initiated? You're probably about to go on a video conference, so you don't want it, it's in your way, it's a barrier to your destination. So what I thought almost want to do is have it be after the video conference right.

Like after your video conference is over, put up a thing that said hey, apple, here, hi we have, we have some new features you might be interested in now that your video is done, for the next video, to make yourself look better. You know you look fine, by the way, you look fine, but we could help you even make it look better. Join us in the, in the green box, where we're gonna tell you about all these new features. Right, they could do it then, and that would probably be the best, but it's hard. Right, because you know turning it on means people will actually try it and they can turn it off If they don't like it. But if you, if you don't turn it on, I firmly believe they know.

0:55:58 - Alex Lindsay
People just will never find it. I think it needs to start out with you.

0:56:07 - Leo Laporte
So let me turn on studio light. Give me a full screen, if you would. There we go this. To me this looks better, but maybe that's cuz I'm looking a little thumbnail. Do you like that? Better than not?

0:56:17 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I mean it's really nice. I think it looks good. Well, if I do.

0:56:23 - Leo Laporte
The portrait unfortunately looks like I'm on a green screen now.

0:56:26 - Alex Lindsay
I think that has a very I will say that Apple does that better than almost everybody else. Yeah, so you know what? Look how good this is. It's a much, I mean. And the reason is is it's, it's not it's. The edges are probably a little better, but what really makes the difference is that it doesn't blur it as much. So it's. I wish that that what Apple should do. There is somewhere. Have a thing where you can turn the slight opening, yeah, the focal length.

0:56:49 - Jason Snell
Oh, they do, Do that right. And if you're yeah, you can adjust it. Those settings are all adjustable. Now which they?

0:56:55 - Leo Laporte
actually great, you know. Okay, I want to play with this for a while.

0:57:00 - Jason Snell
The panel that you're here is so good, they did such a good job with it and I think maybe they're with your reactions. They got run it.

0:57:05 - Alex Lindsay
They it's pretty silly.

0:57:06 - Jason Snell
They're like oh but it's, and then if you haven't done the presentation stuff, the screen sharing stuff Is is bananas, where you can be in a little circle While you're presenting video or a window to somebody and it's like, and your head pops out of the circle because, like, just like, why? Why did you do that? The answer is because we have segmented video now at the system level and we know that's where we were in the foreground and we know what your background is and we can do all these things with it and no app has to do anything. That's the funny thing, right, it's like the apps don't need to do anything to get these features.

But, like I said before, it might be nice if you get, if you let them integrate your features into their interface. Because, like, first thing, if you got something weird going on in zoom, first thing you're gonna look is in the toolbar. Then you're gonna look in preferences in zoom. Right, you're probably not gonna look in the menu bar. Wouldn't it be nice if zoom could have a reactions button? That was literally just toggling apples reactions button, but in a place where the users could see it, I think?

that might be something they could do here's a little field research.

0:58:05 - Leo Laporte
So I noticed there was this vocal. This mic mode has standard and then voice isolation. Then that's an apple feature is in synoments right under all those other features. I turn it on and then zoom Popped up a thing saying hey, you know that voice isolation isn't as good with the original sound setting you're using, so zoom knows when those go on. Yes, and clearly to avoid calls to their tech support.

0:58:29 - Jason Snell
Well, yeah, you don't want to have like a double, a double isolation or you said, you turn on natural sound and then and then in the system Setting, you turn it off again.

0:58:40 - Leo Laporte
Have a thing that says oh you know, I noticed you've got reactions going and maybe you shouldn't do. We are gonna get rain later in here. Oh my god, it's here, it's already does look like it does look like it's fixing. It's a fix in the rain. I'm gonna leave. Alex, now you tell me if I'm making a mistake, but I'm gonna leave this studio lighting.

0:59:02 - Alex Lindsay
You know the hard part of the studio light I think is fine.

0:59:05 - Leo Laporte
I think that the, not the portrait. Okay, just the problem is the edges.

0:59:08 - Alex Lindsay
So yeah, you know. That's normal and the edges.

0:59:14 - Jason Snell
In your background and brightening your your foreground.

0:59:16 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, okay, so it's, I got. I got my portrait on now. Yeah, he is ugly. I don't like that, see, but in part and part of the problem is that, like they still haven't figured out how to deal with, like, headphone gaps. Yeah, not that I'm complaining, it's it's.

0:59:30 - Leo Laporte
It's a modern miracle, but it's like Wednesday on this week in Google, glenn Fleishman had one of those microphone pop filters that has a little arm, and the arm disappeared and it looked like he had a floating pop filter. We almost contacted him.

0:59:47 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, occlusion is always a really complicated, you know, problem and I think that eventually we're gonna see Lidar added to the. Oh, I think you're gonna see Lidar added to your laptop, you know, and so that you know, until all the Apple products, I think that they're they probably commoditized, that cost enough that they could probably, within the next year, to add Lidar to the, to that process, because it'll it's a much more accurate, you know, sampling at that also, the ML models are getting so much better than that.

1:00:13 - Jason Snell
I mean, remember how bad portrait mode was originally in terms of those all those you know you, you put your your hands on your hips and and there's, it's a portal. Yeah which everything is clear even though on the outside it's blurry, and Just the ML models have gotten so much better now.

1:00:28 - Alex Lindsay
It's hard, you know, on a day-to-day basis. I mean, it's one thing when you do it when you're traveling or something like that. I think that people get who get used to doing it on ongoingly. What we have found is that a lot of what people attribute Zoom fatigue is very closely connected to the quality of the audio and things like virtual backgrounds, because there's something about so. When you see someone's edge moving and they see a inclusion coming in and out, your brain is actively noticing that and then actively ignoring it and it's creating load, you know. So there's a lot of cognitive load that's being added to that process, and the same thing when you're trying to listen to people like I. I find, especially right now, with all the news that's going on right now and they're interviewing all these people at their house I'm like you know you are a pundit. It is embarrassing, like it is just like what is wrong with you.

1:01:16 - Leo Laporte
We have come so far. I used to do CNN hits. They said, well, you gotta come down to San Francisco Right satellite bureau so that we can mic you and stuff. And you had the earpiece and you had you know so bad. And now they've got just people in their living rooms. There's people in their kitchens.

1:01:31 - Alex Lindsay
You see stuff going on for the broadcasters who don't do something about like actually, at least I think if you're a regular?

1:01:38 - Leo Laporte
You should, but that's up to CNN. Yeah, but send them the bed, the box that you send your.

1:01:43 - Alex Lindsay
It's just not telling them Like we have had. I can't tell you how many people we've brought on to our show, you know, on to onto Michael Krasny show or or other shows that we've done, where we're working with them. We've worked with probably five or six thousand people at this point, people who, and the first thing they'll tell us is, I do this all the time, you know, like I know how this works, and you're like, oh yeah, this is gonna be that hill.

1:02:07 - Jason Snell
All the time. And your buds are fine. They work great. Everybody loves them.

1:02:10 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and so, and the thing is is that is that then and, and then they, and what? What helps is that we come in with these mics and they sound and we go let's play this back for you so you can hear me and you, and then they go, you know, and and work has to do sound checks for everybody on our shows, right, and we always get people say, no, I've got, I've been doing, I'm not, I can't do that, I'm too busy and I.

1:02:31 - Leo Laporte
But don't worry, I've got all seven and then, variably, the ones we spend half an hour on twit oh, they're ticking around with their sound because it's terrible right.

1:02:38 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and and the and. The thing is is that the broadcasters don't tell them they, because they don't, they have them there for a minute, they don't want them to think about it, they don't want to deal with it and so, like PBS does, tells you, believe me, because there's like we've probably had at least 50 people who are on broadcast all the time over the last five years who literally told us no one told me, no one told me I didn't sound good and if you play it for them, they and they get it.

1:03:06 - Leo Laporte
It's really valuable actually, because then they I mean nobody wants to sound bad yeah, yeah, they just don't. You don't, you can't tell when you're sitting here doing it.

1:03:15 - Alex Lindsay
And it's. You know it's a pain to sit like we send out mics. I've got like four or five mics that float around the world, you know, like for for Michael Krasny show, that are just where they're coming. Oh, that's interesting they're getting because that's audio only that show it it no, we do a video live stream for subscribers and then the, and then the Non-subscribers just hear the podcast.

1:03:38 - Andy Ihnatko
I think you, I think you have to get people like familiar with the idea that it's okay If the microphone is in the shot, because if the microphone is in the shot, you've got totally tell them that nine tenths of your problems are solved.

1:03:51 - Leo Laporte
The beginning of this show, alex said your microphone. Where is it? You sound terrible. Where is your microphone? I said I have some cookbooks.

1:03:59 - Andy Ihnatko
It's here, well, and I tell you lights they need to be right near your face. That's if there's one, one sentence you can give people, that will fix a lot of the problems.

1:04:08 - Alex Lindsay
It's yeah, and and I put my mic in front of me so that you took yeah, yeah, the idea is sell the idea that everybody can just have a mic in front of, I have to say lately, when I'm watching the news channels, there is a look and you always know a guy's a podcaster because he's got big headphones on, he's got a big microphone in his face, and is it.

1:04:28 - Leo Laporte
And now joining us from the podcast. Who believes in witches? And you always, you always know, because there's a look, right, and I honestly no, I think we should take credit for that. I think we created that. Look, I think that's part of it.

1:04:45 - Andy Ihnatko
No, it's being normalized. You know that. That, oh god, I can't, I can't, oh god, I can't remember, isn't it? Oh, stephen Colbert, he's got. He tested positive for COVID. He's not sick, he just tested positive so he had to do the show from his house and even then, like he's, he has no problem. See, I'm going to be wearing over he was over the ear headphones. Yeah, he had a nice microphone. Yeah, it's. People understand that this is it's. It's weird that, because now everybody knows somebody who's a broadcaster. Now it's basically like, or having a family member. No, it's not truly. Because now, the idea that that, what used to be this miraculous thing when, my god, your audio is so good, how did you do it? Never, ever knows.

1:05:23 - Alex Lindsay
Oh, you must have went to Home Depot and you Last, last October, because they had him on sale and everybody has a nice microphone, or, excuse me, more people than you would, if you would think, have a nice microphone and ring light now and the funny thing is is that and I do really think the undermining of people's Belief in the press and in their leadership yes, country leadership is very connected to the quality of the of what they do on air and when they bring these pundits in over, you know, and they're they're sounding horrible. I mean, there was like a day or two ago we were passing it around. We passed videos around of like this is amazing, like that the worst. And there was a like a former I can't think which one it was, but it was like the former defense you, this fence defense secretary, talking about something and Lighting was done perfectly and it was a big echoey room and he was obviously using the built-in mic and you were like what are you doing?

Yeah, like you know, and I think that people don't, they don't know. Here's the worst part, the thing that's scary, the scariest part of this is that people make decisions in their subconscious and their lower brain About you and they don't. They're not even conscious. Oh yeah, they don't know why. They just know that they don't really believe you anymore and I think, I think that anybody you know what happened on that one, the the his aid, came up, said mr Secretary, here's your headset for the.

1:06:39 - Leo Laporte
and he says I'm not gonna wear that oh.

1:06:42 - Alex Lindsay
No no.

1:06:42 - Leo Laporte
I think, I think yeah.

1:06:44 - Alex Lindsay
I think that they just he. Hasn't he someone in in his group because they know they obviously spent time on his lighting in his camera? Yeah, so he had a web camera, but he obviously spent time on it. They just didn't. It was just not an audio person. And I'm like the thing that we worry about on ours is Do you have wired internet, like that's the number one, like yeah, you know, because Because the amount of the amount of filtering I have to, the amount of fixes we have to do.

If you start taking Wi-Fi hits you know as a big deal and they're like, well, I got a one gig connection. I'm like it doesn't matter. No, you know, it's how many devices are moving in and out of your space. That's all, just say.

1:07:16 - Leo Laporte
I always use the secret magic which word jitter, say well, yes, but your jitter is terrible. And then they don't know any better because they go well, I don't know what my jitter. Oh my god, what am I gonna do?

1:07:26 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and then and then I'm like and then it's the mic, you know, and it's like those are the two, the, and then after that we worry about lighting, because lighting will make every camera better. Right, then camera and then background. You know, like we just kind of discuss back down there. That's the priority, that's how we work through the priorities, but so many people will, at best you'll get them to pay attention to the camera. And then, and they don't realize that, what we're listening to and what you know, especially at talking head, is your voice.

1:07:52 - Leo Laporte
There's a bit of a backlash against room Raider on X, formerly known as Twitter, because he's just rating the backgrounds. So a lot of people are getting five off out of 500, room Raider, when they really should be getting much lower scores. You need to do that, alex. You should be.

1:08:09 - Alex Lindsay
I'm, I'm, I'm, so I when I first started in pick the pixel core. You'll see some of these, the teardowns. I love this, love this. I know I gotta get back.

1:08:17 - Leo Laporte
I've got it all set up and I just anyway, but the you should you have me a nickname like nasty Alex the mr Blackwell. Yeah, that's it Simon called call 30 frames per second is so.

1:08:32 - Andy Ihnatko
So 2009, people love that you could be the who's the chef.

1:08:38 - Leo Laporte
Well, gordon Ramsay of Video, you should go and get a job in garbage collection.

1:08:49 - Alex Lindsay
This black and white? For some reason, why this black and white of someone throwing a television like Haven't found it yet? I just I think I might go shoot it myself.

1:08:59 - Jason Snell
We've got room tone right out there Room tone Raiders.

1:09:01 - Leo Laporte
That's it.

1:09:02 - Andy Ihnatko
I love it opening, opening titles of that CTV just grab it, just steal it. High-rise apartment building with everybody in the building throwing.

1:09:15 - Alex Lindsay
I respect a second city but I do think that you know, like it, I started with broadcasts. I didn't want the online people to feel like I was picking on them, and then I stopped doing it cuz I'm ran out anyway, but but I but but I'm Definitely thinking about turning that thing back on, mostly just to you know. Shame and ridicule.

1:09:34 - Jason Snell
Somebody at a network who says who's in charge of, like, upping the game of the people they have as their contributors, who's sending them equipment? I am sure there was like during COVID lockdown, but they're asleep on the job now as well.

1:09:47 - Leo Laporte
Alex, I remember the day you showed us the Oprah kit that they would send out to get people on Skype and it was a big trunk of equipment and gear. Oh yeah, show John Ashley, show the the discord, patrick Della Hennie's post to that wonderful mythic quest. The best episode of mythic quest was the last, the COVID season, where they were all. They did a whole show from Skype and and the great f Murray Abraham played a kind of a drunk Game designer who I don't think he can. You show that, john Ashley. I don't think he really got the the Skype thing. You can't, you don't have that up.

1:10:26 - Alex Lindsay
But anyway, it's just it it's. I know we were a little up, but but the the it it is a man in post, we'll fix it. Post, it's it. It's amazing how off the broadcasters and and again, the online creators, the us, you know, doing all of our individual podcasts and everybody else, we've all figured it out and so, and, and the broadcasters are the ones that are kind of left behind, you know, and yeah, that's hilarious has a meeting started?

1:10:58 - Leo Laporte
has a meeting started? All right, let's take a little break. I'm sure the Hannah Waddington holiday special will appear in the next segment. Ham, whatting ham, whatting hum, whatting ham? I don't know, I don't watch the wedding.

1:11:18 - Andy Ihnatko
Wanting them, wanting them. She says wanting ham and stuff, wanting wanting them, wanting them?

1:11:23 - Leo Laporte
How does she say it?

1:11:25 - Jason Snell
I think, wanting them, probably wanting him, wanting him holiday special only from about six feet in the air.

1:11:31 - Andy Ihnatko
That's I.

1:11:34 - Leo Laporte
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1:17:43 - Jason Snell
Never mind. I'll let me get her. She's the team owner, right.

1:17:48 - Leo Laporte
She's. Yeah, I like her because you know why I like her? Because she's attractive, she's sexy and she's an older woman and it makes us old folks feel better.

1:17:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Like right. Also, her character was exactly the sort of thing if you want to become a star and have all people really like you a lot. She was a very, very likable character. And then she was the host of the Eurovision this year. Oh, she was great on that and she really took off Like everyone was like oh my god she's wonderful.

1:18:19 - Alex Lindsay
Why don't we not see more of her? And she's French. Yes, I watched, I watched, I watched Ted. I finally got pulled into Ted Lasso because I had to see what she was really like in that show. Yes, she's great in the show Because of Eurovision, I mean, she's so, she's so talented. Oh, that's interesting and so funny and just so amazing, like amazing.

1:18:36 - Leo Laporte
When she eats those shortbread cookies she really makes them look good.

1:18:41 - Jason Snell
But my cookies are, and they're apparently very bad. Actually, though, oh really, the cookies that are on the set. She said they taste like salt and they're terrible.

1:18:49 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's a different food. Yeah, so she's an even better actor than I thought. Mm-hmm, yeah, she makes them look so good. Anyway, hannah, waddingham or Ham, but not Tun, not Tun, not Tun Everything, but Tun, hannah and Waddingham Home for Christmas. It was, it was recorded live. I guess it was. It's not going to be live, but it was recorded live in front of an audience at the London Coliseum November 22nd on Apple TV Plus. There'll be a big band, there'll be special guests. It's a pretty show.

1:19:27 - Jason Snell
I kind of, I kind of I guess it's the.

1:19:29 - Andy Ihnatko
it's the, it's the official picture they released. That got me excited about Woo. She looks good in that. Yeah, because Woo, Well, not, no, not just, not just that, but like again, this is Jen, this is Generation X talking. But we're, we're old enough to remember, like the, the TV, like celebrity packed, like Christmas specials from the old days where it wasn't like the people weren't these days they're too cool to like. Oh, we're going to have a set in which, like we're, I'm just inviting you here to my, to my Christmas ranch, and Kenny Loggins is going to be here to sing. This is no, I'm going to be here in a big glitzy dress with a big, like Christmas-y backdrop orchestra and we're just going to have a whole bunch of guests come on, banter and then sing the hell out of a song and then maybe, maybe, maybe you know there'll be there'll be a little skit of your two. I don't know. I just there's nothing that could happen that I want to destroy it.

I think that she's capable of being the emcee of such a show for me right now.

1:20:22 - Leo Laporte
I think the picture looks fabulous. The thing that worries me it's being produced by the same people who did Mariah Carey's magical Christmas special, which was a complete car wreck. I don't know if you watched it, Don't worry, it'll be back this year.

1:20:34 - Andy Ihnatko
It's a redemption arc. It's perfect reality.

1:20:36 - Leo Laporte
TV. Anyway, she's also. Ms Waddingham is also being going to be in the big screen flick the Fall Guy. I guess the movie version of the Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Wait, a minute, what was it? What was the Fall Guy? He was a stuntman, right? Yeah he was a stuntman. He was a stuntman. Was it Lee.

1:20:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Majors, I'm a kiss and tell, but I've been seen with Farah.

1:21:03 - Jason Snell
Yeah, lee Majors is a Lee Majors guy. He's got a lot of energy going hard here now.

1:21:06 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, because I'm the unknown stuntman who makes eastwood look so fine.

1:21:11 - Leo Laporte
I don't remember that theme song, but I'm thinking that's real, that's what I remember.

1:21:16 - Jason Snell
Oh yeah, I'm the unknown stuntman. Oh yeah, real stuff, that's real. That was Lee Majors, after the $6 million man. And yes, there is a line about how he was seen with Farah, which is funny because he was married to Farah.

1:21:28 - Leo Laporte
He was married to her. Wow, a little in-joke.

1:21:32 - Jason Snell
Farah Fawcett, majors.

1:21:33 - Andy Ihnatko
That's right, A little in-joke. And the thing is, both of those people were two big stars, two big of a stars to have be like, conglomerated into like a fair mayor. Fair may like as they would, as they wouldn't in these days. Well, that's more modern.

1:21:46 - Leo Laporte
You got your $6 million.

1:21:47 - Andy Ihnatko
man, you got your Charlie's Angels detective. I can't remember who name was, but still.

1:21:52 - Leo Laporte
My favorite. Now we know, now we have, we might want a special gesture on your camera for this one. The Goldman Sachs unidentified Goldman Sachs partner who says of the Apple Car we should have never done this effing thing. Actually, goldman had earnings this quarter $2 billion, which makes everybody very happy. But they have really been fighting. They're in all of their consumer products and they really want to get out of the Apple card. They sold their personal loan app, green Sky, at a big loss. They bought it just last year. They have you know we've heard this several times that they've been shopping the Apple card business to American Express. One little problem Apple card's a master card. That's a little problem. American Express has been kind of looking at it. I don't know how, but somehow Goldman Sachs manages to lose money on the Apple card. They also have a general motors credit card. They want to get out of all the consumer business.

1:22:51 - Alex Lindsay
Consumer, consumer businesses are hard, like like dealing with individuals with tiny little accounts compared to commercial accounts and industrial accounts and so on and so forth is really hard. And you know, I think that they, I think they saw an opportunity to work with Apple, they saw an opportunity to go into a new market and, and especially doing it at the level that Apple expects it, I think, is the other problem is that it's really hard and it's exceptionally hard to do it the way Apple wants to do it and I think Wall Street Journal says that one of the reasons AMX American Express is reluctant to buy the Apple card is because of its losses.

1:23:26 - Leo Laporte
It's. It's not not that the business loses money I'm not sure about that but the loss rates. So there are a lot of people stiffen Apple at this point. And of course when they do that, it really is Goldman Sachs. They're stiffing.

1:23:38 - Andy Ihnatko
And the Wall Street Journal is the second article they've had with insiders talking about how bad this deal was or how much bad will there is inside Goldman Sachs. And this one was interesting because it's talking about some details that Apple is insisting on. That seemed more like esoteric style, things like no, no, no, we get. Everyone gets their bill on the same day every month, and some executives were talking about how like? Well, that means that we have this huge crunch inside the office on the same day, whereas on every other credit product we spread them out across the month. So basically, we have this totally artificial work crunch that we have to deal with that if, if not for Apple's stylistic preference of no, no, no, we have to have Apple. You know we're painting the side of the fence that people don't see as well and that takes them a lot. Yeah, but some things make an office run more, more smoothly.

1:24:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, it's what happens when you partner with somebody who has no experience in this business. Right yeah. Well, I mean, I might have said that you know it'd be great if the credit card bill came every the first of every month. Yeah, you don't think about the consequences, and obviously somebody who's been doing credit cards would say but that's what Apple it's not.

1:24:41 - Alex Lindsay
It's not. Apple doesn't have experience. Apple does this all the time in many other places.

1:24:46 - Jason Snell
So, they.

1:24:46 - Alex Lindsay
You know, this is how that. This is not out of inexperience, it's out of. This is how we, this is how we live our life.

1:24:53 - Andy Ihnatko
It's. It would be awesome if you guys did that and we didn't have to do it ourselves. Yeah.

1:24:56 - Jason Snell
It cuts both ways too Great. Because, like, how do you get? Because sometimes you have an insurance market. And they're like well, we do it this way. And the answer is well, why do you do it that way? Is it because it's more convenient for your customers? And it's like oh no, it's less convenient for them, but it's more convenient for us. Right? And Apple goes in and says no, let's prioritize the customer, we're going to do it this way. And, like, you can affect change and make a better product that way. But you're right, leo.

I mean, I had, when I worked at IDG. I went through like eight managers in about two years, where every one of them rolled in and said we're going to reinvent this. I've got some ideas. And I would be like okay, let me tell you, this isn't true, you're wrong about this, this is what worked and missed. And then I realized after the fourth one or whatever, that I just needed to give them six months to realize everything that I told them was right and then they would figure it out. So that's, that's the truth of it too.

1:25:43 - Leo Laporte
And the problem is after six months, there's somebody else. There's somebody else. Yeah, you gotta do it all over they're gone.

1:25:49 - Jason Snell
You train them and then you lose them. It's just, it's brutal to manage up when they keep changing the. Yeah, apple is, everybody wants to work with Apple, but then the reality hits of this and this, this is doubled. I mean it is funny the journal writes about this because clearly they have people inside golden sacks who are like, help us, get us out of here. And they, they went into this business, this consumer business, that they just don't, as a company, want to be in, and and, and you know they're trying to escape and and you know Apple's holding them. It feels like one of these things where Apple's holding them to the letter of their contract at this point, which is fine, except that's a bad relationship to be in and it is going to end at some point. And so you've got to be thinking like where do we go from here with this? Because clearly this partnership isn't working.

1:26:34 - Leo Laporte
So even the Apple savings account, which has been a huge success I think I have a couple of thousand dollars in there um has quickly attracted billions in deposits, according to the Wall Street Journal. Not all Goldman executives are thrilled about that. Goldman had placed a cap on the amount of deposits it would accept for the Apple account. According to people familiar with the matter, it surpassed that figure within a few weeks. They increased the cap again, but it's close to hitting it again Now. I mean, I think that's free money for Goldman, but, uh, the problem is bank executives are saying these high balances are going to make it very hard for us to separate from Apple. Uh, because if the Apple partnership moves, all those billions in dollars in savings accounts that Goldman now has as cash are going to move with it. Um, so this is uh, this is yeah. I think Apple has contracts. I think what Goldman at least. You know. It's interesting that this has appeared now twice in the Wall Street Journal in six months. I feel like somebody in Goldman keeps planning the story.

1:27:42 - Andy Ihnatko
Or just everyone's so freaking upset at the first of every month that there's a lot of bad blood.

1:27:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah maybe according to people who are really really pissed off about this, but I but of course the hook on this one is the, the Goldman partner, who said we should never have done this effing thing which reminds me a lot of the AT&T CEO, remember, who made the deal with Apple to have the exclusive on the iPhone, and part of the deal Apple said, well, you, you know, have to have unlimited data. And uh, what was his name? I forgot his name.

1:28:12 - Jason Snell
Randall Stevenson.

1:28:13 - Leo Laporte
Randall Stevenson said it was the worst thing we've ever done. We have lost so much money on that deal.

1:28:20 - Andy Ihnatko
But, but nonetheless, like the other, the other part of that was remember that at the time, at&t had just gone back to yet another rebranding. They were AT&T mobile, then they were singular and then they switched back to AT&T. They were struggling to be a really big force against Verizon, which was the 800 pound gorilla I think that I was. I remember hearing other executives basically saying that, yeah, it was a pain in the butt, but the reason why we gave Apple Apple everything they asked for was because this was a way to get more people signed up for AT&T. And now, that's why it's a two party system, right or two two gorilla game.

1:28:51 - Alex Lindsay
I think that if AT&T calculated the, the, the benefits over you know X number of years, and then and subscribers over that and what they gained from that, I think they did okay.

1:29:02 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that's, that's. I mean, that's exactly what we saw in the testimony with the uh Department of Justice Sancti-Trust case against against Google, where Microsoft CEO and other executives are saying that we were willing to take a multi-billion dollar loss on a deal to to supplant uh Google search as the default as the default uh search engine. If Bing could default that because we felt that just getting in front of that many people was worth that loss, we could eat that there's, we could make more money. We can't necessarily make people become users of Bing at this rate.

1:29:36 - Leo Laporte
Uh, does the iPhone 15 pro cost more to make? Uh, the bill. They call it the bomb, the bill of materials. And according to Apple insider, the iPhone 15 pro max costs 12% more to make than its predecessor. They're actually quoting a tear down from Nihon Keisai Shimbun and the formal house techno solutions of Japan, and he says uh, the bill of materials for the pro max is $558. That's actually kind of interesting. It's a 47% parts to cost ratio. It's pretty high.

1:30:17 - Alex Lindsay
I think that the declaration of accuracy is, or is, well beyond the precision of what you're talking about. I think that the say that it's 12, $558. There's so many other things that are part of that cost analysis that they're not taking into account how much, how many, how the goods that go back, the things that don't work, the some of the efficiencies when they when people say five like, go down to a dollar. If you're outside the system, you know, you don't know that you can do plus or minus $50.

1:30:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you know, at best I think that it, it, it's a, you know in some ways it is an apples to apples comparison, because they're comparing it to their bill of materials that they calculated from last year Exactly Like, like, like they made up from last year.

1:30:59 - Alex Lindsay
I made up number and my other made up numbers. Are $12 different. Are 12% different.

1:31:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, they, they don't necessarily make it's speculative. I would say speculative rather than made up, because of course they're not going to email Apple and say hi, can you tell us, can you give us the receipts from your manufacturing? I would like to buy one. Yeah, exactly A list of everything you need. I want to get a 1A17 chip. I was just asking, um, but but the thing is like this isn't just like a tabloid tech reporter trying to get clicks. There's a lot of money that changes hands based on the financials of what these?

1:31:33 - Jason Snell
Oh yes.

1:31:33 - Andy Ihnatko
So basically it is. It is um. It is significant if the same team, using the same metrics and the same sources from one year to another, says that our numbers for this model are higher than last year's model, you can't believe the actual number, but there is. That is a data point that's significant. Um Nikkei also had a story that I just saw a couple of days ago about there saying about the A17 Pro chip that uses the new three nanometers process.

They they're putting it as costing about 27% more than the A16 bionic last year cost.

They're saying it costs 130 bucks to make. But they were also saying that the compared it to their numbers for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is they're saying is 23% more expensive than that. So it's it's interesting when you think that if they're, if they're thinking that the entire unit costs 500, someone, some, some on dollars, the idea that just the silicon could cost 130 bucks of that. That tells you a lot about, like, how much on lock they've got All these, all these previous technologies done, how much on lock they've got other manufacturing processes done, and that every time they roll out a brand new process. How, uh, I think even Jason hinted at this before with the Apple pencil that once you've made the millionth of something, you know how to get this price way down and we make the next generation of it. You know how to cut that cost of of manufacturer down even further. When you make the first million of a first thousand of something, you're on brand new ground and you haven't economized anywhere.

1:33:03 - Leo Laporte
Um, I should have asked this at the beginning of the show. Is that, it, is that all there is? Is that all there is to a circus? No, is that all there is to Apple's announcements for the rest of the year? That that, that pathetic pencil, are we gonna?

1:33:20 - Jason Snell
are we gonna see them? Probably, but it's.

1:33:24 - Leo Laporte
I think if they were gonna do anything else, they would have said it right.

1:33:26 - Jason Snell
Well, they might, they might do. Sometimes they do the thing where it's like well, this is our iPad announcement and the next Tuesday we'll do another one. Like they, I would say it's not impossible that something like an iMac might be announced next Tuesday, but it feels. It sort of feels like they're at the end of the day.

1:33:42 - Leo Laporte
If they don't do it next Tuesday, they're not gonna, because then it's Halloween and you never want to announce something on Halloween, and then it's November and it's too late, so I think November, about.

1:33:52 - Alex Lindsay
November 17th, I think, is about the last day that you could do it, so they could do something next month. They've done stuff before Thanksgiving. They've done stuff in the first couple weeks.

1:34:00 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if they will, but I they have traditionally you say get it done by the end of October because you've got to, you've got to fill the channel. But I guess Apple, because they run the stores, they don't have to worry as much about getting it to Macy's.

1:34:13 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think that that that again they they have the latest they've done is right before Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving they Apple kind of shut. You know, the next one you can get to end of February is the first time you'll see.

1:34:25 - Leo Laporte
Well, you got to get out by Black Friday. I mean, that's the shopping day, right?

1:34:28 - Andy Ihnatko
And not only that, but you got to share, you really got. You really got to accept that China is going to be shut down for the New Year's celebration. So that's another Black hole. I mean, I really do want to. I still want to believe there's going to be a new iPad, at least a new iPad mini, but an Apple pencil coming out just as a lone straggler announcement that like, okay, that would have been a perfect thing to tag on to. Oh and, by the way, we've listened to people who love the Apple pencil, but they wish we're a little bit more affordable, and so now we're introducing one more thing. So, okay, I guess I'm finding it harder to if they, if Apple, comes up with another announcement before the end of the year, I'm not going to be able to predict what it is, because it could be anything and it's probably going to be nothing.

All right, I'm just getting my hopes up, but I guess I'm yeah, me too, because again, I am so jonesen for a new iPad mini, I can't even tell you. I mean, it's almost as if they know that if they there are so many people like me that are three months ago we're like, ah, I'd be interested, sure. Then the longer they hold, they make us hold out, the more, like as soon as it comes in, I'm pretty worried. I'm going to be demon dialing that phone number. I don't care if it's, I don't care if it's, if it's made out of Mars, a pan, I'm going to have it.

1:35:39 - Leo Laporte
Apple's, of course, tribute to Mother Nature. Octavia Spencer was an interesting part a long, an interesting part of their last event. Stand Earth has come out with a report I saw this in nine to five Mac that compared the green, the actual green credentials of Apple, dell, google, hp, microsoft and Nvidia. Everyone but Nvidia has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within supply chains by 2030, but Apple has the largest commitment. The headline is yeah, apple's green, not as green as they claim, but they still are better than anybody else. Apple's commitment 75% of greenhouse gas emissions eliminated in the next what is that? Seven years. Google, hp and Microsoft say 50%. Dell says 45%. So you know, I think that's kind of what we thought when we saw Octavia Spencer they're doing the best. I mean green, green piece shortly either. After said well, if they really wanted to do their best, they'd stop trying to push people to buy new phones all the time, but that's not going to happen. That's their business, okay, susan.

1:36:50 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's marketing. It's a real commitment and a real belief wrapped in marketing, because that's Apple, that's how Apple rules, right, like Apple is never going to come out with. Here's a humble white paper. No, that's not the, it's never going to happen that way. And it's like no, what if we do a whole bit with Oscar-winning actors and also a bunch of comedy actors, where you're like hey, wait a second, isn't that? And we'll say that we're. But in the end, while it is marketing and therefore it is self-serving, it is also a real commitment. And if you look at the details, I was, I was watching some sport football, probably last weekend and I noticed there was a, there was an airline ad, was it a Delta? And it was basically like no, no, we're not killing the environment, we're great. It's just like well, actually I'm not sure about that. And they said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're committed to being carbon neutral. I'm like whoa an arrow. And how is it possible by 2050,?

1:37:48 - Leo Laporte
oh, by 2050.

1:37:50 - Jason Snell
You'll all be dead by then, so we can say that so yeah, apple's commitments are real and they're substantial and I think that they are put. They are shaming other companies who are scrambling to resolve. But it's also marketing and you should take everything they say with a grain of salt because sometimes, like I mean, I appreciate in that video that they said we're doing carbon offsets and somebody in the Mother Nature Brigade was like, yeah, the carbon offsets are kind of sketchy and they're like no, no, no, the good ones. And I thought that was good right, because they're trying to say like we're trying to do the right thing here. But in the end it was still a marketing video, there's no doubt about it.

1:38:25 - Leo Laporte
There's still a company in business and they can't very well say well, you should really buy less of our products. That would be the best thing possible for the environment. It's funny.

1:38:34 - Jason Snell
And I hear people being like, well, shouldn't the shareholders be angry that they're doing all this silly stuff? And it's like, no, you know, the truth is, everybody is going to have to do this and they are getting out ahead of it and they are shaming other companies into doing it, and I think that in the end, it will be seen as a net benefit that Apple was out in front of this stuff, because it's that same Apple game right when the next one to come along in five years is gonna find out that it's potentially like more difficult for their business and more expensive for them to do it than it was for Apple to do it, because they did it up front.

1:39:04 - Leo Laporte
And the Verge is pointing out that Apple is one of the few companies that is also pushing their suppliers and helping their suppliers with financial support.

1:39:14 - Jason Snell
They got a cloud.

1:39:15 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, it's so much. As Jason said, it's so much easier to do this slowly than quickly, and it's gonna get more intense, so it definitely makes sense for them, yeah, and they're also in a good spot to lead.

1:39:29 - Andy Ihnatko
I agree that I think they actually they really do believe in this. They also believe that it's good marketing. Excuse me, they're doing it. They're gonna get good press out of it, but I do believe that that's a sincere belief, just like they sincerely believe in the health benefits that they're trying to promote through Apple Health. But they're also in a position where they are all of their businesses are the kinds where it's very it's easier to maximize your ecological moves.

They're not like Microsoft, they're not like Amazon, they're not like Google, where so much of your profits come from data centers that have to consume more and more electricity. Google and Microsoft are gonna be really, really gonna have to deal with this because all their business they're investing so much in their business and AI models and training these AI models and running them just costs an immense amount of energy and sourcing it in clean ways. They're gonna run out of real estate where they can put a renewable energy sources nearby and they're just gonna have to say you know what the plant has to go here. Here is in West Virginia, and the cheapest energy in West Virginia is coal, sorry.

1:40:43 - Jason Snell
It's not gonna fly, though that's the thing. It's not gonna fly. In the end they're gonna have to say we're gonna go by a river or right here, by where the wind is, and we're gonna do it there instead.

1:40:54 - Andy Ihnatko
We have installed little little shower stations, free for all the little birdies if they get covered in soot and they wanna just, you know, take a dirt bath or something. All out of pocket is what we're on. That.

1:41:05 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure you all play Honor of Kings, the fabulous 10 cent game that started in Chengdu and is now a global phenomenon in the App Store. I know that cause that's what Tim Cook said on Weibo, the Chinese social media service. He actually went to China, went to an Apple store in Chengdu to cheer on gamers playing Honor of Kings in what CNBC was calling a surprise visit, just like when a diplomat shows up in a war zone. I guess the iPhone 15 has been getting a somewhat lukewarm response In China sales down 4.5% compared to last year.

1:41:48 - Andy Ihnatko
They're gonna have a lot of risks.

1:41:50 - Jason Snell
Yeah, according to estimates that are. I mean, I have no doubt that it's a little bit down but the estimates are all. Yeah, they're all guesses and they're guesses in the China market.

1:41:59 - Leo Laporte
But there was a yeah, there was a Chinese phone launch. You know what makes, as a guest, seem somewhat merry. Maybe more real is the fact that Tim flew to China to cheer on gamers this year. Yeah.

1:42:11 - Alex Lindsay
Hey, I'm here.

1:42:12 - Leo Laporte
Hey, gamers love it.

1:42:13 - Alex Lindsay
Keep playing. Well, it's talking to the gamers. It's also the government going hey, it'd be really good if we had some attention, right?

1:42:19 - Jason Snell
now.

1:42:20 - Alex Lindsay
You know like. You know like cause, there's a lot of things that we could do that you know that could be more interesting. You know Apple is still pretty beholden to the Chinese government and they're going to be. I think they're slowly trying to extract themselves out, but they're in a. They've got a lot of work to do there.

1:42:33 - Leo Laporte
Look, apple's committed, you get. You get Tim Cook in a middle seat between a big guy and a little old lady, and he's flying to China for 12 hours. That's commit. Oh wait a minute, he's not. Ah, that was me. That was me on the middle seat.

1:42:47 - Andy Ihnatko
He's flying out here, he's, he's, he's flying in one of those really green private jets. I think I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to, I'm not going to give CEOs crap for, like, having using private jets because they're super, super valuable. But yeah, there's, supposedly I was trying to read more about this he certainly didn't come there just for the eSports tournament. Obviously he was going to be meeting with government officials there's. I did see something that said he's going to be speaking at it at some sort of a trade conference that I couldn't actually identify.

But yeah, the thing, there's a lot of it's, it's, it's his CEO style that that, as he, as he frustrated the hell out of me by having trying to make sure he always talks to Trump when he was president. But that belies his philosophy of you talk to the people, you keep an open line of communication. You don't necessarily have to like berate people and bully people or say, okay, we're going to turn my back to you. So he's basically a hey, I'm good, I'm going to be being able to put in the face time with China means that, in an area when which things are kind of testy and vulnerable Remember that there were some rumors, like a month or two ago about the government's banning iPhones from government agencies.

I don't think that turned out to be true, but there were a lot of people, at least in the china press, that were talking about that at least being floated. He's a person who believes and if I have a, if I have an hour or two in private talking to this person, at least they know that, hey, you don't have to simply buy fiat, make a declaration that kind of ruins part of our business. You can actually call me up on the phone and we can talk about it.

1:44:21 - Leo Laporte
All right, I think we should take our final break and get your picks of the week. Is there any stories that I missed? Uh, something they wanted to talk about? I think we got everything Hear about that new apple pencil.

1:44:30 - Jason Snell
Oh, that new apple pencil. Almost missed that one.

1:44:34 - Leo Laporte
Big breaking news Hot story, yeah, uh. All right, let's take a break when we come back, your picks of the week. Security now is coming up. The HTTP to exploit will be the topic, and a hot topic it is, with Steve Gibson. Just a little bit.

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I'm going to start off because I've been meaning to show you this. You know manu corny we're corny that. He is the former google engineer, the former twitter engineer, who also is a very well known cartoonist and he has compiled all of the cartoons and writing he did during the fall of twitter. I remember those. Yes, they're so good. Remember the jet airplane going down, burr on fire and so forth. Uh, it's called twitter tunes. It's a twitter tunes dot com. Uh, don't not to be confused with twitter tv twit T double o n s dot com.

Manu is a good friend. He actually was on twig, uh, as as twitter started to crash at bernard. Uh, I just think he's done such a great job with this. I've been read. I read it on the plane, uh, and it just came out. There it is. You can get on amazon. It looks like too. Uh, twitter tunes one employee's Cartoon chronicle of twitter's accelerated descent. And it is accelerated. He was the first, I think. He is claimed to fame. He was the first employee fired by by elan right, he says, when he was on twig. He said we were all so excited we thought elan's gonna, you know, take this place and wake it up and really take it somewhere.

1:51:10 - Andy Ihnatko
Um but he did take it somewhere.

1:51:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it wasn't exactly the direction he. Uh, there's some and, by the way, manu is a great cartoonist, as you can see. He really Is able to capture what's going on. It's good to tunes available at fighter bookstores everywhere.

1:51:28 - Alex Lindsay
Alex lindsey, your pick of the week, sir. So, um, it kind of snuck out last week from apple and I I just want to make sure people knew it was there um, reality composer, um, so that that's been available. Um, you know, and it was in. It started off in developer only, but now it's publicly available and apple released reality composer and here's the thing that they added to it is the ability to do 3d capture. So object capture is now built into reality composer. So you can say I'd like to capture an object with my phone and the way apple does things it's really good. So so it, it has the a lot of like, um, just, Uh, it you point it at something and it just knows, you know, Apple did all the work so that you don't have to in it. It just knows oh, this is the object you're trying to capture. So it builds a little box around it and then it gives you a little guide to follow along and it does like okay, just go around it Now, go around it really low, and it might tell you like it'll make a decision about should I flip it or should I not flip it, Cause it'll just ask you to flip it over. Like, flip this object over so that you can capture it, and then it'll ask you to go, you know, do a high pass and a low pass, but it's guiding you and the more you do it what's interesting I've only had it for a couple of days and the more you do it, you get kind of used to all these little interfaces that it's showing you like, turn this way, you know, keep moving around, and you see this little dial that's going around it. You can see there and it is telling you where you're at and what you're trying to cover so you can figure out where you need to be. To do this you don't have to know anything. There's a little bit, I will say there's a little bit of practice to get used to what the interface is telling you. But like a half an hour of practice and now you can capture objects and it'll immediately textures everything, capture that object and let you, you know, bring it in. Like now you could literally capture that and put it in your keynote document so you can go. I wanna you know like. So you know, this is where we start to see this integration starting to come together. Where you can, you can go around your, you can find an object that you wanna use for a presentation for a school, you know, education, those types of things you can capture that object in the real world and immediately just drop it into keynote and rotate it into the position that you wanna put it in and keynote or even animate it, and all that stuff is stuff that is really straightforward. It's pretty powerful.

You know, as someone who's been doing I started doing photogrammetry almost 30 years ago. Like you know, 29 years ago I started doing photogrammetry where we had to put a box in into a scene We'd be in like a little city scene, and then we put a box in and then figure out by hand our vanishing points, so the box match the vanishing points and then start opening up boxes, one at a time, to fill this all in. And then it was revolutionary to not have to do, you know, to only have to identify points 25 years ago, where we just identify points in the scene and it would start to and then it would still guide us on where to put the boxes. And then there was a huge jump forward about 10 years ago where we could take a bunch of photos and it would just turn them into, you know, a model, and so I just wanna, as an old fogey here, I just wanna say you have no idea what you're looking at Like you know like this is.

It is insane that I can download a free application on my iPhone and wander around an object, following, just following the interface, and end up with a high resolution model. It's magical, like it is really a magical thing that Apple's doing here as far as being able to capture objects, and now that it's integrated with what just happened with Keynote, you know it's pretty interesting, you know, and not just Keynote, but you have a USDZ model you could bring into motion, you could, you know, do other things with it, you can animate it, and so, anyway, I think it's pretty slick, so I would check it out.

1:55:22 - Leo Laporte
Nice, is it free on the iPhone?

1:55:26 - Alex Lindsay
It is Wow. It's made by Apple, so it's free. Oh yeah, oh cool. Reality Composer is. You know? It's funny. I hadn't opened Reality Composer for a long time and I realized that I have all these other models that I've been putting into it for the last four years, and so so Reality Composer has been out for a while, but again it was mostly a, it was a developer tool. Now it's a public tool and again the new thing that happened over the last update so it's been out for a while, but the new thing that is the last update is the fact that you can, and now they put the capture tools. They had built a library for other people to do the captures, so other companies were, you know, doing it with variety of level of success in user interface, and so Apple's done their own, and it's for object capture. It's pretty slick.

1:56:21 - Leo Laporte
It's. I noticed it has when I went to my Apple store. It has a little cloud that says I downloaded it before. So I must have downloaded it Probably. I probably talked about it earlier, like when it came out in three more public probably me recommending it two years ago or something like that.

1:56:34 - Alex Lindsay
And you know I still use Polycam for capturing locations. So when I'm out of space, I don't think that this, I don't think this object, it's an object capture. So I will say that and I pay money for that, and I pay like $100 a year for a Polycam and Polycam is I can. I don't find that the object capture is that great, but when I'm trying to capture, like I've walked around, we're looking for new space right now. So I'm I've been walking around digitizing spaces and so I just wandered around.

1:57:03 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's a good idea.

1:57:05 - Alex Lindsay
I walk around the microphone, that way I can show it, because the owner of the phone. I know Mark.

East. He's in San Diego or New York or whatever. So I went into a new space and I just wandered around and captured a whole thing what a good idea. And then sent him a USDZ model. And then he's like, what about this and what about this? And I'm like, oh, you have to, you know, and so it's. It's so. Polycam is still good for that. This is specifically. I want to put objects into a, into something Nice.

1:57:28 - Leo Laporte
Reality Composer free in the Play Store. I remember when you came to probably call for help with the screensavers back in the day on tech TV and you put used a magic marker to put dots on my head, oh yeah.

1:57:41 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, that was that was call for help, and that was it, and that was before you went to Canada. That was the old days.

1:57:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, early 2000s, to do the same thing that you can now just take a phone and.

1:57:51 - Alex Lindsay
Exactly.

1:57:52 - Leo Laporte
I mean that was, we put a bunch of markers on your face and then we took a bunch of the photos and then we it took me a long time to get those dots off. No, I don't think it was. I don't think it was that hard, but I think you were using a Sharpie, right. It was just irregular, I think.

1:58:06 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think I used a Sharpie, but maybe I did. I think. I think I might have used something Toxic, non-toxic.

1:58:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, more washable. It's all just legal mumbo jumbo.

1:58:16 - Leo Laporte
It's good TV. It's good TV. You know it walks around with dots in his face for a week.

1:58:21 - Alex Lindsay
I think it was like eye lash. Oh yeah, it was probably. Back then they were using like eye liner Eye liner, I think, was what we're. That was our popular thing at the moment.

1:58:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, mr Andy, and I co-pick of the week.

1:58:33 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay, there's good. And then there's great. Good is Patrick Stewart writing a memoir. Okay, great, is him recording the audio book of that memoir? And so, yeah, that's why I was, I was he'd been making the press tours for this first new memoir called Making it so and I was, I was, I was interested in the book. I thought, okay, maybe I'll, maybe I'll buy that sometime, maybe I'll wait for it to acquire a second hand. But then I realized that, ooh, I bet he recorded the audio book of that. And then I went to Audible and said, oh, he did. Okay, that's $25.

That I'm that I'm very, very happy to part with. I've only gotten into like the first, like half hour to an hour. It's an 18 hour book. But him reading anything is amazing. Him telling his own story from the very beginning and him having one of those great I'm sorry I wanted to call it great but in terms of storytelling growing up in a tiny house without a bathroom, with a family and father and mother who are like washerwoman and ex-military who was on hard times, and him not thinking that people like him could be actors. That's such a fun, such a wonderful story. So I haven't gotten too big into it. But him reading this story is just incredible. That's the highest recommendation I can give Patrick Stewart telling his own story and acting it out. He can't help but act it out.

I read some of the reviews it takes. The good news is that it does take 300 pages before he gets to the book, that before he gets to the next generation. The New York Times complained a little bit that he the reviewer, I think, made a correct observation in that they really really, really, really wish that. He talked a lot about his friendship with Ian McKellen and he didn't get enough of that like a lot of Hollywood stuff. But still, I cannot imagine this ever going south 18 hours for 25 bucks.

I'll take it Also if you go to. I first looked for it on Amazon and they have like, if you're not a member, if you're not a member of Audible, they have a deal where, instead of paying 25 bucks, you could commit to three months of Audible for like six bucks a month and keep the three books that you buy and still wind up seven bucks ahead of the deal. I'm the sort of person who would forget to cancel after the first three months when I just bought the book outright. But putting that information out there. There's, and there's, a if you, but if you doubt it, there's a sample of him reading on the Audiblecom website that will probably convince you if you haven't been to this already Nice.

2:00:59 - Leo Laporte
Mr Patrick Stewart making it. So Tee oh, gray hot. Now the odds are. The odds were in the chat room that Mr Alex Lindsey would scoop you, jason Snell, on your pick of the week. I don't know if Alex saw what you were gonna pick or not, but he did not, so you get to talk about it.

2:01:21 - Jason Snell
Who is going to choose the $280 teleprompter? And it's gonna be, I guess you're right, not.

Alex, I've got to make some nice stuff for people in this sort of mid range of you're doing video on the internet but you're not a broadcast professional, but you're doing video on the internet and you want nice stuff and so, like, I've got their green screen and I use a stream deck and like they have made some nice stuff. Their new product is called Promptor. It is a one piece teleprompter thing that it's got a screen and it's got the two way glass and it's got mounts and so you can set it up. So if you're somebody who does a lot of teleprompting, you could do this and I haven't tried it out yet, but I will tell you.

Tom Warren at the Verge has tried it out. He wrote about it today and he said this is perfect for me because he's a guy on the internet who has to do videos and he can do them with his script in the Promptor. Can you, for vastly less than $280, make a somewhat janky but perfectly usable setup using like an iPad and a mirror and you get? Yes, I bought one of those in pieces and it was very hard to put together and it was. You know it worked. It was shaky but it worked. But if you are somebody who thinks I just wanted to work and I don't mind spending $280 on it. The fact that Tom Warren basically said, yeah, I will use this, this is what I want. I take that Tom's great. He does good work and I'm intrigued by this as well. I don't do that much stuff with a teleprompter, but you know it. Actually his writeup made me kind of wanna start doing more videos no don't, don't stop With a teleprompter.

2:02:58 - Leo Laporte
No teleprompters.

2:02:59 - Jason Snell
Well, you know I do so. My friend, david Sparks, does a bunch of. Basically they're what used to be books, but now you do them as a series of videos and it's a course about something, and the challenge with that is that you do you can memorize that stuff when you need to communicate and you need to hit all the points.

And those are the parts. That's why I bought the other teleprompters. I was thinking about doing one of those and yeah, but you know what, you know what, if you need it, and Elgato, I will also just say again is there stuff? The cheapest? It is not. Is it nice? Yes, it is. And so if you're this is cheap for a teleprompter.

2:03:35 - Leo Laporte
It's not bad right, Really cheap for a teleprompter.

2:03:37 - Jason Snell
Again, you can spend a hundred bucks and get a janky mirror with a no, this is for a real teleprompter.

2:03:41 - Leo Laporte
This is incredibly cheap.

2:03:42 - Jason Snell
If you don't want to fiddle with it, 280.

2:03:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and the review says it can just act as an external monitor. So if all you want to do is to be able to make eye contact with the person you're talking to on Zoom while you're looking directly at them, that intrigues me, or?

2:03:57 - Jason Snell
even do a screencast where, instead of recording and having the video be kind of like in a webcam somewhere, you could do a screencast while looking right at the screen and yet you could use that in your video and it'll look natural like you're looking at the screen. Lots of interesting potential here, so I thought it was worth a pick.

2:04:14 - Alex Lindsay
What we found with screencast specifically is resolution. Like you, it's that one's gonna be pretty small. Like for screencast, we use very pretty big ones because I mean sometimes we the largest one we built for that was like 55 inches because we just really felt like we had to see a lot there for screencast specifically. But for eye contact, I mean we've been doing in the quote unquote in Teratron, which is Harold Morris's-.

2:04:36 - Jason Snell
Harold Morris right.

2:04:37 - Alex Lindsay
For 15 years. We had one client that was obsessed with it, and we just kept on going down that path, and so I think-.

2:04:45 - Leo Laporte
So to explain what that is, Harold Morris, famous documentarian, would put himself on a screen with the camera going through it and you would talk to his video picture.

2:04:58 - Jason Snell
Yeah, you were looking right at the camera lens and it was his opinion that he got better interviews and he was right by not being in the room and not being off camera and not having to be so.

2:05:09 - Andy Ihnatko
Subject communicating with a camera lens, but to a human face that's in conversation with you, right?

2:05:16 - Leo Laporte
It was a much more natural thing for the non-initiated interviewee, but it gave him great results and if you ever watched thin blue line or any of his documentaries, he certainly did.

2:05:25 - Alex Lindsay
And the funny thing is is that we'd probably I have probably shot more in Teratron than Harold Morris at this point yeah, I'm sure you have. You know, thousands and thousands and thousands of hours based on what he's done and of live voting. And one of the things we noticed was that it also your eyes and your face do different things when you see the person in front of you. So one is your eyes converge on the face and you're literally your eyes will do something just slightly different. I mean, it's like a less than a millimeter, but it feels different than when you're just looking at a camera. And, in addition to that, we do this thing where we mirror the other person, and so your face does different things when it's talking to someone as opposed to just a camera, and so it's a really powerful way to do it. To underline what Jason said, we talked about this for like I don't know, 10 or 20 minutes today on office hours, because it just came out and so someone brought it up, and a couple of things about it that are really powerful is that first we thought it was only gonna work with their webcam, but it's got all these features that let you fit a still camera, all kinds of other cameras. It's got these little fittings on the back so that that'll work. It is really convenient and much smaller. So in addition to it to being less expensive if I have an ICANN, I have a 10 ICANN teleprompters.

For our kits that we send out this one would be way simpler. It's not only it's a quarter of the price that we're paying, or a little less than a quarter of the price, or a little more than a quarter of price, and it is much simpler to set up. If I was gonna send this out as a kit, I would send this one out as opposed to what I've been sending out, because it's gonna be much easier for someone on the other end to put together. I'm gonna buy one to test it, and so I've given up on asking Elgato. They always tell me I'm not important enough for them to send me something, so but I'll probably buy one and then, if I like it, I'll keep it and I'll send it back.

But I think that it's a. It looks like it's a great solution and I'm only concerned that the glass is a little too small, like. I'm hoping that they do a plus version that's like 50 or 100% bigger than that, but I think that as a first try and Elgato does a lot of great stuff I mean I have I don't know, I have four StreamDecs on my desk, you know, and they do. They're really good at that kind of stuff. This works with StreamDec.

2:07:37 - Leo Laporte
You can use StreamDec to advance or stop the prompter too, yeah, and which is fine.

2:07:41 - Alex Lindsay
You know, I think that the prompter software doesn't the knob is better. The prompter software. I was like like it's the kind of prompter software you write when you do it the first time. So the but that'll get better. The but I will say that the way that they figure what Elgato is really good at is figuring out how to make it compact and easy to use and just have it just kind of work. And so I think it looks really good and I'm really excited to test one because I think it'll. I think we'll end up using them in our kits.

2:08:13 - Leo Laporte
So it wasn't Alex pick after all, Jason, I would pick, after all I had for it. That way I didn't have one yet Jason, maybe do it.

2:08:19 - Jason Snell
I was like. I was like I'm not gonna have one Scoopcha.

2:08:22 - Alex Lindsay
I don't. I don't ever recommend hardware that I haven't tested, because I don't trust anybody.

2:08:26 - Jason Snell
Right, that's why I'm to use prompters.

2:08:28 - Leo Laporte
I hate prompters and we bought them cause some of our hosts needed them and wanted them.

2:08:34 - Alex Lindsay
I can't use them Like I really like to say I can use them, I'm very good with a prompter.

2:08:38 - Leo Laporte
I learned how to do it in television but I just don't like them. I think it. I don't know why I just when someone re, when someone says to me something that I have to do.

2:08:46 - Alex Lindsay
I'm really good at it. Like I can just read it when I wrote the content. I can't stop editing. So I go into the cycle of, like that one little word isn't right or I need one more space. I should have put a dot dot there. And so if I write it and like I'm always amazed by YouTubers that can just knock them out like that, because if I write it while I'm writing it I'm re-editing it going.

This isn't quite right, like I need to do this again. And and so if someone else sends me a script, like I can read a teleprompter I the only problem, even with someone who's really good, there's this glassy eye thing that you get-. Yeah, that's what I don't like, that I don't like. And you either see scanning Now with one this small, you won't see scanning People, like if the teleprompter is too big and too close to you, you'll see their eyes doing this little thing where they're reading, reading, they're reading. And but even if they don't do that and they get good at reading without scanning, you see this glassy, it's just a telltale glassy eye. Look, I'm rooting for everybody.

2:09:40 - Leo Laporte
This is the red pill I can always tell when somebody's reading a prompter. Always If you're going too slow.

2:09:44 - Andy Ihnatko
Too slow, no fast, fast, fast.

2:09:46 - Alex Lindsay
No, no, no. It's just this there's a dead eye look that anyone reading a teleprompter always has, and it's just that you're reading something. That's what bothers me. Yeah, it bothers me too, and I feel like it's not. I think that the when you look at the creators that are doing really really well they're really really good at eye contact and there's something that the teleprompter takes away from that that you can't get back, and so I don't. I'm not a big fan of reading it. I love them for Enterotron, though, like they, you know, we've been using it. That's actually a really good use.

2:10:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we use them. I think probably Jason and Micah use it on Techno's Weekly. There are a few shows we use them on. You won't catch me using them.

2:10:28 - Alex Lindsay
I probably use them in. I've done, you know, a couple of thousand events and I'm in the last decade and I think we've probably used a teleprompter 50 times out of you know thousands of times using the, using the Enterotron, like that's what our. For us, the teleprompters are all about seeing another person on the other side.

2:10:48 - Leo Laporte
Sometimes, though, you got to say a lot of copy, and you don't have time to memorize it, and you don't want to be reading it, there's all sorts of reasons you need a teleprompter. I you know I would defocus, so I didn't get that glassy eyed look. I kind of defocus and try to make contact. But invariably I would just like you, Alex, I would change the copies or reading it and it would invariably happen that suddenly the prompter copy would be going up and down like this.

2:11:14 - Jason Snell
I don't know where he was the prompter operator tried to figure where is he?

2:11:17 - Leo Laporte
What is he doing? What?

2:11:17 - Jason Snell
is he doing For some of my self scripted stuff? I've just used it as a with the bullet points. Yeah, bullet points are fine, I know what I need to hit, and I'm going to use them in my own words and it sounds more natural, but I don't want to forget one of the bullet points.

2:11:30 - Leo Laporte
That's what it's good for. I do it all again. Yeah, that's essentially what I did on Tech TV. So I would say, please make that bullet points, because I don't want to be reading.

2:11:37 - Jason Snell
Right, I know how to make sentences. I'm pulling words into sentences.

2:11:41 - Leo Laporte
I can do that and it's. You know, there's a certain way people speak when they are extemporizing versus when they're reading, and you and we know the difference. Well, you know comma Leo comma that we are all.

2:11:54 - Alex Lindsay
I think they're getting better at Apple, but we had we used to call it the, we used to call it the teleprompter pentameter, which is that there's this thing where they move the screen and you can hear it. You can hear it when they're talking. They'll stop at the end of the paragraph and wait for the next one to come, and for a while Apple really had it Like it was like, because with executives they don't have time to. They practice it a couple of times, then they do it.

2:12:21 - Leo Laporte
But it's not their job, it's not as a presenter.

2:12:23 - Alex Lindsay
They're not presenters and so it's. But Apple, I think, got the message and has. I mean, I think that, like Tim Cook, is getting better every show, like Intel is working.

2:12:34 - Jason Snell
They're all a lot better.

2:12:35 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and it just it's. What happened was is that they realized that this takes work Like it takes work to do that. I mean, that's the company that probably does it the best is still Salesforce. They, they. I don't use any of their products, but we used to do a lot of streams for them and we watched them. They got really serious and when they got really serious, suddenly all of their stuff but they memorize everything Like they don't need to help them. They memorize literally every word. That's amazing, yeah.

2:13:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you can always tell in Saturday Night Live when they're reading Q-cars. Oh yeah, sure, always looking off to the left, yeah. Yeah, hey, it has been a pleasure to join you from Mom's House, jason from. Mom's House, mom's House, I love that Love, that. That's how dedicated we are, ladies and gentlemen, to bringing you the latest Apple content. And to our moms and to our moms.

2:13:26 - Andy Ihnatko
I touch, the best friend is his mother.

2:13:28 - Leo Laporte
I visited mom this morning before the show and she's really happy. She's doing great, yay, I can never remember the name of that thing you sent me, but I love it.

2:13:38 - Jason Snell
Mine's just like how long is this show? I'm like very long, it's very.

2:13:41 - Leo Laporte
I think she's watching. So when I left I'm going to put it on the live stream and I said you'll see your house, mom. You see, there's your house, I'm in your house. Thank you, mom.

2:13:52 - Andy Ihnatko
You reminded me when I was taking care of my mom and, like she would, I would set her up, make sure she has her snacks, make sure she has her movie going on, and then she'd say, now don't worry about me, go off and talk to your internet friends. I'm like, oh, and she knew very well, this was a podcast, but as far as probably cause she could hear me from the other room Like how are you good time? Oh, talk to your internet friends.

2:14:12 - Leo Laporte
There are people in the house right now. Yeah Well, I was saying is he done? Is he done? Are you through? Can I walk through now? I said it's the house, you can walk through at any time.

2:14:20 - Andy Ihnatko
Can I start? Can I start watching Netflix again, or do you still band with Kent?

2:14:25 - Leo Laporte
No Netflix. Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Snellas at sixcolorscom. His shows are at sixcolorscom slash Jason. He does many, many other podcasts and never reads a proctor on a one of them.

2:14:39 - Jason Snell
I'm looking right in your eyes. That's what I'm doing.

2:14:41 - Leo Laporte
I'm actually a little creepy, so stop it. Knock it off, okay. Sixcolorscom is a great place. You also see him in Macworld and other places. Thank you, jason. Thank you Leo.

2:14:50 - Jason Snell
His mom in Arizona, arizona. Yeah, it's so hot here, oh God.

2:14:55 - Leo Laporte
Well, you know it's funny cause winter is coming in New England it's getting chilly here.

2:14:59 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like a hundred. I just turned the heater on yesterday.

2:15:01 - Leo Laporte
We're in Arizona, south of Phoenix, no very hot and dry, very hot, very hot, and you're there in winter. Thank you, andy, and I go GPH in Boston. I don't know if I'm being able to make it to the Boston Public Library, but if I were to.

2:15:21 - Andy Ihnatko
It's this Friday at 1230, again at the WGBH studios video studios and at the Boston Public Library. So if you want to go watch the show lives, the live the Boston Public Radio show starts at 11, doesn't until two on Fridays. There's often a musical guest. At minimum You'll be able to see me again. The double hell of like being on camera cause this goes on YouTube as well and having notes that I really have to go on and trying to make it sound effortless that I'm just coming up with this information as opposed to know I'm reading these names and these numbers off of an iPad. But yeah, so watch, watch me. Be uncomfortable and if you can't watch me live, go to WGBH newsorg and you can stream it live or later. Or again, go to WGBH news channel on YouTube to stream it live or labor.

2:16:04 - Leo Laporte
You gotta do what I do, andy, really lower expectations. I just get stuff wrong all the time and then nobody you know like here, he goes again.

2:16:11 - Andy Ihnatko
Or maybe I should do the thing that Marlon Brando used to do in his old days. He would just basically like tape his lines to the fort. No, you would tape a script page to the forehead of the person doing the scene with yeah, it's famous.

2:16:22 - Leo Laporte
In the Godfather they were going around in scenes. They all had little pieces of script taped to them in various places so Marlon can read them. Oh yeah, yeah, Mr Alex Lindsey, office hours dot global is a great place if you are interested in production Well, just about anything. These are the polymaths of the internet gathering together each morning. Every day, office hours dot global has an invitation so you can join the Zoom conference or you can watch them on YouTube. What do you got coming?

2:16:52 - Alex Lindsay
up. We just had yesterday we had Ian McKagan. So we had Ian McKagan on gray matter over a week ago. What was great is that I was able to bring him back into office hours so we got to listen to gray matter and then ask another set of questions Follow up. So we had a great conversation specifically about storytelling and it just it was an amazing. He worked at Lucas right Lot of yeah, he's worked at Lucasfilm. He's worked on many, many movies you know what I'm saying and an incredible, just so much fun to listen to, and also an incredible storyteller and so it was really, really a great, great hour. And that was just yesterday morning, so you can see it at office hours, dot global Office hours, dot global, you can do it.

2:17:35 - Leo Laporte
And, of course, if you want to hire Alex and learn how to do shows with or without prompter, zero, nine, zero, let you use a prompter if you want to.

2:17:44 - Leo Laporte
You can use. If you have to, you can get it.

2:17:46 - Leo Laporte
Zero, nine, zero dot media is a day job.

2:17:49 - Andy Ihnatko
Office hours is a place of safety and love where we don't judge unless unless you're lying, and it's just a little bit off and which kids, and they won't touch the hell out of you, but with love.

2:18:00 - Leo Laporte
Alex has a. Alex has a telestrator and he's not afraid to use it. Let's put it that way. Thank you, alex, thank you Andy, thank you Jason, thanks to all of you for joining us. We do Mac break weekly, rain or shine, no matter where our hosts are. Every Tuesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern. That's a 1800 UTC, although got two more weeks at that time. And then we're going to move. We have already we are still on summertime, but I know a lot of you have already moved to standard time. We will do that first week and in November and that's when it'll change, but I'll let you know at the time. So for right now, still 1800 UTC.

The only reason it matters at all is if you want to watch us live, you can do that or listen live at livetwittv. There's a streams there. If you are watching live, chat with us live at IRCtwittv. Of course, club twit members get access beyond the velvet rope. If you're not yet a club twit member, $7 a month gets you ad free versions of all the shows, access to the Discord, which is more than just chat for the shows. It's where geeks gather to talk about all kinds of things. It is a really a great safe space, my favorite social media plus the twit plus feed with shows we don't put out anywhere else, including Hands on Macintosh, hands on Windows, the Untitled Linux shows and Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks that's one of the newer shows in there Giz Fizz with Vick De Bartolo. A lot of those shows end up getting into the mainstream, as this week in space did, but for now they're inside the club because the club members pay for it with their $7 a month.

Livetwittv, join us, join us. We're gonna have a wonderful party. Livetwittv, twittv slash club. I should say for joining the club, $7 a month, and we thank you in advance. It is more and more important. I don't know if you guys saw it. The WNYC is pretty much shutting down. It was one of the premier prestigious podcast studios and they're basically saying to all their podcasts if you can't make it on radio, we don't have room for you. So it's a tough time. I don't know why podcast advertising is disappearing, but it's why the club is so very important to us long term. Thanks in advance and we'll see y'all next time. But now I have to say it is my sad and, yes, somewhat humbling duty to say get back to work. Break time is over. We'll see you next week. Bye bye.

2:20:28 - Rod Pyle
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief of Ad Astra magazine, and each week I joined with my co-host to bring you, this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the final frontier. We talked to NASA, chief space scientists, engineers, educators and artists and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not in space books and TV. And we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So, whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars rocket, join us on this week in space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.