MacBreak Weekly 897 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Jason Snell
Hey everybody, jason Snell, in for Leo. This week I got great news Dan Moren is joining us, along with Andy Ihnatko and Alex Lindsey. We have a lot to talk about, despite the fact that we had nothing to talk about, isn't it amazing? We're going to talk about lists. We're going to talk about philosophy. We're going to get into it. It's going to be deep Plus a thing that cools your laptop. That isn't a fan. What is that about? All coming up next?

0:00:27 - VO
Podcasts you love from people. You trust this is Tweet.

0:00:36 - Jason Snell
This is MacBreak Weekly episode number 897, recorded on Tuesday, november 28, 2023.

0:00:43 - Leo Laporte
The event this episode of MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Miro, the online workspace for innovation, where your team can dream, design and build the future together From any location, tap into a way to map processes, visualize content, run retrospectives and keep all your documents and data in one place. Get your first three boards for free at Mirocom slash podcast and by Myleo. Myleo Photos is a smart and powerful system that lets you easily organize, edit and manage years of important documents, photos and videos in an offline library hosted on any device. Check out their limited-time holiday gift bundle for a 25% discount on Myleo Photos Plus at Myleocom slash Tweet25.

0:01:38 - Jason Snell
It's time for MacBreak Weekly, a week where nothing happened. No, that's a terrible way to start a podcast. It is a week where Thanksgiving happened and we got to think a lot about Apple and related subjects. I'm Jason Snell sitting in for Leo Laporte, who is contemplating the universe Big job, somebody's got to do it. Leo decided to take a crack at it, and it's a good week for it because it is a little quiet. But you know what? There's still stuff to talk about about Apple, and I am joined by a wonderful panel of people. By the way, they just let me sit in this chair. I'm waiting for them to drag me out of it, but until then, let me introduce our two usual panelists, starting with Alex Lindsay. Alex hi, how's it going?

0:02:20 - Alex Lindsay
I'm doing well. Good to be here.

0:02:22 - Jason Snell
It's good to have you OfficeHoursglobal. I could list. I feel like I've been on the show long enough now that I could probably do a Leo impression, but I'm not going to do it yet, yet, yet, yet. That's the key. Save that for a very special episode. Or, if we really run out of things to talk about, then we'll just go around the hound horn. Everybody work on an impression, your pick of the week and an impression this week. Andy Nogco is also here from WGBH in Boston this week, from SixColorscom too, where Andy's got a piece up about what we talked about last week, about that interesting, kind of strange Apple holiday video. Hi, andy.

0:02:59 - Andy Ihnatko
Hello, I'm glad you didn't tip things too early in the intro because I think that I'm not speaking for everybody in the panhub here. But I think we're all just sort of like processing the thing that happened. I mean, we might not even talk about it this week because it's just so big. It's so big. We don't want to just go out with our first thought, with something that this may just again I can't get my head. I'm surprised I even showed up today because I mean, I've been in contemplation about that news item ever since I heard they made us.

0:03:30 - Jason Snell
They made us come here and do a show, even though we're still all reeling from whatever.

0:03:34 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, because Jason we're here to provide reassurance, I mean, even when we don't have the answers. Our job is to tell the audience, to tell the public that answers will come, that this isn't as big a thing as we can make it out to be, when all we know at the early stages is fear. So we're going to hold hands across this digital landscape and just like Hands Across America, united, our Nation in the 1990s, and we're going to get through this together.

0:04:01 - Alex Lindsay
We're all like this Saturday Night Live thing. We're just like get away from that, Get away from that. What the heck is that?

0:04:06 - Jason Snell
What the hell? Are they even talking about? Yes, it's true, though we're like the Swan Lake when Brezhnev was sick for tech media.

0:04:15 - Jason Snell
That's what Andy's trying to say here.

0:04:17 - Jason Snell
Now I think the show has been accused, quite rightly, of West Coast bias, because three of the four regulars here are on the West Coast, west Coast, best Coast, by the way, just trolling you there. I decided to balance it out. You know what, Jason, I decided to do? The California, Massachusetts Acts. Ok, New England Access Andy's not quite in Massachusetts anymore, but New England Access by finding one of the key technology analysts on the East Coast. The six colors East Coast bureau chief, Dan Moran is here. Hi, Dan.

0:04:51 - Dan Moren
Hello, east Coast, right coast as far as I'm concerned.

0:04:54 - Jason Snell
OK, I mean like on a map with North on the top.

0:04:57 - Dan Moren
Yeah, it's the right coast. Sure, it's the right coast Also, I barely slept in the last week, so if there really is giant news, I've missed something. Oh man.

0:05:05 - Jason Snell
Get ready for later, when Dan starts picking like invisible things that only he can see for his pick of the week, that'll be great, like he's invented apps that don't exist, and it's great.

0:05:16 - Dan Moren
So Dan, of course, writing is six colors.

0:05:18 - Jason Snell
And a novelist. We may talk about books later too. I want to start though. Top story Is your airdrop. Dangerous Film at 11, right.

0:05:31 - Alex Lindsay
No, no, no. The others no. Ok, let's move on.

0:05:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Is your batteries in remote and your remote continued remote control, killing you.

0:05:41 - Alex Lindsay
If you eat enough of them.

0:05:42 - Jason Snell
yes, this is to be asked, better than use a drop-in Like it's hot reference anywhere, like because it's like this name drop is scalding All right, apparently somebody.

Ok, first off, the question is do police departments function more or less like your relatives when it comes to forwarding Facebook posts? And the answer appears to be yes, Because what's been going around, mostly posted on Facebook by various police departments, sometimes on their own websites, is this chain letter of a story warning people that with a new iOS update, now a surreptitious person can come up to you and rub their phone against you and steal all of your information.

0:06:28 - Dan Moren
What about that is surreptitious? Is somebody coming up and rubbing it for you?

0:06:32 - Jason Snell
You're distracted, you know what you are the height. The kids will pick up contacts on the street. Dan, what are you talking about? That's the stuff that they should only pick up at home.

0:06:41 - Andy Ihnatko
It's easy to be glib in your little Pacific coast enclave. Here in the Northeast we are rubbing up against each other for heat all the time we are packed in sardines.

0:06:52 - Dan Moren
The density is just incredible.

0:06:54 - Jason Snell
So basically, yes, it's a police warning about this new feature called Name Drop, which basically is airdrop for contact information. It happens automatically when you touch your phone with another modern iPhone. There's a little NFC handoff. You still have to accept it, right? There's another. Well, let's in fact, Alex, let's see if we can do it here. I'm going to bring up a phone We've all been having trouble actually getting it to work. If only we're more reliable than it actually is.

0:07:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Jason, I've got my Android phone ready, 3,000 miles away.

0:07:28 - Jason Snell
I was going to say these police reports.

0:07:31 - Andy Ihnatko
I think that we're going to get a result here that's going to surprise a lot of people, so I'm ready. It's on unlock, all right.

0:07:36 - Jason Snell
So let's see, here I'm holding it up, I'm going to try to do this. It should be on the airplay too, I think, guys, I don't know. Ok, here we go and and look nothing has happened.

0:07:50 - Alex Lindsay
See, this is we can't even get it to work when we want it to work.

0:07:53 - Dan Moren
Someone is trying to do this to you and he's just like constantly like nudging up against you for a solid 30 seconds.

0:07:58 - Jason Snell
There it is, there it goes. Bloop bloop, oh, oh.

0:08:04 - Dan Moren
And he's putting a passcode and nothing happened.

0:08:07 - Jason Snell
What is going on? Anyway, this is how it's supposed to work. It's literally an NFC tag and then, and then you my password's 1234, because this is a totally fake phone. And then what happens is there's a little bloop and you get a contact sheet, and this is the thing that the police are warning us against right now, which is again, calm, stay calm, stay in your homes, remain indoors, everything's going to be fine. What actually happens is you are prompted to offer your contact sheet to the other person and you get to choose.

There's nothing that happens surreptitiously. In fact, this feature is a security feature, because what Apple did and I know we talked about it here over this last year is it turned off the ability for you to always be open for airdrop from anyone and instead made it that you can go to Settings and be open to airdrop for 10 minutes from anyone, but otherwise it's only for people in your contacts, and that means you're not getting unsolicited, gross pictures in your airdrop. But if you're next to somebody who isn't in your contacts and you do want to airdrop with them, you touch your phones together and it says oh, there's consent here. Now we're going to let them decide to send pictures to each other or send contacts or whatever you want to do to this person. You basically make a temporary connection, which is very clever.

0:09:27 - Dan Moren
Well, the better part of it even, is that even within the name drop feature, it's granular in a way that sharing context didn't used to be, because when you do it, you can choose exactly what information you want to share. So if you only want to share your email or your phone number or something like that, you can choose just that thing. So, yeah, not only is this a non-story, but it's like ignoring the fact that they actually tried to make it more private because you can be in control. If you shared your contact information before this, it shared the whole thing, getting caboodle no matter what you had in there. So that was in some ways, worse, because they would have all of your phone numbers and your home address and whatever else you keep in your contact card.

0:10:14 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, this is. It was a positive thing because, again, it's pretty light in terms of news, except for the thing of course, Of course, and the event.

0:10:23 - Jason Snell
We call it Andy the event Exactly this way.

0:10:26 - Andy Ihnatko
We get to write about it once, first time when it's breaking news, and then we get to write a second piece and submit a second invoice about how we can debunk all of this. And we're looking forward to a third think piece about how law enforcement, public media, social media often converging each other to make people more afraid about tech than they actually need to be. So I'm looking forward to it being a very, very Merry Christmas by filing three invoices for this, To even be sharing contact information.

0:10:54 - Dan Moren
can you ever really know anyone or be known by anyone?

0:10:58 - Jason Snell
Oh, wow, that's the sort of thing Leo is contemplating right now.

0:11:01 - Andy Ihnatko
Diana. Well, well, dan, like the thing, once you give a name to something, you take some of its power away from it. You see, but you can't do the incantation unless you have that familiar contact.

0:11:14 - Alex Lindsay
And that's why the event will be always remain as the event that will not be named Like. That's the. You know that we won't keep, I'll only share it with you, you touch to my phone and with all these people playing Dungeons and Dragons.

They are into necromancy with the kids today, so they need to be protected, you know, I think the only way that someone could take advantage of this is if you left your phone at the bar unlocked. But they could do so many other worse things. Exactly, you know, and I will say that, while it's a little annoying, the great thing about the facial recognition or the fingerprint recognition is that my phone locks immediately, like as soon as I walk. You know, like it's, I think it's on the 15 second. Whatever you know, I'm going to have it lock up quickly. You know and just in case I set it down somewhere and that I'm always surprised, sometimes when I pick up somebody's phone.

This is the kind of extend this to some safety. I'm always surprised when I pick up somebody's phone and it doesn't have a passcode, like it's like hey, I'm here, that is a bad idea. Like that's what law enforcement should be spreading is hey, let's not do that and let's not use password or one, two, three, four, unless we're doing it on the show. Those are all things that we probably should avoid, and I think.

0:12:20 - Andy Ihnatko
but I think that, like the law enforcement community the federal law enforcement community at least, is very much into they should be spreading the rumor that, ooh, passcodes compromise your security, because if someone guesses your passcode, then they know your first child's birthday. If you're using that, the best thing is to leave the phone completely unlocked no biometrics, no pass keys, no whatsoever. I mean, if you hand it over to a cop at a speed trap, what's he going to do? Take it back to the car and dump all your messages? I don't think so. That's not the police agencies that we grew up with.

0:12:55 - Dan Moren
So yeah, there's a lot of work. You should also have a desktop widget that just shows all your other passwords just in plain text. That's the best way to do it.

0:13:03 - Jason Snell
I like it. I like it.

0:13:06 - Andy Ihnatko
Also, if you can also be so kind as to have some sort of odor in the car that could be misinterpreted as some sort of controlled substance, thus meriting a stop and search again. Do you support the police or do you not support the police?

0:13:23 - Jason Snell
So I think, yes or no, everybody, let's go back to the right. I think the lesson here I support the police. Well, now, after the event, andy, how could you not the? They're the real heroes. I think what we need to do here, though, is look the people on this panel, the people in this audience. We are the people that our people come to for actual answers, for tech questions. We're the ones who will say hey, I saw on Facebook my local police department on Facebook told me that my iPhone is sending my contact information, and probably my calendar and other things, to very bad people who are just walking by with their phones. What do I do? And so it's incumbent on all of us to be the ones to say dear listeners, spread the word, counteract to the misinformation that they find on Facebook that this feature is secure and fine and actually might be fun If you could get it to work at least, which I couldn't do here.

0:14:15 - Andy Ihnatko
But, theoretically.

But also it reminds all of us everyone in this conversation and, I would guess, most of the people who are in this podcast this is like the tense season, Because when we go to Thanksgiving, when we go to the holiday parties with our family, christmas with the back at home, with all the deep relatives, we're not afraid of political discussions, we're afraid of the line of genius bar requests that will come pouring in on actual, practical things and also about hey, should I worry about open AI hacking into becoming a robot that kills us all?

And having to be there. The last time I did like the full sweep, like I actually made sure that in the car I had a bag full of like I had a laptop, I had every cable that I thought I would need, because I knew that at some point someone would ask me about hey, how come my Wi-Fi isn't working anymore? And you'd have to, and you want to be, you want to be of value, you want to be able to, you want to get the big piece of turkey, the big piece of cake in the to go bag at the end of the day. So, yes, you're, I think. How haven't we all been in that position?

0:15:16 - Dan Moren
Well, we don't have to worry about our Wi-Fi anymore after the event. It's not a problem.

0:15:22 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, that's the good thing about it.

0:15:23 - Jason Snell
if, frankly, Andy, I relish being asked genius bar questions. In fact, I would like to bring one of those Lucy style like the genius is in boxes to my family gatherings, and I'll tell you why. It's because most of the time you're with your family. It's a little awkward. Just did this for Thanksgiving. It's a little awkward. When we talk about, we tell them the same stories about what we're doing, what our kids are doing, all of that. And then somebody asked a technology question and suddenly a podcast.

0:15:50 - Andy Ihnatko
Jason turns on and I'm like oh well, let me tell you about that.

0:15:53 - Jason Snell
I was like oh, I do that every day, I could do that all day.

0:15:59 - Dan Moren
So I go the other way. I go the unprompted way, which is four days into my time at my in-laws. I'm like why is this Wi-Fi so slow?

0:16:05 - Jason Snell
Let me just fix it.

0:16:08 - Alex Lindsay
I'm in the same boat where I walk around and I'm like, let me fix this. I need to fix this.

0:16:11 - Andy Ihnatko
I need to fix this. It's bothering me Where's the remote of your TV? I have issues with how you've got this TV set up and I need to fight.

0:16:18 - Dan Moren
My father-in-law left the room briefly while we were starting a movie and I went like motion smoothing, oh off, we were watching a movie. Yeah, we were just starting a movie. I was like I cannot do two and a half hours of Indiana Jones in motion smoothing.

0:16:31 - Jason Snell
I have heard somebody refer to the ultimate achievement of being a nerd. Family member is going to the same house the next year for the same holiday and discovering that motion smoothing is still off. That's when you know you've won. Go ahead, Alex.

0:16:48 - Alex Lindsay
I delegated. Even my kids went to my parents' house in Pennsylvania for the summer, or for about a month in the summer, and I sent a star link out, Like we need to fix the internet while you're there, Just like they have one mega second out there in the country. And I was like they're like it's amazing, there's 40 megs a second. And I was like yeah, but we just you got to carry around your bandwidth to make sure that you have it when you need it.

0:17:13 - Jason Snell
Just going to be Alex's relative. I guess that's the answer there, Wow.

0:17:16 - Alex Lindsay
Then the first part, though. Is that a star link? My mom was like you should turn it off, we're not using it anymore, and I was just like, OK, never mind, We'll go back to it. No, no, no Well anyway.

0:17:27 - Jason Snell
Look, I'm not saying that one of your relatives is going to come up and ask you about how Apple is stealing your contact information and sending it to the dark web by airdrop. I'm just saying they, they know. I'm saying they will, they will, they will. So now you're better armed, right? You know that it's just a new iOS 17 feature and it's hard to get it to work anyway, so don't worry about it, it's fine. You're using iOS 15 anyway, right, mom? Yeah, all right.

0:17:56 - Andy Ihnatko
I need to buy my mom a new phone. Whether you're talking to relatives or talking to the public via the radio. This is a good chance to pivot this into, but you know what the real threat is Multi-trillion dollar tech corporations that are in control of public infrastructure that has been privatized, that are now insulating themselves against any hope of regulation or accountability. That's more of a threat, then.

0:18:22 - Dan Moren
Really.

0:18:22 - Andy Ihnatko
And turn off those settings in your Congressperson.

0:18:24 - Dan Moren
It's a very zingy Thanksgiving dinner conversation.

0:18:29 - Andy Ihnatko
It's nice when you're on Zoom with the hosts so they can see you while you're talking. You can see them like wait, we're supposed to be talking about the police and this thing. Why is he talking about late-stage capitalism? Well, that's a look.

0:18:41 - Jason Snell
I didn't realize that was an iPhone 15 feature being on a podcast with Andy and Ako is a ride and you just got to go with it because that's just how it's going to be. But I do, you're welcome. I do, job done. I do want to move on to one of my most favorite times of the year. You're thinking it's the holiday season. No, it is the season of list making. Oh, you got to love those lists and also you got to love the end of year list that come out before it's even December, because December, what happens in December, stays in December. I guess Doesn't matter if you have a big hit, something or other in December, nobody cares. The lists are already out too bad.

Anyway, as we record this, on Tuesday, the 28th of November, apple has deemed the year over and has released a bunch of their lists of the year, which I suppose we're not going to like. This is not a casey case and thing. We're not going to count them down, but we should at least mention them. Apple came out with their list of the top podcasts of 2023 and Apple podcasts. This is, of course, only measuring use in Apple podcasts, so it doesn't count Spotify or third party apps. It's not looking at podcast listens on Apple devices, it's just the Apple podcast app. A lot of familiar names on there. I will point out the top show, crime Junkie, for the second straight year, and the top new show, scamanda. These are both crime shows, crime podcasts. If you thought crime podcasts were over, they're not, they're not. And then a bunch of other stuff politics and news and news.

0:20:06 - Dan Moren
There's still crime, jason. There's still crime, like name dropping everywhere. Yeah, I tell you.

0:20:12 - Jason Snell
I mean it could be, but that is so. Apple as a way to promote, obviously, apple podcasts in general, which is an incredibly popular app. I mean Apple podcasts and Spotify probably cover I don't know 90-something percent of all podcasts being listened to, so it's good to see that. I don't know, they're still in business. Crime podcasts are still a big business. We're going to pivot to crime here at TWIT next year, so get ready for that. We can bring it out. It's a crime industry.

0:20:39 - Andy Ihnatko
We're talking about it. We can produce content.

0:20:41 - Dan Moren
Enough. Are we doing crime, are we?

0:20:45 - Jason Snell
Well.

0:20:45 - Dan Moren
I mean, it's a choice.

0:20:47 - Jason Snell
My understanding is, that's what Leo is meditating about right now is like do we commit crimes or do we just do podcasts about crimes?

0:20:53 - Dan Moren
I like pivot to crime as a you know, the sequel to pivot to video whenever it's like no, just do crime I mean we do bit of crime.

0:21:02 - Alex Lindsay
There are a lot of shows on TV also about crime. Law and order is done OK, so I think that you can see the draw.

0:21:14 - Dan Moren
Crime if there's one thing I learned from Sam Bakeman Fried this year crime pays. I only watched the first half of that story. Sorry, I don't know how it ends.

0:21:22 - Jason Snell
Yeah, spoilers for the SBF part two. But get ready for a ride, dan. When you find out what happened to that guy, it'll be fine, it's going to be fine.

0:21:31 - Dan Moren
It's bad year to be a tech CEO named Sam.

0:21:33 - Jason Snell
Just wait, there'll be a podcast about him and his crimes too, so get ready. I mean, I'm sure there are already 90 of them and they're all at the top of the charts at Apple's Top Podcast Chart.

0:21:44 - Alex Lindsay
I do find interesting that how long this American life has sat in the top 10. Like it is just, it's like every year, every year, for the last, I don't know 15 years, it's in the top 10. A pro tip, I mean it's.

0:21:57 - Jason Snell
The approach about list making is if you have a prominent best new podcast, partly that's because your best or your most podcasts are always the same. And so you have to have a new show, because it's the one way that you can have a list that's more interesting than the one that's always like yeah, this American life Dateline, nbc Smart List, it's a bunch of the usual suspects on that list.

0:22:21 - Alex Lindsay
But beyond all the other ones, I mean and it's someone who does podcasts, if you want to I mean they have a budget that you know our budgets pale in comparison. You know they get to, they have people working on things for months, so and there's a lot there. But I will say that it just feels like when I listen to this American life, I look at the title and I go this is going to be the first one. I don't like Like, I just like this is going to be boring.

It goes through my head every single time I look at it and then I listen to the whole thing. You know, like it's in the quality of the production is just as a person all of us make podcasts but as I listen to it, the use of, you know, recorded sound and how they put together the story, it's like a masterclass. If you kind of listen to the structure, it's still. I mean they the other ones I go, eh, maybe, maybe they're worth listening to, but like I open them up and I listen to them for about 15 minutes, I'm like I don't know why anybody listens to this and but this American life is definitely not one of them.

0:23:12 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's just, it's a matter of effort, which means in the podcast business it's a matter of scale, right? You need to have enough listeners to be able to afford to take that much time with every individual episode and have a staff and collect all that stuff.

0:23:24 - Alex Lindsay
And it is. It works so far. They had a radio show.

0:23:26 - Jason Snell
Yeah, right, well, that's, that's part of the business model, right? It's that it's radio and the podcast and you put those together and, having having done some sort of NPR style podcast episodes in the past, it is a wonderful medium and is a wonderful format and it is so much work and I think that the truth is that most podcasts can't afford that level of the amount of money spent per minute on something like that, but it is a great, great sound.

0:23:51 - Andy Ihnatko
It is. It is a lot like the pivot towards, like when, when news crews, local news, we were able to like take the van out to do live hookups for the most mundane of things, like where they would be live hook, all of a sudden there'd be live, live satellite hookup at 11pm in front of the courthouse where, like, a legal case was decided eight hours earlier. And what's interesting about, like the well-funded podcast is that this could be like eight sentences of script that's written, that's recorded anywhere, but they want the room tone of like the, the trucks passing by and like the wind coming by and saying, and the intro that goes gosh, it's like it's almost all weeds, anyway. Well, this location is where, in 1983, a coalition was formed, an evil coalition whose ramifications are only being heard right now. But it makes but I'm not complaining, it makes it more interesting to listen to it's great drama.

It's all about a theater of the air experience.

0:24:55 - Alex Lindsay
At your point. We had someone on office hours that was working on Wunderly podcasts and they're doing them, some of them in surround, like they're actually doing them in a surround format, and when I edit a podcast I'm like let's take some of the gaps out and let's do a little stuff and we'll tighten it up. Did he really need to say that? I think I can cut that out. There's a couple of little bits and pieces though Someone he was knocking on the mic or I need to get rid of some of those pops or whatever. That's how I edit my podcasts, and so there's not it's like three tracks of what I need to do if it's two people talking to each other. They opened up their version of that for one podcast and it was like 80 tracks of stuff and I just looked at all these little squares in pro tools of all the things. I was just like whoa, that's all that's like. I don't think that was so it is. When you have the budget, it's a lot of fun.

0:25:51 - Jason Snell
You know a Chihuahua and a great day and are the same animal. But, right, it's like podcasts or podcasts, but you know they're a panel podcast or podcasts. Not all podcasts are podcasts, but some of them are created. I just worry about the mic.

0:26:05 - Alex Lindsay
Like we mail the mics to people, we're like I need you to use the same one that Dan's using. You know we send the MV sevens out and and we're just like we need you to use this mic like, but I have a mic.

0:26:15 - Dan Moren
That mic is garbage.

0:26:16 - Alex Lindsay
Put this mic in. I get the CNN said that that was fine for a hit. It's not. They shouldn't have told you that and they embarrassed you on national television. Now let's, let's use a real mic.

0:26:26 - Andy Ihnatko
I think I think the brand name with that, oh yeah, mso stands for microphone shaped object. Get rid of it, use ours.

0:26:34 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it could be a great prop before we move on and talk about more lists, which we'll probably do after a break, where Leah will appear in it from the astral plane, I believe to tell us about our first sponsor. But before we do that, while we're talking about podcasts, I want to mention another story that we're following for you here live on that break Weekly. Wow, that sounded way more news newsy than it should. So Castro, which is a popular indie iOS podcast app, is having some serious database issues that have caused lots of problems for Castro users, and I know a lot of people who love Castro. It's a really nice, beautifully designed app. It's been around for a few years. There is a little more troubling news, though. One of the somebody who used to work on Castro, mohit Mamoria, posted on Twitter yesterday that he had talked to the Castro leadership and says that Castro is being shut down over the next two months. I have heard from other sources who've heard that it was basically mothballed and was going to be shut down at some point. I haven't been able to get anything direct from the people at Castro to confirm or deny this, but if this is true, it's really sad, because this was one of the favorite indie iOS podcast apps because it had a very clear, beautiful design and a very clear take with a kind of inbox metaphor for your new episodes that people really liked.

And you know, apple Podcast is the 100 pound gorilla, 1,000 pound gorilla. It's a big gorilla, is what I'm saying. And Spotify is obviously huge and cross platform. But these little indie apps I mean I use an indie app to listen to my podcast and I like it better than even the new features in Apple Podcasts. It can't match it. I use Overcast and I know a lot of people love Pocketcast. But so it's sad news and also I think the message is it's hard out here for indie podcast apps that were created at a time when nobody really cared about podcast listening Not really. Apple's early versions of its podcast app weren't very good, spotify didn't care, and so a lot of indie apps kind of made their name. But it feels more and more like Apple Podcasts and Spotify are the monsters in this field and it makes it really hard for a small development team to make it work. So I hope it's not easy.

0:28:56 - Alex Lindsay
Easy is hard. I mean it makes it hard for everybody else Like it's just like I. You know you can have a bunch of extra features, but are they enough to get you over?

0:29:05 - Jason Snell
the top Pass, the default right yeah.

0:29:06 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it's a little app it's hard to pass up.

0:29:11 - Jason Snell
Yeah, and Apple Podcasts used to be not great, right? I think it had the real to real tape, well, and it also has a lot of old days.

0:29:19 - Alex Lindsay
When you have the podcast. The podcast app itself is getting better and it's also delivering a lot of data back to people who are using Apple to distribute their podcasts Yep, so you're getting a lot more. You know everyone wants more data and it's not giving so much people data, but it's giving what are they listening to and where are they listening and how are they. You know, like that data is all coming back in a way that and I actually I was talking to someone about this over the break that I think that a lot of the data has actually been really damaging to podcasts in general, because there was this kind of happy like we don't know how many people are actually listening to the podcast. You know, we just know that. You know 80,000 people downloaded it, or 20,000 people downloaded it, and having that data and having or having a rough idea of what that data looked like, that allowed people to.

I mean, I think that we, you know, and because we were working on verticals, we had relatively good, you know, cpms, and I think that this drive for data, of trying to be precise, allowed the pencil pushers in the thing, because the thing is the reality is the result of being on a podcast and getting a live read, oftentimes is the ROI is there, like you, you know, you know if you, if you, if you look at them what we call you know, a lot of times we talk about multipliers like how much money did you put in and how much money did you get out, and oftentimes that multiplier on podcasts is really good. But then you have people who just can't get over the fact that they're that, now that they have the data, they're paying $50 CPM like they care about the CPM, like that matters, and they're not looking at just the ROI of the, you know, of the ad, of the ad itself, and I think that that's pushed a lot of pricing down and then also put a lot of pressure on a lot of podcasts.

0:30:51 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it was always the story that they used to use how effective the ads were in driving sales and then the numbers sort of eclipse that and the problem is that the numbers maybe on a show that's more effective the numbers don't look as good even though the effectiveness was there. But now they're measuring based on the standard. Yeah, it doesn't always make sense, but it's tough. And you're so right, alex, about the power of the default. We've talked about it here.

A lot Defaults, they just have to be good enough, and that original Apple podcast app wasn't good enough but it has, I think, continues to win over people who. It's just so easy. It syncs with everything that Apple does, including like Apple TV and Home Pods and things like that, and the features keep. They do keep getting better and they've integrated things like premium subscriptions in there, which are again limited to Apple. I don't do any of them because it shuts off all the other people or you have to build it twice. But it is super convenient if you're a mainstream podcast one of these podcasts that's on this list to be able to say a couple of taps in your podcast app and now you are paying for the premium version and you can do that with Apple podcasts.

0:31:59 - Alex Lindsay
What I find amazing is if you've I don't know if you built all the artwork for the Apple podcast I have yes.

0:32:04 - Jason Snell
So many templates, so many PSDs, so many so many, so many comp.

0:32:09 - Alex Lindsay
I was like I would have never built a logo this way if I had known I was going to have to build all these templates. So like it was a process, yeah, it's interesting.

0:32:18 - Dan Moren
I mean these had the default and I agree that's. I am an Apple podcast user and have been for a long time. I've used other apps, I've used Overcast, I've used Castro at various points I tend to be a fairly liked podcast listener and for that podcast is pretty good because it's just there and like, gets out of your way, you still do the thing and everything's there and it works fine.

And the fact that it's integrated with the ecosystem and it's like I can listen to stuff on my home pod. I can listen to stuff in the kitchen or in the car or whatever. There's a lot going for it there and it's. It is hard to overcome that and if you're somebody who is not a podcast you know, power user or whatever like it is definitely fine for most people. Yeah, it's it's.

0:32:58 - Andy Ihnatko
There's a reason why the user interface is so simple. That doesn't have any. It doesn't have a patch on all the features of podcast, features I really, really use and need for discovery, because I like I try not to get stuck in the same like 10 popular podcasts that everyone else listens to, as much as great as they are. It's like I know I try not to get stuck in that sort of thing, but the thing is we, we often forget that people are not looking for, and most consumers aren't looking for, an adventure they're not looking for. Oh my goodness, this podcast app is. That came pre-installed on the phone, is good, but I wonder what kind of wonderland of extremely more full featured and different experiences are out there. It's like no, this is the, this is the podcast feature of the iPhone. It works fine and they could last 10 years without even scratching the surface of what they think is the limitations of what they want for podcast app. So I mean the.

It's the idea of default.

That even kind of extends to what we were talking about earlier about, about the popularity of this American life.

There's, to an extent, there are like 10, maybe a dozen podcasts that are sort of the default podcasts where, when, when a podcast app tries to get you started with with things by one measure or another, it's going to start you off with the most popular and broadest appeal shows that already have an immense audience and immense amount of listeners, and there are only so many hours in the day when you can listen to podcasts, even the ones that you actually enjoy. I, I, it's. It's. My inbox on pocketcast is just crammed full of shows that I can't wait to actually listen to. But I'm not. I don't walk that much, I don't do that much house cleaning, and so that's the. That's the problem of the idea that, okay, everyone's going to be doing this American life, everyone's going to be listening to fresh air, everyone's going to be listening to the office ladies podcast and two others, and where is the opportunity for that 5,000 listener show that is amazingly perfect for that listener and what is the podcast app doing to help that person find that content?

0:34:50 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and and I think that the the real, yeah, the challenge also is that audio is becoming keeps on getting bigger, you know, and the fact that you know and so that there's. I don't think I, when I started listening to podcasts I didn't. I mean, I've been listening to audio books since the late, since they were on tape, you know, like so that you know they've been listening for a long time, you know since the late 80s. But but it definitely got a lot easier when I didn't have to go somewhere audible. I guess I pay audible some money that goes out of my account and I get more, more credits keep showing up, so I just keep on buying books. So I've got a hundred books that I haven't gotten to. That I'm just like, oh yeah, that will be good. And and then I have the voice or news over audio, noah, which is just like all these magazines that are available that I can listen to. And then you have Apple. You can see Apple like slowly adding audio to all the magazines that are in the Apple news, and so I think that there's also to go back to what Andy's talking about.

We're just competing for time, like at some point. I just don't have, I don't, there's only it turns out there really is only so many hours in the day, and especially now that a lot of people are working from home, I think it gets more challenging because, like, that used to be a dead time. Travel time, yeah, travel time. And now you know like I'm sometimes lucky to get to the pool or get to the garage. You know like I don't, you know, I don't get out, I don't get out of the house sometimes, and so that's a you know it's. I think that there's just not the same timeframe that there used to be.

0:36:09 - Jason Snell
I love people with extreme commutes. Keep on driving, keep on riding that train, do it Back to work. We love it, we love it, we're podcasting.

0:36:16 - Andy Ihnatko
When's the last time you visited your mom an hour and 45 minutes away?

0:36:19 - Jason Snell
Yeah, exactly, I'm sure she'd love to see you All right. Well, these are deep philosophical thoughts, and that's good, because Leo is also thinking deep philosophical thoughts, but before he will have to do that, he also stopped by and has a message for you, so we'll take a break right now.

0:36:35 - Leo Laporte
Jason, nice to see you. No, I'm not here, you're just imagining this. I popped in to tell you about Miro, our show today, brought to you by Miro, because we use Miro and I'm kind of up on what Miro does. Hard to describe. For me, it's an online workspace for innovation, but but, but I don't know. Does that say what it means, what it does and how it can help you? It depends on what you're doing. We use it to plan shows, but it can be so many different things.

There's one incredible visual place that brings all your innovative work together and it's great for teams because it doesn't matter if you're in the office, if you're at home, if you're in Timbuktu, it's all in the same place, even if you're in different time zones. Miro's packed with the right things to be your dream products home base. If you're doing product development, we're talking six whole capability bundles, from product development workflows to content visualization, all powered by Miro AI, which means you're generating new ideas or summarizing complex information pretty much instantaneously. Miro can work for any team, but product development teams really get the full experience. Miro offers teams the richest feature set of any visual workspace, with specific tools to help with strategy or process mapping, facilitation tools to run effective design or agile sprints. You get the picture.

Miro connects super seamlessly to platforms you're already using. You use it with Zapier and Google Docs. You can use it with Jira and Confluence Asana. You can centralize all sorts, by the way, all sorts of integration, so you can centralize work in a way that makes sense for your team. It's all there. They don't need to go anywhere else. They don't need to open any other windows, which means the context never shifts. You've always got everything you need in one place. There is one source of truth. You're all on the same page. You can update projects or statuses using any of the tools inside Miro. You don't have to leave to go to Confluence. It's in there.

It also ends up being a massive time saver. Miro users say they save up to 80 hours a year that's like two weeks of vacation a year by streamlining conversations, cutting down on meetings and I know we all want to do that and seeing all that most up-to-date information in one place. That's great for feedback too. Of course, they've got commenting, but Miro just released a board video recording feature. They call it TalkTrack. To save even more time Instead of having yet another meeting, pre-record your thoughts.

Leave it on the board. Everybody gets an input, right? You don't have to schedule a millionth meeting of the week. Look, I can go on and on. The best way to find out about Miro is to try it for yourself. Here's the good news your first three boards are free. Yeah, start working better. Mirocom slash podcast. M-i-r-ocom slash podcast. It's a really cool product. We're very excited to be working with Miro. We use them ourselves and they're going to be with us all through 2024, so we're very happy about that as well. Miro, you got to try it. Mirocom slash podcast. Now let's get back to MacBreak Weekly. Jason.

0:39:49 - Jason Snell
Thank you, leo. I saw a video just saw me beam in where Leo just was. That's creepy, weird. Speaking of lists, we were talking about lists, best of the year lists right Before we got all philosophical about podcasts, we were talking about lists. There are more Apple lists to talk about.

Apple also unveiled the top books of 2023, as well as a new year in review experience. So, if you're again like with Apple podcasts, we're talking about the power of the default here. Right, apple books. You might use Kindle, you might use Kobo, you might use a separate e-reader I don't know but you might just read on your phone and your iPad using Apple books, and Apple has come out with a list of what people are reading in its book app. So, again, no real shocker here Prince Harry, top nonfiction book of the year. They've got some audio books in there too, because that's Apple's way of reminding you that, yes, there are audio books and Apple books as well.

And I think what's interesting also is that they have added this new year in review that appears inside the book app. That will do things like tell you what the books are that you read this year. Even if you didn't log it yourself, it knows because it's the app you use to read those books and a series of reader types. What kind of reader are you? You don't even have to take a quiz, you just read the books and it comes up with it saying oh, you're the seeker, you're the contemporary, you're the wanderer, all of these things. So write the app in the year in review.

0:41:29 - Andy Ihnatko
Don't judge me device I spent $1,200 for. That's very uncut, that's very not nice, that's not grateful.

0:41:35 - Jason Snell
It's a cold reading, it's not, it's a warm reading. It knows everything about you.

0:41:38 - Andy Ihnatko
You have a very short attention span and you like sensationalistic things. You like being lectured to and made afraid of things that you actually shouldn't be afraid about, by people that are trying to manipulate you into doing things that you can't even understand. You are a pawn in a much larger game that you don't even understand.

0:41:54 - Jason Snell
I imagine they're using it to make some recommendations and sell more books. Dan Moran, you are an author, you are a novelist. You are inside the book publishing machine or I don't know next to the book publishing machine watching it grind away. You're part of the problem, Dan Moran, or are you part?

0:42:14 - Dan Moren
of the solution. There is a problem. I guess I'm part of it in some way. I'm reliably informed that I just missed out on hitting top fiction books with 2.3. You only go to number five there. Number six, I was just so close. That's All Souls Lost by.

0:42:29 - Jason Snell
Dan Moran.

0:42:31 - Dan Moren
I'm fascinated by this. I went to look and try to find my reader type because I was curious and it told me you haven't finished any books in Apple Hound sand buddy. That was not the response that I was looking for. The thing I found the most interesting about this was somebody else mentioning online that there is a way that you can mark books that you've read elsewhere. If you've read like hard copies or something they want you to log, there is a way to log that in Apple books and I thought that's interesting.

0:43:02 - Alex Lindsay
This is so much work. Exactly it is.

0:43:04 - Dan Moren
That's just the point I started thinking to myself could I like read a shortcut or something? Or I can like, when I finish a book, I hit a button and it like tells the Apple books. I've read this. I don't know.

0:43:14 - Alex Lindsay
I can't even be reliably expected to do it, to do list Like, let alone like having to like log the book that I just listened to.

0:43:21 - Andy Ihnatko
I can't be expected to take the book out of my bed after I finish reading it. Now I've got to, like I've got to file paperwork to get the receipt.

0:43:28 - Dan Moren
You lie on a book. Bed Sandy, that must be nice.

0:43:31 - Alex Lindsay
Maybe somebody will like to track themselves. It's just not me. I still, every time I, every time any story comes up with Apple books, I just feel like we're at a lost opportunity Like it is.

0:43:41 - Dan Moren
I think that's the point is that, like it is, you know, seeing this from the inside and seeing the stranglehold Amazon has on this industry, it is a real shame that Apple, a company as large as it is, a company as invested in media as it is, has not been able to really provide a worthy challenger.

0:43:58 - Alex Lindsay
Well, but the challenger is not not competing with Amazon I mean, people have heard me say this a thousand times but not competing with Amazon on just on just words. Like the idea is that you could build a thing that we call a book. That is much more interactive, and they started to kind of go down that path. But the idea is to build something that is much more interesting than than just the text and listening to it. You know, and you know, text is a highly, highly efficient compression and you know format, but it takes a lot to encode and decode it.

Well, and the issue is that there's, you know, we have, pages that we can put videos into and we can do a lot of other things and Apple kind of gets that kind of working and all these other things, but being able to publish it out to a book, you know when, when and it wasn't through books, but when element came out and I was like this is the future of books, like for science books and so on and so forth, like DK could be owning this, this market and then. But that was written as an app because they couldn't do it in books. They couldn't do it in books.

0:44:54 - Dan Moren
And I'm just like. I disagree with that. Such a huge chunk of the market is still just text right and like. That's not. You're really not going to need that that for every experience in text, and I think that's one place where competitors like Amazon even honestly, koba I use a Koba reader and Jason has a Koba reader like or they're doing the job better because the experience of even if I just want to read text, the experience is better.

I don't want to read stuff on my phone. I don't want to read stuff on my iPad, even because it's really big and it's heavy and if I hit myself in the head with it while I'm lying in bed it'll hurt. So for me, you know, I think this is the biggest challenge is Apple is wants to shoehorn the Apple books into its existing ecosystem, and the problem is ultimately, yes, you might think I've got my phone everywhere I go, or I use my iPad all the time and it's a perfect place to read book, but then you're dealing with all the competition of the other stuff that's on your smart device. Do I want to read this book then, really, and it's kind of. Maybe it's a little boring, or do I want to go to Twitter where I can get a dopamine hit every 30 seconds. You know that's. That's a big challenge for Apple. On their devices is this idea of multitasking, and it's so easy to not read, frankly the biggest problem is just DRM, because I this.

0:46:03 - Andy Ihnatko
There are very few areas in which I actively dissuade people from certain choice, and one of them is why on earth would you buy a book from the Apple bookstore when you are absolutely 100% locked into devices with an Apple logo on it? Where I don't, I trust me. I think that Amazon and the Kindle system is their huge bunch of bastards. I refer you back to the conversation we had last week about what they did, what they're doing. The com cut to Comixology.

But at the very least, if I spend $23 on a book on the Kindle store, I can read on my iPhone. I can read on my iPad, I can read on my Android phone. I can buy a $75 e ink reader to read it on. I can buy $300 e ink reader to read it on. I have all of these. It's as close to a non DRM experience as you as you're probably going to get, whereas with Apple it's like they're. It's not possible for them to do like an $80 iBooks iBooks reader for for all kinds of sensible reasons. But this is the reason why, God, if I'm going to have to spend real money on a book and I'm going to be locked into one platform. It'd better be the most ecumenical platform with the most choices available to me anywhere, and I just don't see how the iBook store isn't any way a viable even a viable choice.

0:47:20 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and I'm and I'm, I don't have any of those issues. I mean, I don't care what other platforms it might be on, and I still only use, kind of the Kindle reader, because I had early problems with the books, where I bought some books on Apple and then I couldn't figure out how to get them from one one Apple device to another Apple device. And that happened I don't know 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and I was like, okay, I'm done, like I know, like I. Just I don't want to play this in a place. Now. The number one thing that I use I that I use iBooks for, is actually or use books for, is that I download every manual that I possibly yes, so like I have, you know, on all my devices. I have every manual for every piece of hardware that I, or every every piece of software that I have, so that I can get to it, so that so as a PDF holder, it's turned up, you know, like, so you know, but but as a as a platform, again, they just have to. I'm not saying that Apple could do, could outdo Amazon in that area, but I do think that Apple has the advantage of high, the opportunity to do highly interactive publishing and that's a niche that they could own, as opposed to competing with Amazon. You know, fighting Amazon on the same playing field, they're that that that chip is gone past. Like it's gone. There's no. Like you're not gonna get people to move away from that Once you have 100 or 200 books in the Kindle. You know, in audible you're not gonna go anywhere, like you know. Like you know, or kindle or whatever. So Apple's kind of given that up, but with USDZ, with video, with those things and making those tools more effective, tying the tools into it. You know, like I've, there are so many like and again we have to remember that.

You know when you used to walk into a bookstore, a lot of books are obviously sold as fiction, but that's 10% of a bookstore. You know everything else is nonfiction. Like. Not even everything else is what people are passionate about, for the there's a one small section of a bookstore that's fiction and everything else is how to cook and how to and how to build something and how to, you know, in philosophy and all kinds of other things. But the the main thing is is in those areas.

I mean, I'd love to have cookbooks that have videos in them, because I can't understand what they want me to do here. I don't understand and, and you know, being able to insert those things I think was a real opportunity, is a real opportunity and it would take a company the size of Apple to build and it has all the tools, whether it's motion and keynote and pages and final cut. It has all the tools that could feed all that content into the, you know, into that pipeline and a way that nobody else in the world could do. And I'm not saying that that's going to replace what people are doing with regular books. I'm just saying that's a new format. Like that's something that could grow into something that's probably bigger than the, than the they can keep running doing the little print business that they're doing. But I don't think that that's very good.

0:50:01 - Dan Moren
I don't think, though I mean because then you're you've got a whole different market. You're competing with that point, because I think you know cookbooks with videos in them, sure, like there's an interesting idea there. But how many people go to YouTube to look up stuff?

0:50:09 - Alex Lindsay
right, exactly, but the problem is that a whole different set of things.

But here's the issue is that you watch. You know cooking with Babish or whatever you want to do on YouTube. Now you have to. Now you have to figure out how to hit, pause and stop and go and everything else. And so the thing is is having something, and the issue is is there's so many? You know those types of things would be much better.

Taking a YouTube video, cutting it up where it had, you know, this is how you do that step, and here's the actual text version of it is is way more effective in a way to actually watch something and do it.

You could you watch the video and then you can immediately, you know, do those pieces like, for instance, if you look at Heston, you know Heston makes that little pan that has a Bluetooth to your phone. Part of that I have the pot and the pan and the. You know the thing, and part of what makes it really good when I want to experiment with a new meal is the pan. The pan is really nice, but what really is the secret is the train, is the video, so that what they do is they have every step, says this is what you got to do, and it shows a video of that step and then you go to the next one. It shows a video of that step and if you already know it, you don't have to hit play Like oh, I know how to, I know how to dice onions. I don't need to do that, but if I don't, I hit the button and I get to sit there and want and figure out how to do that properly.

0:51:25 - Dan Moren
I think your other challenge in that department is is publishers, who are going to have to want to invest in this to. This is a place where Apple would need to, I think, offer some degree of subsidization or handling, because a lot of the publishers it.

0:51:37 - Alex Lindsay
You have YouTubers that know how to do this, but that's a huge chunk of the market.

0:51:42 - Dan Moren
I mean the point is still dominating history, so, but the thing is that I'm setting them is like, or like you know, I'm saying the Alpacart there is, it's difficult, it's hard, they're very hard. It is hard, yes, you can push that hard, but it's a small niche, like you said, and I think Apple doesn't necessarily see enough profit there.

0:51:55 - Alex Lindsay
I don't. I think that the thing is is that it's a small niche right now, but the thing is, is that, partially because the tools are difficult to all, you know it, apple is the only company that owns all the tools, tying the tools together to make it easier to publish these, would you know, and being able to have an easy and easy storefront to put this on. You know, I think that there's a lot of people that might be, you know, that might be interested in that, you know.

0:52:17 - Andy Ihnatko
it's just that it's the problem. The problem is that it's kind of like remember, remember, when, like, vinyl records were being clobbered by CDs, and so suddenly you see record players that play records but they kind of try to be as CD like as possible where, hey, we will find, we will be. You know, you like that track? Next button, we will let you seek out the next track on the LP and hey, we'll have some sort of a noise reduction on this too. And hey, we'll have slot load, we'll have like front loading, so you don't have to like hold it by a by your fingertips. It's the idea of here is a really old technology, but hey, let's try to make it viable by making it look like the thing that people are saying that they actually want, when the rate, when the right answer was. This is kind of done in the form that, but what I'm getting is that I think that this is not how cookbooks work now.

It's like the idea of let's have a cookbook with videos inserted into it. That's a very let's make a. Let's make a let's make a vertical record player. People go to you, people go to binging with Babish to see watch for six minutes him make them back, roni and cheese. Then they buy it. Then they go to the kitchen that has his cookbook in it that gives the actual steps by step recipes. They don't necessarily have to go back to sections of the video to go see it, but they've seen it once and now they're seeing it again.

Meanwhile, youtube is making more advanced. They do some incredible stuff to make their this informative content more interesting. Where they now we will automatically find the high points of in a 20 minute video like okay, we're going to skip over the part where she talks about the summer she spent in Provence during her skip year, the relationship that she had, the relationship that she was moved. Let's get right to the mac and cheese. And then, when you need to figure out oh, wait, a minute, do I need to do? I do I need eggs in this? And how do I? How do I temper an egg? It will cut to. Oh, here's the part where she talks about tempering eggs. This is, this is the next generation of stuff, I think. I think the your idea of a digital cookbook is it'd be very, very interesting. But other than one Korean, one important creator who decides that they're going to make this part of their brand, I just don't see it.

0:54:12 - Jason Snell
Also let's let's talk about the fact that what Alex is describing sounds great, but I've already kind of tried this.

0:54:17 - Alex Lindsay
They tried this and, yeah, they gave it to Pearson and that was, that was the best idea ever.

0:54:22 - Jason Snell
But here's bottom line, alex they tried this with iBooks author and then they tried it with pages, and I think the failure of this is is not, they thought it would be easy, and you're right, they also didn't. They made it. So people ended up having to build apps, because Apple decided that the right way to do this was apps and don't get me started about newsstand, which is where they kicked all of the newspaper and magazine publishers rather than giving them a simple news format inside of books. But they, they tried to, but the fact is, apple doesn't care. Apple doesn't care about this market. They have all those tools, but they didn't care.

I the fact that the Books app exists at all is, I would say, mostly inertia, because it was part of an initiative that Apple just didn't care about and they didn't care about building tools for it, and I think, in the end, what it comes down to is who does care about this enough? And book publishers don't care about it enough to invest in it? And the truth is, the people who do care about it are your YouTubers, and they're your people with recipe blogs that spend 5,000 words telling you a story you don't care about before you get to the recipe because the SEO.

It's a nice dream but like Apple's not gonna do it because they literally, even though they have all the tools, they don't care. And every now and then Apple does get that point where they're like oh yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna change the world with this, and then they realize it's complicated, it's not their core competency and they kind of abandon it. And books already went through that.

0:55:50 - Alex Lindsay
I Know and I agree with you when I say it's a lost opportunity. This was an opportunity in 2010, not a twin opportunity. Right now I just look at it like, oh, that was because the. The issue is like the interface when you make things easier to do or harder to do, it changes the way people interact. So when we say this doesn't exist, it's because the tool to make it doesn't exist. And the thing is is that is that the.

When you look at, for instance, I've been I was talking some friends about how I watch NFL football now has completely changed like. I watched games completely different this year than I've ever watched before and I was Watching my behavior, which is that I start all the games 20 minutes late. I skip not only the ads but any slow play, like any play that I don't think there's gonna be an interesting replay. I just hit 15 seconds ahead, 15 seconds ahead and I just sit there and I just I just tap through the game. When I get caught up, I could do something else for a while, because then I can. I can calm down, because every stealer game is like spread by three points, right, and so so I go, I'm gonna go do some other stuff and I come back and I'm behind again and then I go, I run through it. That is not a behavior I used to have, like you know, like that was, and the interface changed my behavior. The fact that I could do that so Seamlessly change the way that I watched that. I watched games, you know, and and it's.

And I think that, in the same sense, you know, I still get people that walk up and you know, I made these training things on how to do 3d 20 years ago and they're like when are you gonna do more of those? Those are the best training ever. And I'm like you have no idea how much blood and sweat took to make those training, because it was. We made them in FileMaker, like you know, like we were, like you know, I mean, they were, they were.

Every mouse click was animated in After Effects, like, like, like it was, like it was, it was this most painful and it was. Yeah, it was good, but it was, but it did exactly of these things that we're talking about, which is that I'm gonna tell, explain it to you. I'm gonna show you how to do it only if you need it. I'm gonna explain to you why you're doing it, and it was, but it was an incredible amount of work. But again, what I look at is, if you put a template Into pages that did what my training did back then I'd make them all the time. Well, you, just you know like it would be. It'd be really easy for me to do them.

0:57:53 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it just feels like the world has moved on, although I will say that the we were starting this conversation by talking about Apple's list. The books and Apple's lists are just, you know, again, not just words, dan, not just words. Words are important, but that's what they are, they are. They are your chosen medium, which is it's just a lot of words, and I'm a non meat, non-word person, yeah, yeah, so, so so, turning, turning back to words for a minute, because Alex sort of took us on a Multimedia journey.

It's his thing, you have time it's, it's.

Alex's thing, but I do want to talk about the words part of this too, because Andy mentioned Kobo and Kindle and all of that, and I will mention Regarding DRM, regarding copy protection. I'm not gonna tell you where to find it, but I will tell you that there's a great app called caliber that you can download that is free, that is an ebook management system, and that there is a plug-in for caliber that you will have to find. That does a very good job of removing Kindle and Kobo DRM so that you again not so you can pirate books. Don't pirate books. Dan has to eat but, yes, what you can do is take your child, a beautiful, beautiful infant. I'll do bastards, but but it does. Let you take that Kindle book you bought and use it on a Kobo reader instead, because you prefer the Kobo reader, or vice versa, I imagine the the, the Apple books thing in general is the fact that they even added this like.

0:59:12 - Dan Moren
To me that was a sort of okay, all right, we're interested in Apple books again. Apple's attention, and it has come around once more as the planet has rotated and we're talking about books again. I find it a little fascinating. Again, I speak from my somewhat meager experience here as well, but what's interesting to me about the sort of like the list here is that I have a heavy suspicion, based on my personal experience, that the amount of units you have to move to get on to a top book Listen, apple books is considerably lower than pretty much everywhere else.

I can say this because I've made it on Apple books and so it's kind of intriguing to see because I imagine some of these a are doing very good business. I'm curious as to why like what about? These particular titles have seized on people specifically who use Apple devices. To me that is a fascinating question. But it is interesting to see Apple talking about like hey, we're going to encourage more people to engage in some way with books, which suggests to me maybe they have some renewed interest in this some way.

And to our point earlier about discussing taking on Amazon and all the various reasons why Apple is or is not successful about that, they are one of the few companies with the weight and the money to do it. If they felt like, hey, we can actually take a chance. And they've been gun shy because they got sued Justice over this, and so you know that's unfortunate because that only solidified Amazon's wringlehold of this market and the fact that Apple has, I think, has kind of seeded it over the last decade because, well, we got into trouble and we got kind of got smacked down, and so it's tricky because you know now they're even further down in the trenches than they were 10 years ago and getting out of there is gonna be real tough because Amazon is a 2,000 pound gorilla.

1:00:54 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and to their credit. Like, how do we remember how flat-footed we were when the first Kindle reader came out? Like the idea, the idea that the idea that this is sometimes. This is one of those areas in which sometimes, when a Company is a behemoth and arguably a monopoly, sometimes it works out well for people because they have this sort of firepower to say that we really want to start selling digital books. But there are. We have phones. At best people have little tiny phones with bad screens, that whose batteries are gonna last maybe three hours reading Books. We need to develop an entire.

1:01:31 - Dan Moren
We need we need to worry advice.

1:01:33 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean, I think I try now I'm trying to remember whether the Sony ebook reader came before it or not, but they but the idea that this is a, this is a, this is not electronics company, this was a digital store company that they said we're gonna have to develop our own platform Just so that we will be able to sell this product we want to sell, which was something that we should kind of like acknowledge that. Okay, that was a big, that was a big swing, and I hate monopolies. I hate the fact that, I Hate the fact that it is legally not possible to acquire this, this book, without DRM or convert it to without DRM.

1:02:07 - Dan Moren
But okay, fair play to Amazon the DRM thing is interesting too, because there are cases where in Amazon you know you can publishers can request their books be published DRM free on Amazon. They exist, yes, like, and in fact I believe my book is DRM free on Amazon because it's published. This most recent was published by my agency. I would kind of be interested see Apple do that. That is one way for Apple to potentially gain some ground there, because their stuff is just EPUBs. It's just EPUBs. You could read it on a Kindle, you could read it on a Kobo reader. It'd be fine.

And in fact there is some interesting argument there that if Apple made themselves a more attractive Storefront and then had you the ability to read their Apple books on other Devices, if I could buy a book from Apple books and put it on my Kobo or put it on my Kindle, I'm more interested in buying stuff from Apple books at that point. And and then truth that that opens up Apple in some ways to these charges of being monopolistic or having plastic platform lock-in, which is stuff we've seen them trying. You know, trying because it's in their own self-interest to push back against in other places, like with the recent RCS adoption, usbc adoption, all that stuff. This is one place where it's like, hey, we can't really lose anything from this, so we might as well give it a shot.

1:03:17 - Jason Snell
Well, we have Only covered two of the lists so far. I love it. It's Mac break weekly. I come in the door thinking what are we gonna talk about? And an hour passes and we I still am not off of my first. I made my own list. It's a list of lists anyway. We'll complete the lists in a minute, but first Leo has an important message from you from the astral plane our show today, brought to you by my Leo.

1:03:45 - Leo Laporte
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1:08:17 - Jason Snell
It's less Leo, my Leo, my Leo, is that Leo? I always think that, but I never say it.

1:08:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Hey, we got more list, my Leo which Leo, who's Leo?

1:08:29 - Jason Snell
Don't captain, my captain who moved my Leo? Okay, so list number three and list the last, apple music replay 2023, also dropped as we record this Tuesday, the 28th of November. This is a little different. This is a feature that you can actually access year-round that shows you sort of what you have been playing in Apple music again, just in Apple music in their ecosystem, over the last year top artists, top radio stations, top albums, top playlist, top songs all of those things are in there and they there's some extra stuff that they've added today. There are there's sort of Instagram stories like thing that plays different videos and with with music in the background and all of that. But and so it's fine and they do this every year it is competing with those.

The Spotify unwrapped feature, which is very important that Spotify does. Apple's trying to kind of catch up to what Spotify does. What I find most interesting about this feature is that I can tell you where you can find it. Can I tell you in the music app? The answer is no, it's Apple Music. It's not in the music app. You have to go to replaymusicapplecom in order to see it, because after many, many years of doing this feature. It's in a web browser. That's the only place you can get it. What?

1:09:50 - Dan Moren
What Apple noted. Noted web developer. This is a sweet solution, jason. Oh, see, everything in the web app. Yeah, it's weird that the the book thing is in the books app, right, and this is in the web app and it's like, oh, if we built it today instead of 10 years ago, maybe we would have made this in the music app.

1:10:10 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay, Are they excited about, just like they found a guy who still remembers how to use web objects from next step and they say oh, here's something to give this guy to do. He's only retiring in eight months.

1:10:21 - Dan Moren
Every time they update it they have to shut down the entire server. It's no good.

1:10:25 - Jason Snell
I just, yeah, I don't understand. I mean sure there's a an amazing story of horrible technical debt going on here where we can't build it there. There's something in the app. We can't do it, but we could do it on the web. And somebody said yes, and now it's years later and they're like yeah, but we've got it on the web, so do we need to put it in the app? And then somebody now this year is like books, did it? Why, why, why didn't?

1:10:46 - Dan Moren
we do it, books did it the real coup. The real coup will be when Apple Classical has its own replay thing in the home and classical app that's a lab.

1:10:55 - Jason Snell
Maybe they can just say hey, go to the classical app to see what music you played. In Apple music it's over there, Even even if it's just Taylor Swift. But but in the classical app you can. You can see the classical artist.

1:11:07 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know about Apple TV Plus. I'm for free, free preview, just to check out. Then you can cancel it in seven days.

1:11:14 - Jason Snell
You see, right, that's, that's where you'll find it.

1:11:16 - Andy Ihnatko
Energy.

1:11:17 - Jason Snell
Maybe they can put it in books, services, services, services. Sure.

1:11:20 - Andy Ihnatko
It's just right in there.

1:11:21 - Jason Snell
Books and music, they go together. I, my list is always super boring because I listen to the same like five artists at any given time, and so it's always the same top artists. It's it's there and their latest album, and it's not that exciting, although it does do it. There's one stat that I really liked, which is I listened to a playlist of a music by Bob Moulds, the alternative music grandfather. When I write, it's one of like two or three playlists that are used to focus when I'm writing, and the stat that I did like is Apple Music told me I am one of the hundred most active users listening to that artist. Like I'm in the top 100 players of Bob Moulds solo work, which is kind of fun. Only Apple knows that, so it makes me feel a little special. Why am I not in the top 10, though I'm really I need to work harder right more next year.

The one that fascinated me, though, and because every now and then, you see something you're like that doesn't seem like. The play counts don't always seem right, the minutes don't always seem right. Sometimes I think Apple loses some telemetry or they're not paying attention in certain circumstances and things don't sync right. The one that got me this year, that made me lean forward and go. I don't think this is right is I was told that my number one radio station for the year was something called Dog Music, which I listened to for 841 minutes. As far as I can tell, this is music for, not about or by four dogs, and I have no idea how. What happened here? We did get a dog. We did worry about our separation anxiety. I think I did play the dog music station one time. Did I leave it on for 14 days straight, or whatever? I don't think so.

1:13:05 - Andy Ihnatko
But did the dog figure out how to use your smart speaker? Maybe that was it.

1:13:08 - Jason Snell
Maybe if you were a music. Yeah, maybe. Maybe the home pod was.

1:13:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Or versions the remastered version, not the crappy one from 1968.

1:13:18 - Jason Snell
OK.

1:13:18 - Andy Ihnatko
I heard dog noises.

1:13:19 - Jason Snell
I'm now playing dog music. That's it, yeah.

1:13:22 - Dan Moren
Similarly, I can see why number two on my list of most played songs is Africa by Toto, because it is a song that my son enjoys listening to, and we'll quiet him down. So I definitely well, I mean similarly, my fourth top artist is they might be giants for kids. Yes, so that is definitely definitely messing with my stats this year, but I'm glad to report that my number one top artist remains John Williams. So congratulations, Johnny. You're over 90, but you're still racking it up for me.

1:13:52 - Andy Ihnatko
On brand for Dan let me tell you, do you think that they have for all of the, for so many different parts of the company and part of different streaming companies? There has to be like an executive who was hired because he or she is a master at tact. Like so, when it comes up with these recommendations of hey, here's the sort of listener you are. It's like OK, the numbers say that they might have been in DC on January 6th. We're going to spin that in a positive direction. It's not insurrectionist rock, it's for people who are adventurous, people who are independent. And so I'm getting my Spotify playlist. I'm getting, now that Spotify made a hit out of it, everybody's doing playlist and I can kind of see where they want to say you really know what you like and that's what's great about you. You know what you like, you're in your lane and that's what's great about you. Not that you know. There was music after 1991. And one was made by people who were not former members of Nirvana, like yeah, you're right, good point.

1:14:55 - Alex Lindsay
Mine is very confusing, like I, and the funny thing is I don't remember listening to Billy Joel the most. I just don't like I don't remember it, but it's like Billy Joel, the Eagles, and then it's like Peter Gabriel told the Wetsprocket and then somehow number five is Dua Lipa. I was like I don't remember listening to Dua Lipa that much, but evidently there is weird stuff in there too.

1:15:12 - Dan Moren
I agree. Like I'm looking at my top album list and it tells me number 12 way down there Fine, I listened to the soundtrack to season two of foundation from Apple TV plus. Like, yes, I definitely did listen to that soundtrack I just discovered it a couple of weeks ago when I finished it but also tells me I played it 39 times. If I only found this album within the last couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure I have not listened to it 39 times.

1:15:33 - Andy Ihnatko
Is that gas lining us? Is Spotify gas lining us? To like, are they being paid to say oh, no, no, no. You love the new Taylor, the new Taylor Hicks album you love it.

1:15:43 - Jason Snell
I think I do. I think that their telemetry is weird.

1:15:47 - Leo Laporte
And so I was.

1:15:48 - Jason Snell
I was told that I have listened to 1989 Taylor's version by Taylor Swift 39 plays. Now, okay, I love that album and I have been listening to the new version of it and that's great. Have I listened to it 39 times? Well, no, 39 plays. What does that mean? And the fact is, before it came out, there were like a couple of teaser tracks that were in there and it was empty and you could press play on that. I think it's like if you start, if you have the album selected and you click on it it considers an album.

1:16:15 - Dan Moren
Play listening to an album and then you stop to play a song in because you're like, oh, that's the wrong thing. Yeah, I think there. I think it's counting stuff, that it's wired up to different kinds of UI.

1:16:24 - Jason Snell
And sending those back.

1:16:26 - Alex Lindsay
Well, some seem so high, it's like yeah, some seem low. You're right, like I was like. I was like again I have like Dooli, but 23 plays. I remember listening to Dooli, but at all like, like. I just like somewhere in there it might have been like in road trips or something and then, like the search from NF says 12 plays. I'm like I definitely listen to that way more.

1:16:42 - Dan Moren
Well, I mean, it's like I said, like I was listening to Africa with my kid like 21 plays. I've definitely listened to that song more than 21 times with him this year Exactly.

1:16:50 - Alex Lindsay
Like I won't buy AJR. That's like my theme song, so like I've definitely listened to that one 12 times, I can listen to that one 12 times in a row, like so. So the thing is like the fact that it only shows 12 times over a year, I was like I don't know.

1:17:02 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's not. It's not right. Yeah and well, and I've got my. So album came out late last year being funny in a foreign language by the 1975, which is sort of my favorite current band. They have in my top songs. It's four album tracks from that album. But it says I played the album 180 times, but I've only listened to the track I've listened to the most only 62 times. It can't be right. It doesn't make sense. So I don't know what they're doing. It's fun. Look, I'm a life logger. I like saying like how much did I sleep last night and what's you know? And how many times has it rained in the last year in my backyard and I have a weather station. All those things are true and so the stats are. They're fun, but I never look at one of these and think it seems accurate.

1:17:47 - Alex Lindsay
Well, here's the here's. The problem is it says OK, I won't, let's go back to I won't because I'm a little fixated on the fact that I know that I've listened to it way more. 12 plays it's a four, it's like a four minute song, so that's like 48 minutes. But it says that I've listened, that it says, oh, it says the whole playlist and it might it might so, but it's. But the thing is is it's like it's fun if it's accurate, but yeah, it is not accurate.

1:18:09 - Dan Moren
Like it is weird, there's some other doing the telemetry data.

1:18:12 - Alex Lindsay
That is not close, you know, because 7500 minutes. And how do you divide that? It's not dividing that up.

1:18:19 - Dan Moren
Well did you just stop listening halfway through? Yeah, and there's also weird metadata stuff in here. Like I'm looking at top genres, like great genres, always fun to argue about, but like number one genre for me, soundtracks, that's fine. Number two classical. Well, a lot of soundtracks sometimes get put in a classical genre bucket. So I guess three rock, sure for adult alternative. Ok, fifth, original score, which is also kind of a soundtrack. So why are we divvying these up and how are we deciding which ones fit in the soundtrack and which ones fit into original score, like well, it has like number seven.

1:18:54 - Alex Lindsay
Number seven. It says Luke Holmes. I don't know who. I mean I know the name. I couldn't tell you a single Luke. I know I'm placing myself in a whole bunch of people in the country now that are upset with me. I don't know who that is Like. I don't know who that like. I don't. I don't. I haven't consciously listened to any of those songs and so I'm like not I'm not sure where that I just don't like it. It's not that this is a little inaccurate, and I think the metadata is off. Like it is like feels, like it's just I mean some of them I recognize, but a lot of them I'm like I don't. I don't know where any of these came from. Yeah, I mean the Milky Chance, I understand. Like I want to say that a lot, but, but the but a lot of them, I'm just like I don't, I don't know. When I listen to Luke Holmes, I don't know what that is.

1:19:36 - Jason Snell
I'm sure he's a great artist.

1:19:38 - Alex Lindsay
I'm sure he's a great artist, I just don't know. No, he's won a lot of awards, I think, evidently, but I don't know yeah no, it's weird, it's very, it's very weird.

1:19:48 - Jason Snell
This is fun Also. You know, we, we, we so often talk about oh, the big tech companies. They're watching you and they're watching your every move.

1:19:55 - Leo Laporte
They know everything about you.

1:19:56 - Jason Snell
And then you get something like this and you think, well, one it is. It's actually kind of fun that they were watching me, because now I can remember my past and they know things about me that I, that they're aggregating for me, and that's fun and people actually can be delighted by it. But number two is they're watching me but I don't think they're counting right, like whatever they're watching.

1:20:16 - Dan Moren
It's that. It's that classic. It's that classic Ben Kingsley line from sneakers about organized crime. Don't kid yourself, they're not that organized, that's right.

1:20:25 - Jason Snell
That's right. The truth is that they weren't that bright. All right, I'm done with lists. Those are my lists, so the show is not over, because we do have some other things to talk about. I want to talk about a stunt. We're moving on to the PR stunt category and I actually I like the story a lot. It is about a company called, I think for a called the Airjet is the name of the product and they did a story that got reported breathlessly all over the Internet as a company hacks Apple laptop to run faster or whatever.

You know OK it's a good PR stunt, is what it is for an interesting product, and what they decided to do. So this company makes the Airjet is a solid state cooling system, so it's using a different technology from what we would think of as a traditional cooling system A fan that uses heat, radiates out into air and then the fan blows it out of the computer Right, that's how it works. This is a solid state system, so the idea is it's not using a fan, it's using a different method that is very compact that moves heat away from the processor. And they took an M2 MacBook Air and they they hacked it, they installed their cooling system in it and then tried to push it to the same level as an 13 inch M2 MacBook Pro, the old touch bar model, which has a fan. And the idea there is that there is a very small performance difference in very particular circumstances where the MacBook Air thermal throttles because it just gets too hot and the MacBook Pro with a fan is able to work a little bit harder. It's I want to emphasize this it's a very small amount of performance difference in very limited circumstances, but it can happen if you don't have a fan.

And they picked I think they picked it brilliantly because they basically said OK, what if we took this computer without a fan and put our thing that is not a fan in it, that uses a solid state method of radiating the heat away from the processor, could we get it to be cooler? This is not a product that's going to exist. It's more like they're saying hey, apple and other companies that make hot running computers that are very thin and light and you don't want to have a fan blowing, get to know me, right, you should. You should know about this, and they succeeded. It's actually a very cool idea for an alternate technology that isn't blowing air with a fan the tried and true in order to get something that's quiet but also can run a lot hotter because there's something actively cooling it inside. It's yeah.

1:22:50 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's it, and I'm glad you pointed out the early at the outside very correctly, that this is a marketing thing, because I've seen this video like in lots of different channels like that, how the really high profile tech channels like got access to this and also got access to the. This isn't a case of, hey, they cracked open the MacBook Air, they removed whatever cooling system, whatever cooling system and fans. They replaced it with this thing. No, it was like OK, we will no longer be able to have USB, we will no longer have speakers. We had to grind a couple of microns from this lid to get it all in here. But it is an. It was an interesting demonstration that, like when you push the, when you push this hardware to its absolute limits limits beyond which I don't think a lot of MacBook Air consumers would probably go for I mean, if you're looking, if you're looking for like a 30 minute long render, if you're to really max all the cores of this thing, you probably foresaw that in the next two or three years and that's why you bought the MacBook Pro with a fan to avoid this throttling. But, as you say, it's really, really interesting because it's not as though, hey, they just made a really small, flat sort of fan. No, it really is a brand new technology. So you don't you don't have to carve these channels in and worry quite so much about airflow. There are a lot of considerations to be considered there.

I could really I could see Apple being interested in this in the sense that if it means that, hey, remember how we always have to figure out where to put these fans, remember how we always have to lay out this, this product, so that there are air channels to places where the events that are not going to get blocked by people's laps and people's desks, here is a way that we could change the design of. We'd have more freedom to design if we use this component. The fact that it's I think it was first introduced a copy text, I think last year. That's at least the first time that I actually saw mention of it, but it's one, it's early and it's one supplier, and so until they can, until they can demonstrate that we can make millions of these to order and specifically the way that Apple wants to make them, I don't think we'll see anything about it, but it was a very, very clever way to demonstrate that.

Here is we're not, we're not. We're not. We're not promoting this as a hack that you can do yourself If you can get, if you can get your hands on one of these. You would not want to use this, this, this MacBook Air with the things that we've done to it, but it does show that. Ok, here is something that could actually work out If you were to integrate that with all the rest of the steps of your design. It could not necessarily make a cooler, faster machine, but allow you to make a flatter machine, a machine with more room for batteries in it, that kind of stuff.

1:25:20 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I should say, as listener David is pointing out in the chat, that it does move air, ultimately, but it's a solid state device, right? So it's got incredibly tiny things that vibrate and basically create airflow. So it's not a fan, it's a. You still need to. It's still thermodynamics or there's still heat that needs to be moved and it needs to be moved to a place that's cooler than where it is right now. But it is such a different thing in terms of its cool technology. Whether it's practical or not remains to be seen, but that's why they're doing tech demos like this and like could this be the fanless laptop of the future? That is still, it's fanless, but it's still moving air because it wants to run hotter sometimes. So it's, I like it, it's cool, it's fun.

1:26:00 - Dan Moren
Yeah, I mean to Andy's point. Like you know, real estate inside Apple products is incredibly valuable, right?

Yeah more than like a Manhattan. So you know, if Apple's got an opportunity to free up some space in there and do other stuff with it, that's huge win for them. And it's the same reason that they got rid of the headphone jack and that they're doing all this other stuff is like we have more room in there to put in, whether it's battery or whether it's other chips or whether it's other stuff. You know silicon stuff they're working on. There's a lot of options in there. I'm curious to see. Like you said, scale is probably the biggest issue here, but it's not hard to imagine Apple thinking like hey, buy these guys for a song for their friends to like go property and we're off and running.

1:26:37 - Jason Snell
Or it's possible that Apple looked at this technology like a year ago and we're like no, excellent point, we don't know. But I just I admire it. Yes, it got blown out of proportion because it's somebody did a thing that they modded a Mac, and then it's like, oh, look what happened. But at the core of it I mean it's a PR stunt that worked. I love that about it. And then when you look at it and get past the PR stunty part of it, you're like that's really cool, like it's a cool idea and they chose. I think they chose really well, because the M2 chip and the difference between those two, it's just like it's in certain use cases it's a low-end chip, but you do have a case where you've got two computers one has a fan, one doesn't. What's the difference? And then you, instead of taking out a fan, you just put this thing into a fanless enclosure and say, look, we're so small that we can fit right in there. Asterisk, as Andy pointed out, not really fit in, but kind of sort of, if you squint a little bit, fit in there. It's a cool idea. I think it's fun. So I thought I'd bring it up.

Speaking of hardware, digitimes had a report following up on a bunch of stuff that good old Mark Gurman who, or, as he's known here, mark Bloomberg apparently he's not related to Mike Bloomberg in any way, though Mark Gurman at Bloomberg mentioned this earlier. But there was a new Digitimes report about Apple's future Vision Pro, or Envision OS hardware development, I guess is the right way to phrase it and the idea that they are working on a new version of the Vision Pro, the second generation of the Vision Pro, and they're targeting 1500 to 2500, which is a lot less than the first generation of the Vision Pro is going to be. And what Digitimes says that they're also trying to do is make an affordable version and the goal there is to cut the bill of materials, the parts that make the Vision Pro, in half, which is a sort of a new little detail here.

1:28:33 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and to be clear, that often happens with production. I mean, that's not an unusual thing. Like you figure out how to do it and the first time you do it it's really expensive and then after that it gets cheaper because you figured it out. So I think that them getting down to a, I think that 1500 is probably pretty aggressive for them to try to get down to with a similar profile. But I think, because I do think that what's gonna happen is that the specs that we see in the Pro right now will become the new affordable specs. They will, the Pro will go the other direction, which is that we'll probably get to that 120 frame per second, 8K per eye, you know will probably be the next generation, Whereas the current version will be a less expensive version of what we have right now, Like it's not gonna get less than this, it's just gonna be the same thing, but 2000 or $2,000.

1:29:22 - Dan Moren
I'd be really surprised if they got 1500. What you have to cut in order to get to that price? Because it's not all process stuff, right?

1:29:29 - Alex Lindsay
Well, the LCD on the outside? That's the question I was gonna say, so money.

1:29:33 - Dan Moren
Apple talked a lot about how important that was to it, but we always think they're going you know it's expensive, it's the touch bar of the Vapolver.

1:29:40 - Andy Ihnatko
Pro, I think.

1:29:41 - Dan Moren
Yeah, that's not a bad way of looking at it, because it does seem like it's something. If you wanted to lose something, you could lose that. I just they have to find a new way to spin the story of well, yes, it is important to stay engaged with your outside world, and we do want people to be able to talk to you. But here we've come up with a. You see a light come on when they're looking through the camera.

1:29:59 - Jason Snell
Exactly, it's a little. You can put a little picture of your eyes in there like slide it in, it's a little transparency, Slide it in the lights up, fuck it's mine.

1:30:06 - Andy Ihnatko
They can replace this $823 component with a pair of stick on googly eyes.

1:30:10 - Jason Snell
Yeah, exactly, I think this is up to us and the other. A lot of it's just scale.

1:30:14 - Alex Lindsay
Like it's just, it's literally like we can order more of them at a time. I mean, they can only these. They can even if they wanted to.

1:30:20 - Jason Snell
I don't think they can make more than two or 300,000 a year, right we know about the Sony display bottleneck and the more they make of these that presumably they're going to get some volume there and then they'll may be able to get the price down. I find fascinating that it costs. You know, the vision pros are going to cost a lot and the report suggests that Apple is not taking much of a profit on this. There's I'm unclear whether Apple is doing a traditional margin or how much of it they're eating, but it's a very expensive product and that's why I'm fascinated by the idea of cutting the bill of materials in half, just as a. How do you solve that problem? Because the answer is yes. The answer is you do everything that we've said. You throw features off, you find lesser features, things that seemed like you had to have them in terms of, like the comfort of the strap and the woven fabric of that head strap and all of that Like. Well, can we do a cheaper strap? And, as Alex said, some of it is you make it up by having it be the components that you're building now and in two years they're going to cost a lot less, but like cutting your bill of materials in half it's. I mean.

This is the reason that there are some reports that they may not be able to make this product, this low end vision OS hardware product, because it's going to be really hard to get down to that price point. I think that they should be striving for it and they obviously are. The digit times report also suggested that they're working on a few different variations on that second generation hardware, so you may end up with sort of like the really really good high end one and then one that's. You know, apple loves a good, better, best. Right Always looks good, better best, and some people will be, in fact Mr Lindsey here. I think he's a best kind of guy, but a lot of people are better. They come into the store thinking of the good price and they end up spending for the better price, and that's how Apple gets all the money.

1:32:06 - Andy Ihnatko
I really do think that for this first iteration, they knew that this is a special kind of product. This is not an Apple watch, this is not even the first iPhone, that this is something where only a very this is a super niche product, super super niche for Apple that they can and, as an unproven product, they can say you know what we're not. We're going to go for the higher end, like enterprise level price point for these VR AR goggles. We're not going to restrict ourselves to be cheaper than $3,500. If we can, if we have to go $4,000, we'll go $4,000, because this first iteration and the lessons we learn from it and from the developers and for the people who use it, are going to teach us what we needed to have in here, what we did not need to have in here, and that will guide them on what the second generation of this thing can be, I think it's probably going to guide them on what the fourth generation is.

1:32:58 - Alex Lindsay
I have a feeling that Apple knows what the second and possibly the third, it's so hard to make these and I think they have a pretty good idea because they've already had to cut. Like they've already, like we most of us that do production know that AK per eye, 120 frames per second, is the, that's the flat point, like that's where you have to get to at some point, and so the fact that we're not seeing that in the current performance means that they already know where they need to go for that performance, for the next generation of pro, and so I think that that's you know, and so resolution, that interactivity, you know those sort of things. So I think that the pro is pretty well known, is known to them. I think it's just a matter of figuring out how to lower the price for the for the next ones.

1:33:41 - Dan Moren
Well, they interact a bit with both the software and marketing as well too, because we also have a device that's not out for anybody to use. At this point, nobody knows what people are gonna end up using it for. The software's still a bit of a moving target by all accounts. That's the thing that's not quite done yet. The hardware is, you know, been locked for a while probably, and so, even if they're looking down the road, it's saying this is what the next version of that hardware looks like. If something about that story changes in the next year, in terms of what people who are buying these as early adopters are actually doing with it or using it can influence stuff down the road. In terms of how they're going to affect stuff Maybe not as much with production, but in the way of terms of like, yeah, what features are important?

1:34:16 - Alex Lindsay
why features aren't important. I think it'll definitely affect the software development, like though the platform development the hardware I bet you is probably not movable until probably 2026 or 2027. Like, I think that they know what that turn has to be because it's so complicated. But how they develop, you know what features they develop inside the software and inside the delivery tools. I think are the things that are probably highly maligned.

1:34:41 - Dan Moren
What stuff is emphasized, or DM says I think about the early versions of the Apple Watch too. Right, I mean, there are certainly plenty of features that were on the Apple Watch in terms of software features that then ended up being things that, like Apple, talked about a lot and were really excited about and then realized nobody uses this. And so, you know, years on you get even interesting choices like, hey, we have this side button, we're going to change two or three times what that button does because, depending on what people use it for, so, like you know, even if we have the button on our Apple Vision Pro, it may not do the same thing in two years that it does now.

1:35:11 - Alex Lindsay
It might be good to have multiple countdown clocks, because I mean, you know, alarms, because that's what everybody's using.

1:35:15 - Dan Moren
You know like that's weird enough.

1:35:16 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, that's what people want, yeah exactly Like that's the number one use of my watch is alarms.

1:35:23 - Jason Snell
It's one of the great. I was thinking about this today. I am really looking forward to next year and part of it's like I love the iPad and all the iPads need to be updated, because that didn't happen this year at all. But Vision Pro like I don't know what it's going to be. I don't know how people are going to use it and I sometimes I know Leo is sort of like a bet. He's betting that it's going to be a flop. Like I don't know if it's going to be a flop. I don't know if it's going to be a success.

What I do know is one of the world's most interesting and creative companies has spent a huge amount of money building their most probably cutting edge high tech product that will be available to the public ever, or at least for a very long time. They don't quite know what it's going to be. The public doesn't quite know what it's going to be, and one thing I'm certain about is that we're going to learn things that surprise everybody, including inside Apple, as it rolls out and as people use it and as people build software for it, and you know, that's kind of why I love technology. Is that sort of thing of like I don't know. I mean, if it fails it's going to be interesting. If it succeeds it's going to be interesting. If it muddles along, it's still going to be interesting regardless.

1:36:28 - Alex Lindsay
I think, and I think that it's not going to be next year, it's going to be the next decade. Like Apple, apple's not jiggle, they're not going to go. Oh, we did this and it didn't really work. You never mind Like this is. I think that they, you know, and I think we've seen 10%, I think they've shown us just enough to keep us interested in talking about it.

For sure, and so I think that there's a lot more that they're going to roll out with what they have here, and I do think that they're going to keep pounding at this for a decade, and I think that that's exciting to see a company this big throwing like they're all in, like this is like you know, they're all in on this platform. It's not like we're going to see if this works. They think it's going to work and I think that that's going to be a pretty fun ride, yeah.

1:37:08 - Andy Ihnatko
I think, particularly if Apple doesn't lock themselves into some sort of an artificial refresh rate on this, if they say that you know what we think, that this is a this is this first edition does exactly everything that we intended the first edition to do. We have. No, we are definitely going to be continue to work on this. We're definitely continue to sell this, but don't expect the 20 after the 20, 24, 20 24 edition there to be a 25, 25 edition and a 2026 edition. We will update these when we have a good idea of what we need to make next. Because they can.

They can ride this for a ride Is a denigrating term, that's not what I meant but they can.

They can keep, they can make a very good experience with the hardware of this $3,500 headset and decide that we're going to keep the hardware as it is and we're going to spend two, three, four, five years working on the software and working on a hard working on a third party hardware software library to make sure that developers are not just porting iPad apps and not just giving us hey look, I'm answering. I'm answering a hundred emails, but I'm doing it at Yosemite in the snow, like no, give us real apps that take advantage of this. They have the time to really figure this out and I mean, I'm with you, jason, I've as as observing a company that for its entire life has been. We are going to observe what other companies do and then try to do that thing, but better decide that you know what. No one has done this thing. Well, no one has proven that there's any interest in this thing, but we really think this is interesting, so we're going to go in.

1:38:34 - Jason Snell
Yep, can't wait, looking forward to it. We are going to be back with the picks of the week. Everybody prepare themselves. Listener prepare yourself, panelists prepare yourselves. I will prepare myself. And while we're preparing, we're going to let Leo philosophize one last time.

1:38:52 - Leo Laporte
Leo, all right One more time. I'd like to interrupt, jason. Thank you so much for filling in for me. I'll be back next week.

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1:40:49 - Jason Snell
So comfortable, so comfortable, but I know I can't stay here for very long. Not for very long. Let us do our picks of the week. That's the thing we do. Why don't we give it a shot? Alex Lindsay, what do you have? Oh, he disappeared. You pressed the wrong button, alex. You put on your invisibility glasses. We can't hear you. I surprised Alex and he doesn't have his microphone on. I don't know what?

1:41:15 - Alex Lindsay
I just went because. I had to put this on.

1:41:17 - Jason Snell
It was very confusing.

1:41:18 - Alex Lindsay
So I can't see you. How do I look? Do I look good?

1:41:21 - Jason Snell
I'm shining with the brightness of the sun, though Then you could see exactly.

1:41:24 - Andy Ihnatko
You look like you're about to pull up the minute black thing and make us all forget the last hour Exactly.

1:41:30 - Alex Lindsay
So this is a reminder that these are eclipse glasses. That's what they're for here. They're almost opaque because they will allow you to look at the sun, and this is. I got them from eclipseglassescom. We did some research on it. This is the reminder that the last eclipse in the United States for the next 20 years is April 8th 2024. And if you want any glasses and you want it to go somewhere and you want to do something to see it, you have to start now. So, like all the RVs are sold out, we're about to we're going to do some coverage for office hours and so we're going to cover it along the spine.

1:42:11 - Jason Snell
It's going from Texas all the way up through Maine, I believe. Newfoundland and then on into Canada sure.

1:42:17 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it was into Canada and across the top and there's so many cities that it's going over. It's probably one of the most populated eclipses in a very, very, very long time and it will be the last one We'll see in a very, very long time, unless we're willing to travel to some other part of the world. And so but one of the things that we we started having our meetings a couple of weeks ago to get ready for it and we realized, like a lot of the resources, some of the, some of the office hours members have already gotten space and they got it a year ago and there's a. And we realized as we started to look at the whole opportunity is tightening up very quickly. So it came to me yesterday.

I should probably recommend, like the glasses are fine, you should get glasses, but the main thing is is that you, if you have any, if you want to get a photo of it, you need a special lens cover so that you don't destroy your lens. Do not use binoculars. That will be the last thing you see, yes, Ever. So these are, but but the all of those tools and all the pieces of hardware within the next month or two will probably be gone Like you know cause, know why make more when you're not going to have another one for 20 years? So there's a certain push that's happening right now and this is the thing to get, and it's as someone who's. I went. We covered the Eclipse for National Geographic in 2017. And I didn't understand why anyone cared about the eclipse. It was not something that was on my my register until I was there, and it is something a total eclipse is something totally.

1:43:49 - Jason Snell
My kids were very skeptical when we dragged them. We dragged them out into the middle of Idaho because we wanted, good, the best chance to not have cloudy conditions, right Cause that's the danger that you have. And my daughter's like whatever Eclipse, whatever my dad drives me to these things. And then she saw it and she started crying Afterwards. She was like, oh, I didn't understand it all. A total eclipse is not the same as any other. Eclipse.

1:44:09 - Alex Lindsay
There's no. The other Eclipse is after you've seen a total eclipse. When they say, oh, we have this partial eclipse, you're like, okay, that's cute. Like I don't know why, it's horrible. Like like. You're like like, if you just all one of those do not think that that meant anything. Like when you see a total eclipse, there is a hole in the sky.

1:44:26 - Dan Moren
Like and temperature drops.

1:44:29 - Andy Ihnatko
And it's and there's a biblical component, because all of the animals go absolutely crazy.

1:44:37 - Alex Lindsay
Or they all sit down and go to the one. When we were in Bend, oregon, and they and they all were like, oh, I guess it's time to go to bed, and they all just started laying down. They all just were like we're all going to lay down now.

And then it goes I guess we get up again and it's, and it the temperature drops 10 degrees in in like 30 seconds. It is, it's just a, it is an amazing experience. I would highly. It's going right through the United States. I would highly recommend finding a place to to go and it, it, it's like nothing you've ever experienced and you should get glasses and then nice you should get glasses.

1:45:10 - Jason Snell
Thank you, alex. And yeah, the nice thing about this is that, although things are booking up, it does cover an enormous amount of ground and if you can drive to the side of the road or this, you know, on a street, somewhere, in a place where the eclipse is happening and it's going all the way from you know, you know the Texas Mexico border, up through Dallas, all the way up through Cleveland, and then it continues on it's going to be a fantastic party.

And it is. You should give it a shot if you've got the ability to travel at that time of year, I believe. I believe the Cleveland Guardians opening day is during the eclipse and they're going to stop the baseball game for an eclipse break, which is I can't even there's a minorly team in Salem, Oregon, who did that during the last eclipse, but apparently it's going right through Cleveland and so they're going to be able to do it at the Guardians opening day.

All right, Awesome. So I think that's a total eclipses and also eclipse glasses. Thank you, Alex.

1:46:08 - Andy Ihnatko
Alex can I quickly ask you the link that you gave to eclipseglassescom Are you wearing? Did you get the plastic Eclipser HD glasses?

1:46:15 - Alex Lindsay
Yes, of course, I got the most expensive glasses, the ones that are not paper. It's like $20.

1:46:20 - Jason Snell
I thought that was going to be your, your pick, which is, you know, you got all these paper eclipse glasses and they're no good, they're no fun, they fall apart, right, but you could get like real plastic ones that I just would stay on your face.

1:46:29 - Alex Lindsay
I just gave you the link. But but these are actual, real plastic ones that I plan to use and they're not. And they because I got paper ones on the last one and I was just kind of like it's just yeah, I was like I want you to get something nicer, Treat yourself.

1:46:42 - Jason Snell
I say Andy Inako, what is your pick?

1:46:46 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, there's a brand new holiday special on Apple TV Hanawaddingham home for Christmas and with this stunning hour long special, it's very, very clear there's a brand new Queen of Christmas. We already have Darlene Love. She, of course, will remain the Queen of Christmas until she chooses to hand the crown over to Hanawaddingham. The point that I want to make is that Murray, murray, I carry can go suck lemons. This is. I watched it just this morning. It is such a fun special it is. It really finds a certain sweet spot. It is. It is.

Hanawaddingham is like the child of opera singers she was. She's been like on the performing stage for years and years and years on Broadway on the West end, something that I did not know until, like. I saw this show and said, wow, she sings that well, she takes the stage, it's. It's it's in the form of like a live performance that they that they recorded, and she is on the stage all the time and she is singing all the time and they bring and there are people out there to support her. Occasionally, lesiotum Jr does an amazing song with her. Most of the cast of Ted Lasso comes out and occasionally like, if you want, if you want to see Coach Beard like, dancing with a giant candy cane and tuxedo, along with, like most of the players of of the team. This is where you go to see that it's.

I can't. I just can't say enough about it. It's exactly what I. What I like in a Christmas special where it's not there's nothing fakey about it. There's nothing, oh there's. There's no little sketches and skits about it Really is just a musical stage performance where everyone there seems to really want to be there and really be. Oh my God, I can't believe I got this opportunity to do this. This is awesome. All the crowd that must have must have like been watching this Christmas show. In what August like it was.

1:48:34 - Dan Moren
It was really thank you.

1:48:37 - Andy Ihnatko
Uh is like really excited to be there. It really did like make my Grinchy heart grow three sizes that day. It was really really quite good, can't very, very high recommendation? Of course it's. You're going to see a promo to hell every time you open up any sort of an Apple device, that with that with access to streaming. But it's, it's definitely worth it. I have. I have not seen the last 10 minutes of it, so if Jason Zudeikis shows up, uh, completing like the cast of Ted Lasso, that would be a surprise. Don't know if that's so, but I haven't checked those spoilers. Yeah.

1:49:07 - Dan Moren
I won't expect the murder. You want to expect the murder at the end, andy.

1:49:09 - Andy Ihnatko
It gets dark, it really takes a turn, but but that's very much in this the child like surprise of running downstairs and finding out who's been murdered by Santa over the night.

1:49:20 - Dan Moren
You know, you can replace it, yeah.

1:49:22 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean, you keep, you know, as a little kid you're going to stay up and watch and catch him in the act and turn him in for the reward money. But something inside you tells you that you know a part of you would just die if you were there when you saw him committing that murder and you just don't want that.

1:49:34 - Jason Snell
Okay, it just got really dark. Dan Moore, and save us. Save us with your pick Um.

1:49:39 - Dan Moren
I love puzzles, especially word puzzles. I've lately been doing the New York times connections puzzles, which started this past summer, I think, um. But if you find yourself in the need for more of those style puzzles that you can't get from the New York times, uh, my good pal, lex Friedman and podcast co-host, does his own connections puzzles, or conlections, as he does them, uh, every day, uh, and they're a lot of fun. They vary even more widely, I think, than the New York times puzzle in terms of how hard they are, uh, which I kind of appreciate, um, because it does feel like a real, like the New York times month. They're great.

But I feel like I've started to get the stick, whereas with Lex's, some days you're just sitting there, you open it up and you're like what are you talking about? And then you sit there and you think about it. You're like, oh wait, I think I started to get it. He had one that was like all just emoji, and I think I texted him that day being like what the hell, man? And then I looked at it and I was like, oh, I get it. I see what he's doing here. So it's a real sense of satisfaction too, and you so, basically, you know the the. It's like there's four. You know 16 different clues and you're just trying to group them into four different groups of four. That's it. That's the whole idea.

Uh, and I, I love that he does those. He's got so many done. He he's so compulsive about doing them. He's got them like month a month out. He's got these things scheduled to go, so you can go to his site and it does. You can get their scores and, uh, you can look at your trends and your history and all of that, and it's a lot of fun. It's just the thing he built in his spare time, but I highly recommend it. It's great.

1:51:08 - Jason Snell
Oh, it's a Lex freemancom slash connections. It's an. It's in our show document there Lex freemancom slash connections. Check it out, although I will agree with some other people who think that it should not be called conlex chuns. It should be conlex chuns without the T, because the X is already making me X.

1:51:26 - Leo Laporte
I O N S is just fine.

1:51:28 - Jason Snell
I'm going to do a pick that is completely self-serving and lets us lead into our saying goodbye to our special guest, dan Moran, who joined us today filling in for me, because I'm filling in for Leo. Um, my pick is all souls lost, the new novel by Dan Moran. You can get it now in the ebook and in print, and next month you can pre-order it now. I believe next month the audio book is arriving as well, dan's latest novel and not part of a series yet, so you can just read it, even if you haven't read his other excellent series of novels that are all connected. This one is a standalone and it's an urban fantasy and I think it's a lot of fun and I think people watching MacBregWiggly. I'm not going to spoil it, but there is an element of this story that is very Apple related in a way that I can't really give away, because it's part of the plot, but there's a big technology company in it. I'll just say that, dan, the serial numbers are carefully filed.

I know oh no, very I, I, I chuckle at all the filing of the serial numbers. Dan, thank you so much for being on MacBregWiggly. It was great to have you here.

1:52:32 - Dan Moren
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure always to step in and I'm glad that when Leo leaves it trickles down and I get to make my way onto the show.

1:52:40 - Jason Snell
Anything you want to plug other than all souls lost available now.

1:52:45 - Dan Moren
Sure, yeah, I've got a couple of podcasts about technology clockwise over on Relay FM with my co-host, mike Sargent, the rebound with my pals Alex Friedman and Sean Moultz, and of course I don't know. I do a ton of podcasts at the incomparable with Jason and other fine folks who's there as well as being at sixsellerscom. You can find all about all of this, as well as my books at dmorencom. It's got all of the links to all those fine things.

1:53:08 - Jason Snell
Very nice, very nice, andi and Nodco. Now I mentioned you wrote a piece about Apple's holiday video on sixsellerscom. I assume you'll also be on WGBH at some point in the near future.

1:53:20 - Andy Ihnatko
Yes, a week from Friday it looks like. I'm sorry, a week from Thursday it will not be at the Boston Public Library, but go to WGBHnewsorg. Thank you for thank you for running that piece. By the way, I promise everybody that my the relaunch of my website and tech blog is is proceeding of pace. Lots of technical stuff that have to lock down, that are not on a fixed schedule, but I keep writing stuff for it and posting it like privately. And then I wrote this, then I wrote this piece of like hey, so maybe people aren't going to be able to read about this article about Apple's holiday thing until maybe late December or January. Maybe there should be a way that I can let people see that beforehand. So I'm glad that we got to live, we got to relive some of that Mac user action, I mean it's like I was talking to you and then complete with oh don't, don't, don't use the version I gave you.

I just said, I just made some edits, go, go.

1:54:06 - Jason Snell
It really threw me back in time to those days when I was editing your column, where I was first off, you showed it to me and I was like, oh man, this is vintage and not go here. And then you mentioned, well, I got to post it when I get my site up, and all that, and I'm like, well, if you want to be timely, we'll take it. Let's just do it right now. So it's made me laugh. There are a lot of good, a lot of good laughs. You're. You're thinking about things, thinking about some meeting of empathy and also, yeah, we laughed, we cried, we learned. It's all classic.

1:54:30 - Andy Ihnatko
And given what we've all been through in the last 31 hours, I'm glad that I did Given the event. Yes, Give someone to some little bit distraction. I mean not to not to make sure the people don't face what's going on, but it doesn't have to be quite so intense, Right.

1:54:43 - Jason Snell
I'm glad we're all in this together. Thank you for the callback as well, and these times, these trying times, I needed that callback. Alex Lindsay, office hoursglobal and many other things.

1:54:58 - Alex Lindsay
Anything else you want to plug? Nope, I'm, I'm, we're, we're just cooking away every morning.

1:55:02 - Jason Snell
Every morning. I don't know how you do it Every morning.

1:55:06 - Alex Lindsay
I think we're, I think we're in the 1250s somewhere in that road without missing a day. Wow, now, it's just part of our personality, you know. It's just like we can't, can't miss a day. So, but we've, but we're, we're having a good time. We're talking more and more about you know, we had to switch our systems. I lost my space in San Rafael and so it turned out that one of our members had built it was. It was literally like contact. They were like well, I built another hardware system that runs just like yours and I was like, can we use it for a little while? So, so you're seeing us kind of work through some of those things, but it's been, it's great. Yeah, that's all you can come up and ask questions and thank you for the invitation.

1:55:43 - Jason Snell
I am going to be on Michael Krasny's show in December.

1:55:46 - Alex Lindsay
Yes, that's. That's not this week, but next week, right, I think we finally made it happen.

1:55:50 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I think December 8th is when I'm doing that. Awesome, thank you for the connection, making your own connections there, and you don't have to match for in order to make that connection. All right, that is it. We are at the end of Mac break weekly. We made it. Don't you feel like you accomplished something? I know I have, and next week, you know, we're going to have to do it all again, but Leo will be back in this very chair for that. And then, until then, I have to break it to you because Leo can't do it. But break time's over, get back to work. We'll see you next week.

1:56:22 - Leo Laporte
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