MacBreak Weekly 902 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 - Leo Laporte
It's Diver. MacBreak Weekly, first episode of 2024. Jason Snell's here, Andy Inhatko, Alex Lindsay, Of course. What are we gonna talk about? The Vision Pro, it's coming. Why Apple never released an iPad in 2023 and what they might do in 2024, and why the Masimo lawsuit is an on again, off again affair. It's all coming up. Next, on MacBreak Weekly.

This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 902, recorded Tuesday, January 2nd 2024. In The History of Melontrucks, this episode of MacBreak Weekly, brought to you by Wildgrain oh, I love Wildgrain. It's the first ever Bake From Frozen subscription box. What do you get? Sourdough breads, fresh pastas, artisanal pastries Every item sits in your freezer, then bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less, without thawing. Let me tell you, those croissants are better than the croissants you're getting France. We made them. We made them here at work and they were so good.

You bite into a hot croissant. I'll give you a little Wildgrain tip. You don't have to bake all of them. They're in the freezer. You take one out, you bake it. You have your nice croissant for breakfast. You're going to have another one tomorrow. And the sourdough bread, the walnut bread, oh my gosh, you could fully customize your wild grain box so you can get any combination of breads, pastas and pastries you like. So all bread, all pasta, all pastries. You want it, you can have it. Plus, for a limited time, $30 off the first box, Plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgraincom slash MacBreak to start your subscription Free croissants you heard me in every box, and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com/macbreak. Those croissants are so good. wildgrain.com/macbreak the promo code MacBreak at checkout. wildgrain.com/macbreak. Promo code MacBreak at checkout.

It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Hello, happy 2024. I didn't even think I'd be alive in 2024. But I'm here. I mean, it wasn't recently. I thought that, but as a kid I thought you know, you do the calculation the year 2000,. I'll be 46. Or what was it 44? Yeah, I can't. You know and you don't go past that. I love it when I see the ads for one of the car makers I think it's Honda says we're going to be carbon neutral by 2050. And I'm going, wait a minute. That's 27 years. Okay, Hello, Andy and Ako. Chicago SunTimes, former everybody's guy, and then WGBH in Boston, and this is the year ihnakto.com will be launching.

0:02:55 - Andy Ihnatko
ihnakto.com as a website, as a newsletter, as something I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to actually release, as something. No, you don't.

0:03:02 - Leo Laporte
You know, you don't really, I'm just no.

0:03:05 - Andy Ihnatko
I kind of do because, like I don't have enough places to like, we have opinions, we have thoughts, we have reactions, we have insights and I have a stuffed Dalmatian that I can explain these things to. It is not very, very rewarding for me, or the stuffed Dalmatian toy for me to share, so I'd like to share it with actual people.

0:03:28 - Leo Laporte
A website is better than a stuffed Dalmatian.

0:03:31 - Andy Ihnatko
Now you know Exactly the truth In many ways, not to diss my stuffed Dalmatian, because he's been with me for the past 17 years and loyalty is definitely. You think dogs are loyal. How about one that's actually a large stuffed toy that has no agency of its own? That that will be with you, man.

0:03:50 - Leo Laporte
It's never going to go, mr. Happy New Year, andy. Happy New Year to Alex Lindsay OfficeHours Global and hello, hello, partsunknown. Hello, alex, how are you Good? Did you have a good New Year, had a great year? Stay up to midnight.

0:04:06 - Alex Lindsay
No, no, I did not. I celebrate when New Year's hits the United States in New York, so I watched the New York Ball drop. We do our little champagne thing. We're like it's around, it's in the country, and then we go to bed, then we go to bed, so I don't need to stay up, but we did have a great fire.

0:04:24 - Leo Laporte
I was a little disappointed because the Rockin New Year's used to end at 9pm Pacific and we could go to bed, and now they're time shifting it, which really takes the fun out of it. I know they're time shifting.

0:04:36 - Alex Lindsay
It's really frustrating I had the live streams weren't as good. One thing I did notice was how great the live streams look when the cameras are where they're doing the show. But there was an earth camera, whatever that's up high looking down, and I was like that is the most pathetic looking thing I've ever seen. Only you know this thing. It's always weird. All this stuff people jam together in these little boxes.

0:04:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, you don't want to ever go with that. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:00 - Alex Lindsay
No, no, it was just like it looked like the most amazingly bad thing to actually go to, but it looks great when the camera's lower Sure, and that was. But that's what I noticed. It depends, right, yeah, exactly, but. I'm going to get a. Vpn. I've decided I'm going to get a VPN for YouTube next time, so that I can just say, hey, I'm in New York and then get the New York feed. Get the New York feed. That's a great idea.

0:05:23 - Leo Laporte
Also with this, jason Snell, who went home for the holidays but is back in studio. You never know, with Jason it could be a green screen.

0:05:30 - Jason Snell
You know, I was briefly at my mom's house and she got COVID and I came home. Oh no, but the home's here and not Phoenix. I'm not from Phoenix, I'm not from Arizona, that's where, just where my mom lives, she's doing okay. But yeah, we had a little audible call. Then my kids came here to California and we just did a, we just we nested, we did our classic. So you flew down, got there, flew down, got my mom got exposed to COVID, got her some antivirals, made sure she was doing okay, and then flew home and did a, did a little quarantine until I had multiple negative tests.

Yeah, so anyway, that was a mess. And this has spoiled my joke, which is that I'm still dialing 2023 on all my rotary dial telephones Boom.

0:06:17 - Leo Laporte
That is a callback to something probably most of you didn't hear, which is before the show. They were talking about weirdly rotary dialed telephones old, very old tech. And then but it's an interesting twist because I think many of the younger people in the audience won't understand this thing about writing checks. I don't think we do that anymore.

0:06:36 - Jason Snell
I know, I see I took it further by saying let's put it even further in the past?

0:06:40 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you went back.

0:06:40 - Jason Snell
I'm making it about a rotary dial telephone or punch cards. I'm punching 2023 on all my Vax punch cards IBM punch card.

0:06:49 - Leo Laporte
I don't think AI could have done that. This is proving that you're a human, which I appreciate.

0:06:53 - Jason Snell
I'm, I'm yes, that's right, that's that's going to be. The true sign in the future is, if it's a really bad dad joke, we know it's actually by a dad and not an AI. So that's, that's a. That's like a really, really bad test for artificial intelligence.

0:07:06 - Leo Laporte
Can they do dad jokes? This is going to be the year for AI, for for sure, but Apple still, I'd like to think so.

0:07:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Thank you very much.

0:07:15 - Leo Laporte
Andy Inhatko. Ladies and gentlemen, get it, but, by the way, you might want to change your name, andy, because I think this is going to be confusing for you.

0:07:25 - Andy Ihnatko
I actually I like all the headlines that's saying that AI is going to be replacing 300,000 jobs. Ai is the biggest menace and we need regulation against it. He's just so powerful. The possibilities of AI are endless. This is all good marketing. This is another reason why I need to get an Outgocom up and running.

0:07:41 - Leo Laporte
I get confused because they keep naming things, leo, and that's confusing. But I can only imagine what you're, what you're going through.

0:07:50 - Andy Ihnatko
I have, I have a close, I have a close relative who I don't, I don't want to get, I don't want to give it away but like a very controversial politician came to prominence like eight years ago with, like their last name it's not a very usual last name and so she went from being completely anonymous, like ordering pizza or whatever, oh Regan or Jablonowitz or whatever it's like. Oh God, I remember. I remember when I could just board a board a plane without it, without having to anticipate a joke.

0:08:20 - Leo Laporte
I attempt not to make jokes about people's names because I figure they've heard them all. Probably Sometimes I fail.

0:08:26 - Jason Snell
Well, yeah, let me tell you the the smell jokes. Yeah, oh, I have heard them all. They're hilarious. Well done Everyone.

0:08:34 - Andy Ihnatko
I've been to junior high school.

0:08:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Just be glad your name is not Ray vagina. I'm just saying it could be worse. Let's see this is we'll catch up on the saga of the Apple watch, which is now officially. Is it for sale or not for sale? It's for sale now. It is for sale, let's back for sale.

0:08:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay, they, they, they.

0:08:55 - Leo Laporte
as the president, let the president, let us all down. And did not overturn the international trade commission ruling that Apple's watch infringed on Masimo's patents and could not be sold in the U? S. Apple pro act preemptively pulled the Apple watch ultra and I think was it the series nine, the ones that do blue bullsuck some of their readings pulled them all out of the stores but then put them right back because a court came in and said well, wait a minute. And junction. Junction has stayed. That boy the lawyers were working over the holidays has stayed that until a couple of weeks from now. So they may still have to do that. Meanwhile they are furiously working. There are some Apple employees who've been at the Apple campus all Christmas sadly working to be tapping with their Elvin hammers on some sort of software update that would avoid the import ban. Am I? Am I up to date?

0:09:50 - Andy Ihnatko
now You're, you're up to date Basically all. Basically, all that happened was that Apple had to run down the clock before they could fight that, before they could start filing appeals and before a court could. Basically, the federal government had to say, okay, we are not going to get involved with this, before they would start to hear appeals as soon as they filed an appeal. They didn't. The court did not side with Apple, they just simply said that, okay, you can continue to sell Apple watches while we settle this. While this is going through the courts, massimo CEO has been very, very clear that say well, go ahead, apple, if you want to try to try to create a software fix. I mean, you got to keep busy in these trying times, but we insist that it's a hardware problem, it's not a software problem. You will not be able to satisfy this patent infringement by just patching the watch OS. So again, good luck it is not unprecedented.

0:10:38 - Leo Laporte
President Obama 10 years ago vetoed an ITC patent ruling that would have banned older models of the iPhone and iPad, so that was not impressive.

0:10:48 - Jason Snell
Samsung not an American company. Masimo is actually an American company and so political and, of course, the political tenor of big tech and things like that. It's a tougher case all around, although this is. I mean, it strikes me that this process like Andy said, they're waiting and then they do this and having this be paused is a good idea, because the idea is you don't want to do damage, and having the watch is not on sale is doing damage to Apple's business when there are still more court fights to debt be had in the future. Also, like we all know, the end result of this is not the end. Then the Apple watch was never sold again. Right, there is a process to be worked through, while negotiations are probably going on sporadically and at the end somebody will get some level of satisfaction and you know, but but so, yeah, so the process continues, perhaps endlessly, who knows?

0:11:37 - Leo Laporte
Wesley Hilliard writing in Apple Insider. This paragraph you can decipher for your very own self. The ITC could deny the extended stay on or before January 10th, but if Apple software update passes customs investigation, the Apple watches could go back on sale as soon as January 12th. Apple software approach with customs would prove a victory, according to the ITC. I don't even know how to chart that what I don't under. So right now, are they selling it? They can, but I think they're or they are. Okay. They put them back on the shelves. They're back back on the shelves now, okay.

But, until January 10th.

0:12:15 - Alex Lindsay
You need more yarn, you need more red yarn for your board and the reality is I mean I think that there was some number that was floating around like Apple loses 185 million or 135 million dollars a day, but the reality of that is that there was probably a surge right before it happened. They flushed the market in Best Buy and everywhere else with it. The chances of Apple losing very much money on this so far is probably pretty low. I do believe though I think we talked about this in the last show that this all came up because Apple went after Masimo over their watch. So the thing is is that I think that that's what opened this can't worms? I think that Masimo I don't think that Masimo took on this legal. This is 2018.

I think that Masimo, that Masimo built a watch that looks exactly like, or very close to, an Apple watch, and I believe that that what opened the can of worms as I was reading through this and through a bunch of articles and I don't have it right in front of me, unfortunately but that what opened the can of worms is Apple sued Masimo over patent infringement over their watch, and Masimo was like oh really. And then they went the other direction and that's what? Like? I think that Apple unwrapped this on their own, like it's you know, I don't think that. I think this was a. I mean, in addition to meeting with a company and then not making a deal with them and then taking their technology, that's step one of probably the thing they shouldn't have done.

Step two is, you know, going after them over their watch, but I think I believe that that was in one of the many articles that I was scanning through to go through. This is that Apple actually kind of opened the can of worms after they had created the can of worms, you know, and so I think that this is this is something that, again, massimo has said they're willing to have a conversation about. You know, royalties, like it's not, like it's, as Jason said, it's not like that it's going to go away, it's just Apple's just not wanting to pay another dollar. You know, pay a dollar a watch for that process.

0:14:06 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't think that's that timeline is correct. I'd have to double check my own notes from a couple of weeks ago, but I think that they launched their lawsuit before Apple did anything counter this. This lawsuit, this, this action has been going on for quite a while. The Wall Street.

0:14:21 - Leo Laporte
Journal and kind of an unprompted article a couple of days ago, all about Joe Chiani, who's the CEO of Masimo, featuring family photos from from early days, just so you know. There's Joe with a in a striped shirt with a page boy haircut with his mom I don't know why in Alabama. And then here's Joe a little later on on the waterfront in Southern California after getting his master's degree. I couldn't quite parse this Like. Again, what is Apple up to, is it? I feel like Apple has some clout with the journal and may have may have kind of implied that Masimo is a patent troll, that Kiani has done this before and is kind of aggressive. They do point out that it's cost him a lot of money.

0:15:10 - Jason Snell
Is not. Yeah, that story is not particularly meaningful. I mean, I read it hoping it would be like why he's doing it and the and the answer is like the last line of it. He's like because it's right. I'm like, okay, right, he's done this before. The journal points out in 2006.

0:15:26 - Leo Laporte
He won a seven year patent dispute with Nelcor that also made a Pulse Oximeter. In 2016. He sued Royal Phillips, so he's done this before. This is they're estimating a hundred million dollar lawsuit for him. So but but as to who did what when first and so forth, they don't really I don't think really clear that up At 2013, massimo showed a portable Pulse Oximeter that hooked up to Apple devices.

A few months later, apple reached out. This is from the journal article. Representatives of the company met in 2013. Apple official said we didn't dig deep into the technology. The meeting didn't last long. We never met in person again. This is relevant because Masimo says they. They met with Masimo to steal the technology At the time of the Apple Watch development, says the journal, apple met within many other small players, not just Masimo.

Quoting the company, apple also said the two never got close to working together because Masimo was more focused on the clinical side, and this this lends credence to what you were saying, alex, that hey, just as long as you stay in your lane, massimo, and don't go into the consumer side, we might not have a problem. A few months after that initial meeting, apple did hire Masimo's chief medical officer. Later it added a top engineer who was working at a Masimo spin-off, as well as dozens of other Masimo employer employees. They did. Those employees did testify in a later trial that they did not bring any information to the company. In fact, apple said explicitly don't. But you know what's in your brain is in your brain. 2019, six years later, apple publishes patents listing the former engineer of the Masimo spin-off as the inventor, founding co-inventor, massimo's technology said it felt like a knife in my stomach. It was truly painful. Masimo sued in 2020.

0:17:30 - Jason Snell
And remember that guy. Another report said that that guy who left Masimo actually approached Apple that they didn't try to recruit him. He, he apparently approached them and then he was also a bad cultural fit and didn't last at Apple. So he, they did all of this and then like within a year I think, he was gone. Because he was, he wanted to like his own team and like he was a big surprise because I mean, if there's ever a company that just is a bad cultural fit for almost everybody, it's Apple. So yeah, but so it's. Yeah, it's a it's, it's a mess.

0:18:01 - Leo Laporte
Masimo has two complaints one with the federal trade commission but also a trade secret case over this. You know, transfer of knowledge that went to trial, according to the journal, but had a hung jury last spring and is scheduled to go back in court this year.

0:18:17 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and if and if that's significant, it was a hung jury because one of the six jurors that could not five agreed one, could not agree on a verdict, and that's what caused the hung jury. So so it's not as though there was like that's why jury trials are super, super weird. All you need is one person, and that's why, that's why, that's why you settle, settle, settle right and let the scope of front mature.

0:18:40 - Leo Laporte
It's. This is one of those cases where both sides are pretty intractable. Apple says we're not going to let a patent roll win ever, because that would just open the door to other patent rolls. And Masimo says no, we're not going to let somebody steal our technology, even if they're the biggest company in the world. We're going to fight. It is a big fight for them. They have a hundred forty four million dollars a year profit and they've spent a hundred million of that on this suit.

0:19:04 - Andy Ihnatko
It's it really, it really does. It really does seem like a like you're trying to do a excuse me like anyone who, anyone who tries to paint Masimo as a patent troll is really actively trying to smear the company, because this is a company that has a long, long history in biomedical research and biotech. This isn't like a company that you've never heard of, because they buy patents and they buy struggling companies just to have a patent portfolio. So I'm not that there's still, of course, a lot to discuss about this, but the idea, the idea of oh well, this is just another company that's trying to hold up a big company for a big settlement, that's.

0:19:39 - Leo Laporte
Keanu. Keanu says we're willing to settle with Apple, but they have not approached us.

0:19:44 - Alex Lindsay
They right and the and the issue is is that it's not only is it not they not, not only are they not a patent troll. This is a core product for them and Apple will make, you know, apple will make. If you look at like a live course, doing you know, has the same complaints about Apple doing things they're doing. This becomes an existential threat for them because if everybody has a glucose, an accurate or semi accurate glucose monitor on their, on their watch, if that actually you know, comes out and starts to have you know or or not, or the you know all of the blood oxygen, the chances of them buying other products becomes very low. Like, even if they're, even if those products are more accurate or better, it's not going to matter. They have one that is good enough, you know, and, and that is so, it's a real or blood oxygen, you know. Glucose is next right, right, apple doesn't want to fight that one either. But but blood oxygen, with the blood oxygen level, you know, people, once they have something that's good enough, that's always on their wrist, that came with their watch the chances of them moving over. So it's a real problem for Masimo.

I think that I really feel like Apple should find a way to. You know, I can understand Naughty, but wanting, wanting to make it feel like, even if they lose, they want to make sure that you realize that someone spent a hundred million dollars trying to. It's for every little company like, hey, this is what it takes to win, is to you know? So even if they, even if they lose this, they win in the sense of everyone looks at what the fight's going to look like if you get into it.

0:21:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, mass, it's interesting there's a little zinger from Keonay. At the end of his Bloomberg technology interview he said part of the problem here is Apple isn't building their stuff in the US. There'd be no import ban if they built it in the US. We build our stuff in the US, little zinger, that is a zinger, little zinger. You can't block something, import something if it's made in the America. America, that would be an interesting choice for Apple is to say, well, okay, we'll just build it here.

0:21:39 - Alex Lindsay
Be hard, hard choice.

0:21:40 - Leo Laporte
More expensive, more expensive than doing what they're doing now, absolutely yeah, yeah, I mean should somebody like me, who loves his Apple watch ultra and uses the blood oximeter from time to time, should I feel bad about this?

0:21:56 - Alex Lindsay
This is why we have quarts, so we don't have to go back.

0:21:58 - Leo Laporte
Let them decide.

0:22:00 - Alex Lindsay
Let them figure it out, okay.

0:22:01 - Jason Snell
Law eases the pain.

0:22:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Let somebody who can't be fired from their job. Tell me whether I should feel better or not.

0:22:07 - Leo Laporte
I like it. I'm happy with that. I'm good with that. All right, let's see. Oh, congratulations, by the way, mr Snell, for fully deconstructing your Touch ID button, and, and, and, and set it aside as a standalone fingerprint reader for your Mac.

0:22:25 - Jason Snell
What. What is interesting about this whole thing is the way that this happened is I wrote a piece on six colors at the end of the year. That's basically like what are my setups? Well, that's my setup out here. What's my setup in my sort of alternate studio that I've got? Cause that's new this year and people cause people always ask like what you know, what computer do you use and what monitor do you use and what are all your peripherals? And one of the things I mentioned including like what keyboard I have out here, was I also have this deconstructed thing that I did in in like 2022, I think I think it's more than a year now that I've had this deconstructed thing. But John Gruber then reads my what I'm, what my setup is, clicks on the link about the, about the Touch ID sensor, right To post on daring fireball about the link from 2022 to the Touch ID sensor, and then I start to hear from all these people about my Touch ID sensor, which has not changed in more than a year.

0:23:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we talked about it, we did, we did.

0:23:26 - Jason Snell
And I have. I mean, actually the photo on six colors is not the even the 3d printed case. I got a new 3d printed case that actually has a back, so you don't have to oh congratulations.

0:23:34 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's a big yeah. Well, thank you.

0:23:36 - Jason Snell
And so I, I now, yeah, so it's great. So now I have, yeah, a little touch ID sensor and a little 3d printed case and it sits on my desk and I agree, like John Gruper's point was, you know, what they should do is is put this on the magic track pad, which they probably won't, but I, you know, and I've seen arguments that's like, oh well, but you know, a button is ungainly and it's a smooth surface and all that. It's like I don't know. There are all these stories that we've talked about about the last five years, about how they investigate a touch ID technology under glass. I thought, well, maybe you could do touch ID, like on the magic track pad, but have it not even be, not even be like visible, really, just like have a little space where you could put in the corner and it would and it would read your track.

Anyway, I, as somebody who doesn't use an Apple keyboard, touch ID is real convenient, so I bought a touch ID keyboard and took it apart, and I don't recommend that people try this at home. I wish Apple would sell an overpriced touch ID button just for those of us who are sickos and don't use their keyboard. I would pay their overpriced price for it because I literally paid the price for a keyboard and threw everything but the button away.

0:24:47 - Leo Laporte
And then John Gruber's defense. It was December 28th. He had to write something.

0:24:52 - Jason Snell
I love it. I love it, it's just funny.

0:24:55 - Leo Laporte
This is your post from August 2022. I mean, it's a year and a half.

0:24:59 - Jason Snell
John saw it. John saw it and was interested by. What's funny then, because of the weight that John carries in the community, is all these other people start reacting to this topic and citing my piece and, like you know when, when, when I write something and John links to it right away, I don't. I mean, I can usually tell, because usually there's a little lag and I can see this. Here's the daring fireball effect happened. But it's very obvious when it's something that I posted 16 months before Now suddenly everybody wants to talk to me about, I'm like oh, even when you got that idea, I even knew that you published this a year, and a half ago because I was here, so it's there's nothing to talk about because it was the end of the year.

You're right, so it's. I'm happy to talk about it again. It's a really cool thing. I love having it and I wish Apple would, you know, sell an overpriced thing or put it in the trackpad, because I love the trackpad.

0:25:48 - Leo Laporte
Do you agree with John who says they probably won't?

0:25:52 - Jason Snell
I think they yeah, I agree, because I think they probably philosophically think it belongs on the keyboard and they love their keyboard, I guess. But like a lot of us don't love their keyboards and their keyboards are great, but like I can't. I used to tape it under my desk right Like before I broke it off into his little box. It was there's another post that John diddling to where I had velcroed an entire keyboard under my desk with the touch ID button.

Yeah, Right at the front, so I could just stick my finger under my desk which was stupid, but it worked and then I lock. I had software to lock out all the other keys, in case I pressed them accidentally. It's like again. I think that there's a market for something like this and it's a case where Apple has to basically make it themselves. Unfortunately, like there's no third party touch ID button, and so here we are, we're kind of left in this.

0:26:43 - Leo Laporte
At least there are 3d printers now. Just buy a laptop, for Christ sake. It just proves. It proves, however, one thing which I've always expected, which is that. John is a time Lord right, he does, and time is meaningless to him, it's a constant.

0:26:58 - Jason Snell
I love it when we both are under an embargo for review and like my review and the Verges review and like all those reviews hit right right on time at whatever the embargo time. It is Like eight hours later, gruber posts a story. He's like I don't care, it's great, I love it, he doesn't need to.

0:27:12 - Leo Laporte
He doesn't have to and he doesn't. It's why he is the daring fireball he is the master of time.

He's merely podcast mortals, mortals, mere mortals in his presence. One more story before we take a break. Let's see. Oh well, this is an interesting one from ours Technica. There is, and has been for the last four years, a backdoor in the iPhone, the triangulation backdoor the most advanced exploit ever, says Dan Gooden in ours Technica, and, what's interesting, it was, among other places, applied against employees of Kaspersky, the antivirus security company, and dozens of iPhones, according to Gooden, belonging to employees of Kaspersky were infected by triangulation. This came out just before the break, the Wednesday before Christmas. Or no, actually the.

Wednesday after Christmas, so those guys were working up late.

0:28:15 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and one of the most interesting parts of it is that they exploited for the hack, exploited for different vulnerabilities, one of which uses a what's been described as an undocumented feature of memory memory excuse me, the undocumented MMI. Mmi over registers. The ability to basically directly address stuff, that stuff on a very, very low level. That didn't, was not thought to be possible beforehand. Apple apparently knew of it and had taken some sort of a very weak method to try to secure it, but it certainly wasn't enough. And these four things. But as often happens, basically a first hack just gets you into the system but you can't do anything because you're having privileges. Every subsequent layer of it got you deeper and deeper until with this, with this, the final version of this. It was the classic send somebody an I message, doesn't matter if they open it or not, that that phone is owned. And it wasn't just Kaprosky, was basically government officials business officials this was really really big and really really super bad to.

0:29:20 - Leo Laporte
CVE through four CVEs, which Apple has since patched. So we should reassure you, this is not.

0:29:28 - Jason Snell
This is no longer exploitable, but boy read the story bug in the true type font.

0:29:35 - Leo Laporte
Well, anybody listens to Steve Gibson security now, as I have for the last 1000 episodes knows that the big, a big vulnerability is interpreters. And true type is not a bitmap, true type is a program and you have a true type font interpreter which interprets the program and displays the font on the screen. That's what gives it all the capabilities. Interpreters are almost always the problem on Windows and Macintosh. That's why messages is often the target, because it has interpreters for a variety of file types and those are just basically little program code runners that are running program code that come in over the transom, always a vector, and it took Kaspersky 12 months, they say, of intensive investigation to to find to figure this out.

So I'm guessing these hackers are nation state. What would be really interesting, and in fact I think it's probably the case, is that they are Russian, because a nation state, because Kaspersky is a Russian company and we know that Kaspersky has been implicated you know, not directly, but has been implicated in some leaks of US spy technology. And the thinking always was well, probably somebody at the NSA had Kaspersky's antivirus running and one of the things the antivirus does is quarantine and exploits and send them back to the home office in Moscow. And the question was well, is there a a mole inside Kaspersky, or is Kaspersky actively cooperating with the Russian government? Well, or maybe, just maybe, the Russian government's had an exploit on Kaspersky's phones for all this time and they didn't have to bother. Very, very interesting story. I'm sure Steve will cover it on security now later today. But fear not, you have, you have. Is that why we got like four updates in the last week?

0:31:36 - Andy Ihnatko
And according to Kaspersky and others, it's not wasn't just the iPhone, the same exploit was was the same exploit was developed for Apple Watch, for Apple TV, for everything, and so, although it had only been seen in the wild as an exploit against the iPhone, so it's like that was. I hope that. I'm trying, I'm struggling, to understand technically exactly everything that was going on. Like, like, like Jason, I kind of like got to oh wow, okay, true, type hack, I kind of get that. Then you get to the lower, lower level stuff. There was some discussion amongst some security boards I was reading about how was this? Was this a problem that Apple created? Or is this a problem with arm? Is this a problem with something else? Because it seemed to be something that caught a lot of people off guard and so we don't know where the where the responsibility ultimately lies.

0:32:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, gooden's article implicates both Apple and arms, so it's very interesting If it is armed, that's really interesting Because, of course, apple is the isn't the only licensee of arm technology. In fact, there are a lot of arm processors in almost every phone out there. Speaking of hacking, you may remember when Apple warned Indian officials that a nation state had been breaking into their phone. That made Prime Minister Narendra Modi's prompt party quite upset. The Washington Post says a day after Apple warned independent Indian journalists and opposition party politicians in October, the government hackers may have tried to break into their iPhones. Officials under Modi promptly took action against Apple. They publicly questioned whether the Silicon Valley company internal threat algorithms are faulty. And just in case, an investigation fake algorithm.

That's a new one. Don't, don't give anybody any ideas. Announce an investigation into the security of Apple devices. Yeah, they also summoned and this is more heavy handed and Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi. You need to come to New Delhi. Yeah, they were really angry. One of the people said they were really angry. So just in case you're not aware of this, Modi's government spies on this opposition politicians and on a journalist in.

0:33:53 - Jason Snell
India. We know that there is a larger context here too, right, because of course, relationships with India and some other countries, most notably Canada, are currently quite fraught, because Canada said that there is a separatist group in India and one of their leaders is in Canada and Canada recently said that the Indian government was trying to assassinate him in Canada, which Canada doesn't appreciate, and that the US has said that there have also been some Indian actions against other separatists in the United States, and so there's a real tension going on here, because, of course, what India says is well, these are terrorists, what do you mean? But the people involved are like no, we're not, we are in opposition to the government.

And then Apple, like, steps right in it too. So this is what's been going on recently, because Modi's government has yes, has, I don't know how to say it, I don't know enough about it Like there is a lot of tension.

0:34:51 - Leo Laporte
Yes, and it seems to be heightening that, some of that tension we should point out. Just to be completely fair, it's not like the US would ever attempt to assassinate a national of another country. In that country, that would never happen. But Canada, ever Canada.

0:35:05 - Jason Snell
Canada from the sky.

0:35:07 - Alex Lindsay
From the sky and their apartment in Beirut.

0:35:09 - Leo Laporte
Oh, if that happened yesterday, well, well, there you go. Okay, never mind.

0:35:12 - Alex Lindsay
You know, like so. So yeah, I mean it's like the, yeah, the. I think that when our intelligence agencies get caught doing this, that we, they quietly try to change all the laws over long periods of time, they don't wave the flag that says, hey, stop doing that, they just slowly keep on working, working the angle. But I mean all, all governments are doing what India is doing to some degree. It just depends on what level.

0:35:37 - Jason Snell
And Well, spying on political opponents in their own country, that's that's. That's different right.

0:35:44 - Leo Laporte
Well, and certainly Apple doesn't want to be a vector for that. That's the other thing, right.

0:35:48 - Andy Ihnatko
Exactly that's. That's that's yet another chapter in this problem that, as as cell phones become so easily and tempting to to weaponize against political opponents, religious opponents, any kind of opponent, apple's going to find themselves in these situations more and more, more and more as time goes by. What are they going to do if the Indian government basically sharpens existing anti-terrorism laws, saying that it is illegal to interfere with an ongoing intelligence operation that's targeted against militant, militant insurgents, militant terrorists, and they use that to say oh, by the way, apple, you are not allowed to tell anybody if anybody inside India, or at least nobody, is on this list of people. You're not allowed to tell anybody if they, if they are being tracked or somehow hacked.

0:36:33 - Leo Laporte
Many of us have received that warning from both Google and Apple that a nation state hacker was attempting to get into our stuff. That is, that is a standard operating procedure for at least Google and Apple, probably Microsoft as well Right, but the government's made I mean take kindly to that they were using, apparently, pegasus, the spyware developed by the NSO group, which the NSO says we only sell to governments. So that's another smoking gun. People often ask Leo, why do you inject politics into technology? Why do they put, why do they inject politics into technology? We're not the ones with the syringe, we're not the ones with the syringe. Thank you, andy the syringe and the chloroform.

We're, there's somebody else, we're just, we're just reporting, not taking sides, but but just reporting. It's also further complicated by the fact that Apple really wants to do business in India, which is a giant market. Yes, right, yeah. This is somewhat similar to Apple's issues in China, where, you know, on the one hand, they're not crazy about the government, but on the other hand, they want to do business there, and you know and and in China you can see the soft peddling where Apple is is doing as much as they can.

0:37:39 - Alex Lindsay
They have some certain lines that it's not going to cross, related to actually getting all of the data on the phone, but in the cloud it's fine and they kind of give where they need, where they have to give in those areas. But you're also seeing Apple building factories in other countries. So Apple is like there's this slow, like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll agree with them, but they're there. You're seeing them slowly diversify their risk and and that over a decade, gives them more leverage to be more assertive. But they don't right now. They couldn't, they couldn't run their company without China. So they there's a certain level of of of what they have to do there.

0:38:11 - Andy Ihnatko
Plus, to be fair, china. What China and some other companies have done are asking for passive things such as you're not allowed to have VPN services, vpn software or anything that will allow you to allow citizens to do their communications right as a poed, but the end.

but if the rubber ever met the road and saying that we need you to not interfere in any way with our, with the power structure's ability to surveil, intimidate and perhaps even cause bodily harm to people who oppose our political party or our political structure, that's when Apple and any other company is going to have to really have, really have to have a come to Jesus moment about like I'm sure I could come up with a better phrase than that but really decide look who are we and what are we willing to do If we're going to cross this line. Is there any line that we're not going to cross? You call it a come to Ford moment. How about that? Come to Ford, gerald Ford? No.

0:39:11 - Leo Laporte
I mean, he was, he was charming as a president. A little callback to Brave New World, don't worry about it. Oh, sorry If you were going time to take a break and I want to talk about our sponsor, but before I do that I want to ask you if you were going to learn another language, andy. What language would you like to learn? Would you like to learn Russian? I bet you would like to learn Russian.

0:39:28 - Andy Ihnatko
So don't ask me enough to fake it yeah. So you're, norie Smilz, your republic's people. He's one of the people who, like he, like to learn Russian.

0:39:39 - Leo Laporte
How about you, Jason? Is there a language you would like to?

0:39:41 - Jason Snell
learn. Well, I live in California and stupidly decided to take German in high school and college. So, yes, spanish would be more useful in my way.

0:39:53 - Leo Laporte
We had a fight when my kid Abby was little in high school and she was in high school she was trying to decide what language to take and I said a French, of course. And Jennifer said what are you talking about? She lives in California, she took French, ended up spending junior year in France and boy, that's come in handy.

0:40:10 - Andy Ihnatko
It's the international language of diplomacy, exactly.

0:40:13 - Leo Laporte
That's right. She, whenever Chess has mentioned she knows what language to take.

0:40:18 - Jason Snell
Hey, when I finally went to Germany, 35 or 40 years later or whatever. Then yeah, it was very useful. Had you remembered you were able to ask for the library, just like that, no phrasebook.

0:40:27 - Leo Laporte
I remember no Chinese, which is what I usefully studied in college. How about you, alex? Is there a language?

0:40:34 - Alex Lindsay
Swahili. You know, I know a little bits of bits, I think, swahili.

0:40:37 - Leo Laporte
I know a little bit of the show. It's kind of a beautiful language. I like it.

0:40:39 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I do like the Bantu-based languages and so I do like I think that that it's a very beautiful language. I think, practically, if I learned another language, it would be Spanish, because my wife already speaks very fluent Spanish, and so it's it would be fun, but I keep thinking about it.

0:40:53 - Leo Laporte
Plus, we've got Mexico, and then there's Barcelona. This is why I use Babbel. In fact, I'm learning Spanish in Babbel Spanish, french, italian, german, danish, indonesian, dutch, norwegian, polish, portuguese, russian, swedish, turkish. You can even learn English Did you know that? Which maybe some of us should do from Babbel?

I love Babbel, the language learning app that actually works. I love it so much I actually bought a lifetime membership because I just know that I will always be wanting to learn some language. Babbel uses quick 10 minute lessons, so it's you can do it anytime, whenever you've got a moment and it and they're designed by language experts 150 different language experts so you could start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks, using science-based cognitive tools, things like spaced repetition, interactive lessons. I love the conversational part of it because I really can. It's you know, it's not just learning vocabulary, it's learning how to speak to somebody, build real world conversations that order food, ask for directions, speak to merchants and, of course, as you get better, do more. It also teaches and I think this is really important the context, traditions and the culture of the language you're learning from self-study app lessons to podcasts. They actually have live classes as well Babbel has, which is great because then you're talking to real people in real time. It's such a good, useful tool.

Babbel has a wide range of learning experiences for learners of all ages, based on your ability to commit time or how advanced you are. 15 hours with Babbel, they say, is equal to one university semester. All of Babbel's 14 language courses are backed by their 20 day money back guarantee. And here's a special, limited time deal just for you Right now 55% off your Babbel subscription. But you have to do it. This is special at babbel.com/macbreak. B-A-B-B-E-L. babbel.com/macbreak for 55% off. Some rules and restrictions apply, but I think this is a great new year goal right To learn a language, especially a language that would be useful. Although maybe you want to read, you know Proust in the original French, whatever it is, Babbel B-A-B-B-E-L.com/macbreak. I just, I just want to speak to the more than 50% of Californians who know speak Spanish. Babbel B A-B-B-E-L.com/macbreak. Our son's studying German right now. Actually, jason, did you? It's like it's an interesting language. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it's weird.

0:43:27 - Jason Snell
But you get my high school like that was the first year they offered German, because before that it was French or Spanish, and so it was like, oh, let's do this exciting thing and yeah, I don't. I mean, I enjoyed it, but in terms, in practical terms, it's stupid and I should have you learn Spanish because I am a, I am a lifelong Californian and you're rightly at like it is our other language.

0:43:49 - Leo Laporte
It's a bilingual state at this point, it is like many states. By the way, this is not unusual. There are a lot of states now who are basically bilingual and I think that's fine, I think that's great.

0:43:59 - Jason Snell
It's another culture, it's another if you live in Maine, you should learn French. More French speakers in Maine than any other part of the US. One thing I like about Babel.

0:44:09 - Leo Laporte
They do that, you can do Spanish, you know Castilian, or you can learn what they call South American Spanish, which is basically Mexican and South America.

0:44:17 - Jason Snell
Espanyol.

0:44:18 - Leo Laporte
They're a little Castilian versus Espanyol, and so it's nice that they make the distinction. You can learn either one. They're similar enough that one would help you with the other. In pro, we should talk about this. The drumbeat is getting harder and harder, and louder and louder. According to Ming-Chi-Kuo who, by the way, gets our Rumor Monger of the Year award he was the guy who, at the beginning of 2023, said no new iPads in 2023. And he was right. First year since they were announced that, there were no new iPads, which is kind of amazing.

They're going to be new iPads this year Before we get to the vision pro. Why no new iPads in 2023? Were they trying to figure out what to?

0:45:06 - Jason Snell
do with them. I think it's just an accident of timing. Honestly, everybody's going to do these uh Tealy for eating and criminology about it, but, like I think it was an accident of timing that they had everything lined up in a certain way. Uh, for the previous ones and they, you know, apple goes through these more than year long cycles for the iPad, I think, the iPad pro, I mean. The real story here, I think, is is that that iPad pro, the last generation, was supposed to be the big step forward, the rumor is, and instead it was just to kick the can down the road, kind of thing, and I think that that changed their time horizon for everything else that they were doing, so we'll get them all this year instead.

It's a little bit weird, but I'd say it's like like an eclipse or something. It's literally just a whole bunch of variables happen to leave this weird year where there are no iPad updates, except, except, except, except less. We forget the very exciting not third generation, uh, not second or first generation, but USBC, apple pencil, whatever that thing is. That was it. That was the entire iPad line for the year. New pencil, new pencil.

0:46:07 - Andy Ihnatko
You want to blow our minds that badly more than once a year.

0:46:10 - Leo Laporte
By the way, the rumor is there will be actually a new pencil this year too.

0:46:14 - Jason Snell
Like a real new, like a like a pencil pro or something.

0:46:16 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, Pencil pro, and you know there there could be some integration between the vision pro and the iPad, that that you may want to have the iPad come after the vision, so that's a good so that may be also a possibility. There's also, I feel like this is.

0:46:31 - Jason Snell
this is the year where they're going to, I mean, I think, the pro. As somebody who is a big fan of the iPad pro, I think this year the iPad pro is going to really get expensive A nice, a nice it's going to. It's probably going to get expensive. It's going to have OLED, but I think that there it's going to be a real substantial update, which we have been dying for since 2018.

Really, I think that the the pro accessories are going to get an update right, like the air will keep using the old size and I'll have the old magic keyboard and stuff like that. But I think they're going to turn over all the accessories on the pro line, including the pro pencil and the pro keyboard, and, who knows, there may be some new features there, too that are exclusive to the iPad pro, because they're going to have the M three processor. Like I'm excited about that, because that's been one of the big problems with the iPad, right, it's not that the iPad isn't fine it is fine, I love mine but that the iPad and pro and the iPad air and the base level iPad. You're like why is that iPad air there and what does it do? And I think the answer is going to be that the new iPad pros will be so much further up the chain that the iPad air will make more sense for everybody else.

0:47:32 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I'm intrigued by what they could do if they decided to do a more explicitly creative, more focused iPad. That was something that's not necessarily like a good bridge device for a little bit more than a phone, a little bit less than a notebook, but saying guess what? We're going to make it 14 inches, you're going to get an OLED screen, you're going to get like more storage, you're going to get more connectivity so that if you wanted to capture and edit 4k, 8k video done to 4k, you can do it here. If you want to do an entire illustration job on this thing, not simply use it as a as a sketch device for something you eventually put into your desktop, that's super intriguing to me.

0:48:09 - Leo Laporte
This is going to cause a crisis, though, for me, because I'd really love my MacBook Pro and I spent a lot of money on it. Do I want to spend another? It's going to be two grand. At least right For the iPad pro.

0:48:22 - Jason Snell
The high end iPad pro. Yeah.

0:48:24 - Alex Lindsay
I'm going to look at that screen and go.

0:48:25 - Leo Laporte
The last two have cost that much. And then I'm going to think, oh, and then I have to decide what platform, because you don't really I have an iPad pro. I don't really, I really use it to FaceTime my mom, that's it.

0:48:39 - Jason Snell
I feel like I mean I use it a lot, but I feel like I mean Apple's happy to take your money right. We all, we learned that. That's why Apple has all the money is that they've taken all of your money and everybody else's money.

Who can buy both why not both that there's? You can say that in Spanish, but I'm not going to. And so then I do think, though, that Apple is. You know, apple had that moment where they thought, oh, the future of computing is the iPad. I don't think that they think that anymore. I think that I think the iPad is going to be good at what it's good at, which is it's modular. It can be different things to different people, and they're going to be. The iPad pro is going to fit into very specific use cases where people want and maybe need that level of power with that kind of modularity, where an iPad makes sense and fits in, whereas the Mac is a general purpose computer and it's going to remain the general purpose computer. So I think it's better if the iPad. So what I'm saying, leo, is, unless you know you need an iPad pro, don't buy it, because the people who know it will know it and it'll be worth it for them.

0:49:35 - Alex Lindsay
And I will say that if, if you were able to boot an iPad into Mac OS, I would never buy another laptop. It would be like you know, the. It's just some basic services and the thing is, is there? It's the same chip now. It's the same level of power. It's the same like all you hold. You hold down a button when you hit restart and it now for iPad. But it would be like other features.

0:49:58 - Jason Snell
This is exactly what I meant, alex, which is I wonder and I don't know if they'll do it, but I think it's a non zero chance of saying one of the features of this new high end OLED iPad pro is there's a Mac app on it and when you tap it, it runs Sonoma and it's running it like an MacBook Air, essentially an M three MacBook Air and then you can leave it and you know, maybe it only works when you attach it to an external keyboard or to that case, but like I don't, I don't think that would be unreasonable and I don't think it's going to kill Mac laptops. It's a very different use case.

0:50:32 - Alex Lindsay
But it would make the iPad more useful, like I would. Be like I would do it if you made it, if you just made the screen a little bit bigger and you and you gave me an iPad that could run it. The only reason I opened my Mac laptop is because there are things that I can't do on my iPad, and if you gave me the Mac stuff on the iPad immediately, I would be like it's also the iPad problem.

0:50:53 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I could.

0:50:54 - Andy Ihnatko
I could. I could believe it more easily if it were, if it were only able to install Mac apps from the, from the official app store, and if developers had the ability to, just as they can now with iPad apps, click a button that says that allow this Mac app to run in Mac mode. Or, excuse me, they would probably, they'd probably flip it on its ear, not saying I give, I give this app permission to run, but I specifically want to deny permission to make it run on an iPad.

0:51:20 - Alex Lindsay
Which is what happened with the iPad.

0:51:21 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean, if they think, if they think that their Mac app is a degraded experience for whatever reason, on an iPad, I think they should have the ability to do so. But I think that they would never do that unless they had, unless they said guess what? You're absolutely locked into the app store. You cannot side load any apps. We're not going to trust anything on this completely locked down platform where every sacrifice we put you through is basically to make sure that it is more stable than a Mac, to make sure that it is more secure than a Mac.

0:51:47 - Alex Lindsay
The amount of pressure put on developers to go to the app store, because that would be basically the signal of hey Macs are going away. Like, like, like, like, like, let me swing this?

0:51:57 - Jason Snell
I don't think so, but it would certainly be a great lever to get people on the Mac app store if they did something like that.

0:52:03 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I don't think it would. I don't think it would get rid of, like the high power ranks, but I would say that I think that the, if you did that, the amount of laptops being sold from Apple Now again, I think that this would be.

0:52:14 - Jason Snell
I think, because this thing's going to cost two grand and it's going to be a tablet with a weird compatibility mode and most people are not going to do that. They're going to buy either a more powerful Macbook Pro or they're going to buy a cheaper MacBook Air. I don't.

0:52:24 - Leo Laporte
I don't think it's a mainstream product, what's interesting is, with the exception of the OLED keyboard, this, the MacBook Pro, is actually roughly the same size, weight and price as a potential iPad Pro. Maybe a better keyboard on the MacBook, better processor?

0:52:41 - Alex Lindsay
Certainly a better processor and more memory and all that.

0:52:44 - Leo Laporte
But having a touch screen, having the stuff and and I don't know how many of you will give up that for touch screen, maybe for an OLED Cameras and and you program in Python. Jason, you, there are. There are programs like Python, there are apps that will let you do it.

0:52:56 - Jason Snell
Yeah, no, I think I mean I get what Alex is saying. I don't agree because I think that it's a a more. I think it fits Alex and it might fit me Right, Like I might not need to travel with a MacBook Air anymore If I could run audio hijack, which would be it would require a level of access that Andy's theory would prevent, right.

But if I could do that in a safe space inside an iPad, it would save me. But I think most people are going to be like what Mac inside an iPad, huh, and they're just going to buy a MacBook Air or they're going to buy a MacBook Pro. And then there'll be the weirdos, us sickos, in the middle saying hey.

0:53:29 - Alex Lindsay
I don't know, I'm not on iPad. Great, I just think that there's a lot of people that work in marketing and work in a lot of other things that are not like. They don't need the computer to do very many things, you know, and they they still have a laptop. I think that it would be Apple selling it as this high end solution. So I think you know.

0:53:43 - Leo Laporte
That's the problem. It's the price but I guess those people can afford it.

0:53:46 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, but there are people, who, who, who, who? They're definitely people.

0:53:49 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, these are, these are I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm I'm I'm interrupted, but but I mean they're. These are Apple consumers. They will buy stuff because it attracts, they're attracted to it or because it fills a gap that they have. I do think that I don't think that Apple wants to wants to confuse their market. I don't think they want to get people into a brain lock situation when they walk to an Apple store, but whether they want to get an iPad or where they want to want to get a Mac. But one thing I absolutely do think is that Apple, there are very few areas in which Apple has 100% missed the boat, and one of them is that they they seem to not appreciate what a paradigm shift it is to not have a computing paradigm where my hands are here on a flat surface, my eyes are here on another flat surface and there's a disconnection between the two.

That I love about using my iPad is that there are times when that really is the most efficient way for me to do things, and when I do that, I can even have it plugged into a desktop and it will work like a desktop.

But there are times where I'm just I'm just interacting casually with data, and this is a there's a disconnect between my hands and my eyes and my brain that the iPad short circuits.

There are types of content that I want to consume, where 80% of what I'm looking at is completely superfluous, where I want just a flat piece of glass that is 100% user interface, without any tactile buttons on it, and I think that every time that I use devices that are like that, that run another operating systems, I'm reminded of God. I really wish Apple had, I really wish Apple had had gotten rid of its, its, its dogma about oh no, you don't want to refrigerate or toaster, you don't want you, you want to have a truck and you want a car, because they do two separate things equally, equally well. I think they were blind to how well a touchscreen, adding it, modifying the Mac OS interface so that it could work very, very well as a touchscreen interface. And if that although if that had happened, Alex, I think you would have been right that at some point, Apple would have decided you know what? We're okay, congratulations. We're now merging the two of them into my pad OS, because we're squishing all the letters of Mac OS and iPad OS together.

0:55:59 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. And I still think that there's a lot of people who you lightly use their laptops, that that would be perfect for that a, that a just. And I think the best way to test that is to put something and I had out that I'll run Mac Mac software and then just see how people do with it and if it takes off, it takes off. If it doesn't, I still think it'll sell enough to make it worth it for that ball. You know millions of copies of whatever, but I don't. I agree that I don't know whether everyone would want to use it, but I just feel like there's a lot of people that I see, especially at the airport, and you think about what they're doing with it. They'd be pretty happy With, with something that was a little lighter, that they could actually draw.

0:56:33 - Leo Laporte
And I use my laptop for more heavy-duty Stuff. I want that in three. I want all the RAM and all that stuff.

0:56:40 - Alex Lindsay
But you still get that on the lap, you still have that on the right. You know, problem is it's the dog.

0:56:44 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to learn new tricks like touching the freakin screen. I don't see.

0:56:48 - Alex Lindsay
That, doesn't see, that, doesn't bother me, it's for me, it's the file system, it's.

0:56:51 - Leo Laporte
It's that when I well, that's a problem too you can't access files.

0:56:55 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it's so like if I want to do a bunch of images, let's say I want to render a bunch of images on mid-journey and I want to put them into a keynote document. On an iOS app on an iOS system. That is a royal pain in the neck. That's right on a Mac. It's nothing.

0:57:09 - Leo Laporte
You know, and the UI I hate to say, but the UI on iOS apps is is all over the freakin place. It is not consistent on that.

0:57:17 - Alex Lindsay
They're that way with the Apple? Did you see them? Did you see the release of the new, the new Apple, oh, apple TV OS or whatever Apple?

0:57:23 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.

0:57:25 - Alex Lindsay
Handedly hear me out here. It is single-handedly the worst update that Apple has ever executed. In the 40 years that I've used an Apple product, it is the worst. It is so bad that I it it like it crashes. It is crash. I restart that app Twice a day, like twice a day, so that it will do something. It doesn't crash it, just the little pain, the new little pain that they created, just opens and doesn't respond, like it'll go up and down, but when you click on it nothing happens. And the way to fix that is to restart the app, come back into it and then everything. I got one for you in addition to that okay.

In addition to that, they reorganize everything. They got rid of movies and TV, all things that worked perfectly fine before, and now they've Shove it all in and I think that I think that they are. You know, they want to become a cable network and and I think that it is. The new app is One of the few times, oftentimes, I think, apple really does build interfaces where the user is all that matters. We don't care about the developers, we don't care about the everyone else, we just care about the user experience. This is where this, along with, I think, apple's whole push into news and TV and everything else, is the place where they're giving up the, the user, as the most important thing. And then they have a business model they're trying to build and they're funneling us into it and forcing us into something that is substandard. You know, and like I think that the news app is a substandard, because when I block something, I don't get it blocked, it just keeps showing it to me. That's, that's not a user-friendly thing to do.

And this new, the new app that they rolled out before Christmas it was like the worst time to roll it out. Everyone's home, so everyone's home. My kids are like what happened to the Apple TV. You know like it's broken. It's actually easier to go watch stuff on like. Amazon has a better I Interface than Apple does, and that's saying a lot like examples. Amazon's interface is the worst one of all the but the whole bunch. And somehow Apple achieved the illustrious Of making an app that actually runs worse than the Amazon's app on on on the Apple TV. It is such a bad it. And then again it took me, took me a couple days to figure out the little dance which is delete the I mean Force, quit the app, restart it, and it'll work again. You know, and and and it's just I got a better one for that.

0:59:36 - Leo Laporte
I hate the interface. I got a better one for you. What is the number one way people buy music? Buy, not rent. Buy music. It's iTunes. Right, it became the number one digital music store.

0:59:46 - Jason Snell
Yeah try to buy, try to buy. So so Peter Gabriel's new album which.

0:59:52 - Leo Laporte
I know you listen to Jason, cuz I, cuz I follow you and I see, yes, it's my favorite new. I just love it and I thought I want to. This is first album in 21 years. I want to support Peter Gabriel by buying the album. Good luck trying to buy it, by the way, on iTunes, you I could not maybe it's me, am I stupid? There's no more store, there's no real way to buy it. They think, well, why would you want to buy it?

You got it with Apple music and then, oh, here's another good one, open music and there's a button that you can click. It's right to the left of the Apple. That makes it the little mini player. But what they don't show you is how to get out of the freakin mini player. And I'm clicking all over the place. There's no button on the mini player to close the mini, to go back to the fee, like I want to go back to. There should be a expand right to go back there. Isn't I finally figured out? You have to click. If you close the mini player window, it opens the big player, like that's the course. Yeah, yeah, of course no. I was.

1:00:53 - Jason Snell
I was joking about it, that's been the behavior for years and it doesn't make sense.

1:00:59 - Leo Laporte
Okay, you gotta help me like 20 years that behavior has been there.

1:01:02 - Jason Snell
The mini player. It's not like any other experience on a macOS at all.

1:01:11 - Alex Lindsay
The, the. I purchased songs because my daughter wants to put them into Moises, so that she can break them up, so she can learn how to play the drums, or, or, or, whatever, and so I buy them walk me through this, because I am now. Can you, can you pull up? I had, I it requires. It requires enough swearing that might fill half the road.

1:01:31 - Leo Laporte
I. I would go to Amazon and they say, well, you could buy the CD. No, I don't want the CD. I want to buy, like we used to own the record, mostly because I want to give Peter Gabriel 15 bucks, that's all.

1:01:43 - Jason Snell
Peter Gabriel's case. He has a band camp site where you can buy it and that's where you should go. But yeah, I get your point it is.

Apple is just kind of hiding all of that. Yeah Well, they they have. I mean that that's the thing. On the latest version of Apple TV. There are still music, movies and TV shows icons, but they only open up a window that says don't do this anymore, go to the TV app, because they're pushing everything in there and I, I mean, I don't envy them. It is difficult to kind of like tear down one structure and build another, and certainly it's harder to support sort of like various methods of buying, slash viewing, slash renting media. But it's a mess.

1:02:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, good, I thought it was just me. And this is the other problem when you do that, apple is People think you're smart, so they assume they're dumb. And, oh my god, I must be an idiot, I'm an old man. I can't figure out how to close the minimize the player window. I can't figure out a buy a gosh, darn album.

1:02:38 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and the frustrating part is is that if you go to a song and you say I want to buy it, so if you hit the ellipse on the song, you can say show an iTunes store, right, yeah, in music. When you're in music, you can say show in the iTunes store, okay. But it doesn't. It takes you to that Artist. It doesn't take you to the song, it just goes here's the artist with all their stuff. And now you got to go dig through to figure out where the album.

1:02:59 - Jason Snell
If you select the album, yeah, it will take you to the album.

1:03:02 - Leo Laporte
Well, I just click the triple dot and it says the item not available.

1:03:07 - Alex Lindsay
When you go to, when you go to the, are you in music?

1:03:09 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, I've got it in music on the Mac.

1:03:12 - Leo Laporte
I know why, cuz I'm 1799, you can buy on the inside mix, so they don't sell that in the US. They like?

1:03:18 - Jason Snell
is that the Dolby Atmos version and why don't they sell that in the US?

1:03:22 - Leo Laporte
I don't understand. I can listen.

1:03:24 - Jason Snell
I don't think they sell the Dolby Atmos Because that's just available on. They even support Dolby Atmos. Yeah, you should probably buy the boot. Buy the Blu-ray if you want the Dolby Atmos album.

1:03:42 - Leo Laporte
That's a good way to get it but what you are saying which is valuable is the three dots in this long menu that comes up, including download, add a playlist, play and no playing at the bottom says show an iTunes store, because there are. There are three.

1:03:56 - Jason Snell
It there are three different worlds encompassed by the music app. Oh boy, I can't believe. I mean, I'm explaining this. This is not an endorsement. I'm just explaining what this is. There are three different worlds. I use music every day. There is your library, which can include things from Apple music, but also can include things that you add manually and that can sync if you're an Apple music subscriber. There is Apple music, which is a specific world that is everything that's on that service at the at the moment. And there is iTunes store, which you can go to to buy things and add them to your library, but not Apple music, but they're probably already on Apple music. It's a, it's a whole thing if you don't use.

Music you don't see that and thank you.

1:04:39 - Leo Laporte
I didn't know about the one dots. I looked at the three dots. I just gave Peter Gabriel my 18 bucks because it's a great album. He deserves it and he hasn't done an album 21 years. He's probably probably poor guy living on spam.

1:04:50 - Alex Lindsay
So send him the money and I hand them out.

1:04:53 - Leo Laporte
Yep, I feel better about the whole thing. Thank you, because that was driving me crazy.

1:04:57 - Alex Lindsay
It's like I want to buy this well, the problem is that the iTunes store doesn't exist anymore, so it's hidden inside of music and you get to it unless the secret door into it is those that ellipse At the at. The ellipses at the end is the is the secret door to get to the iTunes store, and then you don't really see how to go back to music. You just have to hit listen now or go back to something and it's like it's like this it's because it's this hidden place.

1:05:20 - Jason Snell
There. It's not hidden. It might be hidden by default, but there is not true. There is a front door. If you go to settings, there there is show iTunes store and you check that box and then the iTunes store is there like.

1:05:36 - Andy Ihnatko
So, jason, jason, what you're basically saying is that's not hidden. If you know to look under the foot, under the door mat, there's a key.

1:05:42 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how this turned into the lion the witch and the wardrobe but, here we are.

1:05:48 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay, oh Anyway, fish bottom line.

1:05:54 - Jason Snell
Which should be the king of interfaces.

1:05:56 - Leo Laporte
In fact, really, when the Macintosh came out, the interface.

1:05:59 - Jason Snell
I want you to buy music anymore. Right, they just don't want you to artist. I'm gonna make it pissed like.

1:06:05 - Leo Laporte
If I were Taylor Swift or Peter Gabriel, I'd go. Why are you making this so hard? This is you're the number, is it? Maybe not anymore, but it was the number one music store in the world.

1:06:15 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, no, that's. That's what frustrates me and this is why I will do everything I can to make sure that I own all the music that I have, because Every single music service that I've used apples spotifies YouTube's everything. At some point you become Inconvenient to their current business plan.

1:06:31 - Andy Ihnatko
Yes it's called a shitification yeah yeah, like just not knowing that.

1:06:35 - Andy Ihnatko
But now Apple is like trying to create so many incentives to make sure that, like they're people who don't like Dolby, at most don't like like spatial audio. They think that this is not how the rich the music was originally prepared, it's not how it's mixed. They've a lot of people think that it's very, very artificial. But now Apple is moving to incentivize every single music publisher to remaster everything in spatial audio. So, whether you want it or not, that's how you're gonna get it. So it's like it's it's.

It's really really a bummer that, look, all I want to do is listen to this album. But I really really really like and I want you to help me find albums that I really really really like, and once I find it, your job is done, I will find whatever I like the fact that I can put it on of a hundred and forty dollars, digital as Sony Walkman, if I want to. I can load it on my Apple watch if I want to. I'm not not subject to. Oh well, we decided that. We decided to stop support for Apple watch on this platform because of reasons like well, those reasons are Relevant. I bought this watch, I own this watch, I own this music. If you're not supporting, if you a third-party company, you're not gonna support it, I'm not gonna support your company. It's. It's super, super annoying.

1:07:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I'm signing up for band camp and next time I'll buy it for band camp.

1:07:51 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah it makes you feel great when you, when you're buying stuff like directly from the artist, it's like it's. It's. It's not quite as good as likes Venmoing someone, a street performer, ten bucks and taking when there's CDs out of their cigar, out of their guitar case, but it's damn close.

1:08:05 - Leo Laporte
Well, also, I feel like buying it on iTunes. Who knows how long I'll retain the license to the purchased Album. But if I buy it on band camp, I figure I'm actually gonna get a physics, almost physical, a digital copy that it won't expire right.

1:08:23 - Andy Ihnatko
It's, it's not Digital music follow you can back it up and it's not DRM you can back the apple stuff is yeah.

1:08:28 - Leo Laporte
Oh look, it's only 14 British pounds to buy it on. How much money is that?

1:08:39 - Andy Ihnatko
Is also that that is a very Peter Gabriel album cover.

1:08:42 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's so AI, it's AI baby, I love it.

1:08:45 - Andy Ihnatko
He's, he's leaning in here doing, if you're doing, charades, and you were doing Peter Gabriel, if you went okay.

1:08:51 - Jason Snell
I have they would know I'm gon na. Okay, you just gave me my pick of the week.

1:08:55 - Leo Laporte
I'll come back to me at the end of the show and you'll see, this is a footnote to my pick of the week. Okay, thank you, andy. Okay, uh, incidentally, um, oh, is it, is the Dolby mix of this the same as the spatial audio mix? Isn't that Dolby also?

1:09:11 - Jason Snell
Yes, that's the space.

1:09:11 - Leo Laporte
It's not for sale in the US or an Apple store.

1:09:14 - Jason Snell
It is. You can buy the blue, you can buy the blu-ray on Amazon.

1:09:16 - Leo Laporte
It's just, I don't know I play it in Apple streaming store, but I can't buy it yeah.

1:09:20 - Jason Snell
I don't think Apple sells spatial audio on the store. That's not they, it's. It's a streaming only proposition. Okay, because because follow me here the store is in end-of-life mode where they never updated. That's really what's going on. And then they added spatial audio to their offerings and they somebody probably said should we add spatial audio to the store? And they said, no, we're not touching the store anymore. We're not the contracts for that anyway, don't worry about just leave it.

1:09:47 - Leo Laporte
If you buy the 22 pound CD version, you'll get a blu-ray disc with the Dolby mix on it. It's interesting because he released this album with three mixes, had three different mixing engineers come in. Yeah there's a bright side mix, a dark side mix, and Then there's an inside mix which is Dolby audio, which I think is kind of cool Anyway and I do sound, they do sound, they all sound really different does he change the lyrics from bright side to dark side? I feel like no, it's literally a mix.

1:10:14 - Jason Snell
I mean he there's so many tracks. He's been working on this for 20 years. I think he just hired these people and they're like, yeah, try it out. So the Chad Blake mix, which is the dark side mix, is really nice that.

I love it he hired the best engineers, he's got the best session players. I mean this is a amazing. I like this album too. I was worried because he's one of my all-time favorite artists and I'm like you know, but he's an old man now and so many old man artists when they, when they put out stuff, it's like, well, it's got an orchestra on, it's very quiet and it's a very and.

1:10:41 - Leo Laporte
I heard this one like oh no, it's Peter Gabriel. Okay, good it's. It's like it's Peter Gabriel. It's great, except, yeah, there's some why is it all man? Because the lyrics are the old are like reflective Life lyrics. Instead of I can't wait to pound you with my sledgehammer and so even there's even a song about VR on that.

1:11:01 - Jason Snell
There is a road to joy. So yeah, he's, I think.

1:11:06 - Leo Laporte
I'll have trees, also a little VR, because you're you were actually being an olive see?

1:11:11 - Jason Snell
No, you're right, it's all. It's. All of joy is about a guy waking up from a coma. All of tree is about a VR.

1:11:18 - Leo Laporte
Okay wild stuff, I mean it's it's the best, the best lateral change. It's the best album in years. It's incredible.

1:11:24 - Alex Lindsay
A lot of these artists you know, especially the ones that were really, you know, kind of geeky and that in that area, are really fun. It's really fun to see any of the outtakes. You know, we did a, we did a thing with Peter Gabriel a couple of years ago and his studio is amazing. Oh, I think this play the two, the two that I that I really want to visit a Peter Gabriel studio and Stewart Copeland studio. Yeah, and Stewart Copeland has this giant like area that he like I don't know it's half museum, half, but he but that's where he composes and he does all these. Stewart does a lot of Copeland does a lot of these Little like explaining things and jumps on people's podcasts and talks about things, and and he is but the two, those two studios. You just feel like they're just kids in a candy store. They've got all the stuff that they want to do. They sit there and play with ideas and eventually come out with something.

1:12:11 - Leo Laporte
It's cool, somebody has unlimited money and it's kind of geeky and is interested in the technology, like those guys, what they can do. It is a disadvantage for Peter Gabriel, because he couldn't stop mixing this For 20 years, but he has the luxury.

1:12:26 - Alex Lindsay
He has the luxury Really.

1:12:29 - Jason Snell
You know it's a he's apparently got hundreds of songs that are in various states of completion and I wonder if this is his way, because, because he released a new track in a very modern way this is an older artist, but a very modern way. He released a new track every full moon for the entire year of 2023 and and I mean as somebody and he can and he can relate to this deadlines, we know. Right.

He found a structure that worked for him, which is I'm gonna release a new track, finished in album track order, every full moon until the end of the year, and then the album will come out and buy gum after 21 years.

1:13:09 - Alex Lindsay
He did it, it was. I only have so much more time to put all yeah. I guess you know you know when, when prince, when prince passed I think that they said he had a thousand songs.

1:13:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, prince did the same thing. It's just he has this giant vault.

1:13:25 - Jason Snell
Yeah, those are, and those are gradually coming. I, one of my favorite artists, bob mold, has said that he's got like hundreds of songs that are just in the archive and he said it's my retirement fund, essentially like when I'm done I can just put those out and I, you know, the music keeps happening even though I'm I'm done, I hung it up, I can't hear anymore.

1:13:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, speaking of the music, continue to happen. We're gonna get to. We are gonna get to the vision pro In just a moment, as we continue with mac break weekly jason snel, andy and aco Alex lindsey. It's nice to nice to start in the house with you guys.

1:14:03 - Jason Snell
It's good, I'll be back back at you.

1:14:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I miss 24, absolutely. Wow, I never thought I'd I'd be around to see it. It is the future. I mean, look at, we're gonna be talking about ai this year. I think Like crazy.

1:14:16 - Jason Snell
AI and VR helmets just all the way down. Yeah, no, not VR helmets, you watch?

1:14:20 - Leo Laporte
Okay. So VR helmets, let's talk about them. January 27th, one rumor Monger says, will be the release of the vision pro.

1:14:30 - Jason Snell
I love that that. Um, that apple insider referred to it as a sketchy rumor while also reporting on it. Perfect, that is, that is master from the investor, the chinese investor website, wall street insights Uh, more, more.

1:14:45 - Leo Laporte
And this is how we started 10 minutes ago talking about it. Ming chi quo, who did nail his prediction for 2023. There'll be new, new ipad says the vision pro is currently in mass production and will begin mass shipments in the first week of january 2024. That's right now. Vision pro will most likely hit the store shelves late january or early february, based on the current mass shipment schedule. So when he says mass shipments, that means two stores, or does it mean just two? Our shores? What is? What does he mean by that? Stores in stores?

1:15:17 - Alex Lindsay
stores. So the stores are starting to get boxes training. You have, you know, like they're still doing training on it and um.

1:15:23 - Leo Laporte
Yes, because it's gonna be a hard purchase. You're gonna have to go into an apple store and get fitted and measured.

1:15:28 - Jason Snell
Yeah, they have to look at the size of your wallet and they're gonna have to really get into it Measure that I think the next week or two they're bringing all the people from the retail out into cupratino to do the very specific intensive training and then they all get sent back to their home stores to Inclocate all the rest of the people Will it be one or two people.

1:15:49 - Leo Laporte
What do you think it's one?

1:15:50 - Jason Snell
person from every store.

1:15:51 - Leo Laporte
I think something like that. That's gonna be expensive. Wow, Right yeah.

1:15:56 - Jason Snell
I mean, I don't think the price of the cupratino has that many rooms.

1:15:59 - Leo Laporte
I don't know where you're gonna put all those people.

1:16:01 - Alex Lindsay
I'm sure that this was part of this was calculated into the cost of those heads. Oh yeah, that's what I found out about their operational. I'm sure that they thought they thought about it.

1:16:07 - Jason Snell
Yeah, and they don't want. I think what it also shows is that they have a very particular idea of how this is gonna go and and doing like remote training to random people. On the other end of a line they are like we're not gonna do it that way, we're gonna.

1:16:19 - Alex Lindsay
we need them here in boot camp yeah and then they can spread the word.

1:16:22 - Leo Laporte
So your, your sources say that boot camp is ongoing right now.

1:16:27 - Jason Snell
I think it's uh, it's either this week and next week or next week in the week after, but I I've heard ghermans reported this too it's a couple of weeks where they're bringing everybody in week or two, um, and and yeah, that's, that's, it's real and that I think that lends credence. Again, sketchy rumors aside, it would not be surprising at all if there's an apple announcement you know whether it's an event or just an announcement or some embargoed stuff or whatever.

1:16:53 - Andy Ihnatko
But like we're looking at the end of the month with things on sale, maybe even as soon as, like the 26th, yeah, yeah, and I think that's pretty impressive when, remember when they announced it, they, as usual, they're not going to give an actual release date when they first unveiled it. But they said early, uh, early, 2024, and I think that it was rational to think, okay, march at the earliest, maybe April, maybe as late as june. Uh, they wouldn't get a look, they wouldn't get a raw, they wouldn't get away with anything later than the first week of june. I was not expecting Last week of january to be on the table. I'm still. I'm still betting on early february, but I would not have put money on february that they must have really had their ducks in a row on this one early state. Ghermans must, must have been on a very high level of completion. You imagine, uh, when they were giving up those first demos.

1:17:39 - Leo Laporte
So ghermans newsletter from december 10th, which I must have. You know he he always does this, he kind of buries the lead. So the headline is apple's working on cleaning up it's confusing ipad lineup. And then way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way down here he says the seminars for apple employees are getting scheduled now. Training is set to begin in the middle of january. Each employee will be trained for two days, I'm told.

1:18:04 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and you wouldn't want to, you wouldn't want to do all that training and not release pretty soon after that, because I'll forget everything. Right, you really need to so so we can tell if they're doing the training. It's probably weeks away before they, before they're, before they're going to be trying to get fit people with.

1:18:18 - Leo Laporte
I have a rumor I heard that apple's designing especially designed apple caliper to measure the thickness of your wallet as you come into the store, so that they even know whether to spend any energy with you. I have a castanza, so I'm ready.

1:18:29 - Jason Snell
It's not I. I have another rumor that they don't have to do that anymore because it's now contactless. They actually Just tap you, it's up you lighter and they and from that they know how much you're worth.

1:18:39 - Leo Laporte
Can I, by the way, just completely peripherally mentioned how many times over the holidays I've used the the Line up the iPhones and send stuff over technique. That is it. That's iOS 17. That's a nice feature. Contacts, yeah, just like like a touch leases. At least take some pictures. She says, come here, and she just taps my phone with the head to head and they goes. It does a little effect and when it comes, the bubble, it's so nice. That's a. I mean simple things.

1:19:08 - Jason Snell
I'm thinking things and making them, making them physical instead of abstract.

1:19:12 - Leo Laporte
And software is powerful, like it's really powerful, yeah, so Vision pro probably looks like in the next month, right yeah? Will they? Do an event.

1:19:24 - Jason Snell
They do. I, I Think they're. I think they won't do an event proper but they will do a lot of video and they'll have a time release with different people who've tried it and right Like they might do an event. But I think it's more likely that they won't like call an event so much as as roll out, do a big like roll out with videos and embargoes and stuff. Yeah, I think the big deal.

1:19:46 - Andy Ihnatko
The big, the big deal here is that it is an experiential product. They can't sell it by showing you a video. They can only show it off by having people who had it for two weeks explain. And then I played back the video of my child in december and seen it already. I I'm not making fun of that, but I'm making it.

That was actually very, very effective that when people start to think that, no, this is not just like, oh Well, this is a gadget, ease, gadgety Successor to an iphone's like, no, this is something that's completely new.

I have to explain to you how this made me feel and what my reactions were as I were using this. I think that that's gonna. I mean, as many we were used to the idea of oh, I guess apple released a new, a new color of iphone, because suddenly in my youtube feed, like their 11 videos, say hey, I've got the new purple, but not quite as pink as the other purple iphone. Hey, let me run it through its paces. It's. You're gonna see like 40 of those covering every possible audience and demographic of people who not just Didn't just get like a three hour demo and some time on the apple campus, like to do their own stand up, but someone who was able to say I've created content with this, I've done productivity stuff with this. Here's the apps that I were able to use with this, and here is how it transformed how I think about computing are people being invited back still to Review or look at journalists?

1:21:12 - Leo Laporte
I mean, jason, have you had a other shot at it, or is it only I?

1:21:16 - Jason Snell
haven't heard anything. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. I know that they've done. They did a couple of those things with spatial video, but they seem to have Done those rounds now. I would imagine that that's because the holidays and also because now at this point They've got to be gearing up for however they're going to release this. My guess is they've got a handpicked group of people that they are working on with this or we'll be working on shortly, and then those will be there sort of like influencers and embargo drops, and there'll be writers and there'll be YouTubers and they'll presumably have even, like, built a some sort of a Capture stack or something where they can sure that. How, how right.

Because think about this apple, like I remember when the iphone came out, we couldn't take screenshots of it and and we ended up having to jailbreak it. And then, every time we wanted to screenshot, we positioned it in a certain way and then we were. We were actually, by a wire, telnet it into the jailbroken right, we were on a serial connection and we would run a command line command that would grab the image and send it back to the mag. It was ridiculous, right. Well, think about the vision pro if you're doing video, or even if you're doing text and you want photographs, how do you do capture on it?

And then think about, well, apples presumably going to build the software for that, and apple is going to want to have it be the nicest looking that it possibly can. So what does that look like? And how do they present that to people? All of that is kind of like yet to be determined, but I would imagine that'll all be happening in the next couple of weeks with whoever is the first set to get that access. And then I said and then you know, there'll be other waves and you know, and people who will get it after the, after the fact, and you know, and and there's probably a lot more partners, a lot more content, a lot more apps, a lot more things.

1:22:51 - Alex Lindsay
I think apple kept a lot of powder dry. Yeah, there's a, there's. This isn't you know what we've seen so far and gone. Maybe that's gonna work. I think apple's gonna want to put a lot, of, a lot more ground on it. We're gonna see you know what excel looks like in it or what you know like. You know like all those things Are gonna be things that they, that they pop up, and they're gonna want to show you that there's all these different things, and Even the things that of the people that I've talked to that have had the headset on Jason can probably talk more to this there's a lot of things that seem very basic, that are actually pretty impressive when you see them in that space, and I think they're gonna want to show all those things and show how you know you can design your item.

No idea if they're gonna do this or not, but show how they, if you can. What's going to come at some point? Because you're gonna put that headset on and put objects in your. You know, in your, you know Around you redesign things around you. You know, see, think, go places and they've talked a little bit about that, but I think that there there's gonna be a lot more. Um, you know they have been building content for this headset Solidly for five years, so there's, you know, there's a lot for them to show. Like you know, they've been funding projects for five years, you know, so there's a lot that that that they haven't shown us yet. So it'll be what will be the killer app, you think.

1:24:03 - Leo Laporte
What's the what's the thing that's gonna where's it gonna be different for everybody.

1:24:07 - Alex Lindsay
I think it's gonna be. I think that they don't know. I think that they know that there's there's a lot of things that that could be. I mean, I don't think anyone when, in my opinion, still, the one that made me the most impressed about br I've talked about this before, but it was roborecal, just because it was so immersive, like you were doing something inside of the med, the oculus headset, and you just forgot about being somewhere else. Like you were just there and you were Getting a good workout and you were doing a bunch of things and you didn't think about it.

I don't know what that is for apple. I think that there are, you know, there's so many educational opportunities of taking you places and doing things, interacting. I think that there's a lot around learning how to do things that you're going to interact with with your hands. Um, I do think that there'll be a certain amount of content. I mean, we, a lot of us, did a lot of work on figuring out how to shoot 3d. This is where it actually is useful is headsets, because stereo, you know, suddenly looks really good. Um, you know, when you, when you have a headset, much better than almost any other viewing solutions. So I think that you will see more, and I think apple has. We've seen behind the scenes of what looks like either red cameras or Canon cameras hidden inside of a blimp, what we call a blimp which reduces their sound.

Apple's been shooting behind the scenes at their when they're shooting tv shows for a while. I don't expect the whole scenes or the whole shows to be in Invision, but being able to take you in. I think there's going to be a. I'd be surprised if apple hasn't been pretty aggressively pushing this, at least on their own shows, those extra features that come with your movies. Imagine extra features where you get to sit on the set and look around and watch the. You know, watch what it took to shoot. You know like there was a. I was watching the the secret life of Walter midi last night. We watched that. It's a great movie, by the way. I love that movie.

1:25:49 - Andy Ihnatko
Anyway, um, they had this whole, the first, the first one or the benefit of the Ben Ben stiller one.

1:25:56 - Alex Lindsay
I like the stiller one. I know some people really say the other one's better, but but anyway, so but but the Ben stiller one is really good and and the as long discussion after sourcet, that's the morning, so anyway. So the um, um, but uh, the um, there was a hole behind the scenes of how they did the skate. There's a skateboard scene and how they did the skateboard scene and I was like I was thinking about it, watching the behind the scenes of Wow. That would be impressive, like if you could sit there and sit on the truck and sit behind the thing and even be sitting, you know it's, you know and see what it was like for the whole crew to be there. I would be very surprised if we don't see, because they have apple tv and they have all that content. I'd be very surprised if we don't see a ton of Um, a behind the scenes footage. I think that's going to be not on a killer app, but it's going to definitely be something compelling for a lot of people to have it.

1:26:46 - Leo Laporte
Have a skateboard was where skateboards I don't.

1:26:50 - Alex Lindsay
Remember that movie. It wasn't up to, it was a different movie.

1:26:55 - Leo Laporte
It wasn't even related to the story Searching for searching for Sean Penn.

1:27:02 - Alex Lindsay
I think it was Sean Penn's greatest, best performance ever. Oh.

1:27:07 - Andy Ihnatko
Very short, I think. I think. I think you're right, though I think that this is going to be not like the apple watch launch or even the iphone launch. I think it's going to be like the ipad launch, where they were very, very careful to not lock in a preconception of this device in people's minds. Uh, if anything, they're the.

They spent more less time saying what it was Then making sure you didn't think that this is going to be uh, this is, this is not a. This is not a. This is not a laptop. This is not even a windows tablet. This is something that it is of its own, and so that's why the, the messaging that they choose for this is going to be, is going to tell a lot about what they think about this.

I mean, I I was surprised that they spoke so much about gaming on this device, because before the announcement, I would have bet money that they're not going to say that this is not a gaming device, this is not for entertainment, it is for experiences. But I think that they'll they. I would have thought that they would have thought that we have to sell the point that this is. You've seen gaming on vr headsets. That costs $800, $700, even $400. This is not that.

This has way more ambitions than just Uh, beat, saber and other really fun games that people enjoy. This is has many more applications than simply having an immersive entertainment Experience. This is actually going to change how you interact with your daily life. This is going to improve. This is going to create opportunities and solve problems, not just divert you and distract you from your daily life.

So I'm I'm keen to see exactly how, how lukewarm they they set the temperature of the demo, or if they really go for it and say here, here are eight different things this does incredibly and this is, and suddenly we're going to do, we're suddenly so we're going to justify the $3,500 we're charging for this. But the the last thing is this is they are only making about. Last estimate I saw was that they have the capability of making about 500 000 of these in the first year. They definitely have. They definitely can sell all they can make. So it's not as though they have to worry about this, about this. They're turning up like that for $100 at value village in three months or anything like that.

1:29:10 - Alex Lindsay
And I think they'll be able to shoot me. I I think that the the difficulty of making this headset they'll sell all they can make for years Like it is. You know, it'll be a more the next year, more the next year. By the time they get to the next version, which is rumored to be 2026 or 2027, they will still be selling all the ones that they're making. It's just that it's hard thing to make. You know, as they, as they go down that path and and so, um, I will say that for the folks that have them, it's going to be like Everybody who was there at 5 am On whatever day they're releasing it, between 5 and 5, 10, they're gonna sell a year these of these heads.

1:29:43 - Jason Snell
That's why you're gonna have to go every day until finally your first in line and you can. You've waited out the rest. I think so. For me, number one thing is when we tried this all in june, um, there was this feeling of like I'm sure they're holding something back. And we haven't through any of the developer iterations that we've seen. We haven't seen Anything really new. So the question is, is there something that they've held back? I feel like there must be that. It's sort of like that's not ready to show, and we're going to introduce that and explain the concept. But it's possible that what we see is what we got and and and that'll be it. So that's something to watch.

In terms of leo, your original question of you, know, I feel like it's a little bit throwing in the dartboard because nobody knows what the killer app is. But I have two guesses. One of them is what alex said, which is I wonder if, if the entertainment aspect, especially the 3d video, is going to create a little, I imagine there will be a blog post somewhere that'll be like you should just buy a vision pro for the 3d movies, right? I'm sure somebody will write that. They could start writing it now. They probably already wrote it last june. But I think that I think that it is possible, as somebody who has experienced 3d movies in, like the meta quest, like it's a better experience than it ever was on a tv or in a movie theater, and I think that there there is some power there, whether it's your home movies or whether it's also just all the hollywood movies that are done in 3d these days, and presumably a lot of apple tv shows Will also be brought over, and and then we can talk about sports immersion as a possibility sometime in the next year when they'll experiment with that.

So that's my guess number one and, honestly, my guess number two is the, the virtual screen, productivity stuff, because I can also imagine, if they do it right, people saying oh you know, I only travel with the vision pro and I get the big display wherever I want to go, because I just put the vision pro on and then Put my laptop on the table and I've got a giant screen in front of me. I'm apple. Here's the. Here's the reason I say this, because I'm skeptical of the idea of doing productive work on a vision pro, but the fact that apple talked about it so much leads me to believe that they have done that inside and they think there's something there and that means that for some people there's probably something there.

I don't know if that's going to be like. By this $3,500 headset you could buy a lot of monitors for that. You could rent a lot of monitors in cities that you're visiting and have them shipped to the hotel and then taken back by a, by a person that you pay, like an uber driver who comes. Like you could spend a lot of money on portable monitors and temporary monitor setups before you would get to the Uh to cost of the vision pro. But I do. I do think that they are not, you know, making that up. I think there are people inside apple who are like yes, this absolutely is A different kind of productivity.

1:32:27 - Leo Laporte
I'll give you the alternate point of view, which is they spent 10 years and a hundred billion dollars developing this thing and tim cook, has said, has sent out a memo saying you will push this son of a bitch and it and you will do everything you can to make it a success.

1:32:45 - Jason Snell
It's just that they are in so deep that they are, you know, they pushed all their chips in and I get it, but productivity is such a weird choice Productivity is such a weird choice to push that I was. I was surprised.

1:32:57 - Alex Lindsay
I was talking to a youtube creator who, uh, he goes. Oh, I edit on the road in my, in my meta quest, and I was, like you, edit on the quest he goes.

Yeah, he's like I got three monitors and I was like he goes, I can't carry that, I can't take the three monitors on the on the thing. And he was like that's how I do it, that's how I do all of those things, and for me it was kind of like is the resolution high enough? Like I was like I don't even think that would, it couldn't work in my head. He's like no, I used to do it every day.

1:33:18 - Jason Snell
Like I was just like it's crazy.

1:33:20 - Alex Lindsay
So you know, if the resolution is high enough, it's possible.

1:33:22 - Leo Laporte
Hey, anything for views, that's what I say right, he doesn't know.

1:33:26 - Alex Lindsay
He never talks about it online. He never. It was literally. He doesn't the. There's nothing on his youtube channel that has to do with the how he edits it is. You know it's it's other, it's other subject matter and and so. But it's just how. It was, just the behind the scenes like talking I was talking to about workflow and we do.

1:33:44 - Andy Ihnatko
We do have to say one thing before you, before we abandon this, though that we're still. This is all. This is still predicated to the assumption that apple has done something to fix the problem of Not being able to wear one of these things for x number of hours. And like what? What is what is going to be the saturation point? What is going to be the tolerance point? For a lot of devices? It really. For a lot of people, it really is a half hour to 40 minutes. For some people it's going to be a couple of hours before they're like I got to get this off my face.

There's, there's the the. There are problems about eye strain that are just endemic to how the human vision system. It handles focus between between two set, two opposing sets of muscles inside your eyes, and apple hasn't said anything about how they fix that. Whether that's going to make this an insolvable problem or whether apple has done things to mitigate it is has yet to be seen. So there's so many wonderful things that we are not going to know until lots and lots of people have have these things, and these people are not in any way beholden to apple, to uh.

I want to make sure I say this correctly that when you're looking at a pre-release product six months in advance, you I think it's correct to be gentle and kind, because this is by no means for a final hardware or software.

In a couple months time, journalists and just regular people who's paid $3,500 for this are going to be able to say this is what apple has shipped, this is what apple is selling as a finished product. I have returned mine because I just can't bear it's. It's fine for watching a movie so long as it's less than 90 minutes. After that, the weight is too much or the heat is too much, or just my eyes just get so burned out by by, by virtual reality that I have to take it off. I would love, I would love for this to be a productivity device, but whereas I can do four hours of work on my phone if I have to, I can't stay immersed in this in this Environment for more than 90 minutes at a time, and so I don't really use it that way, and I think it'll depend on the person.

1:35:45 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, I think, like I, I got an x-reel, I don't know, it's like a $300, like little headset for my that I can hook my iPad into, and when I had covid, I just laid on the bed and watch movie one. After this I was up in my room and I couldn't go anywhere. It's like I just had a big screen in front of me. I watched Mission Impossible, I watched a bunch of other things and it was. You know it's and it was. It was. I was surprised, because I've never sat there with a headset on that long and you know, like I, probably with a couple breaks, I was there. I was in there for like six hours watching movies because I couldn't go to sleep, couldn't get up, couldn't do anything. So, of course, one of the differences is that when you're watching a movie, you're not, you're not changing your depth of depth of focus or perceived depth of focus.

1:36:21 - Andy Ihnatko
You're just looking at a flat plane. They're thinking they're. I'm not. I'm not denigrating what Apple's doing or other people's experiences. I'm saying that there are things that, until we have thousands of people using this, we're not going to know whether Apple has Given us to give us something it's very pre-release or whether they've actually solved a problem.

1:36:37 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think we're going to know for five years, because I don't think Apple's going to stop pushing down on that pedal, like I think that it's not something, like they're not Google, they're not going to do this for two years and leave. They're gonna. They're gonna press down on this and they're gonna. They're gonna hold that. That when this gets comes out the gate, apple's gonna put the pedal to the metal and they're gonna leave it there for five years, and so we'll just have to see what that looks like. But I don't. This is not like a minor commitment of let's. This isn't a hobby like the Apple TV. This is like they're gonna. This is the next iPhone to them, and so so we'll see how that looks like. I think that you'll see it. I'm sorry. They're gonna keep working. They're gonna keep working this solution for quite some time. You know, I I totally agree with that.

1:37:16 - Andy Ihnatko
However, we have to judge this product as an actual released commercial product. We can't simply say we, I think If I'm writing a review of this and I don't like it, I will somewhere near the end I will say well, of course is just the first version of this and I'm sure that In years time they're gonna continue to work with us because Apple and Apple basically still have a lot of. They're gonna continue to work with us because Apple and I'll basically steal everything you said, because I agree with everything you said. But we have to base, we have to basically say if this is uncomfortable to wear, if they haven't created a good use case for this, if, like the Apple TV, which they did launch with a great amount of fanfare and a great amount of, oh well, now we're bringing, we're solving problems, just that. We solve problems, for with iTunes, we're solving problems with how people watch TV. And then it turned out that whatever they put out there was not as exciting to people as a basic Netflix box, as a basic Roku box, and they said, okay, we're not gonna. We're not gonna basically treat those. We're gonna treat this as a sensible product that we're gonna continue to build and iterate on in support.

We're not necessarily convinced now that we're gonna be revolutionizing anything so much as being an active and valuable player in a Competitive market. This is, then that could certainly. That could certainly could be the future Of vision pro as well. It could be something that okay, we didn't solve any problems, we didn't really Strike a chord with a market that was yearning for this device. However, we're going to be selling enough of these to continue developing of this and, as there it just seems to be, there's going to be a market in five years where there's going to have to be two or three or four different platforms, two or three or four different price points, two or three or four different approaches to what a virtual reality, augmented reality gear is, and apple will simply have a very valuable and reasonable position among those three or four other players.

1:39:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, we'll see. I think one thing we know for sure is that there'll be a major ad blitz starting in the next few weeks, 1984 style Super Bowl ad for sure.

1:39:14 - Jason Snell
You talk about. Andy talks about the reviews here, and I just wanted to say I can tell you what the reviews are almost entirely going to be right now, which is? It is an interesting first attempt that has a lot of potential, but it costs too much money, and so should you you Viewer, listener, reader, whatever buy one now? No, but it's interesting to look at where this might be in the future. Most people will say that right, because it's a 1.0 product that costs 3500 dollars to start, and so it's unlikely that anybody, except people who are at the deep cutting edge, would Ever be the yes, it's right for you of a product like this, and I think that's okay because, as Alex pointed out, they can only sell half a million of them, and I think it's unlikely there'll be a story where it's like, wow, apple can't even give these things away. With the limited supply, I think people will buy them enough for apple to keep exploring this, and I think it's gonna probably take a few years, unless it's a real flop. I think it's going to take a few years for it to be Clear like has it found its way or not, but I think a lot of the reviews out of the gate will will simply be you know this isn't for regular people yet, because it's totally not for regular people yet it costs too much.

No matter how cutting edge it is, most regular people Are not going to get out of it what they get into it. And even if it succeeds wildly, I think that might be the case and that's okay. I don't think that makes it a failure. I just think that that's the truth of anything that's priced like this. That's this cutting edge like back to First generations of all sorts of other tech, where it was like this is the future. Maybe we can debate that, but it's not the present yet. It's your chance to buy in at a high price to the future. That's a different story this.

1:40:57 - Alex Lindsay
This is the, the, the, the 3gs, 3gs this was the one, this is the one that I made that little video about saying apples. You know, you turn your phone into a, into a video camera and this is. This is like this was, was not the future when it came out, you know, like this was like we were excited about it, but there was, you know, within a couple versions, by this version, we started, they started to pick up speed, but the first version, people were talking about it not not going very far. The other thing is is that I think that I do think that there's a lot of cars that are a horrible waste of money, that are a lot more expensive than $3,500, that people buy, you know, and I, and they buy a fair number of them. I think that it's gonna, it's gonna sell well and I think that a lot of people say, well, no one's gonna develop for it because there's only 500,000 people. But these are 500,000 people that paid $3,500 for something they want to play on that. Play on it.

I think that, unless you're selling more than 10,000 units of your software, um, you know, I think you're probably you know there's probably going to be a fair number of developers that want to build Ideas. This is the time to build the ideas. This is the time to, you know, jump into that. So I think there's going to be a mad rush of people putting those things in and I think that I do think that the thing will be really interesting is to see how all the products that apple has been building together, because that 3d view of your from your phones is going the 3d view that they give you a behind the scenes is also going to help Drive people to use the phones as a 3d, as a 3d recording device, which has already been built into it.

Um, you know there's, there's a lot of bits and pieces. There's, how you know, all the developer tools that were built towards this, the photogrammetry tools that are on your phone, the. You know there's a lot of things that are already. You know they've done it's, it is. It'll be epic if it fails. You know, five years from now if they, because I have never seen an on ramp for a product built over so many years so meticulously as I have with this product. So if this product fails five years from now, I mean it'll be an epic. There'll be a lot of books written about it, because it's amazing Like it's nothing like the ramp for I mean the ramp for the iPhone or the watch or the iPad were almost no ramp at all compared to what they've done for this product, and so it'll be really interesting to see you know what happens next.

1:43:10 - Leo Laporte
That's for sure. I wish we could I don't know make a small wager.

1:43:18 - Alex Lindsay
The question is what do you measure on the wager? You would measure. I mean, I know they'll sell out.

1:43:21 - Leo Laporte
you're absolutely right. They'll sell out For years For years.

1:43:25 - Alex Lindsay
I'll argue that they'll sell out for the first three years. But that's more a measure.

1:43:27 - Leo Laporte
That's not every one that they can make. Yeah, I mean, half a million is not a major product.

1:43:30 - Alex Lindsay
I mean more the following year and more the following year.

1:43:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but that's their own. Supply constraints are not really a measure of success.

1:43:37 - Jason Snell
I mean the early signs will be. You know, we'll have to look at like developer response and how they like the platform, and they'll be listening to the people who are the taste makers, the influencers and the journalists. I think we'll have some effect on the perception of the product and so how hard Apple spends it and how many times they come back with oh, here's a new feature. Right Might show you how they're like, tip their hand a little bit about how they think it's going, but it's gonna be really hard. Beyond some of that stuff, we're all gonna be reading the tea leaves for a while in terms of how's it really going here?

1:44:12 - Andy Ihnatko
One thing for sure If anybody is a halfway valid Apple developer, they are scrambling to get something interesting into the App Store at the day of launch. Because another thing about that phone you held up is that remember the early iPhones, when the App Store first opened, you could become a millionaire with a flashlight app, with a fart noise generator app, because people were just so hungry for wow. You mean that I can get apps that weren't built into my phone. What's out there? And so the people who create like little doodaddy apps that just look really interesting and are the right price, they're gonna make their entire. They're gonna make their entire mortgage, probably in about two months if they strike gold there.

1:44:59 - Leo Laporte
I think Nielsen and our who's one of our staffer, one of our best staffers AI guy and VR guy says they're gonna have a problem because without the games they're not gonna sell to the existing VR audience. This is, they're not going after the MediQuest audience.

1:45:15 - Alex Lindsay
Medi doesn't wanna go after that audience.

1:45:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, medi that's why they're pushing productivity right, because which, to me, is the longer shot? I mean, who wants to do Microsoft Word in a VR helmet? That doesn't sound very appealing, so I think they'd like to push games. By the way that was one of the big stories while we were gone is Apple's getting into gaming.

1:45:41 - Alex Lindsay
I think that you don't have to push games. Like I think the games will happen on the headset without any push at all, like they're just gonna happen because it's a very natural connection. So I think that they're like well, let's not make it all about games, we don't wanna get pushed into that. So I think that you don't give it any oxygen, because it'll do its own thing. Like games will appear on the headset, no matter what. What you wanna do is be pushing the energy towards all the other things that the headset can do.

1:46:06 - Leo Laporte
If you're gonna spend money on marketing and time, so here's another question from I'm talking about the Discord, scooterx and the Discord. He says well, it's not VR, it's AR, I mean, it's mixed right, it's a little bit of both. But are people, is the market gonna see it that way and are they gonna see a difference?

1:46:24 - Andy Ihnatko
I guess, Is there going to be a point to the augmented reality features of these things? Oh, I think there will be on the AR.

I'm saying on this first version of hardware if you can't go outside with it, if you can't compete with sunlight, if you can't have a thing where you are actually feel as though you're absolutely connected with the environment around you and you're not using a Captain Video sort of expression towards the people around you, if they can see your actual face and not just a cartoon version of what the device thinks your eyes look like, I'm not necessarily skeptical, but I need to see how that actually plays out before I think of the augmented reality features of this as anything more than a. Okay, that's nice, it does have some sort of AR, but I can't consider. I have to be convinced that this is an augmented reality device and not primarily a virtual reality device.

1:47:16 - Jason Snell
It doesn't. It depends on how you define augmented reality, because if you're talking about interacting with other people and all of that and going outside, then that's a very different thing. I think it is telling, though, that Apple has decided that the default view of this is with the camera. Not in a black space or a virtual environment or on a spaceship, but in your space, with the camera is showing you what's around you and you place items we should point out as the only person here who's used it, so you know exactly what that experience is like.

So think of it as your desktop, right, what is your desktop? And, Andy, this doesn't answer the question of is it really AR or not? But I will say it's interesting to me that Apple has decided unlike Meta, for example, has decided that by default you are putting things virtual things in the world around you and not closing yourself off in a virtual space. Now you can do it, and with Meta you can do it the other way. Now that their cameras are better, that will be right.

That's part of the issue is like the Quest 2, it was an add on. Quest 3 was built knowing, with better cameras, knowing that they have a pass through mode, but, like Apple, the pass through mode is the primary and that means, to me at least, that means that Apple thinks of it as primarily an augmented reality device with a virtual reality option. But it depends on what you mean by it, right, and if you define it in a more, in a tighter way. But I do think it is at least meaningful that Apple, by default, expects you to interact with objects in real space, not basically like you can't move because and you've got to clear out your furniture, right.

Because, otherwise you'll stumble on it if it's a purely virtual space.

1:48:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I'm still. That's another area in which I'm I will say I'm actively skeptical. This is, for Apple is, I think, definitely one of the most humanistic companies out there, where they always think about, if anything, we want to get you to use our phones less. We want you to use a watch when you don't have to have have your attention diverted by a screen, all the sort of stuff. And I think that one of the on the long list of things that any really successful device like this has to solve, it's how do you solve the problem that this is a fundamentally by design, isolationist device when, yes, maybe you can see through video, maybe through excellent 4K per eye video people around you, but they're still looking at you wearing these dumb ski goggles with, again, cartoon Eyes looking back at them. You can watch 3D movies and even regular 2D movies in a glorious way, but you can't sit on a sofa and enjoy that experience with three or four people in your family with you, unless you buy all of them. Through these $3,500 headsets, you can do conferencing, but they can't show. You can't show your actual self when you're conversing with people. You can only show a virtualized version of yourself, and you will never have that sort of two way interactivity.

It's there's a lot of things that are unknowable at this point, and that's one of the things I'm most concerned about that they've created something that, by definition, cuts you off from everybody around you, and it will. There are little cracks in the bricks. You can. There's some daylight and fresh air coming that cracks through that. But by nature, you are inside your own little space, your own little room, and you have a technology that is allowing other parts of these to creep in.

This is why I think that augmented reality is the best. Kind is where there is. You're looking through clearer glasses. You are seeing the actual world around you with no filters. It just gets to enhance and throw other things into that field of vision if it becomes useful to you and so that, instead of you're not even having to look at your watch to do things, you just can simply take a note and see an acknowledgement in the corner of your eye, even if it's a little monochrome patch in your peripheral vision, that says okay, I confirmed that you've created this note. Here's the text of the note that you've dictated. Or here is your next turn when you need to navigate to someplace. Or here is a translation of this menu thing that you're looking at.

1:51:13 - Alex Lindsay
That to me, is way more interesting than anything that Apple showed back in June, and I think, as advanced as this headset is I think it is still version one, and I think Apple has a vision of exactly what you're talking about. You put a little glasses on that are the thickness of my glasses and it just does the thing. It's just that the technology isn't there yet, and I think that you have to start somewhere, and I think this is where they're starting. I do think that there are many cases in which I've used the medics or the Oculus and other things for, like, for instance, flights and man, I gotta tell you, a long flight with VR is pretty awesome, like you, just you know you, basically you know I eat before I get on the plane.

I don't need to interact with anyone. I sit next to the window, I put the thing on, I put the headset on, I don't have to think about anybody until I, and then I land on the other side and I've watched a couple of movies, like, I've played a couple of games, I've done a couple of things, and so there's definitely also times when it would be great to not have to interact with other people, sure, so I think that there's definitely people that would find value in the ability to. That's what headphones are for. That's connect. So when I don't use it, I have these little, these big things that go over my eyes, that have like a little cavity on them, so they don't, and I put them on and I put my AirPods Max or whatever on and I kind of just kind of go in and I, but that's all dark and when you can put a headset on you can actually watch movies and do other things and do the same things, or I like to sleep, Just like you're asking Alex.

1:52:42 - Andy Ihnatko
How many times have you like heard the heard the announcement to put your seatbacks up and you trade people down, turn off electronics and discover that something has been sharpied on your face? Never had that happen. Has it happened more than once or never? Never had that happen, yeah.

1:52:56 - Alex Lindsay
Okay cause.

1:52:57 - Andy Ihnatko
That would be my big, that would still be my big fear.

1:52:59 - Alex Lindsay
This is I was sleeping. I'd probably feel it if they were doing it during while I was talking.

1:53:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is how I travel is with, but actually Lisa has, lisa has. That's how you keep that middle seat free? Yeah, no one wants to ever sit next to me. Lisa has a pair of these blind folds that say F off, which also is effective. And then she has another set I think these are intended for planes that say wake me for meals. So that's a good, that's a useful one. Wake me for meals yeah, I'm going to do a red eye. Go back to see my mom in a couple of weeks.

1:53:39 - Alex Lindsay
And I plan to. I can't sleep on planes, that's my problem.

1:53:42 - Leo Laporte
Well, I, I, I after flying Southwest to Baltimore, to Providence. Last time I decided to splurge and spend a few hundred dollars more in life, flat mint out to Boston, and then I will sleep, yeah, and I will, I hope, wake somewhat refreshed five hours later. Oh, you just like it. Um, well, we'll just you know what we're going to find out. We probably shouldn't spend a lot of time talking about the vision pro too late, because that's all we're going to be talking about for the next four months. So save all those thoughts. Five years, five years, maybe or maybe not.

1:54:18 - Andy Ihnatko
First, first person to figure out how can I defeat the safety feature so I can drive while wearing these.

1:54:24 - Leo Laporte
There must be some clever trick that I can come up with, I think, a couple of things you want to put on your bingo card. First person on an airplane you spot wearing them. Uh, first person walking around town, you spot wearing them.

1:54:38 - Alex Lindsay
They're really built against that, so it'll be really interesting to see.

1:54:40 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, it's really people want to do that, you know they want to wear them to talk about it.

1:54:44 - Alex Lindsay
but I think the whole design is really built around not moving, Like it's not not changing. Yeah.

1:54:51 - Leo Laporte
Okay, um, so you can't use the AR, the augmented reality function, to just be my understanding is that the walking around thing is definitely something.

1:55:03 - Alex Lindsay
I don't know how they defeat that, but it really is something that it's, that it's really built into the system that you're not going to do that.

1:55:09 - Leo Laporte
And then the third thing on your bingo card is somebody driving their car wearing them. That will be, that will be. Then you'll know the end times have come. Speaking of the end times, we have a lot of other stories, but we'll just save them for next week because we got to get them out of the way before the vision pro is released, Cause that's all again all we're going to be talking about, uh, and who's going to buy one?

You're going to buy one, alex, you're going to buy one. You're going to get in line. Oh yeah, yeah, jason, you're going to buy one, you think, yeah?

1:55:37 - Jason Snell
I have to cut it. You know, I I hope I'm in the media review program and I get one that way, but it is sort of my business to do Apple platforms. So yeah, I suspect I will have to buy one when they make me give the one. That's the problem. Hopefully will give me back.

1:55:49 - Leo Laporte
Cause a media review. You get it for a couple of weeks, right, and then you set it back.

1:55:53 - Jason Snell
Something like that, or something like this that's probably it'll probably be a really tight time horizon. Yeah, absolutely so. You know, sometimes they're like, hey, keep that Mac until May, okay, great. But other times it's like, uh, it's not that way.

1:56:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, we've definitely had that happen before. We've got some second tier reviewers we want to send it to. After we send it to you.

1:56:09 - Jason Snell
Yeah, they right, and we don't have that many cause we can't make that many. So we, what we? You have it for two weeks and then you have to give it up because then somebody else has to get it.

1:56:16 - Leo Laporte
John Gruber gets to get it after you.

1:56:19 - Jason Snell
No, that's not how it works, Gruber. I'll just tell Gruber hey, I'm next up, you get Gruber. I think we'll just do it that way. Do you ever get?

1:56:26 - Leo Laporte
sometimes you get a device I haven't done this in a long time but sometimes you get advice you know somebody's had before you and then maybe they leave stuff on it. Have you ever, has it ever happened?

1:56:34 - Jason Snell
Apples I mean, since I mostly do Apple stuff Apple's real diligent about wiping that stuff and getting it set up for that. They don't. They don't do that. But yeah, I can see how I had less. I think I had a phone.

1:56:44 - Leo Laporte
This is 30 years ago, I think. I had a phone from Sprint that they had wiped the device but it was still connected to a cloud because it was a because Sprint. When they let you phones in those days it wouldn't be your number to be their number in their their account. And it had other. It had his pictures in there and that worried me a little bit about future uses of these. I've always really not liked loaner devices. I really don't like the idea. It's a little creepy, especially since I'm like eighth tier, I'm the last guy to get it. I'll give it to Leo, All right, Unless it's Apple, in which case never give it to Leo. Whatever you do, We'll take a little break and come back with your picks. Believe it or not, we have come to the conclusion, nearly, of this show. You're watching Mac break weekly. Let's start the picks of the week.

1:57:39 - Alex Lindsay
With Alex Lindsay in my head, I'm going around it's an electronics thing that I've been trying to solve for a long time. It's not necessarily a Mac Mac thing. I have this thing about wanting to. So I, you know I have to think about tires. I know this is crazy, Like I had a. I had a car that didn't have, that didn't inflate, that had a slow leak somewhere and I couldn't quite figure it out, and everything else, and I always wanted to make sure the tires were exactly the same, and so I've become obsessed with it. If you go to anywhere and you go to the, the car stop or whatever, you end up in the situation where you're not. You know, that thing is horrible, Like that little weird pin that comes out. It's not very accurate. It's very hard to do. I'm like I just want to set the number, plug it into the tire and hit go. Oh, wouldn't that be nice.

1:58:22 - Leo Laporte
And when it's done.

1:58:23 - Alex Lindsay
I want it to stop and I want it to be small and I don't want to plug it into my. I had a couple of rules, cause I bought actually bought three or four of these now, and this is the one that I'm the happiest with when I just got it. And so I bought this on Amazon over the break and and I I tested it out on my car, and so what this does is you green, it's a tire inflator. This is cool. You charge it with USB-C. So you charge it with a USB-C and it'll do up to 12 tires, I think, on one charge. So you know. So what? Basically it's loud. So know that you're not going to do this in stealth, cause it's it's a little thing with a little compressor in it, but you plug it in, you just, you just screw it onto your, your tire, you set the, the, the, the, the target, inflate, you know PSI and you hit power and it's going to go on. Buying this right now.

And then you walk off, and what I did is I cause modern cars don't have a they don't have spares Right, and so. So the thing is, is that I, I, I just hit it, I can hear it going, you can hear it well, Um, you know, and and so really loud. It's not like I mean, it's not like you need earplugs loud, but it's loud.

Plug in compressor that you don't want to be around we close it's not, as I don't think it's as much as the plug in compressor, and my problem was is that I had one that you plugged into your. I've had a couple that you plug into your lighter and I hated it cause it's always wiring and where I get the wire and how I do the thing, and this one is just battery operated. You plug it in, you plug it into the um the thing, you hit, you set the, you set the, the PSI, and you hit start. I love this. And it just starts going and the moment it hits the target, the target inflation, it's done like it just stops. And so what I did is I, I went and I was cleaning, cleaning out, mike, doing the kind of the end of the year, clean out the car and just let it set all the tires while I'm, you know, and it finishes, I go, move it to another tire, I hit, go again and it will work.

2:00:12 - Leo Laporte
Of course it's got a straighter plus Presta so I can use it with my bike, and it's got a valve and gas pin for the basketball.

2:00:19 - Alex Lindsay
So it's got, yeah, so it's got a lot of different little pins in it. Um, I but but the thing is is it's nice and small, it's uh, it fits into your hand and you can put it I, I can put it in under my stuff and like I remember to keep it charged though, huh, yeah, but I have a... I have a USB a 100 watt USB charger in my car Right, so it's hard to do.

2:00:40 - Leo Laporte
So who does it? Yeah, yeah.

2:00:42 - Alex Lindsay
Pop it off when you're driving, you know, around or whatever and and so. But the key is is it just sits in your car, you just plug it into the thing. I never have to think about that. Stupid like one at the gas station, you know, and go in and ask and remind the person that in California, by law, they have to give it to you for free.

2:00:59 - Leo Laporte
You know, like you know um, you know, and they'll go. Oh, yeah, yeah.

2:01:02 - Alex Lindsay
And then they give it to you for 25 seconds and then you're like, oh, I need to go back and ask again, and so, um, and so, if you just, you know, if you like me and you want all the time, because if it pulls a little bit, if my car pulls a little bit, I'm like, oh, I gotta fix it.

2:01:14 - Leo Laporte
Well, this is also for my bike.

2:01:15 - Alex Lindsay
I think this would be really great because it works for your bike, it works for any of those things. But the key is you set, you set. What I wanted was I don't want something to tell me what to do. I wanted to say I want you to get to whatever that is, whatever the, the PSI is the and it lets you switch from PSI to bars or, you know, to all the different. You know it's got to be different that you set it up and you hit go. Anyway, I've had three or four different ones. This is the first one that I've gotten. It's fully battery operated and I have a lot of you green stuff for whatever reason. I don't know if it's my concern or not, but does it generate enough?

2:01:45 - Leo Laporte
It's so tiny that it actually can pump up the tire, but you have one. It does. You say it works.

2:01:50 - Alex Lindsay
It's not fast. It's not like it's going to be. You know, it took a couple minutes to go, a couple of, you know, like six pounds or something like that. I'm blowing it as hard as I can but because it stops, you go about and do doing other things, like for me it was like cleaning the car while I was putting the whole. You know, you don't have to stay there.

Yeah, you don't have to stay there and stay on there. So it's, it's not and it's. It's light enough that it's small enough and the cable is short enough that you do like feel like you have to put something under it, but it did just hang from the thing. I don't think I would do that normally, but I let it hang to see, it was designed to do that. It looks like it's tiny. It's tiny and just. I just plugged in and hung it from the, from the tire, and it just just did its thing. Nice, so I don't I wouldn't suggest I like this. It's a good recommendation. This is great. It's. It's really nifty and I here's.

What happened was here's. The worst part is this is how it works. Is that I? I didn't know that this existed. I saw an ad for a different one on TikTok. Of course, like I, there was an ad for like you can do this thing and I was like that exists. Then I searched Amazon. For all that, I didn't touch the one on TikTok, but I went to. I went to the Amazon and searched all of them and found a brand that I, that I've bought other things from, and then ended up with that one, and it works great. So anyway, here we go.

2:02:59 - Leo Laporte
Nice, jason has recommended one that looks like an alien. It's a lot bigger too, right, but that's what you use, jason, it's it's a Rio be and it's got if you've got Rio be stuff.

2:03:09 - Jason Snell
It uses the same batteries, but it's the same idea. It's a good. These products are great and once you discover them because they will pump up your bike, pump your bike tires and your car tires and be set in and forget it of being able to dial in a PSI and press a button and walk away is so great, it's such a great idea and so, yeah, when I'm on long car trips, I put that one in the car so that with a with a charge battery and and then you just, yeah, you just you know, dial it in and press the button and off it goes.

2:03:37 - Leo Laporte
I should get the one that matches my battery, because we have a Makita, I think. So I'm sure Makita makes.

2:03:42 - Jason Snell
yeah, so they may make one that has all the same battery shapes. Yeah, yeah.

2:03:47 - Alex Lindsay
I wonder one that was just super small, that fit underneath yeah.

2:03:50 - Leo Laporte
This I could put in the glove compartment. It looks great.

2:03:51 - Alex Lindsay
It looks like yeah, yeah, it looks great. I'm sure the Ryobi will go much faster than this one. It is big, it is big yeah.

2:03:59 - Jason Snell
So it's like you know little kind of. You can see the hand grip on it, it's. It's like a little tiny briefcase, it's like a boom box, it's a boom box. It's a boom box. It's bigger yeah.

2:04:07 - Alex Lindsay
I think the thing is all of all the other ones I kept in my, I kept in my trunk, but now I have this caravan so there's no trunk, Like when I have it all down, and I have this obsession with keeping it very empty. So I just I have this whole thing like everything has to stay. It stays very empty because I know, never know what I'm going to throw some in it.

2:04:22 - Leo Laporte
So I just I just bought a new BMW and if you have a low tire, you have to actually bring it to the dealer and they charge you $500. Really no. But you believe it. They say BMW stands for bring my wallet.

2:04:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Because only only the dealership has the special soft horses. That's right, you can load the air to max the stem.

2:04:41 - Leo Laporte
I would totally believe it. I would totally believe it.

2:04:44 - Alex Lindsay
I own a BMW. I don't I don't have one right now, but it because I wrote it until I died, but it was. I had a BMW for 30 years and I just assumed when I take it to the shop it's a thousand dollars. Like I don't know what it's going to happen, I don't know what they're going to find. It's just, I, just I don't take it to the shop until I've got a thousand dollars, because I know that it's going to be a thousand dollars.

2:05:01 - Leo Laporte
This is an electric vehicle and they told me, you know, your first two services are free, but your third one's going to be 1,100 bucks. I said, for what? Changing the wiper fluid? There's nothing to maintain. I don't understand. Anyway, it's BMW, it's electric.

2:05:18 - Alex Lindsay
So there's that You're. The worst part Is that at some point I'm like the next car I get after the caravan I'm like, is another BMW like like still going to go back? I'm just glutton for punishment, but, but I drive the van that I have now. So, lisa, lisa, which one did you get?

2:05:32 - Leo Laporte
I got the I five. It's a five series with a electric, all electric drive train. I like it a lot. Wayne has the eight. Oh, that's three better. Yeah, lisa, we went. Lisa said can I? Drive it home. We went out to the ocean the other day and she said can I drive it home? I said, yeah, I look over at them. It's kind of. It's kind of. You know, it's nice, it's comfortable. I'm looking over and I look at this. It's 103 miles an hour.

2:05:58 - Jason Snell
Electric cars, man.

2:05:59 - Alex Lindsay
That's what happens, that's how they get to Lisa she said it's okay, I'm passing, Wait, wait my uh, my, uh, when, when, when, when my car went bad, Colleen lent me the I eight one time. Oh God, hers is amazing. And my kids, but that's a stick.

2:06:15 - Leo Laporte
That's that manual. Son of a big of a school.

2:06:18 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, she likes to I eight. No, no, no, no, it's it's electric.

2:06:21 - Leo Laporte
I mean she's growing up. Oh, she's growing up there, yeah. Well, no, she's got the yeah, she's got a lot of cars she likes to anyway.

2:06:27 - Alex Lindsay
So anyway, I thought yeah, I like sticks, so I'm I'm a, I grew up on tractors.

2:06:31 - Leo Laporte
Yes, yeah, I'm very happy with uh. This is my old man car.

2:06:36 - Alex Lindsay
So does the BMW? Does that one have the? Does it have the M, the M shifting gears, or it's all just electric? It's all electric. You got a little Because the, the, like the M, the M series, had the. What I liked about the, it was the, it was the. You could do a stick and treat it like a stick.

2:06:52 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, that's silly. If you have an electric, there's no need for a stick. Give me a break. It has a shifter, which is just a little lever. Oh right, it's a little lever. But then there is on the steering wheel. There is a, a paddle that says boost. I've been too afraid to use it.

2:07:09 - Jason Snell
I know I don't want to I don't know what that's going to happen. But then you fly. It just takes you into space.

2:07:15 - Alex Lindsay
Does it have a 360, the? Ia has a 360 camera on the top. The cameras are amazing. It's got six. Everything around you.

2:07:22 - Leo Laporte
Nowadays it's got this thing has six cameras, so yeah, you can see every you can see inside the car.

2:07:26 - Alex Lindsay
You can see outside it's like a helicopter view, it's like a car wash view.

2:07:31 - Leo Laporte
They had to, actually a car wash view, Like, okay, I like to watch my car get washed. I guess I don't know, but it's the yeah, it's the top down.

2:07:39 - Alex Lindsay
But you can see, but you can see if you're yeah, yeah, you can see everything, when you're parking. Yeah, you can see everything.

2:07:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, it's great. I did find out that the LED headlight assembly is $5,000. So do not break your do not hit anything ever.

2:07:55 - Alex Lindsay
This is why, I'm hanging on to my, my Dodge Caravan.

2:08:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, maybe I should have bought a Dodge Caravan. That's things never going to die. The seats fold in the seats, the seats the seats fold in.

2:08:08 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah.

2:08:09 - Leo Laporte
When you need them. When you don't, you have a truck.

2:08:11 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, you can go camping. Yes, and the answer is yes, yes, and you can put like 18 cases, appellation cases, into it if you need to, and it's, it's nice.

2:08:20 - Leo Laporte
It's perfect for you, andy and I come I don't cry very much IK of the week.

2:08:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Mine is something that will definitely be up the up the street of Generation X. It will probably, I think, be fun for just about any of you, though. Cable Sasser, one of the founders of Panic Software, has been obsessed with a relic of 80s technology salesmanship called the DAC catalog. This is the. There used to be this catalog of this very, very weird reseller by the name of Drew Kaplan, and it was a catalog full of like CD players and radar detectors and laptops and computers and Walkmans, but it was written with the bombastic style of a 1908 newspaper ad for patent medicine. I love it.

They were just immensely entertaining. I've only selected one quote at random. I didn't like I looked. I clicked on the very first copy of this catalog.

2:09:22 - Leo Laporte
I used to get this catalog.

2:09:24 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I used to get it in the mail, yeah.

So I'm quoting here the Pentagon may pay billions for the new stealth bomber that flies automatically and is invisible to enemy radar, but you could have TX stealth reversing automatic. Sure that could even record the full dynamic range of CDs for less than the price printed on TX February 1986 dealer cost sheet. He wrote a really great article about this in 2012 and he's been researching the history of these catalogs ever since, and the creme de la creme of this research is he just like. He completed his collection of these like monthly, like tech catalogs from the 80s and early 90s and uploaded them all to the internet archive. And oh, thank you cable.

2:10:09 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, it's such a hoot to read.

2:10:12 - Andy Ihnatko
Like I said, if again, if your generation X, I was like, oh, I remember what that, what a, what a, what a knockoff walk when you say, oh, wow, yeah, yeah, to get FM radio and have this little cassette insert that would go into the cassette. Oh, I remember that. But it's not just all about nostalgia, it really is about here is like what was like kind of hot and slightly off brand stuff, but still quizzically good quality, maybe stuff in the 80s. But the copywriting on each of these things is not just like here's a catalog, here's a little square, here's a paragraph underneath it. Here's another picture. I mean he would spend four pages talking about this Epson laptop with a four line by 80 character, lcd and WordStar built in and the damn techs would just absolutely sing and and again, maybe it was a useful laptop, Maybe it wasn't. But damn, for the price of like mailing in a tear out card from popular science and giving them your address, you got a lot of entertainment for that.

2:11:09 - Leo Laporte
So much fun and it really if kids. If you're interested in what we thought was state of the art, the vision pro from 1991, this is the place to go Unbelievable.

2:11:24 - Andy Ihnatko
A lot of look upon my works and despair.

2:11:27 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, a lot of these products, quite a few.

2:11:29 - Leo Laporte
As a man, the is products here. Oh my God. Yeah, this is back with. Stereo was a big thing. Oh look, a pirate TV station. Transmit a blockbuster video from your family room VCR to the TV in your upstairs bedroom. Grab a ballgame from cable and beam it to a TV in your workshop. And now just $69. That was the other thing. They were all cheap, right, yeah, yeah 386. It wasn't like Billy 19.

2:11:58 - Andy Ihnatko
It wasn't like salvage lots, he would just. The cable has a really great article on his blog that I'm up, that I have to.

2:12:04 - Leo Laporte
I have to get all the scholars behind it. I have to read it cables block, because I grew up with this catalog. I mean.

2:12:11 - Andy Ihnatko
Rob, how I was an adult.

2:12:12 - Leo Laporte
This is.

2:12:13 - Andy Ihnatko
I have. I have clear memories in junior high school of like getting popular science out of the school library and just like reading it during, you know, western Civ class, just reading these ads of this. Just bizarre. Who is this person and what life has this person led to give him this kind of idea? He was there, he had his own, he had a brand, a line of radar detectors and he was always like a, like a WWE wrestler, like taken out, like escort who was like the biggest, like manufacturer of the time. Like we're challenging you, we'll give you $20,000. You choose the highway, you choose the radar detector, you choose the interference systems and we will beat you on that highway somewhere in the con guys does and give you this check for $20,000. If you here's a picture of the $20,000 check like oh my God by the way, escort turned down that head to head challenge, so there, there you go so there.

They could not match that energy. They could not. That was what they didn't fear losing. They feared looking like dopes in front of a master sales person. If this is, if this is not a new, like Apple TV plus series, by the way- the way it.

2:13:28 - Leo Laporte
According to cable sassar, the conclusion was hidden in the page break. No, our Maxon didn't win. No, we aren't better than passport and escort hey, but we didn't lose either. Okay, Okay, that's a. There you go. Look, here's the extra switch. Mistake An extra switch at the same closeout price. You get an extra switch. This is so good. Thank you for bringing back these memories. This is fantastic.

2:13:57 - Andy Ihnatko
This is. This is why you're in an archive is such an important thing. All you need is like everybody has. Everybody is a nut on one topic, everybody is an obsessive completist on one piece of media, and all you got to do is get that one person to say, oh, by the way, could you take that folder of scans that you've been building for the past 12 years and just put them on the internet archive. And now is it has not been lost to history.

I guess not just. It's not just nostalgia, it really is like a really cool piece of history.

2:14:25 - Leo Laporte
During the break I you know, the Christmas break I decided to start donating monthly to the internet archive because, a they need it they are a 501, c three charity and B we use it. It's a great resource.

2:14:39 - Andy Ihnatko
It's a really important historic resource and I want to support Brewster and the internet archive, especially after January 1st when, like now, things are falling out of copyright like from 90, someone years ago. That's pretty Like. If you want to find a copy of something that is out of copyright, it will almost certainly be on the internet. Archive.

2:14:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, even in a lot of stuff it's in copyright, to be honest with you.

2:15:01 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay.

2:15:02 - Leo Laporte
There's that as well, but.

2:15:06 - Andy Ihnatko
I would, I would, I would in in in weak defense. I would put it to you that there is a lot of stuff that is like not public domain but it is abandoned by cause by by the time. One media company is bought by another committee company is bought by another media big company. Maybe there's something valuable in a B movie from 1968 and nobody knows who's who owns it anymore. And so if somebody said you know what, I'm going to put it up on the internet archive. If somebody decides that they own it, great, they come out of the woodwork and pay and demonstrate that they own it and then take it back, that's great. But otherwise I don't want this. I don't want this knockoff of a beach movie, dr Goldfoot and the bikini machine. It should not be lost to history just because it's not available on streaming today.

2:15:47 - Leo Laporte
Just visit. Just visit archiveorg. I just realized I went and I clicked the link. They have the entire two cows software library. They've preserved it, including. Here's one that I'm definitely getting the Jenny McCarthy downloaded shareware that is changing pictures of actress and model Jenny McCarthy. You know you got to have that for your 386.

2:16:09 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, they also have. They also have, like Macintosh and Apple, two simulators and pretty much.

2:16:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, that's, that's. Yeah, you can play hyper if you want to try card. Yeah, exactly yeah it's amazing.

2:16:18 - Andy Ihnatko
So, if you want to actually try out, here's what Mac draw, mac write and Mac paint were like back in 1985, 1986, you can spend a couple hundred dollars or $300 on a Mac classic and then another $500 getting it working, and then another $200 for, like, the media converters and readers, or you can go to archiveorg, click a couple buttons.

2:16:39 - Leo Laporte
save yourself a lot of expense, a lot of leaking capacitors, a lot of space in your in your desk, by the way, credit to two cows because, unlike many other publishers, they donated this entire collection to the internet archive, and that's that's how you should do it, you know, jason Snell. Pick of the week.

2:16:58 - Jason Snell
We mentioned Peter Gabriel earlier, reminded me, and you talked about the album cover being very Peter Gabriel and very AI like as well, reminded me. Peter Gabriel was one of the frequent collaborators of the legendary design firm Hypnosis that made many of the most influential album covers of the seventies and eighties, including dark side of the moon and lots of lead Zeppelin, all the pink Floyd, all Peter Gabriel. There is a documentary that's out there that you can rent, called squaring the circle the story of Hypnosis. I watched this on my sick day a few weeks ago. It is amazing, especially if you like the bands from that era. But it's also such a great story about commercial art, about the push and pull between designers who are trying to be brilliant and forward thinking and cutting edge and clients that don't always agree but sometimes do agree but sometimes don't agree. And sometimes the clients agree but their agents or their publishers, their record album publishers, do not agree with them.

And I thought if you're interested in the history of design, even if you don't care so much about Pink Floyd or Peter Gabriel or anything like that, it is as somebody who used to do magazine covers with designers and artists and things like that. Oh, it hit home of like how do you create something that is not a pure expression of art but instead needs to be part of a larger process? And you want to be creative, but you are also essentially selling a product, or at least somebody in the chain of authority is trying to make money with this thing. It might not be the artist or the musician, it might just be the record label, but how much pull does the artist have, do they? You know, there are cases where Pink Floyd is like nope, or Led Zeppelin is going to be like yeah, we're going to spend all this money on this photography and then we're going to wrap it in opaque paper and put it out that way with so people don't even know what it is.

It's very much the inspiration for spinal taps black album story and that movie. Anyway, it is a really well done. It's Anton Corbin who has collaborated. He's a great photographer. He directed this. He's collaborated with lots of musicians. Most notably, I think, you too, shot rattling hum. It's a great documentary.

One of the two hypnosis guys is still alive, although they've got archival footage of the other guy as well. And it's just and at a base level. Also, if you just want to be like, hey, what is the story behind that very weird Paul McCartney and wings cover from 1973? Oh, it's in there, it's all in there. So we're like, let's, let's spend a million dollars flying photographers and child models to remote Icelandic beach in order to shoot this thing, that then we look at the pictures and we're like, nah, that doesn't work, like, oh my God, how much money did you just spend? It's all in there, the excess and they. And, like I said, I think the the brilliance of the challenge of being a commercial artist where you have it's not just about your art, is also about a product, great documentary, really worth watching Squaring the circle, the story of hypnosis anywhere.

2:20:16 - Leo Laporte
You need to buy it. It's on iTunes. If I can figure out, if I can figure it out and buy it, I will. On iTunes, I will definitely want to see this. This looks incredible, really, really good.

2:20:29 - Jason Snell
And they did those amazing Peter Gabriel albums with the melted face and scratching and the. And there's a great story in there about his first album where he's like I don't really want to be on it but the, but the, the record company wants me to be on it. And literally the one of the hypnosis guys is walking outside in London and it has just rained and there's a brand new polished car there with the water and modules running off of it and he's like what if we put him in a car, yeah, and then shot the car, but you can see he's in there. Could we and it really is very much like would that be cool? Yes, could we get away with telling the record company that he is technically in the album art and therefore you said it would be okay? Yes, okay, let's do it. And that's what they did.

2:21:13 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, there he is. You could see him kind of through the window.

2:21:17 - Jason Snell
Hard to see, but he's there. He's there.

2:21:21 - Alex Lindsay
Wow, I pushed me over the edge. I saw this a couple of weeks ago and I was like, oh, should I get that? And I was like I'm going to get around to it now. Oh, I waited, like.

2:21:29 - Jason Snell
I mean, I heard about it two years ago, I think, and it's finally. I just had a sick day and I'm like you know what? That's a movie that my wife does not want to watch with me, so I'm just going to watch it now.

2:21:38 - Alex Lindsay
And I am glad I did.

2:21:39 - Andy Ihnatko
It was great. Exactly.

2:21:40 - Jason Snell
And she got home and I said I watched a great documentary you would not have cared about. She's great yeah.

2:21:45 - Leo Laporte
I'm glad you got that out of your system. Yeah, I always that's when I watch Helvetica. You know, I know Elise is not really going to want to see it.

2:21:52 - Jason Snell
I'm going to ask if you'd like.

2:21:54 - Alex Lindsay
Helvetica? Yeah, exactly Because yeah, that's a flight.

2:21:56 - Jason Snell
You do not care about this detail of design and documentary. It's fine, I'll just watch it myself.

2:22:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, actually I made a big mistake because I watched Maestro, the new movie about um, uh, what's his name? Leonard Bernstein, yeah, leonard Bernstein on uh on Netflix. And uh, and halfway through Lisa comes in. She says why are you watching this? This looks great. I said it is great, it's very interesting. Uh, anyway, sometimes you make a mistake, that's all. If I'd had hypnosis I would have done it. Uh, thank you, mr Jason Snell. You're still doing six colors in 2024. Yes, I mean.

2:22:34 - Jason Snell
I haven't yet, but yeah, that's the plan later today Perhaps I'll get started with that. I got a time to make the donuts. Yeah, okay, I'll get on it. And if you want to know what, podcast Mr Snell does well.

2:22:45 - Leo Laporte
There's a whole page dedicated to it. Six colorscom slash Jason. Yeah, there's quite a few of them. There's lots, it happens, podcasts happen including the new Magnum podcast, which is a seasonal podcast about random episodes of the original Magnum PI.

2:23:05 - Jason Snell
Let me tell you, I mean, it is the least consequential podcast I do, but it's with two friends of mine who also are about my age and we, you know, drink beer and sit around and watch these old Magnum episodes and it is a shot of nostalgia and we make jokes. It is fun to analyze something that was never meant to be analyzed, certainly not in the far future, and it is. It is a laugh riot on that level too. So it's like it's not important, and yet it is. It is hilarious.

So, I'm happy to do that. Just that is the most the ultimate hobby podcast is watching old episodes of an old TV show that did not ever need to be analyzed in any way. It is hilarious.

2:23:43 - Leo Laporte
Season six, episode 20 just out.

2:23:45 - Jason Snell
So check it out. There's so many. We've covered, we've, I think we've covered about half of the show now, which may mean it's time to stop, quite frankly, Cause we, we, they're not quite random, we pick them and I think, I think there's not a lot left that we want to subject ourselves to, but it has been a fun ride. Oh, the eighties. Well, the eighties. But they say the past is another country that is. Here's the TV guy.

2:24:09 - Leo Laporte
Thumbnail from episode 79 of your Magnum PI podcast. In an episode that teaches us that friendships are like sponges, magnum and TC repeatedly commit crimes and visit jail. Meanwhile, rick wins the lottery and meets a travel agent doing a survey of the hotel hotels of the Southwest and a guy who drives a melon truck has the best day in the history of melon trucks.

2:24:33 - Jason Snell
That's true. How could you miss that?

2:24:35 - Leo Laporte
That's that sounds so good.

2:24:36 - Jason Snell
That is what happens in that. It's great when you get a good one there. Where it's really zany and wacky, it's when it. When it's boring and stupid, it's not as fun, it's just a chance you to thank you, jay's, and still Andy and I co GBA just calling Jason.

2:24:54 - Andy Ihnatko
Did you see the sunrise this morning?

2:24:58 - Jason Snell
Ah, reference acknowledged. Thank you.

2:24:59 - Leo Laporte
Thank you very much. Is that a Magnum PI reference? Oh?

2:25:02 - Jason Snell
that is the peak pinnacle. Magnum PI references from did you yeah, did you see the sunrises? The name of the episode, yeah, every everybody was talking about that on the playground the next day in 1982.

2:25:12 - Andy Ihnatko
Let me tell you because that was our fun Love it, our fun loving Vietnam War of it.

2:25:17 - Leo Laporte
Is that what is that? The one in which the guy in cold blood, the one in which Magnum comes out of the closet or no?

2:25:23 - Jason Snell
a Russian spy kills, blows up the Ferrari with his friend inside, he tracks down the Russian spy. Turns out the Russian spy is not just that, but a guy who tortured him in Vietnam and all of that. You got to make it real bad, right. And then he takes him and the guy Ivan of course, is the Russian spy says he's there. And Magnum asked him if he saw the sunrise of the Pally, look at, because that's what his friend did.

2:25:48 - Andy Ihnatko
I haven't given the big speech of well, you're not going to shoot me, you're one of the good guys, I've got diplomatic immunity. There's no, I can't be touched. That's how I am the winner. You are the user. And he walks away and Magnum, and we're all think oh well, you know Magnum, he's just going to accept that. You know he's their alliance. He will not cross that. He just simply says Ivan, because that was the last thing his friend said to him before he died.

2:26:10 - Jason Snell
Yeah, did you see the?

2:26:11 - Andy Ihnatko
sunrise this morning Like and he's confused they just simply raises the gun, muzzle flash and frame.

2:26:19 - Jason Snell
Oh yeah, everybody. I still talk to people our age today and I mentioned that and they're like oh my God, I mean, and at the time there was no internet, it was literally just on the playground.

2:26:28 - Andy Ihnatko
but it really happened, but it did to every.

2:26:31 - Jason Snell
oh my God, that was the biggest thing in 1982, on that one day after that Friday, because it was on Thursday nights. That was a. Friday on the playground where everybody was talking about Magnum PI, I'm telling you 1982.

2:26:42 - Leo Laporte
I think we just made your little podcast a lot bigger.

2:26:45 - Jason Snell
I got to say and if you want to hear nonsense about the eighties, it is a place you could go. There are many, but that is one of them.

2:26:53 - Leo Laporte
Did you do the sunrise episode, or is it? Is it?

2:26:56 - Jason Snell
Yeah, well, that was like episode two, are you kidding? You're kidding. You're a pilot and then we do the sunrise. How can you not?

2:27:02 - Andy Ihnatko
You never know where you're going to get canceled. You got. You would be kicking yourself if you got canceled before you did that episode.

2:27:07 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it was episode five. You did it May 6th of 2020, right in the middle of the COVID crisis.

2:27:16 - Jason Snell
Well, that's why I mean obviously, that's why we started doing it right is that when we were trapped inside our homes, okay, in our little lives.

2:27:21 - Andy Ihnatko
Yes, you were there with, with a lantern, a match on to our feet and whatever you do, don't eat the snow in Hawaii Once again.

2:27:29 - Leo Laporte
I'll try again. It's cocaine, it's cocaine.

2:27:32 - Jason Snell
Wow, don't eat the snow because it's cocaine. Oh the eighties. Again, it's the eighties.

2:27:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, andy, are you going to be on GBH or not?

2:27:41 - Andy Ihnatko
Yes, Not this, not this Thursday, but next Thursday at 1235 PM. Go to WGBH newsorg to stream it, live or later.

2:27:48 - Leo Laporte
We count on that, mr Andy, and I cope. Do you have, is there an Orthodox New Year's as well? Do you have a second New Year's Day to celebrate as well?

2:27:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Yes, it's the technically the Feast of Three Kings, and so it's about the sixth. I think I have to. I'm such a good Orthodox Christian that I have to double check to make sure I know when, when, when. Orthodox.

2:28:07 - Leo Laporte
Christians, january 6th, it is a Piphany and I will be more exact, theophany, we'll say, sometimes say yes, pierogi and cold Kilbasa, as in my house, in my family, like we would have.

2:28:17 - Andy Ihnatko
we would have. Like the December 25th was the big blowout and but there would still, be like we do, a little Christmas of like very traditional, like humble, peasant food, cold food, things you don't need refrigeration for. How?

2:28:28 - Leo Laporte
fun Maybe.

2:28:28 - Andy Ihnatko
It was nice. I like it. You know they're, they're very, they're. Very few times in my childhood when I got to have like poppy seeds mixed with honey and that was one of them.

2:28:36 - Leo Laporte
Yes, by the way, for some Orthodox churches who celebrate Christmas on January 7th, then they celebrate Epiphany on January 19th, just in case you know, you get extra. In other words, you could probably do it a few times. Mr Alex Lindsay. Office hours Global. Did you take the holidays off?

2:28:57 - Alex Lindsay
No, we don't do that. We don't do that. We had it on Christmas, we had it on New Year's Christmas.

2:29:02 - Leo Laporte
Wow, we did, we did, we just did Q and A.

2:29:05 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, did Q and A for Christmas and then went and open presents. So, yeah, it was good. It was a good, um, uh, it was a great couple of weeks. We last week we really talked about what we liked and didn't like about the year before and what we want to do in the future, and today we're kind of this week. We're talking about what we think is going to happen, so each day in different verticals, and so we're we're having a having a good time, yeah, and we, uh, today, was graphics trends, tomorrow's audio trends and video infrastructure and education.

2:29:31 - Leo Laporte
That's exciting Wow.

2:29:33 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, so we, so we're, um, so you know, it's, it's a good first week of the of the month, and then we have built a crazy format to do. I mean just to, we've got, we've already figured out, we got to fill out the first two hundred and sixty episodes, and so we're just trying to, like you know, get our head around what it takes to do two hundred sixty, uh, different things, and so we built a pretty crazy format for it. So it should be, should be fine.

2:29:54 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure, though, that Michael Krasny took the holidays off.

2:29:58 - Alex Lindsay
We are, we are take, we took a couple of days, a couple of weeks off. We have, we're coming back on the on the 12th, where we have Jacques Papin, which we're very excited. You know what it's so funny.

2:30:06 - Leo Laporte
He has been revived in my life because he does and all.

2:30:11 - Alex Lindsay
And all of a sudden I'm seeing they're the best TikToks ever.

2:30:14 - Leo Laporte
He has a he showed how to make spam into a steak dinner.

2:30:19 - Alex Lindsay
No, he has. What's amazing about him is he's such an amazing chef that is obsessed with having people just cook. Well, yes, Like it doesn't have to be complex. I'm not trying to impress you, I just want to show you how to. He has TikToks on, like how to do your eggs in a real and if you follow the instructions, I love that one. I watched that one.

Yeah, yeah, they're really good and so I love he has a. There's a video he's done it a couple of times, but there's a video from I think the 70s or the 80s where he debones a chicken. I think there's like an AVI update upload on YouTube. It is the best skills training video ever made in any genre. Like it's just because he's like you should be able to debone a chicken in a minute and take some a couple more minutes to do it, cause he's explaining it to you, but you can realize that he could totally debone a chicken in a minute, yeah, and, but he shows you just break it here, do this thing, do this thing. And he, but he it's so clear and he's so good at it and there's just something about him so we're really excited. I've been watching, I've been like watching lots of his stuff and reading stuff, you know, and and cooking his stuff to get ready for the show. But that's on the 12th and then I'll.

2:31:25 - Leo Laporte
I can't. I will be listening to that. Michael Krasny does such a great job with all his guests and I've been watching these. Jacques Pepin, he's back, you know he's got the old videos. But then he's, it's like in his little French kitchen. He says well man, we, you know, we're doing the war. We didn't have much to eat, so we made spam, yeah, and it's like great, it's like the best thing you ever saw in your life. He's amazing.

2:31:46 - Alex Lindsay
What I was amazed was is he was this top chef in the 70s. He got into a car accident and he didn't think he could continue to be a chef, so he just started on to do education and that's kind of I didn't know that, you know. So it was in the yeah and and but what's amazing it just didn't have the same movement on one of his arms and so he moved into this. So he's been doing this now for 50 years and it's just amazing. Anyway, so he's going to be on.

2:32:10 - Leo Laporte
I can't wait. And that is at gray mattershow with Michael Krasny Yep, and can you? It's a podcast, right, so you can subscribe to it, the podcast.

2:32:21 - Alex Lindsay
You can subscribe to the podcast Apple or Spotify and you can and then we we do it for the subscribers, we do it live so they can ask. You can actually ask live questions. So we, you know Michael's asking, he's kind of kicks off the show and then the subscribers will actually, you know, get to ask questions. So we'll take on maybe 10 or 15 questions from the, from the viewers as well. So it's, we were kind of experimenting with this idea of having a podcast where the audience is actually asking questions during the show as well. So so that's it Good.

2:32:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, gray mattershow. Thank you Alex, thank you Andy, thank you Jason, thanks to all of you. A couple of things I'd like to ask of you. First of all, we are doing our annual survey Once again. This is important for us as a way to get to know you better, but also to help us sell advertising, which is kind of somewhat important to keeping the show on the road. We don't sell your information at all, we just sell it, not sell it, we don't even sell it, we just collect it in aggregate so that you can, we can then tell advertisers well, the age group is this and stuff like that. So we never tell them anything about you. But the survey helps us a lot.

If you would do me a favor, go to twittv slash survey 24 and take our 2024 twit audience survey. Shouldn't take you more than about five minutes, 10 minutes. If there's a question you don't want to answer, don't, it's fine with me. Or make up an answer, that's fine. Whatever you need to do to preserve your integrity, but it really does help us with the business. And speaking of helping us with the business, I haven't put in a plug yet for a club twit, but I would like to now, especially as we head into 2024,. Your help is vital to keeping us on the air and keeping the shows going and developing new shows. It's seven bucks a month ad-free versions of everything we do, additional shows we don't put out in public iOS today's in there, the home theater geeks with Scott Wilkinson, hands on Macintosh with Micah Sargent, lots of special content and, of course, the twit plus feed.

But I think my favorite part is the wonderful discord where you can hang out with other people. We were hanging out in the discord during the break talking about coding in our advent of code and I got a lot of help. Everybody did. In fact, that was one of the reactions I noticed in the club twit discord is that this is a great community of like-minded people talking about whatever it is, not just our shows, but people are interested in All of that. For seven dollars is a pretty good deal. Twittertv slash club twit and we thank all that. We got lots of new members during the holidays and I appreciate that. Maybe some gifts and so forth. I really appreciate that. It makes us hopeful about going forward, so hang out in the club and join us.

Twittertv slash club twit. We do Mac break weekly every Tuesday, starting today for the rest of the year, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, that's 1900 UTC. You can watch us live. That's why I tell you the times we record. We stream on YouTube. As soon as the show goes on, the YouTube stream starts at youtubecom slash twit After the fact. Of course, it's a podcast and the easiest thing to do is just subscribe, get pocket casts or Apple podcasts, whatever it is you like, and subscribe to the show so that you will get it the minute it's available on a Tuesday afternoon. Thanks so much to our technical director, john Ashley, to our studio manager, jammer B, and who will be editing the show today. John, will it be you? Yes, john Ashley, our editor. We appreciate it. 
s
2:35:55 - John Ashley
I'm just glad you didn't call me boy producer.

2:36:00 - Leo Laporte
I'm never calling you that again, because that would be insulting and humiliating.

2:36:09 - John Ashley
I wouldn't say insulting.

2:36:10 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to call you a boy producer. You're a full grown man. Thank you, John Ashley, for the work you do. We appreciate it. Boy genius, we will see you all next week. But now it is my sad and our solemn duty to say get back to work, because break time is over. We'll see you next time.

2:36:33 - Jonathan Bennett
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet, but your game console, cell phones and maybe even the machine on your desk. But you already knew all that. What you may not know is that TWiT now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Linux show. Whether you're a Linux pro, a burgeoning sysad man or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the Club Twit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club Twit exclusive Untitled Linux show. Wait, you're not a Club Twit member yet. We'll go to twittv slash club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.