MacBreak Weekly 972 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 time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy's here, Jason's back, Alex is here. The whole gang is here. We're going to tell you how you can make a hundred dollars pretty much instantly, but you may have ignored the email because it looks a little shady. We'll also talk about Eddie Q creating a stern up a hornet's nest with his court testimony last week, and you won't believe what Pope Leo's been wearing. All of that more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

This is MacBreak Weekly episode 972, recorded t Tuesday May 13th 2025. Future Jeopardy champion. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest Apple news. Hello everybody, welcome to the show. Jason Snell, back from Arizona, it's good to see you. sixcolors.com

0:01:00 - Jason Snell
Yes sir. Thank you Good to be back.

0:01:03 - Leo Laporte
Also here, Andy Ihnatko, in the library from ohnatko.com. And from officehours.global, Alex Lindsay hello, hello, it says chihuahua.coffee.

0:01:15 - Jason Snell, Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay
Don't believe it, chihuahua.com he's not Mikah Sargent he is not Mikah Sargent and he does not have a chihuahua.

0:01:22 - Leo Laporte
Do you have a chihuahua?

0:01:24 - Alex Lindsay
I have a cat, that's it, that's it.

0:01:26 - Leo Laporte
That's all you need. I was uh celebrating our new kitty. You know, this kitty might actually come up here and visit at some point, so nice fun yeah, jason, you had a good trip. Yeah, yeah, get a good briefing from apple.

0:01:40 - Jason Snell
Good time, uh. I mean I I don't know what you're talking about. Shelly Brisbin got a briefing about something we're going to talk about today Accessibility. Accessibility because this is where they pull the accessibility features that are going in the new OS forward from WWDC and talk about them for Global Accessibility Day. So we did get a briefing on that one.

0:02:00 - Alex Lindsay
They've done that before, haven't they? This has been. I think it's becoming a pattern. It is.

0:02:10 - Andy Ihnatko
Thursday in May is Global Accessibility Awareness. That before haven't they? This has been. I think it's becoming a pattern. Yeah, it is third thursday and may is global where global accessibility awareness day. Yeah, so they usually time it there. A lot of good stuff this time.

0:02:13 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean there's good stuff all the time, but this is particularly interesting there's uh, so we got 18.5 uh and um, what was the new mac os 15 point, something, 15.5 five also. So they're in the 0.5 release, which means we're halfway, halfway to heaven in september. But, uh, these are kind of the final uh releases of those operating systems and we're halfway through digging ourselves out of the mess we made with the last point of release.

That's serious, oh dear lord, yeah, but uh, there were some. There are some new accessibility features. What car? Where do you want to start carplay? What was shelly most excited about? Let's put it that way?

0:02:52 - Jason Snell
oh, I don't know. I mean there's a lot, there's a lot going on here. There's nutrition labels. Yeah, I think that I mean they're gonna it's it's self-reporting, so you know, we'll see how it goes. But the idea is that when you look on an app in the app store, you can actually see directly what accessibility features that app claims.

And as Shelley put it, this is a big deal because it makes it a lot clearer upfront, before you even download the app. The way she put it is whether the developer prioritizes accessibility, because a lot of developers just don't even think about it and they won't fill out the labels, and so you'll know you'll be like, oh, that's not great, so it's going to be just like with the privacy and security nutrition labels. You'll now be able to see at a glance if these apps in the app store support accessibility features.

0:03:41 - Leo Laporte
There will be, of course, pressure from users if you misrepresent your accessibility.

0:03:49 - Jason Snell
I presume the nutrition label is accessible. How could it not be?

0:03:51 - Leo Laporte
Wouldn't that be ironic.

0:03:53 - Jason Snell
The other big one is a little bit of a head-scratcher if you don't think about the use case, which is Magnifier, which is an app that's been available as an accessibility feature on iOS for a while, coming to the Mac, and it can use continuity camera. Um, and I heard from um a a, a colleague of mine who says she's got low vision, yeah, um or is it.

It is, this is in the magnifier, and so the idea is is uh, she said she always used to sit at the front of her classes in high school and college because she couldn't see the board.

And this is a way you can actually sit there with the camera facing out and your computer and you can magnify areas and you can see what's on the projector and you can see what's on the whiteboard, and all of that can be zoomed in and enhanced from your phone sitting facing outward on your desk, which is it's pretty cool. I mean, they, they, maybe they should put a camera on the other side of the computer at some point. But, um, but they've got these pieces right. They've got magnifier, they've got continuity camera and they're kind of putting that together so that low vision users can do that yeah, I think that's really really cool.

0:05:01 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and there's something there's something a little bit similar with accessibility reader, which is one of the things that I got really excited about, because there's it's often said that, uh, accessibility features often can improve the experience for everybody, not just the people who need accessibility features.

This is one of the big ones for me, like on my android phone, where accessibility reader will basically say well, here's what's on the screen. Okay, I'm going to reformat it so that the text is big and isolated. It doesn't have any distractions on it. That's going to be big, sharp white letters on a on a dark background. The user is going to be able to adjust the font size and all the kinds of things to make it more readable, which is obviously a really good thing for people who require that feature. It's also like kind of a hack, because anytime I'm on my phone and I'm trying to read an article, but there are so many layers of freaking ads and pop-ups that I can't navigate through it. If I just simply touch this feature on my Android phone, it just says, oh well, here's the. It figures out here's the actual text of the article and simply isolates it on again white letters on a black background and suddenly I can actually read the darn thing.

0:06:08 - Leo Laporte
That's fantastic. Uh, this image from the apple press release uh shows a student with her phone pointed at the book. Uh, at the top of the book. And uh, I don't. Is that continuity camera? I'm not sure what it is. And then, and then it's so cool because then it it does. It turns it into plain text. It's big screen, white on black, high contrast.

0:06:27 - Jason Snell
I love that we're starting this way too, because so often the show, especially these last few weeks right has been kind of rough about Apple and Apple's behavior and courts and rulings and all sorts of things like that. And I saw somebody on, I think, mastodon or Blue Sky this morning who linked to the Apple press release in the newsroom about this and said this is Apple at its best and and I mean it's easy to be cynical there are a lot of things going on, including Apple behavior, that a lot of us might not like we'll get to Glenn Fleischman's piece in just a little bit but they're not.

They're not wrong. This stuff is Apple at its best. I really do believe.

0:07:07 - Leo Laporte
Okay, yes, I will also point out that Google and Microsoft are very, very good in this arena as well. Well, I'm not saying compared to others, I'm saying this is Apple's best self Companies need to do this, and I think what's great is that all of the big companies understand that and do that. I mean, microsoft does amazing things with its Xbox controllers. I mean, accessibility is very good. As you point out, andy, in Android, apple leads the way a little bit, though I don't think Android has anything like this magnifier. I think that's fantastic.

0:07:41 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, yeah, I'm sorry, I was just thinking about the best way to phrase it. This is one area in security in which both Apple and Google are very, very happily competing with each other. If you've spoken to the teams on each company, they don't hide that ooh, that's a good idea, let's do that. Or, ooh, we were going to do something like that, but now let's bump that up in priority. Like I said, that reader feature it's coming to the iPhone and iOS and Mac. I've had it on Android for a while. That doesn't mean Apple's falling behind. It's that there are a lot of things to tackle. They're very, very serious about this, and if at some point, they saw this feature on Android and said, ooh, that's a great feature, let's do it. That's good. I don't think that's what happened, because they have enough people working engineers inside Apple that know what is needed and what should be done that they are pursuing it on their own timeline.

0:08:33 - Leo Laporte
Blind whiz in our club twit who from his handle I assume is a wizard uh, says that Apple is better than Google by huge strides. Google screen screen reader talkback sucks in comparison to Apple's voiceover, but he does say, or she says, accessibility is why I'm a huge Apple fan. And this is also new and I don't know how to describe this, but there's a Braille experience called Braille Access that turns the iPhone, ipad, mac and Vision Pro into a full-featured Braille note-taker. Now I presume you have to have a Braille screen reader or something so that you can read the Braille right, there's no raised dots on the phone, but it's pretty cool that it does turn it into Braille.

0:09:21 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, there are Braille accessories. I'm sure that other people are more wise about this than I am, but, yeah, this is the problem that people who don't rely on these kind of inputs and accessories. It's an entirely invisible part of the experience, but it's essential to a large proportion of the user base.

0:09:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, BlindWiz says he has a Braille reader attached to the phone, or Braille display, I guess you'd call it so he would. And attached to the phone, and uh, and. Or braille display, I guess you'd call it um. So, uh, he would. He, and probably not the phone, I'm guessing blind wizards to a to a mac. He's actually participating in our club twitter discord in braille. That's fantastic, amazing. Does it keep up? That's really amazing. Wow, because sometimes that discord can get pretty pretty quick, but he's able to to participate, I think. That's yeah, thank you, um.

Live captions arrive on the apple watch. That's really interesting, uh, so you could look you if you're staring. If somebody's staring at their watch, it's not because they're bored with you, it's because they want to see what you're saying, I guess, wow. Uh, the iphone live listen turns the iphone into a remote microphone which then streams content to airpods made for iphone hearing aids or beats headphones and when the session's active on iphone, users can view live captions of what their iphone is hearing on the paled apple paired apple watch while listening along to the audio.

0:10:50 - Alex Lindsay
It'll be interesting to see how quickly Apple takes this to where some of the other headsets have already gone, which is translation. You know, like, really like, live translation to your AirPods. You know where, you know. It's not just a hearing aid, you just hear every language around you as if in whatever your natural language is.

0:11:03 - Leo Laporte
This, yeah, and this, by the way, lends some credence to what Mark Gurman has been saying about Apple working on some sort of glasses. You can imagine, maybe cameras in your AirPods or cameras in your glasses One of the things that Apple does.

0:11:19 - Jason Snell
Yeah, apple very secretive company. We all know that that's not a secret. Huh, but here is the. I wanted more laughter there. Please clap. Anyway, they thank you. Ha, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're too kind.

0:11:32 - Andy Ihnatko
I somewhere I have a big bang theory Audiences are the greatest in the world.

0:11:37 - Leo Laporte
But what Apple?

0:11:38 - Jason Snell
does is they do build foundational technologies for future products in public Right, and sometimes when we talk about thank foundational technologies for future products in public right, and sometimes when we talk about you, I'm sorry sometimes when we talk about about Apple's future rumors, right, you can start to look around and see features that are laying there that are like, oh yeah, you take that and that and there they are, and and that's because they I mean they can't not only do a lot of those features have utility on other Apple devices, but they can't build it all like at once, so they build it in pieces and they know what they're building toward and sometimes you can see the shapes of it.

Um, I did not have um brain reading on my bingo card for today, but there's a. The wall street journal did a report today about how a company called Synchron that uses neural signals and they're going to build that into switch control in Apple's OSs Wow, and that's the idea of being able to have a brain signal Think it input device for people who are obviously very mobility restricted.

0:12:45 - Andy Ihnatko
And that just shows you how forward thinking a lot of their work is that there is. Right now there is no. My understanding from the Wall Street Journal article is that there is no device specifically that this is designed to support. They are simply laying the groundwork so that when this technology does mature hopefully imminently there will be a standard that Apple has created that people who are developing this hardware and the software can conform to, so that it will be part of Apple's accessibility package from the get-go.

0:13:12 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, very, very cool, there's more. This is not a this is a lot.

Yeah, it's a great announcement Enhanced view with Apple Vision Pro for users who are blind. By the way, blindwiz is on his phone with a braille screen wow. For users who are blind or have low vision, vision os will expand vision accessibility features using the advanced camera system on apple vision pro so you can zoom in on the vision pro. That's pretty cool. Uh, it will. The new api will enable approved apps to access the main camera to provide live person-to-person assistance for visual interpretation.

0:13:49 - Jason Snell
That's Be my Eyes. Like Be my Eyes, yeah, exactly.

0:13:52 - Leo Laporte
Then there are AI versions of Be my Eyes now coming. Look at that. You can zoom in. I still think cooking with your Vision Pro on is not ideal, but okay, at least you can read the cookbook. Other additional updates back. This is all, by the way, not yet in ios. I don't know if I didn't confuse people. This is coming in ios 19, right?

0:14:14 - Jason Snell
this. Yeah, this is all going to be in the fall. This is essentially a pull forward of things that are are otherwise would have been announced at wwdc. Because they've got enough, they can pull the accessibility features forward Background sounds.

0:14:27 - Leo Laporte
by the way, anthony Nielsen, our creative director, does have a pair of Vision Pros and he says he's cooked in them. It's easier than an iPad. Well, yeah, I mean it's hard to cook when you're holding the iPad up to your eyes, but okay.

0:14:42 - Andy Ihnatko
Can you imagine being a lobster and on top of everything else that's on your day is going around? The last thing you see are those spooky eyes looking at you.

0:14:50 - Leo Laporte
Background sounds become easier to personalize with new eq settings the option to stop oh, that's good, because my, my mom can't hear me play the piano with the background sounds off. Uh, minimize, distraction increases, oh, oh, this is that um off, uh, minimize distraction increases.

0:15:09 - Jason Snell
Oh, this is that. Uh, it's the new. Yeah, it's the new. Background sounds, uh, playlists and stuff like this would be useful.

0:15:12 - Leo Laporte
Pink noise is good for my tinnitus, and so I do use background sounds in my hearing aids. Actually, uh, be kind of cool to have that more, more programmable for users at risk of losing their ability to speak. Personal voice becomes faster, easier. That's where you train. Use your voice to train the iPhone and then it can speak in your voice.

0:15:35 - Jason Snell
The quality's going to go up. It's going to be faster to set up. It currently takes 150 different training phrases and then you basically have to wait overnight as it builds the voice. According to Apple, they're going to use 10 phrases and it will train in a few minutes. So that's kind of amazing.

0:15:50 - Alex Lindsay
And it would be. I have a hard time believing that it will have as much detail with less data. You know from your voice. I know that I've talked to some folks that have spent a lot of time in 11 labs training their voice and then also done the Apple one, and it just feels like the apple one is like a little tricycle, like to them, like compared to you know, and it, but it's you know. They have 20 or 30 hours of training in 11 labs. Uh, you know, with stuff that they're reading and then it's amazing what they do, yeah, and they, and then they have this little thing and they're just like you know.

It would just be nice to be able to scale it. It's great to have something that's easy, that gets close, but it'd be nice to have something that says okay, I really want to save my voice into the future because I may lose it, or just that. I want to be able to. You know, because the folks that I'm talking to, they're using 11 labs for this. It's because they want to do things for documentaries and other things with their voice. Then they don't want to. They don't want to. They don't want to do it anymore Like they just type it in and be me.

0:16:50 - Andy Ihnatko
You know and, and, and, so that's so they're pushing it to that level right now. But that's a very big deal that Nick can build a good enough voice under limited number of inputs, because some people don't, they don't get advanced word that they're going to lose their voice. So you're, you're, you're, you're, you're dealing with whatever scraps of messages that you've seemed to have left behind.

0:17:05 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, and I think that, and again, 11 labs is good for that Cause. If you have a lot of historical stuff, you just throw it all in and let it churn through the stuff, that's. That's there, but the but. I think that it would be great if Apple made a bigger version of it. I mean, I think I again, I think it's great to have a quick version that does a very good job with what it has, but also giving us the option of hey, I want to. What's the main, you know, like a big version of that Cause. I would love to have that type of solution built into my phone. You know, as opposed to cause, eventually you get to a point where you're texting and when you text somebody on the other side, they hear you. You know, like when they they're, if they're driving or whatever, they just hear your voice saying the words that you typed in I'm gonna have to start recording these episodes.

0:17:51 - Leo Laporte
Uh, vehicle motion cue. This is weird. Have you ever gotten the? The most car sick I ever got was riding a commuter bus to san francisco, playing doom on the commuter bus, and because everything was moving one way and the screen was moving another way, they're actually going to build vehicle motion cues into the mac to reduce motion sickness while riding in a moving vehicle yeah, it's a great feature on ios, so it's interesting it's already on ios it's on ios, they're going to move.

0:18:19 - Jason Snell
Bring it into the mac, yeah, it puts little dots on the screen and then, as your car is turning or whatever, the dots move with the motion, because all of these devices have multipoint accelerometers in them and the idea. It doesn't work for everybody, but I have heard from a lot of people who said that it really helps with car sickness, because what's happening is that your limbic system is expecting there to be….

0:18:43 - Leo Laporte
Your inner ear is telling you one thing's happening, thing that you're moving, which you are, but your eyes are locked on a screen that isn't moving and the disconnect makes you sick.

0:18:53 - Alex Lindsay
And the reason the disconnect makes you sick um is because the only other time that happens you have been poisoned.

0:18:59 - Jason Snell
Like you know, like so.

0:19:00 - Alex Lindsay
So we have a million years of get everything out of your stomach. Right now, that's connected to, and some of us are more sensitive to it. But yeah, that's it. Yeah.

0:19:10 - Jason Snell
So instead the dots are present and apparently this does a little trick to your vision field where there is feedback of the motion that you're feeling?

0:19:18 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I see.

0:19:18 - Jason Snell
And it decreases your nausea.

0:19:21 - Leo Laporte
There's an animation on the Apple page so I thought maybe they were jiggling the screen. No, as you move, as the car's moving, these dots in the background move with the car. Yes, so you get a visual cue that you're moving which matches your inner ear. Of course, the screen that you're looking at isn't moving, but those dots kind of back it up that's interesting.

0:19:43 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, so the so it does work for some people. You the so it does work for some people. You're saying it does. I've heard from a lot of people who've had great success with it on the iPhone in the current version of iOS.

0:19:52 - Leo Laporte
So bringing this to the Mac boy I.

0:19:56 - Jason Snell
I used my laptop on on the bus all the time and I was until.

0:20:00 - Andy Ihnatko
I couldn't anymore right. So yeah, the bus really do it yeah, you also try chewing on ginger or candy ginger. That's the one trick that always works for me Whenever I board a ferry. It's like wow, really, that works for you.

0:20:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, 100% of the time. Every time I'm on a boat, they have little things of candy ginger after meals and I always cobble as much as I can.

0:20:26 - Andy Ihnatko
At the Yosemite conference. Uh, like to get to yosemite. There's this really curvy, twisty, beautiful winding road and after my first conference I learned to a have a pack of candy ginger for myself and also offer it to people as we get into the car. It's also a delicious thing to have.

0:20:44 - Leo Laporte
Improved eye tracking. We'll have the option to use a switch or dwell to make I don't know. With head tracking, users will be able to more easily control iPhone and iPad with head movements. For people with mobility disabilities, there's switch control for brain. This is what you were talking about, the brain-computer interfaces. Wow, assistive access adds a new custom Apple TV app with a simplified media player. That might be nice. Music haptics on the iPhone become more customizable so you can be listening to a song. It'll tap for you or you can have it just be the vocals. Sound recognition adds name recognition a new way for users who are deaf or hard of hearing to know when their name is being called. Oh, that's great voice, can? This is really amazing. Shelly was impressed by all of this.

0:21:30 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I mean, it's a combination. So shelly writes about this stuff for me and uh is a herself a low vision user who's written a book about accessibility, and you know, I think she's always impressed. This is the accessibility equivalent of the wwdc keynote, right? Yeah, these are all the new features and they are very thoughtful and often they're surprising, especially to those of us who are not tuned into accessibility as much as as people like shelly are. But uh, yeah, it's, it shows you. I I mean again, yes, there's a press release, yes, it's good publicity for apple, but also there are a lot of people at Apple who are not only deeply committed to accessibility on their devices but, I think, culturally. Again, we talk a lot about a lot of maybe negative things about Apple culture from time to time that go into some of their decisions. I also do believe that, culturally, making time to make sure accessibility is good and that your accessibility features are growing is a part of Apple's culture. They really do care about it and prioritize it.

0:22:31 - Leo Laporte
And Apple Fitness welcomes Chelsea Hill in a dance workout. She is the founder of Rolettes, an LA-based wheelchair dance team. That sounds like that'd be fun. Anyway, lots of great stuff from Apple. Well done to celebrate World Accessibility Day. We'll see more about this. Oh, I didn't mention that CarPlay has some additional features too. Carplay is going to have bigger text and a couple of other features that I might actually find pretty useful as well. So good on Apple. Well done, that's our whole first segment. See, good news from apple. Now don't get too settled in, because next we're going to find out like glenn fleischman has has turned against copertino. He's, he's. I thought it was great that he put this on the six colors yeah, he's doing that for us now.

0:23:25 - Jason Snell
He's writing for us. So he writes one help column, which is what he's writing for us, and he's like Jason, I have a post about Apple. Do you want that too? I'm like sure, glenn, right, all right, let's chill.

0:23:33 - Leo Laporte
Jeopardy champion Glenn Fleischman, who is now joined by Dan Morin.

0:23:37 - Jason Snell
Yes, Is last week and it's so. It's not, I think, technically. I mean, unless you're really backed up on jeopardy or something like yeah, dan moore and my colleague at six colors is like glenn fleishman a now a two time jeopardy, champion, champion.

0:23:53 - Leo Laporte
So I was so disappointed when the college professor comes on in day three I thought this could, this might be bad, but uh, yeah is was. Have you talked to dan, since?

0:24:03 - Jason Snell
oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I yeah yeah, funny story. So they record five episodes a day, two days a week, right, that's how they do it on Jeopardy.

0:24:11 - Leo Laporte
So a week's worth of episodes. It was a month ago it was.

0:24:15 - Jason Snell
So it was. Yeah, it was two months ago, it was in March.

0:24:18 - Leo Laporte
So he couldn't say anything for two months.

0:24:21 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, and he knew what happened. I only knew that he went out there and that I knew and this is the funny part is is I knew he was there and they turn off your phone and everything Right so I knew he was there that day, I was doing a podcast that day and then at the end of the day, you know he obviously he went through that process. So he got on Jeopardy the next day because he was in la for two days because he had told you in the past.

0:24:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I took the test online. Oh yeah, yeah, I got the idea, I got the uh, the zoom interview. Yeah, I got the audition. I mean I went through that.

0:24:53 - Jason Snell
He got accepted he was on the list he had been trying to go on jeopardy for years and hadn't gotten even to the audition part. I uh submitted to jeopardy a couple years ago and immediately went all the way through to being put in the pool. They never called me. You're still in the pool. I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I knew Dan had been trying for like 10 years and hadn't done it. But then Dan went through that process and shot right all the way through to being on the show. But the funny part is, on the Tuesday I check in to see where Dan is and spoil myself about Dan's run because he was at Disneyland, and spoiled myself about dan's run because he was at disneyland. So I knew, I knew friday's episode was anticlimactic, climactic for me because I knew, uh, that he wasn't going to week two. But, uh, he won like thirty five thousand dollars or something in two days he did great so that's.

0:25:38 - Leo Laporte
That's awesome. He showed well for the nerds. He did a good job. You now have two jeopardy champions working for you, I do.

0:25:46 - Jason Snell
I am deeply outclassed by my six colors.

0:25:50 - Leo Laporte
You have to re-up, or are you still in the pool? I?

0:25:52 - Jason Snell
I. You have to re-up. I took the test again this year and we'll see what happens. But my yeah, my time expired.

0:25:57 - Andy Ihnatko
So well, I I'm gonna say that I say proudly that I passed the exam and it was only my personality and general physical appearance that caused them to say no. Did they tell you that?

0:26:08 - Jason Snell
That feels like it for me too, I think it was implied the final step is you are on a Zoom with a bunch of people, and my understanding from that was that you've already qualified to be on Jeopardy. The Zoom is for casting. They want to see your demeanor and the look, the look of your face, and they, they, they. You know your age and where you're from and all the things they do, because at that point they've got an unlimited supply of qualified contestants and what they want to do is cast their shows. And they didn't call me so yeah, good for dan.

0:26:38 - Andy Ihnatko
They did a contest in boston, so at least, at least, I got to play with the buzzers, so that was nice.

0:26:43 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I didn't realize you had gone that far. Uh, that's cool.

0:26:47 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I guess what about you, alex? Are you a?

0:26:49 - Leo Laporte
jeopardy champion. Would you like to be?

0:26:53 - Jason Snell
maybe, maybe maybe all the questions I have. Uh, one other jeopardy thing. Um, I just wanted to say which is uh, a lot of us who talk about going on jeopardy, we talk about what our ultimate terrible jeopardy board would be oh and and mine is like opera kings, numbered kings, french stuff, um uh painters I like.

I have nightmares about going on jeopardy and every question is about french things and and numbered kings and I just like I and oh and Bible. I'm really bad with the Bible. I did not pay attention in Sunday school when I was a kid and there was a Bible category and Dan did really well on it.

0:27:34 - Leo Laporte
He did really well. I was impressed.

0:27:35 - Jason Snell
He said I was a religious studies minor.

0:27:36 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm like ah see that, there you go, it finally paid off.

0:27:40 - Jason Snell
After all this time that Cornell education finally paid off.

0:27:42 - Andy Ihnatko
I plus the eternal salvation, but yada, yada, yada hey, yeah.

0:27:49 - Leo Laporte
So congratulations, dan. That's yeah. It was awesome. Let's take a little break. More to come with Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell, MacBreak Weekly.

Our show today, uh, brought to you by Bitwarden.

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Number of people on our twit community forums at twitcommunity said that jason, you did a much better job of talking about the apple spanking in court than we did last week on your shows.

0:32:25 - Jason Snell
Well, thank you to those people.

0:32:28 - Leo Laporte
They said especially on Twitter on Sunday. We mentioned that Judge Yvonne.

0:32:36 - Jason Snell
Gonzalez-Rogers was very upset with Apple.

0:32:37 - Leo Laporte
She was a little, a little miffed, yeah yeah, and that she said an Apple executive lied on the stand and has referred that executive to the attorney general. She also said that. Well, this is kind of interesting. I think you talked about this. Phil Schiller, apple's erstwhile chief marketing officer, wanted to do better in response to the judge's order to open the app store, but others at the company said no, no, no, no. Let's do what I call malicious compliance. Let's do the least we possibly can, and Tim Cook decided to do the latter. Judge Rogers wrote Cook chose poorly the title of our show last week.

0:33:25 - Jason Snell
Literally an Indiana Jones reference sitting right there sitting right there. She didn't footnote it, but we all know.

She really tore Apple apart In the last week I heard from a lot of people and this is a good question that I think as a, not a lawyer, I did not ask that a lot of people out there asked which is, where were the lawyers in all of this? And I think the answer is that you know they gave advice, undoubtedly, and that's privileged, and so we don't know what it is, and then that led to them having meetings about what they wanted to do. I can't imagine that the lawyers didn't say here is a range of possibilities right, like, and that it is a range of possibilities right, and that it is a spectrum from what Phil Schiller is saying, which is I was there, she's mad at us, let's comply. And Luca Maestri is saying let's make this the least compliant possible so that we can. Essentially, it's a choice no one will ever make because it's non-competitive in every single way.

And that the lawyers are like okay, the more you go toward this side, the more you risk her bringing down the hammer, but the less money you get. So you know, in the end that's a policy decision, that's not a legal decision. The lawyers can warn them. But I thought it was interesting because a lot of people are like. Isn't it the job of their lawyers to warn them of the consequences? I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did.

0:34:50 - Leo Laporte
They may have also said and Alex, you pointed this out last week that the letter of the law only requires you to do this.

0:34:57 - Alex Lindsay
And that's what they did.

0:35:05 - Andy Ihnatko
The thing is is that, if you're not, unless she prescribes exactly what they do. I mean, she's one angry judge. This is going to go into appeal weird lying.

0:35:08 - Alex Lindsay
Lying under oath tends to make judges no, no, no, I was gonna say the the big mistake was lying under oath and the bigger mistake was to have emails like what are you doing like slack? Messages and slack like what are you thinking? Like it's interesting. People like in their they've already, they've already community.

0:35:22 - Leo Laporte
We're a little mad at you, apple, for suggesting that. The real, that the real.

0:35:26 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, that at me mistake here is to write things down not.

0:35:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the real mistake was to not do the right thing.

0:35:33 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think, I don't think that apple should have to do any of this stuff, because they're not a, they're not a monopoly. Without being a monopoly regardless of whether we think it's good or bad without a monopoly they're not even monopoly, they're not even a majority, they're not even a majority they're of a phone, of the phone market. They are minority in the phone market. I don't believe that they're. I don't believe the iPhone is something different, and so I don't. We can talk about whether it's right or wrong, but I don't think the courts should be allowed to tell Apple what to do, because they're not a monopoly, and I don't think that you know, and so that's the fundamentally, and I think that they come from the same place. They come from the same place that I come from, and so, of course, if someone told me something that I fundamentally disagreed with, I would, I would, I would pay my fines with pennies. You know, like you know, and that's, and that's what they're doing. I get it.

0:36:20 - Jason Snell
But the Supreme Court disagrees with you. Right Like this went all the way up.

0:36:23 - Andy Ihnatko
The Supreme Court and every court internationally in which this topic has been discussed has lost not just by a little, but definitively.

0:36:34 - Jason Snell
Leaving it to the US? Yeah, leaving it to the US in this case. They appealed it. It went all the way up and they said no, it's fine, other than these little details, that that that she adjusted, I think, yeah, it is I. One of the things that I've been thinking about about this is I get the argument that you know they were following the letter of the ruling in the in the least, you know the least they could do paying, paying in pennies, essentially. That is true. However, there's another way to view it, which is the judge didn't make, didn't dictate to Apple what its terms would be right. This is actually one of those complaints that comes up.

A lot about the DMA, about the European Commission making rulings, is that there's a lot of pushback that says these bureaucrats shouldn't be designing policy for companies. The policy should be designed by the companies, not by the bureaucrats, and the judge in this case left it to Apple to create a policy that fostered competition in payments, and they failed at. Failed at that right. But what she didn't do is say I'm going to just set it at 10 and that's the new setting. She said why don't you go off and come up with a system that will please me in the sense that it will be competitive, and that's why they're in contempt is that they didn't do that, but what?

But I appreciate the fact that what she didn't do is say I will make a policy for, for Apple. She said you make the policy. You are, you are Apple, this is going to be your policy. Just make it in a way that fulfills these needs. And that's what Phil Schiller was probably saying is look, I know what you're trying to do here. She's not going to like it because what she wants is competition and a malicious 27% is not going to please her. And he was right about that and they didn't listen, and I think that's the problem. But I would not. I don't think it would have been better if she had said okay, apple, I'm setting your percentages. Here they are, because it really isn't her business to do that part of it.

0:38:38 - Alex Lindsay
And I have to admit that, as a user, I just fundamentally hate being taken out of the out of the app store. So I had three apps this weekend that I put in and they immediately wanted me to go out of the app store. And I just went. I had already downloaded them and so I gave them one star and I just said third party.

This is a third party payment system, because when I reinstall now I have to figure this all out again and I value my time and I value the low friction that I had before and I'm and I am absolutely going to be malicious about this forever. Like, basically, if someone gives, if someone takes me out of the app store, they're going to get one star, one star, one star, one star, one star, one star, because that's the only way we can vote. We don't have access to the courts, we don't have access, so the only way that we can say, as a user, that we're upset about this is to give them one star. You know, and so that that's that's my vote. You know it's going to be one star that I don't want to do this. I think it's the worst thing you could do to your app and I'm going to give you one star for it well, I mean.

0:39:39 - Andy Ihnatko
My reaction to that is how dare amazon let you buy a book in two steps instead of eight steps, especially when six of those steps were completely artificially imposed by apple, and create a situation where there was not 30 percent of extra profit in the sale of this comic book that that amazon could dip into again? We've been through this before I, I, I, not only just we're not going to go this again.

But I'm going to say what I want to say, and that is that I absolutely don't understand your position here. I don't understand where. Yes, you would much rather give a one-star review, which, to me, every time I see a one-star review, I'm basically, if I could write a part of the UI that says hide everything. That's a one-star review, because they're absolutely meaningless for the purpose of review, they mean nothing and they just do nothing but contaminate the value of that system. But let's put that aside for now. It's like the problem is that, yes, so you're saying that one-star is you don't have the ability to so-and-so. This is your way to be heard. Well, that's the role of the courts to simply to say that, look, if there is a there are only a few multi-trillion dollar companies out there, and therefore companies that are worth much less than a trillion dollars, don't have the ability to fight against something that might be considered fundamentally wrong.

That's where the courts step in and say, wow, we're going to hear everything, we're going to take years on this and we're going to fund, we're going to at the end of this process again, no matter what court we're in, no matter what country this court is in, we are deciding that, yeah, apple has not justified this one part of its app store policy and ordering Apple to change that. I don't understand why this is not seen as a positive thing for users. Again, I'm not going to keep going on, but I just don't get your opinion.

0:41:33 - Alex Lindsay
I don't want to give them my contact information. I don't want to have to log in again. I don't want to have to figure this out. I had it working perfectly before I buy so few books that I'm completely insensitive.

0:41:43 - Leo Laporte
We've heard your argument. We've heard both arguments. I understand we can stop now.

0:41:47 - Alex Lindsay
I know, but it's just, it is. Anyway, I just feel like the user is being ignored in this environment.

0:41:54 - Leo Laporte
You're being ignored, not all users but you're being ignored. I'll do whatever I can to get people to say I understand. Yeah, don't do the one-star thing. That's stupid. Please do it, please do, glenn. Glenn fleishman in fact has the complete opposite point of view. He's pissed and he wrote a piece in uh on six colors saying you know, I've, I've, I've lost my religion, uh, and he's particularly pissed because, you know, you may say well, apple's protecting users, but what his point is and I think it's well taken is Apple's dumping on its developers. Do you want to talk about what he wrote, jason, since it's on sixcolors.com?

0:42:36 - Jason Snell
Well, I mean, glenn's been writing about Apple for a very long time and you know this is very much like it's a, it's a good piece. He's saying, look, you got no company hurt, no company is, is is perfect. And you always think about things and there are issues. I mean he mentions lots of issues over the years, including, I know, andy's favorite, which is the gold Apple watch, no-transcript, four or 5%, and they said, good, even better, because that means that it's not 31%, yeah, and so you know this.

This is the thing it's like. He said it was broken trust. He said that it was. You know, they're lying under oath, they're not following the orders, and that it shows something about their priorities, right, like the idea that their cultural priorities right now definitely involve doing, you know, squeezing as much out of financial transactions on the store as possible, easing as much out of financial transactions on the store as possible. And I made, I thought, I've been thinking about this for the last week and I had the same thought, which is, you know, 30% is what we're talking about, but, like, the non-competitiveness of it is actually the bigger issue here.

It's 30% because Steve Jobs said it would be 30%, it could be 70%, it could be 90%, they could do whatever they want if they have complete control. And so if you think about developers and you think about users and you think about degraded user experience and you think about developers being treated badly, even though their apps helped build the iPhone up, which is incredibly, it's like an $80 billion profit a year business for Apple. Profit a year business for Apple. They're doing okay With with the iPhone and it helps being built by the software and their view is that they deserve part of the. You know the gains from the software developers, and a lot of the software developers would argue that the gains are that they have a thriving platform full of great apps that sells iPhones.

But anyway, I mean, I think that this is, glenn, doing a thing that a lot of us have come to grips with over the years. I certainly did when I started in journalism and started covering Apple. Nothing gets you, nothing takes the blinders off, like being right down close to the metal and the idea that, like I've always said, for for probably since the 90s at some point, um love its products, not my job, to love the company it's my job to love the products?

0:45:31 - Andy Ihnatko
for what?

0:45:31 - Leo Laporte
they do for me. That's it. This is a picture of glenn. Uh, actually he's given up the mac. Now he's typing all his articles. I'm sorry that somebody's only uh, he points out that back in 19. Uh, what was it? 1998? He told the new york times this is my last mac I'll ever buy yeah, then steve came back then steve came back and it all changed. Uh, but we've all gone up and down through this.

0:45:54 - Jason Snell
It's thoughtful I mean, the thing I like about a piece like this is that it's not one of these kind of rage, quick kind of things. It's more like why do I feel this way? Right, I think he was surprised at how much emotional investment he had in Apple. Right To be dismayed, right. I mean he's like oh no, I got less cynical and less jaded, and that's a good thing in general, but in this case, you feel it a little bit when you see their priorities laid bare, even if you could suspect, based on the behavior, that these were always their priorities.

0:46:23 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I think that there's always a transitional moment from Apple user childhood to Apple user adulthood where you realize that Apple is not a magical company. They are not two hippies in a garage, have not been so for decades now. This is why I keep putting that phrase out. They are a $3 trillion company, usually the most valuable company in the entire world. They don't love you as a company, they don't care about you, and if you thought that they did, that's not on them, that's on you.

Every time, it's possible for them to do things that are both incredibly selfish and also incredibly good for the user at the same time, and it doesn't negate either of those things. But if they are doing, they also do something that is very, very selfish and also very, very much against the user. If this is something that does not fit into what they perceive as their business plan, that's not and that's not a slam against Apple. That's an acknowledgement that this is capitalism. This is interfacing with a large company and that's not a slam against Apple. That's an acknowledgement that this is capitalism. This is interfacing with a large company.

And, once again, if you thought that, oh, the reason why they make the best hardware, they don't contaminate the. They don't want to make cheap products is because they take pride. They're designers, they go with a puck is going to be it's like again. That was on you. I'll close by saying that one of the most profound things that I was ever told in my religious education was near the end of my religious education, which is when the priest was saying well, you're now in your late teens, it's now time to let go of the faith of a child and start to develop the faith of an adult. And like that means that you're not simply praying to the icons.

0:48:08 - Leo Laporte
You understand the symbolism, you understand the principles and you have to live by these principles it's also more than it's more than Apple just trying to do the letter of the law, and this is why the judge really got upset. It was it was the definition of contempt. Not only did an executive lie about when they started, when they decided on 27, but the judge said they manufactured that's the word. She used an independent economic study to legitimize the decision. I mean, they really they acted skeevy, let's face it this is really the the 80.

0:48:40 - Andy Ihnatko
The 80 something page decision is worth downloading and reading because she absolutely tears Apple apart bit by bit, by bit by bit.

0:48:48 - Leo Laporte
It's the very definition of contempt. I mean, that's clear, yeah, I mean yeah, all right, we're going to take a break. Come back Now. We're done with the court. Well, no, we're not Darn it, we're. Almost we could have been done with the court thing, except then eddie q gets up on uh on the stand during the google trial, the judge in the google case. Google's already been declared a search monopoly. The judge is having hearings now to determine the remedy, which judge meta will do, I believe, on the 25th. Eddie q gets up on the stand and says well, your honor and I don't. I know he doesn't talk about this, but it feels like he should. It turns out that we're getting, we're seeing fewer and fewer google searches on the iphone all the time, to which the stock market responded with a seven percent drop in google's 120 billion?

0:49:38 - Andy Ihnatko
yep, that was not. That was bad.

0:49:40 - Leo Laporte
It was like ah yeah, um, google said no, no, no, no. We, we are seeing more searches every year, including from apple devices, so I don't know who's telling the truth on this one, eddie, might?

0:49:52 - Andy Ihnatko
this might be a case of eddie well, the, the, the number, the numbers are on google side. They're actually google. Google use of google search has been up, I think last. They have numbers for 2023, 2004. And he might've been grinding his own ax here. Well, no, we're not grinding his own ax. He was there for a real purpose, which is to keep that $20 billion a year coming, and the way to do that was to tell the judge that hey, I mean Google. There's plenty of competition in search.

0:50:17 - Leo Laporte
We're seeing fewer and fewer usage of Google search.

0:50:20 - Andy Ihnatko
AI is killing where we might have to actually switch away from google search that was the thing that really scared the market, I believe, is the.

0:50:26 - Leo Laporte
He said you know we could. We might be thinking about doing an ai thing instead. Uh, I should point out that 20 billion is a big number because, according to at least one analyst, apple doesn't say how much they make on the app store. But, according to at least one analyst, apple's commissions on the app store last year were 10 billion.

0:50:46 - Alex Lindsay
So of the services revenue, google's payoff is twice as much as the app store and when you think about it, and google thinks that that's a great deal, yeah, so you think about how much google's making google wants to keep.

0:50:58 - Leo Laporte
Google wants to keep doing it. The judge is among, among other remedies. The government has asked the judge to end those payments which would kill Firefox. They've already said that it would hurt Apple.

0:51:12 - Andy Ihnatko
And on top of that, they particularly want to at least retain the ability to continue to reach those deals with Samsung and Apple and other makers they're already shifting towards let's make Gemini the default AI that's on the device they're really really driving. Next week at Google IO, you're definitely going to hear a lot about AI-powered search. During their last earnings call they're trying to make sure the analysts understood that we see that a lot of our users are drifting away towards AI-powered search from OpenAI and other AI makers and we're trying to make sure that we keep those users where they are even though we don't know how to monetize it yet.

0:51:54 - Alex Lindsay
Openai is so good at it Like I almost never Google search anymore. Like if I'm looking for something very specific on the web for a webpage, I will go look for it, but almost all of my informational searches now are just in chat GPT Like it's so much faster.

0:52:09 - Leo Laporte
This is to the detriment, though, of every single website on the internet. By the way, I do the same thing. I use perplexity, but it's the same thing because I'm using, you know, perplexity mushes together all the different AIs but as a result, I often don't go to the source.

0:52:27 - Alex Lindsay
But a lot of times what ChatGPT has gotten really good at is it gives me the answers and it's giving me the links to everything.

0:52:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but do you?

0:52:31 - Alex Lindsay
click those links. Yeah, I do, Okay. Yeah, because I go, because I'm looking for something, I'm trying to figure something out and show me. You know, like most of the time I'm not asking it just for raw information, I'm asking it for I'm looking for this or I'm doing this and it, so it shows me that and then it gives me here's a bunch of places that you can go look at it in, you know to, to research it more or to which has made it a lot more, I don't know. Chat, GPT, it feels like if you want to check my work here, it is Right, and but it's also the links to, you know, go find out more information about that yeah, this is the during the this week in tech.

0:53:03 - Leo Laporte
On sunday we were discussing womb bats versus marmots and I was just curious what the difference was. So I went to perplexity and I did a search, got all the information I'd want. Now, yeah, they have the sources, their footnotes and there's links to the sources, but I didn't need to because I got everything I want for that search, you know like yeah I mean you're right if you're searching for running shoes. You might end up going to a running shoe store, but I feel bad that.

0:53:28 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, let's see whatever this is well, you know, like, like a recent search was mine was like tell me the difference between a task cam and a yamaha pin out on a db25 and it just goes here.

0:53:38 - Leo Laporte
This, this is yeah, you never have to go to a site to see that, right.

0:53:41 - Alex Lindsay
But then it goes. But then it goes. Here are the links to the manuals that show you what those things are you know like. And so then I'm, because I'm not going to trust, I'm not going to start wiring, building cables based on chat, gpt, so now I, so now it's going to take me somewhere to go find those.

0:53:53 - Leo Laporte
I think that you will see, and I think it's. We don't know, but I think it's probably the case that a lot of links are going away.

0:53:59 - Jason Snell
Will you run?

a site Six Colors I think, yeah, and then the reason Glenn is writing for me now is because Macworld saw this coming, that he was writing a help column and that a lot of that.

And this is the truth for a lot of the web and that's what I was going to say is we've spent a decade plus of SEO, search engine optimization on the web, on text websites optimizing for let's call it a level one question.

Right, it's a simple answer to a simple question. Because back in the day you'd ask it in Google and when is the Superbowl on? And every site has a when is the Superbowl on page, because they want to get to the top of Google, it's free traffic and they get some ad revenue from all the ads on that page, and so it's it's, it's twisted the internet because of all of that value in the level one search result. I and I don't want to discount it because there are a lot of companies who built their whole brand and their whole business model on that I don't believe things below level one are going are in as much peril, let's say, as the level one. Stuff is the surface stuff for AI, the really simple stuff, where the AI answer just gives it to you, because all you're really saying is one's kickoff.

0:55:13 - Leo Laporte
And that's what a help column does. Right, and that's the problem.

0:55:17 - Jason Snell
Right, if you're just trying to get a simple answer, what do I type here? Right, if you're just trying to get a simple answer, what do I type here? But there is room, I believe, for what Alex says, which is all of the supplemental material where I want to understand it. I want to know why. I want to know more. I don't know if the AI is telling me all the detail that I need stuff obsolete at least not right away but I think that really easy stuff at the top level, that a lot of companies spend a lot of money putting a lot of garbage on the internet honestly in order to have it be, uh, optimized for search.

That stuff is gone and it is, and it's a huge.

0:55:53 - Leo Laporte
Uh blast a hole in the side of the wall this really is, as though is the terminus of that ski slope. I mean, for if I wanted for a long time I'm you know, I can never remember how to do a dfu on the iphone so I would do a google search, get the mac 911 column from mac world and I would read that, then youtube. Somebody on youtube cleverly said I owned a little seo and then youtube started having 10 second videos that you walk through with the dfu. Now I just do it a perplexity search. I don't even see the YouTube, let alone the Mac 911. I'd get all the answers in the AI search and I think that in the long run for a lot of content for a simple answer for that.

0:56:30 - Jason Snell
That like top level, uh, low-hanging fruit answer. I think absolutely and, like I said, I think that was a uh, it's a real hit to the web, but also I think that's a distortion that content existed in. That business model existed was already because of how google worked and and so, as a result, am I. I am very sympathetic to businesses that are struggling with this. At the same time, I'm not sure I'm super sympathetic because I don't think a lot of that content was any good. It was super simple, just designed to suck in money well, from google, and that's the stuff that AI is can replace them.

0:57:03 - Leo Laporte
And you've put your money where your mouth is. Because you hire, because as soon as Mac World canceled Mac 9-1-1, you hired Glenn.

0:57:09 - Jason Snell
Yeah cuz, I think he's doing the help stuff for you. We're serving a more specific audience and they care about this stuff and they want to learn about it, and Glenn doesn't just talk like we had a question. It was like how does the Apple watch know where I am, like when does it? Is it like a find my device or is it like finding a person on all of that.

And he got. He wrote like a thousand words and he said the answers at the end, if you want to go to the end, but the the, the money for me is in the TLDR part or is below the TLDR. It's where he says there, find my is super complicated. It's like are you a person, are you a device? And it turns out like your Apple Watch if it's with your phone is different than if it's not, and if it's cellular is different than if it's Wi-Fi and like it's a great piece. And our audience, I think, is full of people who do this for a living, either for their business, or they do it because they support people and and their friends and they and they want to know the answer. But that is a very different model, for I've never had the model with six colors, of hoping for traffic to drive by with a quick google search.

0:58:08 - Leo Laporte
It's just not my model three freaking hour podcast exactly it's the opposite of a drive-by.

0:58:14 - Jason Snell
It's a that would be a very slow electric scooter drive-by we figure.

0:58:17 - Leo Laporte
You want the information.

0:58:19 - Alex Lindsay
You got more, yeah yeah, yeah, and and when you look at like the, you know when you start trying to game the system too far, you end up building a. You know a place for just, you know for, uh, disruption, which is like, for instance, I, I cook a lot, so I have lots of recipes, and most recipes on the web are designed to deliver you ads. Like it is, I'll give you a little chunk of the recipe and then there's some three more ads. Is I'll give you a little chunk of the recipe and then there's some three more ads, and then I'll give you a little chunk of the recipe and there'll be four more ads, and it's really hard to actually figure out what you're supposed to cook.

0:58:49 - Leo Laporte
But what's happened is that paprika will just strip it out. There's a reason for that that's a little separate from this, which is that recipes can't be copyrighted. So if I write a recipe, I write the perfect Bolognese recipe. Every site on the internet can republish it without paying me or any credit to me, but the extra blog post at the top is entirely for search engines. No, no, but that's what they're taking advantage of. Is you know? This content is fungible, so we're going to make money around it.

0:59:17 - Alex Lindsay
No, I understand, but what happens is that you're trying to turn a business. You're trying to turn a business, you're trying to turn that into a business model, but the problem is is that it sets you up for a paprika which just says put the URL in I'm going to put.

I'm going to go grab the recipe and I'm going to stick it all in there. And then I didn't realize, like the vastness of Apple's recipe thing. So I thought, oh, they're giving me a recipe every once in a while and I hit a button and there's 70,000 recipes that are in there. You know, like it's not like that have all been formatted and everything else. I was like, oh my gosh, apple did not do a little bit of recipes, they did all the recipes. So it's, it's a uh, but that's but. But, because that was a very I mean, you got to figure it out, but that was a very inefficient. Uh, you know way to deliver stuff to users and they are always going to be looking for some other way when it's not efficient. So you always have to figure out how to deliver that efficiently, that's all.

1:00:08 - Jason Snell
I wanted to make a point about the going back to the numbers, because you know all of my charts and all of that when we talk about Apple and profits from services and stuff. I just wanted to throw out there $20 billion for search, $10 billion for App Store.

1:00:26 - Leo Laporte
Right, that's 30 total yeah.

1:00:28 - Jason Snell
Let's say I mean, I'm going to people can quibble this, but let's just say it's 100% profit because it's close, it's close to it's close. I'm sure they assigned some App Store overhead and things like that, but let's just say 100%.

1:00:42 - Leo Laporte
I'm sure they assigned some apps or overhead and things like that. I think that Google check is pretty much consequence-free.

1:00:44 - Jason Snell
I'll knock a few percentage points off, which will take us down to whatever 89 or whatever. It is 29.8. Billion, and then we round it back up to 30. Apple's total profit last year was about 90 billion. Yeah, so we are talking about a third of apple's profit in a fiscal year.

And if you want to know why lukemeister was gesturing wildly at tim cook saying don't do, don't listen to phil, don't listen to the money, guy right because he's the c he was the cfo you know and why one money guy he's the money guy Because he was the CFO he knows and why one of his guys lied on the stand. I think you could get the sense and I would say it's an unhealthy relationship with that. Essentially, pennies from heaven, that free money that comes with 100% profit margin because it's just coming out of the sky. I understand how you get used to it. I also would say that if it was and nobody's saying it's going to go away it would just be less. I'm sure Wall Street would be unhappy. I'm sure that they would have some tough compares in their financials for a year, but Apple would still be an incredibly profitable company. However, I can see why the money people would be freaking out because you are talking about being a third less profitable.

1:02:01 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and also, it is the money that you make. If there's 145% tariff, it becomes half or 60 or 70% of your revenue. If you had a year of a crazy tariff, right so, and Apple, the DNA of Apple is still damaged by the late 90s the right, you know, before the right, before Steve got there. And they, you know, they were months away from closing and all the people running the show right now were there. They're still the first generation after you know this, this very stressful event, and so they're always worried about survival and they're always worried about every revenue stream. And they're, they're definitely building up services because they're afraid that someday, the game with the iPhone you know, the iPhone is this crazy thing and it's built up this huge company, but the dance could end or be stalled or anything else, you know. And so and they're, you know, you see them constantly working on it they're moving, moving phones out of China, they're doing all these other things to make sure that that doesn't happen.

I think that the other thing to look at is what Apple will do.

You know, once they open this up, they have to find that revenue somewhere.

You know the revenue, whatever they're going to lose with third party payments and whatever is going to happen. And there's a lot of things they can do that aren't necessarily great for developers either, which is, for instance, expanding Arcade into productivity and all these other areas where they basically, you know, buy up a bunch of apps and put them into part of the membership, like so, and what will happen is, as soon as you have those as part of your Apple one subscription, how often are you going to go out and buy something else? Right, you know, and so it'll. They could, theoretically, you know, because they have all the data, they know exactly who's what things are selling well and what isn't, and they can start because they're going to. If they, if they start losing money, they're going to try to replace it with services somewhere, and the lowest hanging fruit is packaging more and more apps into the Apple one subscription. You know, and that's going to be the. I think that's most likely their reaction over the next three to five years.

1:03:56 - Andy Ihnatko
I just think. I just hope that overall, every year, when the my favorite questions that Six Colors asks in their usual 30-person survey is relationship with developers and that number of independent people 30, 40 people that get polled, that Jason knows the number get asked this question every year and the numbers are quantified and nobody ever thinks, wow, apple's really treating developers nicely. This year they seem to have isolated the roots of their dysfunction in their relationship with their developers and they're trying to address it. No, it's been this flat line of you are so lucky to be in a relationship with us. We are so lucky that we will continue to drag your sorry butt, giving you all these lovely services and lovely APIs and this store, this gorgeous store we really think that you should have.

Why have you ever thanked us? I think that there should be like an improvement, a real come to Jesus moment of you know what. There's a level of abuse that is maybe unnecessary. Maybe it might've been necessary 10 years ago, maybe less necessary now, and perhaps we should reevaluate how we treat our developers, because they are also our customers and we tell people that we treat our customers really well, I think that when they actually hit all of the developers, or many of the developers, it looks like about 70% are happy with what they get from the store.

1:05:17 - Alex Lindsay
30% are unhappy. If the Republicans got 70% or the Democrats got 70% of the vote, they wouldn't even listen to the other side. They would like I can't hear you over the cheers.

1:05:32 - Andy Ihnatko
That's faulty arguments. If there are 12 people who are living in the streets, that doesn't mean that that's insignificant. That means that they have a good reason to complain that they can't afford housing in this community. I just think it's complicated. I know I'm not saying it's not complicated, but I'm saying that I do believe that there are complaints that developers have consistently made that seem like they're solvable problems and Apple is like we don't see an upside to us for solving that problem and so, yeah, it's. Just imagine if there was a complicated system for unlocking a phone and a phone as like why is this three steps? It should be just I press my finger here and it unlocks. Why do I have to press my finger and then slide something across and Apple just decide, hey, we don't care. It's like anyway, it annoys me about it.

1:06:10 - Leo Laporte
Len Fleischman back at six colors and a, and if you read his tell me all your troubles piece, you'll see why you don't want to just do a AI search and get the answers.

1:06:22 - Jason Snell
Ahoy, hexachromes did he invent that? By the way he did, I didn't even know what he was talking about, but he means six colors, right, that's very glenn yeah, and in his and in his uh first, like I said, his first answer.

I love it. I actually put a link that says you know, because he wrote it. He said look, the answer is at the end. If all you want to read is the answer and I'll put a link to it, so just scroll down and put an anchor down there and there's a big subhead that says the answer. But like the entertainment I think in the education, is such a good writer.

1:06:48 - Leo Laporte
It's yeah, absolutely, and uh, to know that he does it on a typewriter just makes it even better. Uh, we're gonna take a break thank god for fedex.

They would never make, you would not make a six college deadline without it I remember listening uh to my friend will hurst, uh, who was at the time publisher of the san francisco examiner, exhorting um, his uh, kind of. Who was the guy who wrote the feeling loathing hunter s thompson, who was writing a column for the examiner at the time just pleading and begging hunter, please, we, please, we got to print the freaking paper. Finish your gosh, darn column. And you might imagine how hard it was to get a column out of Hunter S Thompson. I don't think Glenn has the same.

1:07:34 - Andy Ihnatko
That's item one of the terms of service for Hunter S Thompson, I think.

1:07:37 - Leo Laporte
You clicked through you should have read it before clicking through. Please, hunter, we've got to go to bed.

1:07:41 - Jason Snell
I edited several editor-in-chief columns over the years at Macworld and Macuser and I've seen every story. I also edited Andy's column for a while. Sorry, Andy, shots fired Like I've seen it all, so you know Hunter S Thompson.

1:07:56 - Leo Laporte
I've been on the other end of that phone call a few times myself. Thank, on the other end of that phone call a few times myself. Uh, thank you, uh, for listening to the show. We're so glad you do. Thanks especially to our club twit members who make this show possible. You know who you are if you're not yet a member of Club Twit. twit.tv/clubtwit seven dollars a month. That price probably will go up because you know tariffs. So, uh, if you join today, you'll be, uh, you'll be grandfathered in at the uh at low price of $7 a month. $84 a year. Ad-free versions of all the shows, access to the club Twit Discord, special events including, by the way, Mikah's Crafting Corner, which is tomorrow at 6 pm. Friday we're going to do Stacy's Book Club. That great Ursula K Le Guin novella, the Word for World is Forest, and WWDC is going to be in the club. Only. This is our new policy.

Next Tuesday, macbreak Weekly might be a little bit delayed because we're going to be streaming the Google IO keynote and Google says it's going to be two hours. Starts at 10 am. So MacBreak Weekly will start probably at noon next next week. And if you get here and you're not a club member and you'll say what what's going on. But if you're a club member, go right into the discord, because you will watch us uh, talking about Google's announcements. Lots of ai announcements build is the day before next Monday. All of these keynotes now are club only, and that's not because we want to extort the money out of you but, frankly, because Apple has now tried very hard to get us off YouTube and Twitch when we restream their keynotes and we just can't afford to be banned from either of those platforms. So instead of streaming as we have in the past and all those streaming platforms as we do today on this show and all those streaming platforms, the keynotes from now on will be in the Discord. Join the club. You can watch twittv slash club twit. You also don't have to watch live because there's a Twit+ feed with all the Twit+ club content that you can listen to at any time.

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All righty, let's see Back to the shows. No more court stuff. Promise we're done. Uh, what else is going on? There's actually a lot of stories we're gonna have to, might have to hustle through these Netflix. Uh, because apple is, you know, opening up the app store. Somebody said Netflix, are you going to take advantage of that? No plans to bring back app store subscriptions? Uh, they're also adding ai to their interface. What could possibly go wrong? Um, it's Netflix. Remember Netflix had a big? Uh, I can't remember what the prize was. It was a big prize for somebody that would come up with a better recommendation engine for Netflix. And nobody won because it's apparently so hard to do my cousin dave.

That's the best recommendation dave says what you know. That's true. I end up watching a lot of stuff henry, really yeah, dude, I promise you okay.

Oh my god, this is awesome uh, Netflix okay, so this is a confusing headline Netflix getting user interface. There has no plans to bring back app store subscriptions. But I think what this? That's miswritten for this Apple Insider? I think what they're saying is they're not going to follow suit with companies like Spotify and Amazon. Netflix says they are. We're monitoring the situation very closely, but we don't have anything more to share at this time. We're just continue to abide by the app store policies until we hear more about how to best implement any changes going forward. So I think that was unclear when I read the headline.

1:15:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Everybody has to know that Apple's going to appeal. Apple did file their, their, their and they, and they have they. They're asking for a response by the end of may, so maybe we won't see someone won't also want to jump until june.

1:15:48 - Alex Lindsay
Netflix is already doing third party app. Third part, I mean like you have to subscribe out to them.

1:15:51 - Leo Laporte
There's no, there's no, oh I see, that's why the headline we're not going to add a button in the app to go by.

1:15:57 - Alex Lindsay
I get it okay, I mean, they're already telling you you have to go subscribe somewhere else.

1:16:01 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, yeah I mean Netflix just gave them a non-answer saying no plans. That headline is cash and checks, or what Writing checks that can't cash.

1:16:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's it, I fell for it. I fell for the link bait.

1:16:14 - Jason Snell
They basically have no comment and yeah, they could.

1:16:29 - Alex Lindsay
I think what they already have third party that there's not really any major upside for them, right, the downside is is that you can be guaranteed that you're not going to make friends with apple. If you do amazon's big enough and other people are big enough, they don't care. But for a lot of people that want to have relationships with apple, as soon as you do a third party, you're basically you know, recommendations, uh, being on the keynote, all those things go away. So so you know, like that's all going to just evaporate, you know, and so so and that's somehow I managed to get in this conversation again.

1:16:56 - Leo Laporte
I didn't want to. No, no, no.

1:16:57 - Alex Lindsay
All I'm saying is that Netflix, just Netflix has no upside and you have to do it because they make it easier for the users and they're big enough that it doesn't matter what Apple's doing.

1:17:07 - Leo Laporte
Oh, poke the bear, jason. Yeah, I mean.

1:17:11 - Jason Snell
I would say that Alex describes a very interesting case that a lot of attorneys would be interested in about retaliation against legal processes. That's a good point If we're saying that. Apple is.

1:17:21 - Andy Ihnatko
There are a lot of people in operation in 2025 that we say we're going to do whatever they want us to do. We don't want to upset them for any reason, even though, because they are stubborn and impertinent and dangerous and vindictive.

1:17:38 - Leo Laporte
If you were an Apple keynote and you streamed Steve Jobs introducing the iPad, for instance, and they never invited you to another event. Yeah, that would be illegal, wouldn't it? No?

1:17:48 - Jason Snell
No, you have no right to be there. Okay, never mind.

1:17:51 - Leo Laporte
I try. 27 years ago, steve Jobs took the stage at the Flint Center to unveil the iMac. It's true, it's original. This is when he came back right.

1:18:03 - Jason Snell
This is when, after Glenn Fleischman said, I'll never buy another Mac, yeah, steve came back they did a crash program and the next year they came out with the G3 iMac, which they you know. Again, they assembled sort of out of some existing projects at Apple and Johnny Ive did a new design for it and all of that and like it is I. So I wrote this piece because it was an anniversary and Mac world really loves it when I read about anniversary. So I did it. But, like the point is, people don't realize how revolutionary the iMac was in so many ways and how it represented such a break from the past.

I feel like this is one of those things that's in Apple's DNA that we don't appreciate enough. People complain about Apple making things, you know, breaking compatibility with old stuff, but like this was a huge moment where they basically had this whole checklist of things that were in computers and keep in mind this was the era of the beige PC with a big cable going to a big beige CRT and they made yes, it was big, but they made an all-in-one and they said, like, doesn't have a floppy drive, Everything had a floppy drive it's gone.

Doesn't have serial or parallel, doesn't have ADB or SCSI, which were all the ports that you had on old Macs Just gone, just gone. I mean, people were complaining when you went to USB-C in the 2010s on the laptops and like that was big, but it was just a port change with a very simple adapter. But they were like no, they're all gone, everything is gone, except for a brand new specification, usb, which is, of course, still with us even to this day. So like it was a huge moment and I think people don't give it enough credit and I think that you know, if you look at it, the all-in-one computer for the rest of us, like Steve Jobs wasn't wrong about that. It just, I think, went in a place that maybe he didn't anticipate, which is the laptop, which is a take it anywhere, all-in-one for the rest of us.

But you know, the iMac still has a place. But the iMac was a vitally important part of Apple's comeback and it really did have a huge impact on computers and it made USB a safe place to be. It made George Foreman grills have a translucent blue model. It just had a huge amount of impact and to this day, like the iMac colors today are, they exist because of those colorful iMacs of the 90s they changed how we think about computers.

1:20:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, uh, 20 fast forward. 27 years later, mark german says apple is kind of stagnating, that their product launch this year, launches in 2026 will be kind of dull. But don't worry because apple, says german and his latest power on newsletter for bloomberg, is planning a monumental year for new devices in 2027 2027 well, the thing is, is that I mean these are all incrementally moving forward too?

1:20:52 - Alex Lindsay
I mean the thing is, is that I, I mean I have to? I have to admit, I feel like the m4 mac I, as someone who is testing the m4 mac mini for a variety of reasons it's pretty wow, like it is it is the most amazing and pretty sweet.

Wow, like it is the most amazing and it's not the most powerful, but it is the most amazing little, most amazing desktop computer ever created. Like it is. I mean, what I can do with that? I keep on like doing pretty hard stuff, like I'd like to stream 120 frames per second, you know, out of the HDMI and it's like, yeah, I think I'm not sure if I'm still on yet you know it's like eight percent, eight percent cpu to just punch out a bunch of video out of it and and it's. And then you know my son is like working in resolve doing a two and a half minute, two and a half hour edit on it and it is just just so interestingly, this mini isn't um imac.

1:21:37 - Leo Laporte
You know it's not an all-in-one. You have to still have a monitor keyboard.

1:21:40 - Alex Lindsay
I think the minis killed are killing the imac because that's the question yeah and they're so inexpensive and the fundamentally like I, uh, I have a. I have a monitor that's 4k. I don't have a 5k or 6k monitor. I don't really, you know, my I don't think my vision's good enough for that um and uh. And almost all my monitors that I work at they're at a slight distance and so so they're all 1080p. They all cost about a hundred dollars, you know, and, and I don't want to pay for an iMac, I don't want to mount the iMac.

I got a bunch of little Mac minis here that are all attached to different things and as glue, the Mac minis solve so many more problems and when they break, they're so much less expensive. Uh, and the monitors can be cheap. The monitors can be mounted any way I want. I can put them in lots of different places. It's just, it's a much better uh, in my opinion. I mean again, the iMac, I think had its moment. When we buy something for our uh, when we buy something for my parents-in-law, when we update their iMac every couple of years, Um and uh, and we just buy them an iMac because I don't want, you know like that's easy for them to turn on. You know they still need a computer, An iPad's, not enough. They're doing enough with it, but I don't want them to have to figure out how to play things.

1:22:44 - Leo Laporte
I think of it as the dentist's office computer.

1:22:46 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I spent some time a few years ago talking to an iMac product manager and it's very clear, first off, that again it's Apple scale. The iMac makes a lot of money for Apple to this day, but it is a niche computer in a lot of ways that it wasn't in, certainly in 1997. But like laptops are again three quarters of the max out there and Alex, you know properly, extols the virtues of the mini and I would even say the studio qualifies as that. But the iMac, you know, it's a shared computer in a, whether it's in a home or it's in a school, or it's at a library, or it's at a desk in a hotel, and I know these are all like weird cases, but like nobody knows where these things are being used better than Apple, and Apple knows that they're being used in those places. And so I think that's one of the reasons the colors really work is because they are kind of environmental objects. Right, you put your laptop wherever and then put it in a bag and take it someplace, but the iMac sort of lives where it lives and so you're like, oh well, in this hotel lobby we'll get the green one or whatever, and then it sits there or at this reception desk in an office, and so it's got very specific purposes.

But yeah, but the truth is it is a. When it came, it was like the computer for the rest of us, and now it is a very niche within a niche almost, because it's a desktop computer and and it's an all in one, and so it's. It's got limited appeal, but you know, that's still a pretty good business for Apple even so. But yeah, I mean, I don't. I had an iMac for quite a while. There's one behind me, but I, you know, I don't now.

1:24:23 - Alex Lindsay
I've got a couple little behind me but and and the but, I, I, I, uh, like I was talking to a school about their multimedia program and they have all these iMacs from 2017, you know, cause it's expensive to upgrade them all and I was like you should just get Mac minis, just get a bunch of Mac minis and put a bunch of monitors out there. It's going to be a lot. You'll be able to upgrade them more often and they're going to be. These little M4s again are just massive.

1:24:47 - Leo Laporte
What do you think of Mark Gurman's contention that Apple is kind of coasting? He says the lack of groundbreaking change has taken a toll. Sales of the iPhone have tapered and are lower than they were two years ago. The Apple Watch suffered a 14 percent revenue drop last year. According to an analyst estimate, overall revenue is only slowly picking up again after a stagnant stretch is all of that.

1:25:12 - Alex Lindsay
I, I, just I. Just all I can say as a user is I really wish apple would actually go slower and make everything work, you know, like. So my biggest complaint about apple is not all the behaviors we talked about earlier. My biggest complaint about apple is they keep on adding features and not actually getting them to all work perfectly together, and that was something that I always depended on Apple for, and something that I depend on Apple less and less for is they keep on adding all these things. Ai is one example, but there's many, many solutions that are just quirky and weird and they just need time to settle in. I would love for apple to release, just just keep updating the products that they have for the next two years, until 2027 or whatever, and just make them all like, just just work on the glue that goes between them and make them all work better. That way, um, I'd be a happy camper.

1:25:56 - Leo Laporte
2027 is a probably um important year because it will be the 20th anniversary of the iPhone. So Apple may indeed, you know, want to take advantage of that. That's the rumor. It's funny Different people say different timeframes for the folding phone. I've heard both 2026 and Gurman's Holden's study at 2027.

1:26:17 - Andy Ihnatko
I think those of us outside Apple are more fascinated with these big anniversaries than people inside Apple are. I think those of us outside Apple are more fascinated with these big anniversaries than people inside Apple are. I mean, if it just so happens that they have a major release that was planned for about then, then sure, and when they write the marketing material, they'll mention it.

But it's not as though. Remember that Apple did once do a Mac release specifically for the anniversary of the launch of the original Mac. It didn't go that great. It wasn't a computer that anybody really wanted.

1:26:46 - Jason Snell
It was for the launch of the company and not the original Mac, and they missed the date by a year. But yeah, I mean it was a disaster on another whole scale. Leo, to answer your question, I think this is narrative making by Mark Gurman, who is very good at reporting, but Bloomberg seems to really want him to tell little stories about Apple and build a narrative around it, and I think that this is a more of a weekly sourced narrative, like his iPhone thing.

It's like iPhone sales are flat. It's true, they are flat. They're not down, really not, not, I think, appreciably. They're basically flat. And and what he seems to be saying ultimately is I'm bored, do something new. And like I get it. I get it, but again $90 billion in profits every year. But, yeah, I'm bored, do something new. I would say that what? And he has to. He has to like poo, poo the things that, like Vision Pro, he's like well, granted, vision Pro is a new and interesting product, but it hasn't exactly flown off the shelves. It's like, well, it was never gonna fly off the shelves at that price, it was never gonna do that.

I do think it's true that Apple put a lot of effort into Vision Pro and into the car and got nothing from it, and that what we're seeing now is the echo of that, where they did some stuff that didn't even reach the waterline, and they've got one thing that reached the waterline but didn't make any ripples, and it that makes it a lot harder for, uh, them to also do all these other things also.

I think, though I think some of this is natural. I think the folding screen thing is a place apple wants to go and has just not been satisfied with it, because all of the other folding phones that are out there are kind of like yeah, they're okay, they're interesting from a tech perspective, but I could see somebody at Apple being like not with this, you know fold, not with this ridge in the middle of the display. We're not going to do it. So I think he's not, I think he's making something out of not nothing, but out of just a little bit. I don't think that this is a case where I think, think it's literally you're looking at the ebb and flow and the troughs and the and then and then the waves and trying to build a narrative around it to say Apple is low right now.

1:28:57 - Leo Laporte
And in two years they're going to be high again, when the fact is, I thinku1122, says that Apple is getting a better display for the iPhone Fold than the one that Samsung is putting in the Galaxy Fold. Samsung will sell the display to Apple, but it's going to be a newer version.

1:29:16 - Alex Lindsay
I have to admit I buy a lot of Apple products. I have negative interest in a folding phone. I don't know anybody who negative interest in a folding phone Like it's like. I just know, like I don't know anybody who's owned, who's bought a second folding phone and and for me the just the whole workflow of.

1:29:28 - Leo Laporte
it doesn't make any sense. I do too. Yeah, I just, I just bought three. So you do know, somebody We'll see.

1:29:38 - Alex Lindsay
No, I think it's for the who have bought two in a row Like that you have.

1:29:46 - Andy Ihnatko
The thing is there are people who are fans of folding phones. There are people who are not fans of folding phones because they are clunky and early tech and because of that ditch. This report from the supply chain says that not only have they gotten rid of the ditch by working directly with Samsung, but they've also made this potentially the thinnest, uh, foldable foam that you've ever seen. But the great thing that I think that would attract attract apple to this is that they love good margins.

1:30:11 - Leo Laporte
They love good margins well, and they have a problem. I don't want to say the tariffs are killing, killing the. You know. They don't want to raise the prices because of tariffs, because that will annoy you know who. Yeah, balt Wall.

1:30:22 - Andy Ihnatko
Street Journal had a good article on that, where they're basically saying that Apple is, according to a source inside Apple this Wall Street Journal exclusive. They're saying that they know that there is a very real reality in which they will have to raise prices, but they do not want to call them a tariff raise. So they're preparing a narrative that we've got a new phone and these new great expensive features and these new great expensive styling right and basically put it on wow, we were bringing so much new technology here that well, of course, we had to raise it by what happens to be what? What percentage are we paying in tariffs that by that much?

1:31:00 - Leo Laporte
yeah, uh, and then he kerman's talking about glasses and you know a bunch. Yeah, it's like it's like I understand.

1:31:07 - Andy Ihnatko
I agree 100 with jason and, and the other thing that was missing from that was okay, like, such, such as what? Like? What is it that they are not building that they should be building? I think that the one answer that comes to mind is they missed the boat on wearables like on.

1:31:24 - Jason Snell
Meta-ray bands.

1:31:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Meta-ray bands, something as simple as that. But other than that, they put a lot of time and effort and ingenuity and money into the car that didn't work out. They put a lot of money, time and ingenuity into the fancy elf goggles that are great for what they are, but not really a mass market success.

1:31:44 - Leo Laporte
Well, you know what, and so that is going to do. Meta has a, a nuclear option. If apple does do glasses, apple will never. There's a feature apple will never build into their glasses, a feature I would love. But but privacy advocates would scream about which is face recognition? And, according to the information, meta is, and they and they don't care right, they don't mind, they know they can get away with it. Uh, they're going to put face recognition in the next generation ray bands apple will do it too, I mean, I think, will they if they, if they believe that it's useful, they'll absolutely do it.

1:32:20 - Jason Snell
They will absolutely do it. I think google, google was had that capability and didn't. What are we? I mean, have we not learned in the last few months that Apple will do anything? That it feels that is necessary to survive, including incorporating third-party LLMs in their operating system if they need to, and maybe lying in front of a judge.

1:32:39 - Alex Lindsay
I think that what's interesting is that, if Apple could do it, where they look at your photo library the people you've already identified they're telling you who they are like who's in front of you. That is related to that giving you information, but it all stays inside of the Apple, your personal Apple ecosystem, or meta. It will share it with meta.

1:32:57 - Jason Snell
It will search all search engines and all databases everywhere and find everything about that person. And although even there, if that became an existential crisis for Apple for that product to be accepted, I think they would do it. I think they would dress it up with some privacy restrictions and things and say it's only going to search the public web and only when you authorize it and whatever. But I agree with Alex that the way it would start would be it's identifying people in your photo library who you've already met and you've already tagged. But I think they will do whatever is necessary to make it a good product and I don't think that there are sacred cows in that way. I think Apple will implement features it thinks it needs to implement and try to do it in a way that is safe and private. But I don't think there's a lot. I get the sense that they won't be willing to try if it's going to make the or break a product.

1:33:51 - Leo Laporte
And the information's contention is that privacy worries are fading across Silicon Valley with the new administration, with less aggressive regulators in Washington. They write meta platforms. Google and other Silicon Valley companies feel emboldened to reconsider user privacy strategies.

1:34:02 - Jason Snell
I think it already was fading. I think the reaction remember, if you compare the reaction to google glass, yeah, modern, so negative, the modern snapchat and meta uh glasses with cameras like I, I just, I feel like everybody just kind of there was a moment and that the moment passed and then people, people are like, cause, the fact is I was thinking about this the other day Um, the fact is, everybody's got a camera everywhere and and I, I, I know that holding up a phone and taking pictures of things and people is an invasion of privacy on one level, but at the same time, I, I, I'm not, I'm not saying that there's a panopticon of every you know camera connected to make a single panopticon, but, like, when you're out in public, you, you have to assume that you are being photographed or videoed. That's just where we are.

everybody has multiple lenses in their pocket including your city government, but not just that, but also literally everyone else everywhere and so you know, I don't know, I I feel like culturally if you're in your 20s or 30s. I think you just got to assume that every moment is being photographed and you're used to it, you're accepting it.

1:35:18 - Leo Laporte
I think google's concern about face recognition is that guys would use it to stalk women. Um, and you know that's a, that's a very legitimate concern. Um, the information story, which is quite interesting. Um says that meta, which used to have a whole review process for high risk features, is now automating its risk reviews through a process it calls and this should scare everybody self-certification product teams, confirmed by themselves. They have met requirements for addressing and reducing risk, according to the post. So it's back. We're back to move fast and break things with meta it's always been their philosophy.

1:35:59 - Andy Ihnatko
They're there, it's. It's interesting. With a device like like a wearable cameras, I would absolutely trust Apple. I would acquiesce to Google. There's no way in hell I would buy a pair. I would love a pair of. I would love a device exactly like the Meta Ray bands, but the connection to Facebook is a 100% deal breaker.

1:36:20 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and I think that part of it is also that the, the, the, the, the metaray bands. You don't notice. I was at a lunch with somebody and it took me halfway through lunch I suddenly realized they were wearing my camera. There's two cameras now. I guess there's.

1:36:33 - Leo Laporte
I don't know how that works, but they have a light that turns on, when there's a red light, when you're recording but you don't know that. Yeah right, what the also, they're not hiding the cameras, it's just you have to look specifically at the corner.

1:36:43 - Alex Lindsay
But again you I didn't notice it until I was you just don't notice it. You just don't notice it until you're on. You know immediately like with you're going to have to get a habit of examining everybody's glasses a little more closely you know, just pay a little more attention to that.

1:37:02 - Leo Laporte
Let's see what else I'm just looking. Uh, Pope Leo wears an apple watch. Is that a big? Is that a big story? It's interesting he's the first pope.

1:37:12 - Andy Ihnatko
He's an apple watch first pope to wear an apple watch, first pope with a twitter history that we could worry about. Uh, a bunch of gaming sites were talking about. Oh well, he's a gamer. He was playing wordle and words with friends, with his brother, like, while he was waiting for the vote. He's my age.

1:37:27 - Leo Laporte
So you know that doesn't mean you know, francis was definitely not very technical. We know that because Father Robert helped him with setting up things like Zoom um, and. But it's very clear that the new Pope Leo named is uh, is quite technical. There's his Apple Watch peeking out.

1:37:47 - Andy Ihnatko
One of his first statements was about AI is the new industrial revolution not as a good thing, but as a potential for abusing and putting down people who are already disenfranchised and impoverished in our country, in the world, and we have to be very, very much alert about that.

1:38:01 - Jason Snell
And contrary, potentially, to human dignity, depending on how it's applied, which is really yeah.

1:38:05 - Leo Laporte
Well, welcome to the united states, Pope Leo, because uh, already the, the university is sneaking a uh, a little um addendum into the budget, which means it'll probably get through saying states cannot make a law against ai for the next 10 years. So we are in a, we are in a move fast and break things. Ai situation.

1:38:27 - Jason Snell
I don't know if you mentioned it, but also we found out that he's a Chicago White Sox fan.

1:38:31 - Leo Laporte
He's a White Sox. Eastside, yeah, southside, southside.

1:38:35 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I mean he's from the southern suburbs.

1:38:38 - Leo Laporte
His brother said he would never be a Cubs fan ever.

1:38:45 - Alex Lindsay
And actually they found frames of him on the Fox broadcast of the 2005.

1:38:47 - Jason Snell
World Series, which is amazing. It's not that I mean Pope Francis was a huge fan of a particular Argentinian soccer team. Yeah, he was a soccer fan it's not unreasonable for this sort of thing to happen, but for it to be an American Pope and an American context.

1:39:03 - Leo Laporte
And so was Jude Law. When he was Pope, he was a big sucker for that. Sure. When he was the young Pope, yeah, yeah, exactly.

1:39:08 - Jason Snell
What about Stanley Tucci and Conclave? But spoilers for Conclave. He didn't quite get it. Anyway, it is. Yeah. But Apple Watch? I mean, isn't that funny? Look, live long enough. You see a Pope wearing an Apple Watch.

1:39:32 - Leo Laporte
What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Uh, don't delete the email that you get about. Look from lopez voice assistant. Uh, I did not get the email. I immediately searched it, but, uh, there is a 95 million dollar settlement. Uh, lopez versus apple computer uh, 2019 class action that says Apple violated user privacy by recording their conversations and forwarding them to third party contractors. You remember that Apple apologized and turned it off, but they did agree to a ninety five million dollar settlement. So if you get email from info at Lope, I would delete this immediately. Info at Lopez voice assistant settlementistantsettlementcom. That's not fake. Now, I think you had to apply earlier to get the settlement. But anybody who owns a Siri-enabled device between September 17th and 2014 and September 31st 2024 and has experienced Siri activating seemingly it's on its own well, duh, oh, you can still go and get up to a hundred dollars or twenty dollars per device. Go to the settlement website which, uh, which is probably has some horrible name like apple, lopez, apple versus lopez, settlementcom I mean free burrito man.

1:40:42 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like it's not a lot of money, but think about the free 100 bucks you can buy a few burritos isn't like maximum of 100 bucks and it's like yeah, it's 20 per device, up to five devices.

1:40:53 - Leo Laporte
So uh, yeah, so you still have till july to uh apply.

1:40:58 - Andy Ihnatko
I think anybody that's 10 years, anybody who had any siri devices, you know what eligible and also like I don't know about if you have the same thought, jason's like how many times did I register a brand new apple loaner device and then like you and I sent it back after six months. But does that mean that I can get like is it ethical for me to try to collect 100 bucks for all those phones I registered?

1:41:20 - Leo Laporte
I want to stay in the settlement hundred dollars, we'd buy many if you receive, so look for an email or a postcard notifying you that you may be a member.

1:41:27 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it was in my Gmail spam, so people should definitely check that out.

1:41:30 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so that's the only way to get payment. You have to find that email and then do whatever it says in the email. Okay, that's good to know. Hey, I just made you $100. Thanks, leo to know. Hey, I just made you a hundred bucks.

1:41:44 - Alex Lindsay
Thanks, leo. What's the title of the? What's the title of the email?

1:41:47 - Jason Snell
lopez, voice assistant class action settlement.

1:41:51 - Leo Laporte
By the way, if you, if you are not a twit member, and leo just saved you a hundred bucks you, yeah, or a membership that gets you a year and a half right there, boom, like that. Uh, okay, oh, wait a minute. It says, if you do, oh, anthony had found a link at https://www.lopezvoiceassistantsettlement.com. If you did not receive a personalized notice in the mail of my email, click new claim below to complete a claim form so you can do it on the website. I just missed it. So there's no excuse for you not to uh, not to do that. Get that money where do you see that? I don't? Okay, put a link in the show notes for everybody so you can all get your $100. Should we talk about the C1 modem? By the way, I did mention the 18.5 is out. There are what was it? 30 different security fixes. So even if you don't care about new emojis or anything you might want to, you might want to get 18.5 as installed. There are not a lot of new features, as we talked about before. Yeah, um, but good to do. All, right, I? I think we're going to take a break here and we shall, uh, get to our picks of the week. I think, unless you have any other stories that we should do that I've missed, china will open it. Oh, I did. Okay, I didn't do this. I should probably do this there. There is a little conversation between tim cook and and the president we should talk about. We'll get to that in just a moment.

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So, uh, I didn't even mention it. I guess we're getting so used to this whole red light, green light thing with tariffs. Over the weekend the Chinese tariffs were reduced from 145% to 30%, and this is a classic bait and switch, because actually 30 is still really high, but it's a lot less than 45 percent. China did the same in return. President Trump says the new trade deal is a total reset with China and he spoke to Tim Apple about the whole thing and Tim Apple was very excited.

He's pretty sure that he's going to up that $500 billion too, yeah yeah, yeah, more factories in the let me see if I can find that quote, because it was pretty funny More factories in the US. Apple had already committed to half a trillion in in, you know, buildouts um, which is what they were going to do anyway.

Yeah, they were going to do it anyway, but maybe they're going to even do more. Tim says I mean, uh, president trump says apple's going to up its numbers from cnbc. I spoke to tim cook this morning. He's going to, I think, even up his numbers $500 billion. He's going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. We look forward to that.

1:47:33 - Jason Snell
Wow.

1:47:35 - Leo Laporte
They're building a lot of plants. I don't know how many will be in the United States, but they're definitely not in China.

1:47:40 - Jason Snell
To get carbon neutral, you've got to plant a lot of plants. Oh, that kind of plants, let's talk about plants.

1:47:46 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh, that kind of plants You've got to take away a lot of grazing land from a lot of people in Brazil in order to meet those goals.

1:47:54 - Leo Laporte
Earlier this month, cook told investors about the company's tariff strategy. On an earnings call, according to CNBC, he said Apple's currently sourcing American bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but did not want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation difficult to predict. Yes, that's a. That's a good description of it. Uh, there is a 90 day period now where we at least know it'll be 30 percent, or do we? Or do we?

1:48:23 - Andy Ihnatko
yeah, it's temporary, it's not like a permanent thing, so we so. So basically, if you got another 90 days to decide whether or not you're going to buy like a maxed out mac mini minimum well, but still 30.

1:48:35 - Leo Laporte
I gotta tell you 30 is is more than it was right.

1:48:38 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean, that's, that's more than a big yeah yeah it's still a problem, but it's still. It's still a lot constantly. Apple is the tariff.

1:48:45 - Leo Laporte
Apple says it's not going to mention tariffs in its price hikes. It's just going to give you more, you know, bang for your buck, or something. Apple tv. I'm excited about this. Jude law and andrew garfield are going to play sigfried and roy in a new series. Hello, all right, it's gonna be called we're on tv wild things. I'm. I don't know who's gonna be siegfried and who's gonna be roy, but that's.

1:49:14 - Andy Ihnatko
That was my question too. I could. I could see it going either way, or maybe it'll be like, uh, like the, the broadway version of the odd couple where they keep like switching roles every night just to keep it fresh.

1:49:25 - Leo Laporte
It's a little uh unnerving that it's being created by the showrunner for only murders in the building might, might not be frolic, frolic some, yeah, it's well, that was a. That's a frolic. Some show. It's based on the apple podcast wild things uh. An eight hour, uh or eight hour series. That quote tells the wild ride relationship tale of two of the greatest showman magicians in history who, along with their white tigers, are tasked with turning sin city into a family-friendly destination while fighting crime uh, let's see what other apple tv news.

Seth rogan apparently said no to tim cook. Uh, I haven't seen this episode yet, but apparently, uh, there is um in the I think it's the golden globes episode of the new series, the studio, which I have mixed feelings about. That's not the greatest ever, but it's kind of fun I love it, you love.

1:50:23 - Jason Snell
Do you love it? I do. I think it's really funny.

1:50:25 - Leo Laporte
It's a little whiplashy and it's all that drum and one shot and all that stuff. Anyway apparently Ted Sarandos is the president of Netflix appears in this Apple TV production. In episode eight, rogan's beleaguered studio head, matt remick, attends the golden globes. Matt is stressed about the idea of not getting a shout out in the acceptance speech. Uh, an ongoing bit is that every winner from a Netflix project project effusively thanks sarandos in their speech, without fail. In the end matt has an encounter with sarandos who reveals he puts it in artists contracts.

They have to thank him and accept his speeches uh, so apparently, according to this business insider piece, apple said hey, could tim cook be in that? Make a, could it be tim cook? And seth rogan said no, it wouldn't make any sense. It wouldn't make any sense, it had to be to the joke. It had to be Netflix, right?

1:51:30 - Andy Ihnatko
and and this. This speaks well of apple too, because if you look at a lot of, there are a lot of little quick hit stories based on this interview and it was just like apple basically said, hey, how about we use this, use tim here as a cameo, and he just said no, and apple said okay, that's fine. And there are a lot of headlines I've seen about this like uh uh, seth bans tim cook for refuses apple's demand to use tim cook. And it's like you know you're taking something that's a light bit of fun and you're trying to make it something awful.

1:51:58 - Leo Laporte
Just don't do that, and it couldn't. It wouldn't have worked in the script. I bet you, though, you'll see Tim cook at some point if it did get picked up. And then I think there's, it got picked up for another season, yeah.

1:52:08 - Alex Lindsay
It is a little subversive because it, you know Apple, you know, focuses on really high quality content. You know that isn't necessarily branded and everything else.

1:52:16 - Jason Snell
And they released it.

1:52:24 - Alex Lindsay
They released a show that not only is really entertaining but kind of kicks everybody who's making anything less than that. You know, and so it's. I think that I'm not saying Apple asked for that. I'm saying that Seth Rogen might've sold that to them, like in addition to it, it also talks about all the other stuff and they might've. They might've made it, might've sweetened the pot, but I don't think Apple asked for that kind of programming. I just think that that might've been an angle that might have been thought of when pitching it.

1:52:44 - Andy Ihnatko
Also, I wonder if Seth Rogen is thinking no, I've got something planned. When we deploy the Tim Apple, we're going to deploy Tim Apple and this is not the place for that, and they did pick it up for a second season.

1:52:55 - Jason Snell
So plenty more options for Tim Apple to appear.

1:52:59 - Alex Lindsay
I have to admit, the one that I'm really looking forward to is Murderbot. Like I don't know why that trailer is so good. It was a great book, right? Yeah, yeah, I was serious and it just looks so good and I was just like I don't know. I, I, I'm embarrassed that I, that I'm, that I'm waiting for a show that's called murder bot so good.

1:53:16 - Leo Laporte
It's funny, it looks so good, it's the white brothers who did american pie and about a boy.

1:53:22 - Jason Snell
They're're very good. The source material is so good and the reviews have been good so far that I've seen that they really nailed that. It's sci-fi action mixed with a lot of interpersonal comedy about a character who really doesn't want people to look at them or pay attention to them in any way, which is like awkward. Who hasn't felt that kind of awkwardness Right? Yeah, I'm looking forward to. That's me at every party I go to to be honest, you could be a murder bot you'll find me in the corner losing my religion.

1:53:54 - Leo Laporte
Uh, all, right now we can do the pics of the week. Get ready, boys and boys, it's coming up. Next you're watching MacBreak Weekly with andy inaco, Alex Lindsay and Jason Snell. We're so glad you're here. Uh, Jason Snell, why don't you kick things off with your?

1:54:09 - Jason Snell
well, I was, uh. One of the things I did last week when I was in arizona visiting my mom for her birthday is give her a birthday present, and I am now going to make her birthday present my pick of the week. It's the iphone 16e. Now you can write it off, it is. It is. Yeah. Now it's a business expense excellent, 599 plus. We traded in her old phone, which was a third generation iphone se, got 100 bucks, so it was 499, and the thing is it is. It is great like.

If you are a tech connoisseur, perhaps you personally want a more phone than this, but it's iPhone 16. It's got the. It's got the processor for it. It'll do Apple intelligence whenever they ship the rest of those features. It's got the action button on it. It does not have camera control. I, I was happy not to have more buttons. To explain to my mom Uh, it's got only one camera on the back. But you know what? It's a pretty good camera. It's light, the battery life is bananas and the price is good.

And it's for a people who come to our listeners for advice about what iPhone to upgrade to or do they need a new iPhone. Do not sleep on the iPhone 16E. One of the things I like about it is it's a modern iPhone. It doesn't feel like it's a relic of the past, like all the SE models have always felt. It feels like today's iPhone, but a cheap version of it that, frankly, will be a crowd pleaser. You know most people will not care that it's not a pro or that it doesn't have the second or third camera on it, and yeah, so I'm very happy and I'm happy she's got it too, because a funny thing you may know this, if you're taking care of your older relatives, old skin is not as reliable with Touch ID, the fingers get all kind of like pruney and they can't use Touch ID anymore.

My mom, basically, is immune to Touch ID.

1:56:21 - Leo Laporte
Oh no.

1:56:22 - Jason Snell
And Face ID works great. So she can now just flip the phone open. We had to go through the thing where she's used to a home button, so we had to do the whole, like no, you need to flip at the bottom. And she keeps putting her her thumb down where the home button should be and I'm like, yeah, just push it up from there and you'll get there. But, um, it's a little learning curve. But, uh, and we had to replace her lightning cables with usb-c cables, right, so there's some stuff going on. I bought her a case and I bought her a power adapter because I really did want her to get that full experience because she was back on usb-a and lightning cables before. But, um, just what pretty, pretty great deal for a modern iPhone. So, uh, highly recommend iPhone 16 E.

1:57:07 - Leo Laporte
Nice, very nice. Now you can give it back to mom.

1:57:11 - Jason Snell
Yep, she can take it.

1:57:13 - Leo Laporte
Did you say? You said, hey, mom, I got to show it on the show so I can get the taxes, the Apple loaner the review unit. What color did you get her she?

1:57:20 - Jason Snell
got a white one. This is a black one, but she got a white one with the ready purpley red case Nice.

1:57:28 - Leo Laporte
Very nice, I have two picks. I was using your weather pick, jason, for a while, because it was the one that's going to follow you around.

Mercury weather as you travel, mercury and then I found this one, windy, and I'm actually really impressed with this. One of the things I like about windy which is iPhone, ipad and Apple Watch is you can change, you can choose the weather model you want. You can get hyper local weather and you can get maps of wind and rain and storms and everything motion maps. It's really a beautiful uh weather app 24 bucks if you want the premium, no ads version per year, so it's a little more than your choice and it has that feature, although it's not as easily accessible. But you can give it waypoints in your travels and it will uh, it will follow those along so you can see the weather everywhere you're going. Windy. And then I have another pick. I'm getting a lot of picks out of the way.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I got the new 360 camera I really like this from Insta the X5. And I have to say the image quality is really good and I found a mount that is really nice for it. It's a magnetic mount, so I have it on the Insta tripod but it makes it very easy to get it on and off the mount. It's magnetic, but it does grip in there and then you have a release on it and it's from, ironically, the same company, ulanzi. That makes one of your picks, jason, the aluminum Mac mini case, which I bought and love.

So yeah, I thought that was the greatest thing ever. But let me show you the release. It's a little hard, you have to know it, because it's designed for the Insta360 action cam, but it's the same mount and because it is now that makes it an action cam out, because you have these flip down ears that you could use with any gopro style mount. So it really is a good, flexible, quick release mount. Uh, for the x5, I thought I'd mention it, not very expensive.

1:59:40 - Alex Lindsay
Um, Alex Lindsay, your pick of the week so a a lot of times I have to go to locations and I have to figure out what cameras are we going to use, what lenses are we going to use, how are we going to put this together, what are the framing going to be, where do we need to put things and where we need to take them away? And I can't. I can't take my black magic camera or my airy or that I'm renting or whatever, to the location. Look geeky if I was walking around with this big camera, like looking through it and changing lenses while we're just doing a walkthrough. So I use one of two apps Artemis Pro, which I've talked about in the past, and Cadrage, and so I really like Cadrage as an app. So what this does is it'll let you uh, it cadrage lets you simulate a certain lens on a camera so you can say, I have a 28 millimeter lens on this, on a black magic ursa g2, uh, and it'll simulate what you would see. So you can look through your camera and go, oh, this is what this would look like and it allows you to. You can, you can capture that image so you, you can put it in, you know, and organize it, and so on and so forth.

I'm like this is the frame that if we're standing here, it can grab that, and it's a if you haven't used it before, if you haven't used a tool like this before super useful if you're trying to figure things out, that you know just real quickly to think about things. But I use it mostly in my uh, when I'm pre-visiting a location and trying to figure out where what cameras are going to work. There's nothing worse than trying to like normally. The other option is for you to bring all the lenses. You know, like like I don't know what we're going to do here, but we're going to bring all the lenses and so, anyway, that's CAD rage and it's a. It's a great app for the phone, cad Rage because there's never enough rage in your.

CAD yeah exactly. Why do they call it Rage? I don't know, it might be Cad Rage or Cad Rage, we just call it. It might not be Rage, that's even worse. Yeah, I don't know, it's like Cabbage, like Cabbage.

2:01:39 - Leo Laporte
But with a CAD Cabbage with CAD? Yeah, cad Cabbage, but with a CAD Cabbage with CAD, yeah, cadrage director's viewfinder. I think you should have that thing. You carry around your neck, the little lens that the pros carry around their neck, don't you have?

2:01:52 - Alex Lindsay
that I don't have one of those. Those are expensive and again, the thing is that you hook a lot of those things onto the actual lens to look through it. So it's a a view little viewfinder, uh, that that you end up with um to do those accurately. And and the thing is is, if I use that, I can't capture all the images and send like I was in. This is perfect because it's you're taking pictures of the different aspect ratios. I had a. I had a shoot in um in angkor wat in in cambodia, and I I was doing previs for it six weeks ahead of time. So I flew, flew to Angkor Wat and we looked at all the locations and I'm sitting there capturing all the like, and then the person will be over here and then the person will be over there and then we'll do this, and this is the part of the temple that was behind them.

2:02:35 - Jason Snell
And I know what it is.

2:02:36 - Alex Lindsay
So you build the whole storyboard that way. I had a couple of people that I was with and I just said, okay, stand here. I think in some cases I actually I grabbed two tourists and I said I'll pay you a $50 each just to walk around with me for an hour, is that okay? And they're like sure, you know, you know, like I just bought them lunch, you know. And so then I just walked them around and had them be the people, and, and, and, uh, and and shot all the things. But then I come home with my phone with all those, with all those shots. You're right, right, this is much better. And then I, I can't carry a camera around in cambodia. I mean, just getting into the country is a thing you know. So, so the um, so anyway. So then we figured it all out. Six weeks later we came back and you know we have all the stuff we needed.

You know that was rented from singapore and brought through customs and you know all the things and we were able to get just what we needed. It's so funny people.

2:03:19 - Leo Laporte
The phone does so much now that all those rules like when we were in the, we were inside the pyramids in egypt. You know, down inside looking, this is a newly opened one. The colors are spectacular, no cameras, no cameras. But everybody has a phone now and it's as good a camera as anything, and so I got great pictures and they just can't. You can't ban that stuff anymore. You can't. Customs can't say well, you can't bring the phone into the country. That's great, everything should be on the phone. Andy Anako. Pick of the week.

2:03:51 - Andy Ihnatko
My pick is something that I wish I didn't have to pick. Oh no, it's one of my favorite apps. It's called Graphic and it is basically, if you're an old schooler, it's like MacDraw for the Mac and for the iPhone and for the iPad. It's a vector drawing app, but it's designed to be dirt simple. It's like how to draw a Venn diagram as an illustration for something, and with an app like Graphic, you can just knock that out in 10 minutes, if that. If you need to create a poster for like a yard sale, you can knock that out in five minutes if that, without any restrictions on what you want to do.

There are so many really great vector drawing apps, but they almost all have aspirations towards being uh, like, oh well, of course you want to draw, you're trying to draw an art nouveau poster that's an advertisement for your new whatever, and it's supposed to be what? 80, 80 inches by by 72 inches, like door size. Great, we'll help you do that. Like. No, I really just want up here. I want like yard sale. At the bottom I want the address and in the middle I want to say futon, futon, kitchen stuff, garage stuff. And please just let me do that in three minutes and get gone. Graphic is the best app for doing simple things like that.

2:05:12 - Leo Laporte
You can do very it's good to describe it that way because the images on the website make you think well, this is for designers, this isn't for me, but you're right, you need this for posters it's true, it's try, it's like print shop, broderbund print shop again, another, another fish for the for the old schoolers.

2:05:27 - Andy Ihnatko
Um, but the reason why I don't want to recommend it is that it has been updated in seven years. Autodesk. Autodesk bought it and then they did something with it and then they just said, oh yeah, I guess we're done with that. Like, even if you go to, uh, like those shows their social medias, it's not like so there's somebody who's like, oh, every three months, like hey, hey, did you know you can do this in the app. It's like it hasn't been abandoned. It still works fine. I still use it all the time. It's still very cheap. Uh, you can. You can buy it 30 bucks and like, it's perfect. It syncs through icloud, so it's very, very easy to sync between devices.

Um, I would recommend that you also look at an app called Amadina A-M-A-D-I-N-A. I like it. It's just a little bit more complicated than I would like it to be. But I just have trouble recommending an app that has not been updated in seven years. If you spend $30 for this, maybe the next big OS update is the OS update in which this thing breaks and no one's gonna. No one's gonna fix it. Uh, but it's. I'll at least let you know that this, that graphic, is the app that I would love to be like, the baseline for simple vector drawing apps.

There are too many apps that, again, they try to be a lot. They they serve as professionals and they try to. And of course the ad copy will always say, oh well, great for beginners, or the professional, like, yeah, but unfortunately you can't. Just like hot, please hide. You know you got 28 tool icons over there on the left. Could you hide all but like 18 of them for me? Uh, no, well, do I have to do everything on like 13 layers? You don't have to use all of them, but yeah, you do have to like be manipulating layers. And it's like again, I just want a garage sale sign or I just want to put a sign on my front door that says I'm podcasting go away, you know. So amadine. For people who want a future graphic, for people who want something that will definitely be a simple drawing program but may or may not be around in a year or two. For people who love the past, yes, andy and notko, thank you so much.

2:07:23 - Leo Laporte
Great to see you, great to be here. Thanks guys, I don't think you have anything to plug, do you Not yet?

2:07:28 - Any Ihnatko
Okay, it's coming soon.

2:07:30 - Leo Laporte
It is Okay, that's Jason Snell. He's got much to plug sixcolors.com. But he never rests because he's also a future Jeopardy champion and the host of many podcasts.

2:07:42 - Jason Snell
Future Jeopardy champion. Call me, call me.

2:07:47 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, my kid's in honors too. Can you buy a t-shirt that says Future Jeopardy champion?

2:07:49 - Alex Lindsay
That would be a good kid's shirt. Yeah, and I'm a very inspired big Dan and. Glenn yeah.

2:07:55 - Jason Snell
sixcolors.com. People should check it out. We've got lots of good stuff there this week the Glenn stuff and Shey's thing about accessibility.

2:08:02 - Leo Laporte
you know that's so great that you are doing so well and you're able to uh to to bring glenn in, and all of that. I think this is just great. Uh, it's getting better. How are you doing that?

2:08:14 - Jason Snell
it's getting better just uh, you know getting getting some good people I know to write stuff.

2:08:19 - Leo Laporte
I love that, it's good yeah, yeah, uh, thank you, jason. Thank you, Alex Lindsay. officehours.global q&a time?

2:08:25 - Alex Lindsay
q&a every day, some evenings, weekends, we just do q a it's it's a q a fest. Um, we also uh, you know, gray matter is still cranking away we, we had, we we had Michael McFall, who was the former ambassador to russia, to talk about Ukraine, and then, only the week before that, robert Lustig, who most talks a lot about sugar as poison. So that's the kind of range you get as Andy drinks his Coke.

2:08:59 - Leo Laporte
It's okay, it's Mexican sugar, it's different.

2:09:05 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so anyway, we're having some incredible conversations at graymatter.show and so definitely worth checking out as well.

2:09:11 - Andy Ihnatko
Corn syrup. That's freedom. Sugar man, Freedom sugar.

2:09:16 - Leo Laporte
Okay, only the best graymatter.show. Yeah, I really think McFall is fascinating.

2:09:22 - Alex Lindsay
I'm going to have to listen to this Really really good conversation.

2:09:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah show. Yeah, I really think McFall is fascinating. I'm gonna have to listen. This is really really good conversation. Yeah, yeah, thank you, Alex, Andy, Jason, thanks to all of you who watch.

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